staken for "an
ignorant heathen" and worshipper of stocks and stones, he hardly took
the trouble to do more than answer, as he thought, a fool according to
his folly. The tentacles were all _in_ then.

But that passed soon, and he pointed to the shed behind him, where two
or three life-size idol horses stood and said how childish he knew it
was, foolish and vain. But then, what else could be done? Idols are not
objects of worship, and never were intended so to be; their only use is
to help the uninitiated to worship Something. If nothing were shown
them, they would worship nothing; and a non-worshipping human being is
an animal, not a man.

He went on to answer the objections to this means of quickening
intelligent worship by explaining how, in higher and purer ways, the
thinkers of Hinduism had tried to make the unthinking think. "Look at
our temples," he said. "There is a central shrine, with only one light
in it. The darkness of the shrine symbolises the darkness of the world,
of life and death and being. For life is a darkness, a whirlpool of dark
waters. We stand on its edge, but we do not understand it. It is dark,
but light there must be; one great light. So we show this certainty by
the symbol of the one light in the shrine, in the very heart of our
temples."

This led on to quotations from his own books, questioning the validity
of such lights, which he finished the moment one began them, and this
again led to our Lord's words,--how strong they sounded, and how
direct--"_I am the Light of the World_." But he could not accept them in
their simplicity, and here it was that the book I had been reading came
in so helpfully. He spoke rapidly and eagerly, and such a mixture of
Sanscrit and Tamil that if I had not had the clue I am not sure I could
have followed him, and to have misunderstood him then might have driven
all the tentacles in, and made it harder for the next one whom the
Spirit may send to win his confidence.

He told me that, after much study of many religions, he held the eternal
existence of one, Brahma. The human spirit, he said, is not really
distinct from the Divine Spirit, but identical with it; the apparent
distinction arises from our illusory view of things: there is absolutely
no distinction in spirit. Mind is distinct, he admitted, and body is
distinct, but spirit is identical; so that, "in a definitely defined
sense, I am God, God is I. The so-called two are one, in all essentials
of bei