ows, with all his limitations, although there may be
further knowledge beyond, we cannot truly help; that is the condition of
all true help given by man to man, as it is the only condition of the
help which is given to man by God Himself.

And so in other Avataras, He limits Himself for men's sake. Take the
great king, Shri Rama. What did he come to show? The ideal Kshattriya,
in every relation of the Kshattriya life; as son--perfect as son alike
to loving father and to jealous and for the time unkind step-mother. For
you may remember that when the father's wife who was not His own mother
bade him go forth to the forest on the very eve of His coronation as
heir, His gentle answer was: "Mother, I go." Perfect as son. Perfect as
husband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to show out what
husband should be to wife, how could He in the forest, when Sita had
been reft away by Ravana, have shown the grief, have uttered the piteous
lamentations, which have drawn tears from thousands of eyes, as He calls
on plants and on trees, on animals and birds, on Gods and men, to tell
Him where His wife, His other self, the life of His life, had gone? How
could he have taught men what wife should be to husband's heart unless
He had limited Himself? The consciously Omnipresent Deity could not seek
and search for His beloved who had disappeared. And then as king; as
perfect king as He was perfect son and husband. When the welfare of His
subjects was concerned, when the safety of the realm was to be thought
of, when He remembered that He as king stood for God and must be perfect
in the eyes of His subjects, so that they might give the obedience and
the loyalty, which men can only give to one whom they know as greater
than themselves, then even His wife was put aside; then the test of the
fire for Sita, the unsullied and the suffering; then She must pass
through it to show that no sin or pollution had come upon Her by the
foul touch of Ravana, the Rakshasa; then the demand that ere husband's
heart that had been riven might again clasp the wife, She must come
forth pure as woman; and all this, because He was king as well as
husband, and on the throne the people honoured as divine there must only
be purity, spotless as driven snow. Those limitations were needed in
order that a perfect example might be given to man, and man might learn
to climb by reproducing virtues, made small in order that his small
grasp might hold them.

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