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Maurice bears testimony to the character of Eastern religious ideas in the following language: "Whoever will read the Geeta with attention, will perceive in that small tract the outlines of all the various systems of theology in Asia.

"Is this one of our tribe or a stranger? is the calculation of the narrow-minded; but, to those of a noble disposition, the earth itself is but one family." "What is religion?" says elsewhere the same book, and answers, "Tenderness toward all creatures." "He is my beloved of whom mankind are not afraid and who of mankind is not afraid," says the Bhagvat Geeta.

In referring to the doctrines contained in the Geeta, one of the sacred writings of the Hindoos, Faber observes: "In the single character of Brahm, all the three offices of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are united. He is at once the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer. He is the primeval Hermaphrodite, or the Great Father and the Great Mother blended together in one person."

In all nations, there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one Being. This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the East, and chiefly, in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.

After the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which constitute the sacred books of Christendom, these are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroastrian Oracles; the Vedas and Laws of Menu; the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat Geeta, of the Hindoos; the books of the Buddhists; the "Chinese Classic," of four books, containing the wisdom of Confucius and Mencius.

The doctrine maintained throughout the Geeta is not only that the great life-force represents a trinity in unity, but that it is both female and male.

Such was the origin of this famous dogma, recognized by all the heathens, and incorporated with all the sacred fables, cosmogonies, and mysteries of antiquity." The Religions of Profane Antiquity, p. 186. See the "Bhagvat Geeta," one of the religious books of Brahminism.

It was that necessary return to health, earnestness, and virtuous endeavor which Kreeshna speaks of in the Hindoo Geeta: "Whenever vice and corruption have sapped the foundations of the world, and men have lost their sense of good and evil, I, Kreeshna, make myself manifest for the restoration of order, and the establishment of justice, virtue, and piety."