130 
G. S. Leonard— The Mythic History of the God Virdj. [No. 2, 
would cherish the idea of a God, who created, who regenerates, who 
'preserves this universe, by invariable laws, and by a continued chain of 
similar causes, producing similar effects, who pervades all nature with his 
divine spirit, as an universal soul, who moves, directs, and restrains the 
wonderful fabric of this world. The blissful idea of a God sweetens every 
moment of our time, and embellishes before us the path of life ; unites us 
delightfully to all the beauties of nature, and associates us with everything 
that lives or moves. Yes ; the whisper of gales, the murmur of waters, the 
peaceful agitation of trees and shrubs, would concur to engage our minds 
and affect our souls with tenderness , if our thoughts were elevated to one 
\universal Cause , if we recognised on all sides the works of Him whom we 
love , if we marked the traces of his august steps and benignant intentions, 
if we believed ourselves actually present at the display of his boundless 
power, and the magnificent exertions of his unlimited goodness.” 
I am confident that the Sufi and Vedantist would consider this rhap¬ 
sody as an epitome of their common system, for they concur in believing 
the Spirit of God to pervade the universe, and to be always immediately 
present in his works, and consequently always in substance, and the souls of 
men (jiva) though differing infinitely in degree, yet not at all in kind, from 
the divine Spirit of which they are particles in which they move, and in 
which they will be ultimately absorbed. 
The ubiquity of the divine Soul containing the grand arcanum of the 
Vedanta and Sufi theologies, is the invariable theme of oriental poetry and 
philosophy, for when the Veda says “ He is in and yet out of all”, it fully 
agrees with the Urdu poet Mir Hasan in maintaining his spiritual presence 
in all material bodies, yet different from all matter : 
“ He is neither in the stone nor in the gem, 
Yet shines alike in every hue the same.” 
And while the Vedantist in his ecstacy beholds everything as an image 
of his Maker, the Sufi, in his religious rapture, sees nought but the essence 
of his God spread all around him. 
But the advocates of Pantheism are apt to construe the inseparable 
union and diffusion of the essence of Viraj over the material world, whether 
exhausted or unexhausted in nature, as a real, material, and physical panthe¬ 
ism, and the untangible universality of Vaisvanara (£omyos) the vivifying 
and animating soul of the universe, as a spiritual, ideal, and intellectual 
pantheism. But in the zeal of maintaining their favourite theories they 
entirely forget, that the perfect, immaterial, and incorruptible essence of a 
spiritual nature, though so closely connected with the material world, as 
supporting, sustaining, vivifying and moving all its parts for evermore, 
cannot be assimilated to imperfect, gross, dense, and motionless matter, by 
its pervasion over the whole, which means but the omnipresence of the 
