Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/202

 he is himself but one of a myriad receptacles of Heaven's golden showers, and that his poor puddle is a sorry tiling by the argent brooks and the crystal lakes all around; while the most potent incentive to diffidence and humility, search and meditation, catholicity and fraternity, is the conviction that every soul, however low or dark, is a shekinah of God. Thus is self killed, wisdom honored, and the world constituted a spiritual republic.

Religion is life; and life is growth in knowledge, faith, love and service. The function of religion is to refine, expand and intensify those ideas, hopes, emotions and aspirations whose embodiment or realisation is life. This axiomatic truth is differently expressed when the internal growth of man—his individual consciousness, the native prompting of his soul—is said to be the test of religious growth. It is only when the beautiful moon-lit countenance of truth shines direct upon the garden of the heart that the philomel of the soul bursts forth in heavenly harmo-