ABSTRACT
An easy way of realizing this is to consider the instance of a Hindu reading certain passages of the Old Testament for the first time; or being told about the Holy Communion Service, with its consecrated elements of bread and wine representing the Body and Blood of Christ; or having explained to him St. Paul’s doctrine of election and predestination, or the clauses in the Creed concerning the Descent into Hell, the Ascension into Heaven, and the Resurrection of the Body. W e have become accustomed from childhood to the peculiar phraseology of Christian ceremonies and sacred texts, but others have not. I remember how the poet Rabindranath Tagore once told me that he could not go on reading some of the descriptions of enemy-slaughter in the Psalms to which he had turned on opening the Bible. His elder brother, who was one of the most saintly old men I have ever known, told me that the symbol of the slain “ Lamb of God” presented to his mind a picture that was altogether
revolting, and that he detested the sentence of the hymn, “ Washed in the Blood of the Lamb” .
