American Convert to Hinduism.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 20 June 1911, Page 4

American Convert to Hinduism.

In the monthly journal called Siddhanta Dipika there is reported a lecture by Air .M. li. I'hi'lps. of NewYork, delivered in the Hindu Collego Hall at .Ifl'ua early in this year. M.t I'helps, although raised and educated among orthodox Christian surroundiiiigs, was never a Christian. Until he was more thai) thirty years of age religion bad no meaning for him, but in his thirty-second year Hindu thought and religion was opened to him. There be found an exposition of the relations of God. the universe and man, which appealed to his reason. Ho is very emphatic as to the superiority uf the Rastern civilisation. Ho thus sums up the chief features of Western life :— _ " Pursuit of excitement, sensationalism. Pursuit of wealth, social position and distinction in the state. "Pursuit of gratification of the senses. ''Pursuit of those pleasures which .minister to the more refined tastes and the intellect, in the fields of literature, scholarship and the arts. "And in these purs-nits the 'rule, of the game' is competition—selfaggrandisement, without attention to the sulTeriii'g.s caused thereby to one's neighbour. "So it is, irt its broad a.s]>efits, a civilisation without a God, without a. religion." And he adjures the Hmklus to maintain their noble and spiritual ideals, which lead directly to the footstool of the Almighty, instead of allowing them to be snibinorged by an avalanche of sensuo'usness and intellectuality.