souls rich. Perhaps we have been too much disposed to regard
that former world as a wonderland, a repertory of folk-lore, or a
theatre of gross and revolting superstition. We are now required by
candor and justice to revise such notions. These primeval peoples, in
their way and in a language akin to ours, adored the Father in heaven,
and contemplated the future of the soul with a sure and certain hope.

Nor did they, while observing the myriads of races intervening between
man and the monad, regard the world beyond as waste and void.
Intelligences of every grade were believed to people the region
between mortals and the Infinite. The angels and archangels, and the
spirits of the just made perfect--_devas_ and _pitris_ they called
them--ministered about the throne of the Supreme Being, and abode in
the various spheres of universal space. Much of the difference between
our thought and theirs consists in the names and not in the substance
of our beliefs.

We may thus be prepared to receive what India can teach us. In her
classic dialect, the Sanskrit, we may read with what success the
children of the men who journeyed from the ancient Aryan Home into the
Punjab and Aryavartta have ventured "to look inward upon themselves,
upward to something not themselves, and to see whether they could not
understand a little of the true purport of that mystery which we call
life upon earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly
right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite Beyond,
the image impressed itself upon his sensorium, as would be the case
from looking at the sun, and he would as a result perceive that
Infinite in all that he looked upon. Thus to the Sanskrit-speaking
Aryan, as to the enlightened mind of to-day, not to see it was utter
blindness. What we call science, law, morality, religion, was in his
view pervaded alike throughout by this concept of Divine presence, or
else it would have been less than a dream that had not come to the
awaking. He was a follower of the light, not from the senses or the
logical understanding, but from the eternal world. Let us not dwell on
any darker shade of the picture. Clouds are dark to those who are
beneath them; but on the upper side, where the sun shines, they glow
with golden splendor. Let us be willing to contemplate India
fraternally, and upon that side where the radiance of the Divine sheds
a refulgent illumination.

ALEXANDER WILDER.

NEWARK, N. J., May 1