rshipper and
worshipped," but the clumsy yet honest effort of the human mind to
say to itself: "Doing God's will is the real end and aim of man?"
The Yogi looks round upon his fellow-men, and sees that all their
misery and shame come from self-will; he looks within, and finds that
all which makes him miserable, angry, lustful, greedy after this and
that, comes from the same self-will. And he asks himself: How shall
I escape from this torment of self?--how shall I tame my wayward
will, till it shall become one with the harmonious, beautiful, and
absolute Will which made all things? At least I will try to do it,
whatever it shall cost me. I will give up all for which men live--
wife and child, the sights, scents, sounds of this fair earth, all
things, whatever they be, which men call enjoyment; I will make this
life one long torture, if need be; but this rebel will of mine I will
conquer. I ask for no reward. That may come in some future life.
But what care I? I am now miserable by reason of the lusts which war
in my members; the peace which I shall gain in being freed from them
will be its own reward. After all I give up little. All those
things round me--the primeval forest, and the sacred stream of Ganga,
the mighty Himalaya, mount of God, ay, the illimitable vault of
heaven above me, sun and stars--what are they but "such stuff as
dreams are made of"? Brahm thought, and they became something and
somewhere. He may think again, and they will become nothing and
nowhere. Are these eternal, greater than I, worth troubling my mind
about? Nothing is eternal, but the Thought which made them, and will
unmake them. They are only venerable in my eyes, because each of
them is a thought of Brahm's. And I too have thought; I alone of all
the kinds of living things. Am I not, then, akin to God? what better
for me than to sit down and think, as Brahm thinks, and so enjoy my
eternal heritage, leaving for those who cannot think the passions and
pleasures which they share in common with the beasts of the field?
So I shall become more and more like Brahm--will his will, think his
thoughts, till I lose utterly this house-fiend of self, and become
one with God.

Is this a man to be despised? Is he a sickly dreamer, or a too
valiant hero? and if any one be shocked at this last utterance, let
him consider carefully the words which he may hear on Sunday: "Then
we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, a