Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/410

358 matter is an emanation from this same deity. “Brahm," it is said, in one of the Purannas, “is the potter by whom the vase is formed; he is the clay of which it is made. Every thing proceeds from him, without waste or diminution of the source, as light radiates from the sun. Every thing merges in him again, as bubbles bursting mingle with the air, or as rivers mingle with the ocean, and lose their identity in its waters. Every thing proceeds from and returns to him, as the web of the spider is given from and again drawn within the insect itself.” “I am God," is the constant assertion of those with whom the missionary in India has to deal. And his belief that God and the soul of man are separate and distinct existences is looked upon as the pitiable ignorance of the poor grovelling fool who is not able to rise in thought above external and fleeting deceptions, to grasp the great truth that the soul and God are one.

Under this theory, the existence of the soul in connection with a material body is looked upon as a misfortune, and deliverance from this connection the highest bliss. To be again absorbed into deity, and to lose a separate consciousness, is the highest idea of supreme and final beatitude. This blessedness, however, is