Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1914 — TEMPLE OR PRISON? [ARTICLE]

TEMPLE OR PRISON?

A marvel of human existence, the very opposite of that which is to be found in this country, is the life of the ascetics of India, whose religions penances and self-punishments are described and illustrated in the December number of the National Geographical Magazine. In this country, as indeed in most civilized countries, we are doing all that we know how to do to help these wonderful bodies of ours to do their work. We are teaching children how to care for them that they may escape sickness and live long. We urge ourselves to take exercise that every part of the body may be kept in good working order. We avoid extreme heat and cold, shun Injury and establish hospitals to make repairs of the human body when it is broken or diseased. We hold to the theory that the human body is a temple which we injure at our own peril.

But the ascetics of India, not only do none of of these things, but do the very opposite. They think of the body as a prison of the soul for which they would have release. So they punish it wound it by walking or lying on spikes, abuse it by burning, distort it so as to make permanent and helpless cripples of themselves, put traordinary and needless burdens upon it, refuse it food and water, and in a score of other ways abuse it The men who do these; things are not few; the number of them is put at 5,000,000 enough to people Ohio at its present density. Here in America, we talk of religious fanaticism, but a glimpse at the lift of these so-called “holy at India must satisfy anybody that those who know only the American brand of It know it not at all. —Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.