Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/228

220 and spiritual beliefs, forms and disciplines; later Hindu- ism which rejected Buddha, his sangha and his dharma, bears the ineffaceable imprint of the social and ethical influence of Buddhism and its effect on the ideas and the life of the race, while in modern Europe, Christian only in name, humanitarianism is the translation into the ethical and social sphere and the aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity the translation into the social and political sphere of the spiritual truths of Christianity, the latter especially being effected by men who aggressively rejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as acreed. On the other hand the life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past which has come down only in poetry and legend and may even be regarded as myths; but it is quite immaterial whether we regard them as myths or historical facts, because- their permanent truth and value lie in their persistence asa spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life and conscious- ness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has. done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence and teaching, but must then have its permanent effect, even when the new religion or J discipline is exhausted, in the thought, temperament and outward life of mankind.

We must then, in order to understand the Gita's " description of the work of the Avatar, take the idea of the ‘;ﬁh‘g Dharma in its fullest, deepest and largest conception, as ! theinner and the outer law by which the divine Will and