shadow and cast away the substance. They confound the Creator with the creation, and destroy man's innate conviction of his own personality, of the personality of God, and of the eternal difference between right and wrong, good and evil. Underlying their error is the truth unknown to them, that the living and Holy God is everywhere present, that he knows and overrules all things. But the jewel of truth is, in their teaching, lost in the mire of error. That it may shine brightly in the light of the sun of righteousness, it requires to be cleansed from the mire.

Our reason teaches us, if we listen to its voice, that God must be personal, conscious, righteous, just, loving; that he must be greater than all else, exalted far above all, perfect in all His attributes. Therefore it is contrary to reason that there should be more than one God, more than one Creator; for, on the supposition that there were even two—we take refuge in God from the suggestion—neither of them would be Almighty, the Creator of all things. This is one of the defects in the religion of the ancient Persians, as we have already seen. Popular Hinduism with its almost innumerable gods and goddesses is, therefore, contrary to reason. Hindu Philosophy is still more contrary to reason when it denies the distinction between Creator and creation. If there were many deities, none of them would be perfect and none of them would be deserving of worship. Man cannot serve two masters with

devotion and fidelity; how then can he worship more than one God? For true worship and genuine adoration are dependent upon true and heartfelt love and devotion, and these cannot be shared among many objects of worship. Nor can belief in, and adoration of, deities which are imperfect and in a great degree evil produce in the worshipper purity of heart, hatred of sin, repentance of one's transgressions, and power to live a new and holy life. Nay rather, worship paid to imperfect and unholy gods leads men to imitate the evil deeds attributed to them, and thus to sink deeper and deeper into sin and ruin.

(2) Transmigration. The belief that a man's spirit passes from one body to another, and at one time is to be found in human form, at another in that of an animal or even of an insect, cannot be said to commend itself to our reason, especially when we are told that transmigration is not only a punishment for sin, but also a means of getting rid of it. Thus Manu in his Dharmasastra ¹ says:—

'Those who have committed mortal sins,² having, during large numbers of years, passed through