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The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars 17
Williams, whose very object in writing the book known as "Indian
Wisdom" is to caricature the Vedic religion which he calls by the
name of Brahmanism, and to hoist up Christianity by the
meritorious process of deliberate contrasts. Writes Monier
Williams, "It is one of the aims, then, of the following pages to
indicate the points of contrast between Christianity and the three
chief false
religions of the world, as they are thus represented in
India."
Speaking of Christianity and its claims 'as supernaturally
communicated by the common Father of mankind for the good of
all His creatures,' he says —
"Christianity asserts that it effects its aim through nothing
short of an entire change of the whole man, and a complete
renovation of his nature. The means by which this renovation is
effected may be described as a kind of
mutual transferor substitution,
leading to a reciprocal interchange and co-operation between God
and man's nature acting upon each other. Man — the Bible affirms
— was created in the image of God, but his nature became corrupt
through a taint, derived from the fall of the first representative man
and parent of the human race, which taint could only be removed
by a vicarious death."
"Hence, the second representative man — Christ — whose
nature was divine and taintless, voluntarily underwent a sinner's
death, that the taint of the old corrupted nature transferred to him
might die also. But this is not all. The great central truth of our
religion lies not so much in the fact of Christ's death as in the fact
of His
continued life
(Rom. viii.34). The first fact is that He of His
own free- will died; but the second and more important fact is that
He rose again and lives eternally, that He may bestow life for death
and a participation in His own divine nature in place of the taint
which He has removed."
"This, then, is the reciprocal exchange which marks
Christianity and distinguishes it from all other religions — an
exchange between the personal man descended from a corrupt
parent, and the personal God-made man and becoming our second
parent. We are separated from a rotten root, and are grafted into a
living one. We part with the corrupt will, depraved moral sense,
* Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, Introduction, p.XXXVI