fellowship.” There are the four doors
of the Chet Rami sanctuary. There also we have
the Theosophical Society of India, professing in its
constitution to be “the nucleus of a Universal
Brotherhood of Humanity, representing and excluding
no religious creed.” Ammonius, founder of
the Neo-Platonists, was a pantheist like the present
leader of the Theosophical Society, Mrs. Besant, and
like her too, curiously, had begun as a Christian.[104]
We recall that of Indian Theosophy in general, in
1891, the late Sir Monier Williams declared that it
seemed little more than another name for the “Vedanta
[or Pantheistic] philosophy.” Exactly like
the earlier theosophists also, Ammonius, the Neo-Platonist,
held that the purified soul could perform physical
wonders, by the power of Theurgy. In its constitution
the Theosophical Society professed “to investigate
the hidden mysteries of nature and the psychical powers
latent in man.” Many can remember how, in
the eighties, Madame Blavatsky took advantage of our
curiosity regarding such with air-borne letters from
Mahatmas in Thibet. Again Ammonius, we read,
“turned the whole history of the pagan gods into
allegory.” There we have the Neo-Krishnaites
of to-day. “He acknowledged that Christ
was an extraordinary man, the friend of God, and an
admirable Theurgus.” There we have the
stand point of the educated Indians who have come under
Christ’s spell. For two centuries the successors
of Ammonius followed in these lines. “Individual
Neo-Platonists,” Harnack tells us, “employed
Christian sayings as oracles, and testified very highly
of Christ. Porphyry of Syria, chief of the Neo-Platonists
of the third century, wrote a work “against
Christians”; but again, according to Harnack,
the work is not directed against Christ, or what Porphyry
regarded as the teaching of Christ. It was directed
against the Christians of his day and against the
sacred books, which according to Porphyry were written
by impostors and ignorant people. There we have
the double mind of educated India,—homage
to Christ, opposition to His Church. There also
we have the standpoint of Sahib Mirza Gholam Ahmad
of Qadian. Some, we read, being taught by the
Neo-Platonists that there was little difference between
the ancient religion, rightly explained and restored
to its purity, and the religion which Christ really
taught, not that corrupted form of it which His disciples
professed, concluded it best for them to remain among
those who worshipped the gods. There is the present
Indian willingness to discover Christian and modern
ideas in the Hindu Scriptures, especially in the original
Vedas that the new [=A]rya sect declare to be “the
Scripture of true knowledge.” The practical
outcome of the Neo-Platonic movement was an attempt
to revive the old Graeco-Roman religion,—Julian
the apostate emperor had many with him. There
we have the revival of the worship of Krishna in India,
and the apologies for idolatry and caste. The
most recent stage of the Theosophical Society in India