[Footnote 64: Hardwick traces similarities between Hindu traditions and Christianity in such points as these: 1, The primitive state of man; 2, his fall by transgression; 3, his punishment in the Deluge; 4, the rite of sacrifice; 5, the primitive hope of restoration.—Christ and Other Masters, p. 209.]
[Footnote 65: The Hindus hold that "truth was originally deposited with men, but gradually slumbered and was forgotten; the knowledge of it returns like a recollection."—Humboldt's Kosmos, ii., p. 112.]
[Footnote 66: Professor Wilson's Lectures, p. 52.]
[Footnote 67: Vishnu Puranas, p. 45, note 4.]
[Footnote 68: Buddhism is still more disheartening, since it denies the separate conscious existence of the ego. There cannot be divine fellowship, therefore, but only the current of thoughts and emotions like the continuous flame of a burning candle. Not our souls will survive, but our Karma.]
[Footnote 69: Christ and Other Masters, p. 182.]
[Footnote 70: Yet in spite of Manu and the inveteracy of old custom, there gleams here and there in Hindu literature and history a bright ideal of woman's character and rank; while the Ramayana has its model Sita, the Mahabharata, i., 3028, has this peerless sketch:
"A wife is half the man, his truest friend;
A loving wife is a perpetual spring
Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful wife
Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss;
A sweetly-speaking wife is a companion
In solitude; a father in advice;
A mother in all seasons of distress;
A rest in passing through life's wilderness."
This, however, is a pathetic outburst: the tyranny of the ages remains.]
[Footnote 71: Even in the later development of the doctrine of faith
(Bakti) Hinduism fails to connect with it any moral purification or
elevation. See quotations from Elphinstone and Wilson in Christ and
Other Masters, p. 234.]