Religion and Dharma

EVERY religion centres round some particular idea: Ancient Egypt round death; Persia round the mystery of Good and Evil; Christianity round the redeeming love of a divine Incarnation. Only Hinduism aims at the heights of Vairagyam and Mukti, and at nothing secular. This is indeed the weak point of Hinduism. The quality by which Hinduism has it in her power to make up for this defect of her greatness, is her capacity for synthetizing every religious idea with which she comes in contact. The absorptive power of Hinduism as a religion, coupled with its resistant power as a civilization, furnishes one of the most startling paradoxes in the history of man. Derived originally from a veritable network of religions, in which the co-ordinating element was the philosophy now known as Vedarita, it has thrown out reforming sects in the Mohammedan period, and thrown out reforming sects in the Christian period, each of these being in fact the expression of its admiration for the new ideal of which it has caught a glimpse.