ns indeed, confessions that
finite language and definite acts are inadequate to the Infinite, nay,
contradictions of the Infinite, expressions fit to be recited in prayer
by any man of any creed who feels that God is a Spirit and omnipresent!
But in a Christian prayer such expressions would only form a preface to
confession of one's own _moral_ sin; after adoration comes confession.
Whether, like Sankarachargya, we think of the Deity objectively, as the
formless and literally omnipresent Being, the _pure Being_ which,
according to Hegel, equals nothing, or whether like Swami Vivekananda we
think of man and God as really one, all differentiation being a delusion
within the mind--there is _no second_, neither any second to sin against
nor any second to commit the sin.

[Sidenote: The masses and the sense of sin.]

[Sidenote: Prescriptions for sinners.]

For the ignorant masses, the sense of sin has been worn out by the
importance attached to religious and social externals and by the
artificial value of the service of a hereditary monopolist priesthood.
These right, all is right in the eyes of the millions of India. When one
of the multitude proposes to himself a visit to some shrine or sacred
spot, no doubt the motive often is some divine dissatisfaction with
himself; it is a feeling that God is not near enough where he himself
lives. But what is poured into his ears? By a visit to Dwaraka, the city
of Krishna's sports, he will be liberated from all his sins. By bathing
in the sacred stream of the Ganges he will wash away his sins. All who
die at Benares are sure to go to heaven. By repeating the Gayatri (a
certain verse of the Rigveda addressed to the sun) a man is saved. "A
brahman who holds the Veda in his memory is not culpable though he
should destroy the three worlds"--so says the Code of Manu. The Tantras,
or ritual works of modern Hinduism, abound in such prescriptions for
sinners. "He who liberates a bull at the Aswamedika place of pilgrimage
obtains _mukti_, that is salvation or an end of his rebirths." "All sin
is destroyed by the repetition of Kali's thousand names." "The water of
a guru's [religious teacher's] feet purifies from all sin." "The man who
carries the guru's dust [the dust of the guru's feet] upon his head is
emancipated from all sin and is [the god] Siva himself." "By a certain
inhalation of the breath through the left nostril, and holding of the
breath, with repetition of _yam_, the V[=a]yu Bi