Not a Christian country in which drunkenness and prostitution do not pollute the streets, the “Reformed Christian” countries bearing away the palm for widespread intoxication. Not a Christian country in which poverty does not gripe great masses of the people, or in which diseases that grow out of bad feeding and bad sanitation do not hold high festival. Between the nations that worship “one Father” and “one Lord Jesus Christ”, bitter jealousy, hot suspicion, breaking out from time to time in war, and evidenced always by huge arrays of armed men, bringing the burden of poverty and the curse of prostitution on every land they guard.
Annie Besant
AMONG the priceless teachings that may be found in the great Hindu poem of the Mahâbhârata, there is none so rare and precious as this—”The Lord’s Song.” Since it fell from the divine lips of Shrî Krishna on the field of battle, and stilled the surging emotions of his disciple and friend, how many troubled hearts has it quieted and strengthened, how many weary souls has it led to Him!
It is perfectly true that marriage is different as regarded from the Secularist and from the Christian point of view. The Secularist reverences marriage, but he regards marriage as something far higher than a union “blessed” by a minister; he considers, also, that marriage should be terminable, like any other contract, when it fails in its object, and becomes injurious instead of beneficial
In the debate which followed this lecture, exception was taken by some of the speakers to the introduction of the religious question, and it was suggested that in attacking the Bible I had thrown down an apple of discord. I would point out that the raising of this question was not of my doing. Had the speakers known a little more of the subject, they would have been aware that the authority of the Bible is constantly brought forward as an argument against women’s rights, and had I avoided meeting this argument, I should have left out a link in my chain.
The history of English policy in Afghanistan is one which each citizen of Britain is now bound to study. No adult individual in a nation is free from responsibility of national policy—only some have votes, but all have influence. To-day the hands of the citizens are in so far clean that when this Tory Government was placed in power, it was placed there for inaction, for rest, for quietude. None voted that it should embroil us in Europe, in Asia, in Africa.
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