w birth, the higher life of the
spirit. It is by keeping in mind these blended concepts that we
shall best understand the story of the Ganges.

All the larger rivers of India are looked upon as abodes and
vehicles of the divine essence, and therefore as possessed of
power to cleanse from moral guilt. Their banks, from source to
sea, are holy ground, and pilgrims plod their way along them to
win merit--a merit that is measured by the years of travel and
the sanctity of the stream. Of all the great rivers in this ancient
land, the Ganges is the noblest. Mother Ganga, stands supreme.
No water such as hers for washing away the stains of the most
heinous crimes. She has bands of priests who call themselves
her "Sons," and who conduct pilgrims down the flights of steps
that line her banks, aid them in their ablutions, and declare them
clean. To die and to be buried near the stream is in itself
sufficient to win an entrance to the realms of bliss. "Those who,
even at a distance of a hundred leagues, cry Ganga, Ganga,
atone for the sins committed during three previous lives." In
short, the hold the river has obtained upon the affections and
imaginations of the Hindus is marvellously firm and lasting.

Of course a river so renowned has its wreath of myths and
legends, characterised, in this instance, by the prodigality of the
Eastern mind. It is not necessary to linger over these, save in so
far as to note that they ascribe a divine origin to the sacred
stream; the sense of power and movement issuing from the
world of the unseen is no less strong than that aroused by the
Nile; though it finds strangely different modes of expression, its
essential character is the same. Interesting and typical is the
Hindu belief that the spot where flow together the waters of the
Ganges, the Jumna and the Sarasvati is one of the most
hallowed in a land of holy places. "These three sacred rivers
form a kind of Tri-murti, or triad, often personified as
goddesses, and called 'Mothers.'" With such facts in view, it
would be hard to exaggerate the influence of rivers on the
development of the Hindu's speculation and practice, and more
especially of his mysticism.

Such intuitions and beliefs find their full flower in the
conception of the river of life--the stream, pure as crystal, that,
with exulting movement onward, brings to men the thrill of
hope and the inspiration of progress to a world beyond. It pulses
and swings in the glorious sunshin