Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/405

Rh logy, geography, arts, and sciences. Thus, the art of medicine or of music is as divinely settled as the history of creation; and it is as heretical to dispute the geography as the theology of the sacred writings. These compositions are quite modern, the oldest of them probably not dating back of the ninth century. To define the teachings of this secondary class of Hindu scriptures would be no easy task, since not only do they contradict each other most flatly, but their sum is so enormous that a lifetime would not suffice for their reading.

There is one point upon which all Hindu theologians are agreed, and we might almost say, only one point; that is, the existence of one eternal, omnipresent, and infinite spirit, the Supreme God—. They will tell you also that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and immutable; but by these assertions they mean something very different from our idea of the infinite God; for at the same time they assert that he is utterly devoid of all qualities, good or bad. When they attempt to describe him, lost in the mists of their own ignorance, they grow more and more vague until the Supreme Being melts into a mere essence, or nonentity, boundless and limitless, because possessing no quali-