ption of the Godhead which obtains in Christianity and
that which dominates modern Hinduism there is found a difference of
emphasis which amounts almost to a contrast. To the Hindu, the Supreme
Soul or Brahm is idealized Intelligence; to the Christian God is
perfect Will. To the former, He is supreme Wisdom; to the other, He is
infinite Goodness. The devotees of each faith aspire to become like
unto, or to partake of, their Divine Ideal. Hence the goal of the one
is _brahma gnana_ (Divine Wisdom); of the other, it is supreme love or
goodness. Thus at its foundation the religion of India has always
placed _perfect intelligence_ as its corner stone, while the basis of
the rival faith has been an ideal of _ethical perfection_. Hence, that
process of intellectual gymnastics which so markedly characterizes the
higher realms of Hindu sainthood and effort, on the one hand, and the
altruistic fervour and outgoing charity of the ideal Christian, on the
other. For this reason, also, the great root of bitterness which
Hinduism has, from the first, sought to remove has been ignorance
(_avidia_)--that intellectual blindness which persists in maintaining
that the self and the Supreme Soul are separate realities and which is
the only barrier to the self's final emancipation and final absorption
into the Divine. To the Christian, on the other hand, the dread enemy
is sin--that moral obliquity which differentiates the soul from the
perfect ethical beauty of God. In consonance with this, the salvation
which is exalted as the _summum bonum_, to be forever sought by the
one, is self-knowledge, by the other self-realization in conformity to
the Divine Will. I would not affirm that moral rectitude is absent as
a desideratum from the ambition of the Hindu, nor that the Christian
does not accept with his Lord that "this is eternal life to _know_
God," and that he does not aspire with the great Apostle "to know even
as I am known." But the supreme emphasis which is given by the one to
nescience as the evil to be removed, and to wisdom as the crowning
grace to be achieved, and, by the other, to rebellion of heart against
God as the great sin, and to transformation to His moral image as
perfected salvation, is much too marked to be overlooked by the
student of these two faiths, and by the Christian missionary in the
land.

And all of this comes as a natural consequence from the different
concepts which the two religions have of God Himself. Indee