A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda
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A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

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10.07.2015 Views

476 CHRIST, THE MESSENGER.Judaism ; and, like all power when it is once gKthered, it^cannot remain collected ;it must expend and expanditself.There isno power on earth which you can ket-fp long confined within aBarrow limit. You cannot compressit so as notto allow of expansion at a subsequent period.And this concentration of energy amongst the race,the Jews, found its expression at the next period, in therise of Christianity. The gathered streams collected intoa head. Gradually, all these little streams came andjoined together, became a surging wave and on the; topof that wave we find standing the character of Jesus ofNazareth. Every prophet, thus, is a creature of his owntimes ;the creature of the past of his race, he, himself,is the creator of the future. The cause of to-dayis the-effect of the past and the cause for the future. Thusstands the Messenger. In him was embodied all that wasthe best and greatest in his own race the ; meaning, thelife, for which that race had struggled for ages and; he,himself, is the impetus for the future, not only to his ownrace but to unnumbered other races of the world.We must bear another fact in mind : that mypoint of view of the great prophet of Nazareth would bethat theone of the Orient. Many times you forget, also,Nazarene himself was an Oriental of Orientals. With allyour attempts to paint him with blue eyes and yellowhair, still the Nazarene was an oriental. The similes, theimageries, in which the Bible is written the; scenes, thelocations, the attitudes, the groups ;all that poetry andsymbol, talk to you of the orient : the bright sky,^he heat, the sun, the desert, the thirsty men andanimals ; wells, and men and women coming with pitchers on the head, to fill at the wells ;the flocks, theploughmen, the cultivation that is going on ;the

CHRIST, THE MESSENGER. 477"mill and Awheel, the mill pond,the mill stones: allthes^are td-day in Asia.The vo&e of Asia has been the voice of religion. Thevoice of Europe is the voice of politics. Eacn is great inits own sphere. The voice of Europeis the voice of ancientGreece. To the Greek mind, his immediate society was.all i^ all. Beyond that, it is Barbarian none but theGreek has the right to live none else. Whatever theGreeks do is right and correct ;whatever else there existsin the world is neither right nor correct nor should beallowed to live. It is intensely human in its sympathies ;:intensely natural ; intensely artistic, therefore. The Greekmay lives entirely in this world. He does not care todre^m. Even his poetry is practical. His gods and goddesses are human beings, intensely human,. 4h. all humanpassions and feelings almost as it is with one of us. Heloves what is beautiful ;what is beautiful in nature ; but,mind you, it is always the external nature the beauty of:the hills, of the snows, of the flowers the ; beauty of formsand of figures ; the beauty in the human face, and more,in the human form. That is what the Greeks liked ;andthe Greeks being the teachers of all subsequent Europeans, this is the voice of Europe.There is another type in Asia. Think of that vast,,huge continent, whose mountain tops go beyond the clouds,almost touching the canopy of heaven s blue; a rollingdesert, thousands upon thousands of miles, where we cannotget a drop of water nor a blade of grass will grow ; forestsinterminable rivers rolling down like a fresh ocean into thesea. In the midst of all these surroundings, the orientallove of the beautiful and ofthe sublime took another turn,It meant inside, and not outside. There is also thethirst for nature, and there is also the same thirst,

CHRIST, THE MESSENGER. 477"mill and Awheel, the mill pond,the mill stones: allthes^are td-day in Asia.The vo&e of Asia has been the voice of religion. Thevoice of Europe is the voice of politics. Eacn is great inits own sphere. The voice of Europeis the voice of ancientGreece. To the Greek mind, his immediate society was.all i^ all. Beyond that, it is Barbarian none but theGreek has the right to live none else. Whatever theGreeks do is right and correct ;whatever else there existsin the world is neither right nor correct nor should beallowed to live. It is intensely human in its sympathies ;:intensely natural ; intensely artistic, therefore. The Greekmay lives entirely in this world. He does not care todre^m. Even his poetry is practical. His gods and goddesses are human beings, intensely human,. 4h. all humanpassions and feelings almost as it is with one of us. Heloves what is beautiful ;what is beautiful in nature ; but,mind you, it is always the external nature the beauty of:the hills, of the snows, of the flowers the ; beauty of formsand of figures ; the beauty in the human face, and more,in the human form. That is what the Greeks liked ;andthe Greeks being the teachers of all subsequent Europeans, this is the voice of Europe.There is another type in Asia. Think of that vast,,huge continent, whose mountain tops go beyond the clouds,almost touching the canopy of heaven s blue; a rollingdesert, thousands upon thousands of miles, where we cannotget a drop of water nor a blade of grass will grow ; forestsinterminable rivers rolling down like a fresh ocean into thesea. In the midst of all these surroundings, the orientallove of the beautiful and ofthe sublime took another turn,It meant inside, and not outside. There is also thethirst for nature, and there is also the same thirst,

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