Strange Gods of American Women
By F. M. Wilcox
UNDER this heading the Literary Digest of July 13 speaks of the great inroads being made by the religions and cults of the Orient in the United States. Annually the churches of this country are contributing about twenty million dollars for the extension of the gospel in heathen lands, but "from the very fields where all this money is garnered, the Eastern religions, against which these efforts are made, are gathering their harvest also." Mrs. Gross Alexander, in the Methodist Quarterly Review, says of this propaganda:— "Yoga" classes, which were first made fashionable by the society set, have become in many cities as popular as Browning and Shakespeare classes. Placing the Hindu scriptures above the Bible, many women to-day are studying8these teachings who were formerly Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Jewesses. This woman, quoting another writer, Mabel Potter Daggett, charges that the influences of these Oriental beliefs have been attended by most evil results in many who have become their advocates. After citing a number who have become mentally unbalanced, and who are now confined in insane asylums, she says, "Many more examples could be cited of wrecked minds lost through the pursuit of this philosophy." Of the subtle ways in which these mystic teachings are presented, and of the manner in which they are linked with the Christian religion, the Digest quotes from the farewell address delivered by one of the Hindu priests, Baba Bharati. He says:— It has been my privilege these five years past to preach to you your own Christ, even as much as my god Krishna. I came not here to thrust my religion upon you, but to help you to understand your own God and your own religion. If I have talked of Krishna and of the Vedas and Hindu philosophy, it was only to illuminate the teachings of your own Christ, to present him before you in the limelight of the Vedas, and the X-ray of your scientific philosophies. There is another form of Oriental philosophy practised in many cities of the United States; namely, the teaching and practise of sun-worship. Regarding this Mrs. Daggett is quoted as saying:— At least fourteen thousand Americans are joining daily in this worship of the Lord Mazda and the daily adoration of the sun. There are Mazdazan centers in thirty cities of the United States, as well as in Canada, South America, England, Germany, and Switzerland; and they are all the remarkable growth of the past ten years. It was about 1901 that "His Humbleness, the Prince of Peace," appeared in Chicago. His largest temple is located there on Lake Park Avenue, while his lesser one stands on the lawn of Dr. Hilton's residence, in Lowell; and ground has been consecrated for a third temple in Montreal. That the sun may do its perfect work, the cult encourages the wearing of as little clothing as the law allows. When we come to consider some of the cults and systems of American origin, it can not be considered so strange after all that there should be found in this country those who take up with the Oriental philosophies. It is no more strange that professed Christians should turn from the Bible and Bible doctrines to Hindu philosophy than that they should accept the vagaries of Christian Science or fall into the delusive snares of Spiritualism, both of which are products of Western thought. They all show, however, the sad degeneracy which is creeping into the so-called Christian church. Like the Athenians of old, men to-day are continually seeking to search out some new thing. Human reasoning and idle philosophical speculation are supplanting Christian faith and simplicity. The remedy is to be found in a return to simple Bible faith and practise; in the church of God girding on the sword of the Spirit, and going forth to withstand these evil influences that are threatening her destruction. . . . F. M. W.