पृष्ठम्:वेदान्तसारः (सदानन्दः).djvu/१६

xii PREFACE; - , language. Bharatakhanda has produced' men who would have been an ornament to any society, and it has been preeminently a land of thinkers. It is intensely interest ing to see the efforts made by its great men, centuries ago, to reach the truth; yet with all their keenness of mental vision, what result did they arrive at? The Vedanta philosophy, of which this volume is an outline is supposed to be the finest outcome of Indian thought; yet it abolishes God, as an unreality, and substitutes an impersonal. It with no consciousness, whilst its highest notion of bliss is the annihilation of personality! Yet if any men could, by searching, find out the living and true God, they would assuredly have succeeded. Is it not clear, then, that God must give us a revelation of Himself, or we shall never know Hinm ? And I think that any really earnest and candid mind will see that the Bible is just the revelation we need; and, like the Sacred books of all the other great religions of the world, it came to us from Asia. Do not look upon it, therefore, as a product of European thought, or indeed of any merely human thought,-though it has brought light and life into Europe wherever it has been allowed to circulate freely. Just one word as to the annihilation of our personality. I look upon humanity as capable, under improved conditions, of attaining to heights grand beyond all our present conceptions; and the idea of merging our personality in another Being is as horrible as it is unsound. No, there are far greater things than that in store for that portion of the human race that is willing to unite under the headship of the second Man' ! and such will after all see the declaration *Ye shall become as gods " more than fulfilled, false as it was when uttered. REDHILL, SURREY; September 1893. } G. A. JACOB. 1, 1 Cornj/x, 47. 2. G18888 iii5