iti_--the power of nature; or the Veisashika sage who traces it to
eternal atoms; they all practically posit that it is eternal.

Of course the Christian doctrine of creation from nothing does not, as the
Hindu too often assumes, maintain that the universe is a result without a
cause; for it teaches that God Himself, by the exercise of His sovereign
will and omnipotence, is an all-adequate cause to all created things.

If the Vedantin claims that creation is impossible, how can he at the same
time believe that ideas have from time to time sprung up in the mind of
Brahm, which ideas themselves have put on illusion and appear to human
ignorance as the universe? It is, to say the least, no easier for him,
with his conception of Brahm, to account for the origin of such ideas than
it is for the Christian to trace the source of the material universe to an
all-wise and omnipotent God. Nor does the Sankya philosopher, by
practically denying God and positing the eternal existence of souls and
_prakriti_, remove half the difficulties that he creates.

(_d_) Again, the teachings of the two faiths concerning man are no less
divergent. In the Bible man is represented as a son of God. He is fallen
indeed, but with a trace, even in his degradation, of his Father's
lineaments. We follow him in his willful rebellion against his Father; he
plunges into the lowest depths of sin. But we still recognise in him the
promise of infinite and eternal possibilities of spiritual expansion and
happiness. Indeed we find at work a divinely benevolent scheme through
which he is to be ultimately exalted to heavenly places in Christ Jesus
and made the heir of infinite bliss.

On the other hand, Hindu Shastras represent man as mere illusion--the poor
plaything of the absolute One. For man to assume and to declare his own
real existence is, they say, but the raving of his ignorance (_avidya_).
To the practical Western mind it seems almost impossible that a
philosopher should be so lost in his philosophy as to aver that he, the
thinker and father of his philosophy, has no _real_ existence--is only
illusion, concerning which real existence can only be assumed for
practical purposes. What must be said of the philosophy begotten by such
an illusive being? Shall it not also be doomed to vanish with him into the
nothingness whence he came and which he now really is, if he only knew it?
Sir Monier Williams aptly remarks,--"Common sense tells an Englishman that