Religion

The chief value of the Book of Rites, however, is ethnological, and is found in the light which it casts on the political and social life, as well as on the character and capacity of the people to whom it belongs. We see in them many of the traits which Tacitus discerned in our ancestors of the German forests, along with some qualities of a higher cast than any that he has delineated. The love of peace, the sentiment of human brotherhood, the strong social and domestic affections, the respect for law, and the reverence for ancestral greatness, which are apparent in this Indian record and in the historical events which illustrate it, will strike most readers as new and unexpected developments.

The word God seems intended to express the idea of a power universal and eternally active, which gives impulse to the movements of all Nature, following the laws of a harmony alike constant and wonderful, and developing itself in various forms, which organized matter can take, which blends itself with and animates everything and which seems to constitute One, and only to belong to itself, in its infinite variety of modifications.

This ignored scientific research was by one of India's political warriors, who dared to confront the British occupation and British destruction of his homeland. Based on independent research, astronomical facts, and from the Vedas themselves, Tilak proves that these precious manuscripts were written around or in excess of 6000 years ago. Oddly enough this lines up with biblical interpretation that mankind started 6000 years ago...and that the Great Pyramid of Egypt, too was established on a certain position of Orion.

A few years ago the subject-matter of the present volume might have been condensed into a few pages. Beyond what we would gather from the Old Testament, we knew but little about the history and geography of Canaan before the age of its conquest by the Israelites.

It will soon be: 1500 years since the decision of the Council of 543 A.D.1 condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of Justice inclining to the side filled with their iniquities of bygone times; teachings which would have been welcomed by the masses, and the understanding of which would not have called for any lofty intellectual culture.

SAINTS and sinners are not two selected from the numerous classes to be met with in the world, with which in every-day life we come in contact. They comprise the entire population of the globe. This is the one broad and essential division which includes all mankind. There are black races and white ones; but, then, there are also the intermediate red, olive, and dusky. There are tall men and short ones, heavy men and light ones; but not to the exclusion of those of middle height or weight, which stand somewhere between the two.