পাতা:সারধর্ম্ম-রাজনারায়ণ বসু.djvu/১০

the essential religion.

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show me the way to this object of thy love.’ God said: ‘Turn thy steps to yon village and in that pagoda thou shalt behold him.’ The angel sped to the pagoda and here he found a solitary man kneeling before an idol. Returning he cried: ‘O Master of the world! hast thou looked with love on a man who invokes an idol in a pagoda?’ God said:—‘I consider not the error of ignorance; this heart, amid its darkness, hath the highest peace.’” The moral of this story applies to followers of such idolatrous religions as inculcate the love of God or piety and love of man or morality and not to those of immoral idolatrous religions, though, with regard to even these religions, we might remark with Parker that “men are better than their creeds.” Many followers of those religions, in spite of their immoral teachings, have been observed to lead in practice pure and blameless lives. On the whole, however, those religions can not be included in the category of religion. Excluding them, all religions, whether polytheistic or monotheistic that inculcate the love of God and the love of man, are paths to salvation, straight or devious, according to the amount of religious truth which each contains. Napoleon I. said: ‘‘Paradise is a central spot where the souls of all mankind arrive by different roads. Each sect has its own particular path.” Parker says: “As many men, so many theologies, but religion is one. As there is only one ocean