but it is a rest
from all thought, emotion, self-consciousness and separate existence as
well as from all work.

Within the mighty fascination of this Vedantism the people have been held
through the centuries. And it is a doctrine which renders the highest
morality impossible and has proved the mightiest soporific to the
conscience. A few years ago a murderer in South India was being led from
the court of justice to prison where, soon, he was to be executed for his
crime. As he was struggling in the street with the police, a missionary
accosted him, urging him to confess his sin against God and to seek his
peace. Whereupon the man replied, "I did not commit the murder; it was the
work of God Himself, in whose hands I am and of whom I am part." To this
the missionary replied that this was neither true nor worthy, and that he
would soon suffer the full penalty of the law for his crime. "Ah, yes," he
exclaimed, "the god who wrought this in me and through me, will put me to
death. It is all his and I am he."

Such is the line of thought which passes through the mind of the orthodox
Hindu devotee under all circumstances, be they pleasant or disagreeable.
And it is one of the most difficult things for him, under these
circumstances, to cultivate a true sense of responsibility and a genuine
conception of sin as a moral act.

(_b_) See again his ideals. He has many such which influence him largely
in his life. Much depends upon what a man regards as the _Summum Bonum_ of
life. The supreme blessing which the Hindu ever holds before his eyes, as
the highest and last attainment, is union with God. Not a union of
sympathy, but a metaphysical oneness with Brahm. To lose himself entirely
in the Divine Being and thus to cease having separate thought or
existence, and to pass out of the turmoil and restlessness of human life
into the calm of the passionless bosom of the Eternal--this, to him, is the
ideal which alone is worthy of human attainment.

Again; we, Christians, look forward to a complete self-realization, to a
perfect manhood and a full rounded character as our ideal. The opposite
ideal is the Hindu's. He seeks the loss of all that we hold best--the
elimination of every ambition and desire, the eradication of all love and
altruism, the cessation of all activity--good as well as evil. His ideal is
not greatness and goodness of heart, but the renunciation of all that
animates and inspires. To him the highest virtue in its n