Page:Thirty-nine reasons why I am a vegetarian.djvu/21

 The prophetic and historical writings of the Old and New Testaments have strong allusions to it. It was practiced by many of the prophets and apostles, and Christ himself abolished the bloody sacrifices of the church and instituted the bread and wine as emblems instead of the slaughtered lamb. The Buddhist, the most prevalent of all the religions of the East, is distinguished for its adherence to the Vegetarian sentiment and practice. The philosophers of Greece and Rome were strong advocates of the same doctrine from Pythagoras to Plutarch; the poets have sung its praises from Ovid to Pope and our modern poets are glowing with the thought of the ideal life so near at hand when man shall sing and live "in tune with the Infinite" and when as Axon writes:

Modern leaders of thought, Wesley, Swedenborg, Linneas, Graham, Alcott, Trail, Kellogg and scores of writers for the newspaper and periodical press, are practically developing the Vegetarian idea; the leading newspapers of this country are