190 REV. RICHARD COLLINS, M.A. 
offers of deliverance from the fires of passion and miseries of life ; 
but in its negations and denials of the existence of both a Supreme 
and human spirit, was no religion at all; and in this respect never 
commended itself generally to the Indian mind. Saivism, though, 
like Vaishnavism, it recognised the eternal personality of one 
Supreme Being, was too severe and cold a system to exert exclusive 
influence over the great majority of the Hindu peoples. Vaish- 
navism alone possesses the essential elements of a genuine religion. 
For there can be no true religion without personal devotion to a 
personal God,—without trusting Him, without loving Him, without 
praying to Him, and, indeed, without obeying Him. Who can doubt 
that a God of such a character was needed for India,—a God who 
could satisfy the yearnings of the heart for a religion of faith, love, 
and prayer, rather than of knowledge and works ? Sucha God was 
believed to be represented by Vishnu.” And again (page 140), 
“'The idea of devotion (bhaktz) as a means of salvation, which was 
formally taught by the authors of the Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavata- 
Purana, and Sandilya-sutra, was scarcely known in early times. 
The leading doctrine of the Vedic hymns and Brahmanas is that 
works (karma), especially as represented by the performance of 
sacrifices (yajua), constitute the shortest pathway to beatitude, 
while the Upanishads insist mainly on abstract meditation and 
divine knowledge as the true method.” 
It should be observed that this worship of a personal deity in 
devotion, faith, and love, which is the essence of Vaishnavism, 
originates in the Bhagavad-Gitaé, in the descent, or avatara, of 
Vishnu in the person of Krishna. The other avataras, or mani- 
festations of Vishnu, are of subsequent development: that is, 
though the Ramas were historically before Krishna, they were only 
long afterwards deified. Moreover, the common heathen idea of Gods 
visiting the earth in human or other form, like Euripides’ Bacchus, 
and numberless other instances, such as those found in Homer’s 
Od., p, 484, Ovid’s Met., viii. 626, or such as the fish, tortoise, and 
boar of the Satapatha Brahmana, belong to quite a different line 
of thought. How are we to account for this new departure: of 
Vaishnavism from the earlier Hindu systems of religious teaching ? 
Could the “religious need” of India have itself produced the idea 
of the personal God it required? I believe I am indebted to 
Bishop Temple—though I write from memory—for the aphorism, 
that while we may allow of a development of religion under suitable 
influences, we cannot allow of evolution from the spontaneous 
conclusions of the human mind. The latter is the heresy of the 
day in which we live. That the central thought of Vaishnavism 
