hy should I
come to you at all, if I could not take your food?"

I asked her what her own caste people would say. She told me she had
already spread the news far and wide all over the village. The caste
people had shaken their heads, but agreed that she must go her own way.

I found out that the Devotee came from a good family in the country, and
that her mother was well to-do, and desired to keep her daughter. But
she preferred to be a mendicant. I asked her how she made her living.
She told me that her followers had given her a piece of land, and that
she begged her food from door to door. She said to me: "The food which I
get by begging is divine."

After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When
we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But
when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we
are apt to regard it as ours by right.

I had a great desire to ask her about her husband. But as she never
mentioned him even indirectly, I did not question her.

I found out very soon that the Devotee had no respect at all for that
part of the village where the people of the higher castes lived.

"They never give," she said, "a single farthing to God's service; and
yet they have the largest share of God's glebe. But the poor worship and
starve."

I asked her why she did not go and live among these godless people,
and help them towards a better life. "That," I said with some unction,
"would be the highest form of divine worship."

I had heard sermons of this kind from time to time, and I am rather fond
of copying them myself for the public benefit, when the chance comes.

But the Devotee was not at all impressed. She raised her big round eyes,
and looked straight into mine, and said:

"You mean to say that because God is with the sinners, therefore when
you do them any service you do it to God? Is that so?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is my meaning."

"Of course," she answered almost impatiently, "of course, God is with
them: otherwise, how could they go on living at all? But what is that to
me? My God is not there. My God cannot be worshipped among them; because
I do not find Him there. I seek Him where I can find Him."

As she spoke, she made obeisance to me. What she meant to say was really
this. A mere doctrine of God's omnipresence does not help us. That God
is all-pervading,--this truth may be a mere intangible abstraction, and
therefore unreal