if Rāmakrishṇa happened to meet an unfortunate, he would bow down before her in adoration. Contrast with this the mind of Christ, who loved the unfortunate as a child of God, but could not be content, unless she came to repentance.

Like every ordinary Hindu, Rāmakrishņa regarded all deities as manifestations of the impersonal Supreme. He recognizes the goddess Kālī as one of the chief manifestations of God. She was to him the divine mother of the universe, and he worshipped her more than any other divinity. He worshipped her by means of ide; for he implicitly believed the Hindu doctrine, that the divinity fills every one of his own idols with his presence.1 He also held the ordinary Hindu idea of the guru. Here is one of his sayings:

The disciple should never criticise his own Guru. He must implicitly obey whatever his Guru says. Says a Bengali couplet :

Though my Guru may visit tavern and still,

My Guru is holy Rai Nityananda still.2

He was thus a true Hindu, and was ready at any moment to defend the whole of Hinduism.

Thus far Rāmakrishna was simply a very devoted Hindu. Had there been nothing more in him, he might have lived at any time during the last two thousand years. There have been multitudes of men like him in India. But the living forces which are making the new India pressed in upon him from every side. Though he had no English education, the new thought came to him by many channels. Christianity was demanding acceptance from Hindus, claiming to be the one religion for the whole world, urging its ethics on all men. Islam was also present, but far less active. What was his response to the situation? He declared that all religions were true, that in their inner essence they were identical, and that 1 See above, p. 189, and Gospel of R., 187. 2 Rāmakrishna, 133.

each man should remain in the religion in which he had been born:

A truly religious man should think that other religions also are paths leading to the truth.1

Every man should follow his own religion. A Christian should follow Christianity, a Mohammedan should follow Mohammedanism, and so on. For the Hindus the ancient path, the path of the Aryan Rishis, is the best."

4. One of Rāmakrishna's disciples, a wealthy Calcutta man, named Surendranath Mitter, was keenly interested in the result produced on Keshab Chandra Sen by his master's teaching on this point,3 and employed a painter to produce a symbolical picture, embodying the idea of the harmony of all religions and of the part played by Rāmakṛishņa in introducing it to Keshab. I have not been able to discover with certainty when the picture was painted, but it was already in existence on the 27th of October, 1882.5 When it was shewn to Keshab, he exclaimed, "Blessed is the man who conceived the idea of this picture." At a later date the picture was reproduced and published as a supplement to Unity and the Minister, a weekly paper representing one of the sub-divisions into which the Church of the New Dispensation split up the great leader's death. This picture is reproduced here. In the background are a Christian church, a Muḥammadan mosque, and a Hindu temple. In front of the church stand Keshab and Rāmakṛishṇa, Keshab carrying the symbol of the New Dispensation described above, and Rāmakṛishṇa calling Keshab's attention to the group of figures arranged in front of the mosque and the temple. In the middle of this group Christ and Chaitanya, a Bengali religious leader of the sixteenth century, are represented dancing together, while a 3 See above, pp. 57–8.

1 Rāmakrishna, 153.
2 Ib., 177.
Janmabhumi, Asăṛha, 1317 Sal.
Gospel of R., 132, 164.

after

6 P. 56, above.

7 P. 293, below.

Muslim, a Confucian, a Sikh, a Parsee, an Anglican clergyman and various Hindus stand round them, each carrying some symbol of his faith. It seems to me that nothing could be more fitting (for I am writing in Oxford and the subject is most apposite) than to dedicate this interesting piece of theological art to the versatile author of Reunion All Round.

5. It was his teaching on the religions that laid hold of his disciples. He impressed all who came in contact with him as a most sincere soul, a God-intoxicated man; but what distinguished his message from the teaching of others was his defence of everything Hindu and his theory that all religions are true. This gave his teaching a universalistic turn, and provided the ordinary Hindu with a defence which he could use to meet Christian criticism and the Brahma Samāj.

His personal influence over all who came within his range was very remarkable. Mozoomdar says:

My mind is still floating in the luminous atmosphere which that wonderful man diffuses around him whenever and wherever he goes. My mind is not yet disenchanted of the mysterious and indefinable pathos which he pours into it whenever he meets me.1

Over his personal disciples he exercised a still more wonderful power. Their love and reverence for him was boundless. They worshipped him. Vivekananda once remarked to a well-known Calcutta citizen of high character, Dr. Sircar:

We look upon the Master as a Person who is like God.2
We offer to Him worship bordering on divine worship.3

Here we have ancient Hindu guru-worship checked in Vivekananda's mind by the Christian teaching he had got in his college course. Apart from Christian influence, he would have said, "He is God, and we worship him as God."

1 Paramahamsa Rāmakṛishna, 1. 2 Gospel of R., 357.

3 Ib., 360.