they became a coloured blur in
the shimmering sunshine. There was one such, a bright little child of
eight, who was in attendance upon an old blind woman belonging to that
Temple. "Yes," she had answered to our distressed questions, "she is my
adopted daughter. Should I not have a daughter to wait upon me and
succeed me? How can I serve the god, being blind?" We thought of
another, only six, who was to be given to the service "when she was a
suitable age." Her parents were half-proud and half-ashamed of their
intention; and when they knew we were aware of it, they denied it, and
we found it impossible to do anything.

We turned to the people about us. They were laughing and chatting, and
the women were showing each other the pretty glass bangles and necklets
they had bought at the fair. Glorious sunshine filled the world, the
whole bright scene sparkled with life and colour, and all about us was a
"lucid paradise of air." But "only as souls we saw the folk thereunder,"
and our spirit was stirred within us. There is something very solemn in
such a scene--something that must be experienced to be understood. The
pitiful triviality, the sense of tremendous forces at work among these
trivialities; the people, these crowds of people, absorbed in the
interests of the moment--and Eternity so near; all this and much more
presses hard upon the spirit till one understands the old Hebrew word:
"The burden which the prophet did see."

Does this sound intolerant and narrow, as if no good existed outside our
own little pale? Surely it is not so. We are not ignorant of the lofty
and the noble contained in the ancient Hindu books; we are not of those
who cannot recognise any truth or any beauty unless it is labelled with
our label. We know God has not left Himself without witnesses anywhere.
But we know--for the Spirit of Truth Himself has inspired the
description--how desolate is the condition of those who are without
Christ. We dare not water down the force of such a description till the
words mean practically nothing. We form no hard, presumptuous creed as
to how the God of all the earth will deal with these masses of mankind
who have missed the knowledge of Him here; we know He will do right.
But we know, with a knowledge which is burnt into us, how very many of
the units live who compose these masses. We know what they are missing
to-day, through not knowing our blessed Saviour as a personal, living
Friend; and we know what it me