own
God. This thought of God "is an elixir made to destroy death in the
world, an unfailing treasure to relieve the poverty of mankind, a balm
to allay his sickness, a tree under which may rest all creatures
wearied with wanderings over life's pathways. It is a bridge for passing
over hard ways, open to all wayfarers, a moon of thought arising to
cool the fever of the world's sin, and whatever name His followers may
call Him, he is the one True God of all mankind."

Whether we see the coolie bowing his head before the image of the
Lord of Light, the Buddha, or the peasant woman with her paper
money alight in the brazier at the feet of Kwan-yin, we ought to feel
that the place where he who worships stands, is holy ground. We
hear it said that he is worshipping an image, an idol, a thing of stone
or wood or clay. It is not so; he is thinking far beyond the statue, he is
seeing God. He looks upwards towards the sky and asks what
supports that cup of blue. He hears the winds and asks them whence
they come and where they go. He rises for his toil at break of day and
sees the morning sun start on his golden journey. And Him who is the
cause of all these wonders, he calls his Life, his Breath, his Lord of
All. He does not believe that the idol is his God. "'Tis to the light
which Thy splendour lends to the idol's face, that the worshipper
bends."

[Illustration: Mylady24.]

The difference between us all lies not in the real teaching of our Holy
Men, Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tze, or Christ, but in the narrowness of
the structure which their followers have built upon their words. Those
sages reared a broad foundation on which might have been built,
stone by stone, a mighty pagoda reaching to the skies. There could
have been separate rooms, but no closed doors, and from out the
pointed roofs might have pealed the deep-toned bells caught by every
wandering breeze to tell the world that here spoke the Truth or the
One Great God. But, instead, what have they done? The followers
have each built separately over that portion which was the work of
their own Master. The stories have grown narrower and narrower with
the years; each bell rings out with its own peculiar tone, and there is
no accord or harmony.

I do not dispute with those who have found a healing for themselves.
To us our religion is something quite inseparable from ourselves,
something that cannot be compared with anything else, or replaced
ith anything else. It is lik