Testimony of Healing March 14, 1908 Issue

Brahmanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the sects...

Reuben Pogson

Scarborough (England) Post

Brahmanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the sects and religions that the last includes, these, the principal religions of Aryan origin, bear no real resemblance to Christian Science. It may be true that they use the terms omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, when they describe Brahm as the Supreme Being. Their other definitions as to what constitutes the divine unity may be such as no Christian would object to, but examine carefully what they mean when they use these terms, and you will find that they do not mean anything resembling what Christian Science teaches as to the nature of Deity. Dr. Duff writes: "Brahm exists without qualities or attributes, literally and absolutely. Consequently he is represented as existing without intellect, without intelligence, without even the consciousness of his own existence.... In any sense within the reach of human understanding he is 'nothing' ... a mere abstract of negation more absolute than darkness.... Brahm ... produced Maya, matter or illusion, the source of all phenomena, and by means of which individual existences made their appearances."

Here is a deliberate teaching that reality, truth, produces illusions, unreality, error. Here we have an instance of the dissimilarity between the teachings of Christian Science and the Aryan religions. When the Christian Scientist declares to the believer in these Aryan religions that Christian Science teaches the nothingness of matter, the latter will say, "Our religion teaches that." Yet it is not so, and any thinking man, upon comparative analysis, will see that the two teachings are not in the least alike. There is no monopoly of the truth, neither can we, if we wish, allocate truth, and we do not doubt that gleams of truth have come to all who have sought honestly for light. There is no comparison between the earnest gropings of Sakya Muni for truth, and the positive, certain absoluteness that characterizes the teachings of Jesus, who "demonstrated" the truth. It is this epignosis (exact knowledge) which Jesus manifested that constitutes his position in this carnal world as the Wayshower to the Father, and it is because of this that Mrs. Eddy says of him, "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe" (Science and Health, p. 313).

The idea has been exploited that Jesus in the years preceding his public ministry went to India, and even to Thibet, and there learned the truths which he afterward demonstrated in his own country; but no one will believe this story who compares carefully the teachings of the Buddhists and the Brahmins and those found in the Bible. Superficially scanned, there may seem to be some parallels, but careful analysis quickly detects the point of divergence.

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