, round of births fills the mind of a Hindu with the greatest
horror. At last the soul is lost in God as a drop mingles with the
ocean. Individual existence and consciousness then cease. The thought is
profoundly sorrowful that this is the cheerless faith of countless
multitudes. No wonder, though, the great tenet of Hinduism is
this--_Existence is misery._

[Sidenote: The future of the race.
The struggle between good and evil.]
So much for the future of the individual. Regarding the future of the
race Hinduism speaks in equally cheerless terms. Its golden age lies in
the immeasurably distant past; and the further we recede from it the
deeper must we plunge into sin and wretchedness. True, ages and ages
hence the "age of truth" returns, but it returns only to pass away again
and torment us with the memory of lost purity and joy. The experience of
the universe is thus an eternal renovation of hope and disappointment.
In the struggle between good and evil there is no final triumph for the
good. We tread a fated, eternal round from which there is no escape; and
alike the hero fights and the martyr dies in vain.

It is remarkable that acute intellectual men, as many of the Hindu
poets were, should never have grappled with the problem of the divine
government of the world.

[Sidenote: The future of the Aryan race.]
Equally notable is the unconcern of the Veda as to the welfare and the
future of even the Aryan race. But how sublime is the promise given to
Abraham that in him and his seed all nations of the earth should be
blessed! Renan has pointed with admiration to the confidence entertained
at all times by the Jew in a brilliant and happy future for mankind. The
ancient Hindu cared not about the future of his neighbors, and doubtless
even the expression "human race" would have been unintelligible to him.
Nor is there any pathos in the Veda. There is no deep sense of the
sorrows of life. Max Mueller has affixed the epithet "transcendent" to
the Hindu mind. Its bent was much more toward the metaphysical, the
mystical, the incomprehensible than toward the moral and the practical.
Hence endless subtleties, more meaningless and unprofitable than ever
occupied the mind of Talmudist or schoolman of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: The words of St. Paul illustrated by Hinduism.]
But finally, on this part of the subject, the development of Indian
religion supplies a striking comment on the words of St. Paul:

"The invisible