Excerpt from Christ the Goal of India

And as we pass from the more general relation of Christ to the world in all its infinitely varied aspects to His relation to the various religions of the world, we know that as regards Judaism, the truth we have been dwelling on finds general and ready recognition. I am not come to destroy but to fulfil. These words, which as we have seen might serve as a motto of all Christ's dealings with the world, were used by Him more particularly in relation to Judaism. They affirm the truth - which we have more or less apprehended�that He came not as the interrupter and destroyer, but as the interpreter and perfecter of the Mosaic Law, lifting it up to a dignity, and giving it a worth and meaning that could never have been traced in it before, at the very time that He put it, in its Outward form, on one side, and claimed, its work of preparation and foreshadowing having been ended, to take its place Himself, and carry out to their fullest strength and beauty the shadows, the hints, the suggestions of divine things which it had contained.

But if as regards our Lord's relation to Judaism this truth has been clearly seen and more or less consistently maintained, it is far otherwise when we pass to the other chief religions of the world, more particularly those with which by the widening of our commerce and national responsibilities during the last century we have been brought into such curiously close contact. The title of one of the first books published on Mahomedanism in England, The True Nature of Imposture displayed in the life of Mahomed, is familiar to many Of us, and has Often been referred to both from sympathetic and from strongly opposing standpoints. We are not concerned now to enquire whether, or how far, the charge laid in this title is true or how much there may be either in the personal history of Mahomed or in his creed to justify it, but this we may say, that it clearly does not indicate any smallest grain of sympathy, any slightest wish to see what there was Of truth in the very remarkable system of which it treated, what it had supplied, if anything, amidst the varied needs of man, in what it had found its strength, wherein it was related to Christianity, except in the broadest way as false to true, as darknessto light, or what of hint or foreshadowing or craving in it could be taken up and claimed, satisfied and perfected by the faith of Jesus Christ. Nor is.this an isolated instance. Rather may we say that broadly speaking, and with not a few exceptions, some remarkable ones, the standpoint here assumed has been a not uncommon one alike for writers at home and still more for those who in the mission field have been brought into closest, and ofttimes most repellent, con tact with all that is foulest and least Christlike in the Mahomedan or heathen faiths, and who have thus been led to direct their strength almost wholly to the exposure from an absolutely foreign and hostile standpoint, and if it may be the destruction, of such pernicious error.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.