Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
This was since our occupation of Lower Burmah. The priests in their yellow robes, draped like Roman Togas, come and go just like other people; they are greatly reverenced, they teach all the boys of the nation their faith, reading, writing and simple arithmetic, but they do not proselytise or assume spiritual powers, nor do they act in civil affairs, and they "judge not;" they live, or try to live a good life, and to work out each his own salvation, and you may follow their example if you please, but they won't burn you if you do differently or think differently.... If any one wants to have the wrinkles rolled out of his soul let him go and rest in the quiet, and sun, and simple beauty of the Shwey Dagon Pagoda, with its tapering golden spire and the blue sky above.
And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise; without the smallest interference with religious liberty; merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the prospect. I have been a sincere mourner for Mill. He and I were on the best terms, and his services at the India House were never so much needed as at this time.
The labour of Protestantism will not be accomplished by the pharisaical mode of priding ourselves on our faith, and damning that of every one else! Our mission is to preach the Gospel pure and simple. Too much time, too much money, too much of true religion is wasted, in our common custom of trying to proselytise others! We should look at home first, Mawley."
He will not put you by with conversational counters and small jests; he will give you the best of himself, like one interested in life and man's chief end. A Scotsman is vain, interested in himself and others, eager for sympathy, setting forth his thoughts and experience in the best light. The egoism of the Englishman is self-contained. He does not seek to proselytise.
Not long before the dawn of Islam, Christian and pagan Arabs fought side by side to overthrow a despotic Jew king in Yamen who was trying to proselytise them with the crude but convincing contrivance of an artificial hell which cost only the firewood and labour involved and beat modern revivalist descriptions of the place to a frazzle as a means of speedy conversion to a Jew or a cinder.
An animal that refuses to let another eat it has the courage of its convictions and, if it gets eaten, dies a martyr to them. So we can only proselytise fresh meat, the convictions of putrid meat begin to be too strong for us. It is good for a man that he should not be thwarted that he should have his own way as far, and with as little difficulty, as possible.
One is conscious at Benares just now of a pervading effort to proselytise. There is this fakir on one side of the river with his troop, covering their nakedness with a little dust and ashes, and priests of all kinds and the populace painting themselves red on the other side; then there is Mrs Besant running some new sort of Hindooism or "damned charlatanism," as Lafcadio Hearn would have put it.
The religion is scarcely fitted to the genius of the people, and the Anglican Church has shown no desire to proselytise a nation which has as much right to its own religious opinions and form of worship as the English nation. The Americans and English Nonconformists are very busy, however, and talk somewhat largely of the results of their labours.
It is exclusive and unprogressive still. Mohammedanism in its fiery youth, because monotheistic was aggressive, but it enforced outward profession only, and left the inner life untouched. So it did not scruple to persecute as well as to proselytise. Christianity is alone in calmly setting forth a universal dominion, and in seeking it by the Word alone. 'Put up thy sword into its sheath.
There was no attempt to form a party, or to proselytise; there was no organisation, no distinct and recognised party marks. "I would not have it called a party," writes Dr. Newman in the Apologia. But a party it could not help being: quietly and spontaneously it had grown to be what community of ideas, aims, and sympathies, naturally, and without blame, leads men to become.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking