lofty and stirring emotion. _Bhaktar_, _i.e._,
those who have given themselves absolutely to this doctrine and make it
the motive and inspiration of their lives, are oblivious to all other
bonds, abjuring among themselves even caste and all its demands, and
proclaiming the true oneness of the brotherhood of the faith among all the
devotees of the same god.

[Illustration: Rock-Cut Temple, South India.]

Thus we have today a large and vigorous class of Hindus who have
subordinated every doctrine and practice of their religion to that of
faith, or _bhakti_. I believe, with not a few illustrious scholars, that
this doctrine traces its origin to Christianity. Like everything else
which Hinduism had absorbed, it has been considerably transmuted in the
process. It has been necessarily and greatly affected and degraded by the
character of the gods who have been its objects. It has been debased by
contact with idolatry and error, with superstition and sensuality. And yet
we trace its lineaments to its lofty, divine origin, and hesitate not to
say that it furnishes a common ground of a fundamental truth of which
Christian missionaries have not yet sufficiently availed themselves in
their work for this people.

Hindus have also done not a little thinking in the elaboration of the
doctrine of salvation. In their discussion as to the relative potency of
divine grace and human agency in the salvation of man they became divided
into two antagonistic schools, corresponding, very closely, to the
Calvinistic and Arminian, among Christians--the _Tengaliar_ maintaining the
"cat theory" and the _Vadagaliar_ the "monkey theory"; so called because
one party holds that, just as the cat saves her kitten by seizing and
carrying it away bodily, so God seizes and saves man without his own
effort. This is the doctrine of absolute grace. The other party insists
that the relation of the young monkey to its mother, whereby its rescue
from trouble depends upon its own grasp, best represents the process of
salvation in which man's cooeperation is necessary.

They have also developed the doctrine of growth in grace sometimes in a
very instructive way. The spiritual development from _saloka_ (in the same
world with God) to _samipa_ (in the divine presence) thence to _sarupa_
(in the divine image) and finally to _sayujya_ (complete identity with the
divine Being) bears, in some respects, a striking resemblance to the
teaching of St. Paul