oodthirsty gods and goddesses. In their religion no Isaiah makes
terrible and effective protest against the uselessness of form; no
Christ teaches that God can be worshipped only in spirit.

Another doctrine, that Self, that a man's own soul is an Emanation of
God, a part of the Divine Essence, and the purpose of man's existence
to hasten a final absorption into God--this also (although destructive
of the idea of individuality, the sacredness of personality, so
fundamental in Christian thought) would seem to be a tremendous moral
force, but it is vitiated in much the same way as is the idea of
Samsara, while it is further weakened by the fact that the Hindu gods
themselves are often represented as immoral, bloodthirsty, obscene and
criminal.

Enmeshed in vicious traditions and false doctrine, its philosophy and
purer teachings known only to a cultured few, the Higher Hinduism
"powerless to be born," is only the illusion which it would teach that
all else is, while practical Hinduism hangs like a blight over a land
whose people are as the sands of the sea for multitude. If all the
human race alive to-day were to pass in review before you, every
eighth person in the {200} ranks would be a Hindu. And to realize in
what manner Hinduism guides its 200,000,000 followers it is only
necessary to visit some of their most celebrated temples.

It is an extreme illustration, no doubt, but since it was the first
Hindu shrine I visited, we may begin with the Kalighat in Calcutta.
This temple is dedicated to Kali, or "Mother Kali," as the
English-speaking temple priest who conducted me always said, the
bloody goddess of destruction. That terrible society of criminals and
assassins, the Thugs (its founder is worshipped as a saint), had Kali
as their patron goddess and whetted their knives and planned their
murderous crimes before her image: all this in a "temple" of
"religion."

The representations of Kali befit her character. Fury is in her
countenance and in her three red eyes. Her tongue lolls from her
mouth. In one of her four hands is the dripping, bloody head of a
slaughtered enemy. Her necklace is of the heads of her slain. Her
girdle is the severed hands of the dead men. Tradition says that she
constantly drinks blood; and each man who comes to worship her brings
a little wet, trembling kid: the warm blood that flows after the
priestly ax has done its work is supposed to please the terrible
goddess. The morning of my visit