Covenanter Witness Vol. 55 - Rparchives.org

cow.'cows,'mankind."ness"world."yieldBurden-Bearing and Burden-SharingBy Veva I. HansenIn looking back over the past year, I find I havespent most of my time at the time-consuming taskof housekeeping. Barbara came to live with us onMay 15 and while she is a good baby, she is still requiring a good bit of attention. We have all enjoyedher very much and she has made a good point of contact with many Japanese people.I did help with the Chashi Vacation Bible School.This school and the one held at Ichinotani were bothfor one week. The attendance was good and the interest was keen. The use of an interpreter did notseem to hinder at all. Some of our Japanese membershelped also. Miss Huston was in charge.When the Boyles went home, Mrs. Boyle's Sabbath School class was left without a teacher. I taughtit until Barbara became just too much for a 10 yr.old sister to handle. This class is taught in Englishfor young people who desire to learn English aswell as the Bible. The Chao boys attend as do severalJapanese who have studied English for several years.I have not attended the Language school buthave studied for several months at home with a private teacher. The school teaches the language fasterbut it has been impossible for me to attend so far.It is a very difficult language and I fear it will takemany years to become really fluent. We hope thatthe Spears will be coming out and that Mrs. Spearand I can study together.We have started a Sabbath School here in ourhome since we moved to this village of Suzurandai.The children are eager to come and we usually havea good attendance. School programs are often heldon Sabbath so on those days the children cannotcome. Two of our Japanese young people have takenthe responsibility so I am an advisor and at the endof every lesson I try to give a present day applicationthat the children can understand.During Miss Lynn's absence I kept the books forthe Book Room. This did not involve the handling ofany money but consisted of the book work only. InNovember, I became the Mission treasurer and havethat responsibility since that time.Every daywe realize our weaknesses and howvery unfit we are for the tasks that come to us. Weask for your prayers that we may more and morerelyupon the Lord for we know that He is able.LIFE LOOKS AT HINDUISM(Continued from front page)ence for everything, trees, rivers, cows and ants.This reverence is expressed in one form of ahimsa,or nonviolence to animals as well as humans, and asa result, most pious Hindus are vegetarians . ."For a Hindu to eat meat is sacrilege tantamount tocannibalism. 'All that kill the scriptures warn,'rot in hell for as many years as there are hairs on"the body of a slain No less than MahatmaGandhi once said, "The cow is a poem of pity. She ismother to millions of IndianSuch darkness of mind needs to be both pitied and deprecated.72Life magazine makes no effort to point out theeconomic poverty and degradation into which thisso-called reverence for all of animal life leads thegreat nation of India. The worship of cows andmonkeys alone represents an economic liability running into millions of dollars each year. Thousandsof India's children go hungry while Hunuman, themonkey god, and his 50,000,000 four-footed followersfill their stomachs.It is true that many forms of sin abound in socalledChristian lands. The reasons are evident. Millions who think of themselves as Christians franklyhave never become "new creatures in Christ Jesus."They are, of course,.andsubject toto the lustand passion of the flesh. These things have, however, always been condemned by the Christian message Whereas they are, to a large extent, condonedby Hinduism.The Doctrine of God"Hindus believe that ultimate reality is so mysterious, ineffable and illimitable that it can neitherbe described, nor debated. Yet Hindus have madefantastic efforts to describe the divine and its relationship to the This teaching stands in boldcontrast to the biblical revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of ourLord and Saviour Jesus Christ. According to Hindutheology, God is manifested in three basic conceptions. Each of these has appeared in a myriad ofshapes, forms and incarnations. There is Brahma,the creator, who "creates each universe out of eternally existent There is Vishnu, material."the sustained and Shiva, the destroyer. Not by the fartheststretch of the most virile imagination could this concept fit into the Christian teaching of creation nor ofthe Holy Trinity. It is certainly not true that allpeoples and all religions are ultimately worshipingthe same God. If a Hindu claimed that two plus twoequals five and a Christian counteracted with a statement that it equals four, one would not suggest thatboth are ultimately reaching the same mathematicaltruth. The plain fact is that the Hindu in this caseis undeniably wrong. Like truth, the character ofGod is eternal and immutable. It is not somethingin one country and something else in another.In the Hindu philosophy of life "Reality isone."Yet in reality this very philosophy has divided Indiansocial experience into many castes and sub-castes.Hinduism, itself, has "many dozens of sects, eachfollowing its own beliefs and rituals . . . Hinduismmay be interpreted in one way in one community,in quite a different way in another. It has meantdifferent things at different times in history."The Hindu feels that "only through ignoranceand deception do we see life as . . .multiplicity Thecreated world though it has been projected from thereal is not the real itself. The relationship of God tothe earth is illustrated by the heat that rises fromthe fire. The heat is not the fire and yet it comesfrom the fire and cannot exist without it." Suchtheories would incline one to feel that Christian science may have borrowed some of its assumed modernrevelation from ancient Hinduism.Strange it is that in the midst of India's "onethe Hindu heavens "teem with three hundredthirty million gods . Charged with super-human. .energy, the Hindu gods posture, proliferate, and dashCOVENANTER WITNESS