Page:Cradle Tales of Hinduism .djvu/54

30, and lame and squint-eyed, He regards as His very own. For loneliness and deformity and poverty are passwords sufficient to the heart of the Great God, and He, who asks nothing from any one, Who bestows all, and takes nothing in return, He, the Lord of the Animals, Who refuses none that come to Him sincerely, He will give His very Self, with all its sweetness and illumination, merely on the plea of our longing or our need!

Yet is this not the only form in which Siva may come to the soul of man. Sometimes the thing that stands between us and knowledge is unspeakably dear. Yet is the Great God ever the Destroyer of Ignorance, and for this, when our hour comes, He will arise, as it were, sword in hand, and slay before our eyes our best beloved. In the middle of His brow shines forth the great Third Eye of spiritual vision, with which He pierces to the heart of all hypocrisy and shams. And with the light that flashes from this eye, He can burn to ashes at a glance that which is untrue. For foolish as He may be in matters of the world, in spiritual things He can never be deceived. In this aspect, therefore, He is known as Rudra the Terrible, and to Him day after day men pray, saying, "O Thou the Sweetest of the Sweet, the Most Terrible of the Terrible!"

So runs the tale. And yet in truth this thought