d-teacher, not the teacher of one race alone.

Then we see Him in the strange and wondrous aspect of the Searcher of
the hearts of men, the trier and tester of human nature.

Finally, we may regard Him in His manifestation as the Supreme, the
all-pervading life of the universe, who looks on nothing as outside
Himself, who embraces in His arms evil and good, darkness and light,
nothing alien to Himself.

Into these seven acts, as it were, the life-history may be divided, and
each of them might serve as the study of a life-time instead of our
compressing them into the lecture of a morning. We will, however, take
them in turn, however inadequately; for the hints I give can be worked
out by you in detail according to the constitution of your own minds.
One aspect will attract one man, another aspect will attract another;
all the aspects are worthy of study, all are provocative of devotion.
But most of all, with regard to devotion, is the earliest stage of His
life inspiring and full of benediction, those early years of the Lord as
infant, as child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in the
forest of Brindaban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wives
and their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. It
is noticeable--and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would not
have been uttered--that Shri Krishna chose to show Himself as
the great object of devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the form
of a child, not in that of a man.

Come then with me to the time of His birth, remembering that before that
birth took place upon earth, the deities had been to Vishnu in the
higher regions, and had asked Him to interfere in order that earth might
be lightened of her load, that the oppression of the incarnate Daityas
might be stayed; and then Vishnu said to the Gods: Go ye and
incarnate yourselves in portions among men, go ye and take birth amid
humanity. Great Rishis also took birth in the place where
Vishnu Himself was to be born, so that ere He came, the
surroundings of the drama were, as it were, made in the place of His
coming, and those that we speak of as the cowherds of Vraja, Nanda and
those around Him, the Gopis and all the inhabitants of that wondrously
blessed spot, were, we are told, "God-like persons"; nay more, they were
"the Protectors of the worlds" who were born as men for the progress of
the world. But that means that the Gods themselves had come down and
taken b