ect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been
content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life.
It has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself
to disciplines, some of which are admirable, others of which are
loathsome. It has at its best ventured everything for the well-being of
the soul, even when it has misconceived that well-being. It has had
little of the hard driving quality of the West. Not a little of the
teaching of Jesus fits in better with the temper and devotion of the
Orient than the competitive materialism of the Occident. It is easily
possible to pass not a little of the Gospels through the interpretation
of Eastern mysticism and find therein arresting correspondences. For
example, a little book called "At the Feet of the Master" by a young
Indian student, has in it a wealth of insight and an understanding of
the balanced conduct of life which is wanting in a good many of the
Western interpretations of life, but none the less, things must be
judged by their massed outcome and the massed outcome of Eastern
Pantheism does not commend itself.

The larger part of the religious literature of the East is upon a
distinctly lower level than those parts of it which are brought to us by
its devotees, and when Pantheism--and the basis of all Eastern
speculation is Pantheistic--comes down from its high places and begins
practically to express itself in worship and the conduct of the crowd,
then it is such as to give us pause. What Kipling calls "the sculptured
horrors" of the carved fronts of the temples in Benares are no accident;
they are simply the logical outcome of a faith which lifts the whole to
the level of the divine and has nothing beyond to correct what is by
what ought or ought not to be. Almost inevitably Pantheistic religions
unduly exalt those powers which make for fertility of field and the
increase of life. As they do this they have on their side the elemental
forces in human nature. When we begin to make gods of what after all
must be sternly subordinated to higher things, and the East has done
this in spite of its mystics and its dreamers, then we are not only in
danger of sculpturing symbolic horrors on the fronts of our temples but
of setting up therein strange altars to strange gods who are best
worshipped by strange rites. All this, inevitably enough, has given to
Eastern worship a more than earthly character, and has invested with the
sanct