“ I swear – I swear – there is no lascivious note in these lines of our good friend Dayârâm in spite of all that libidinous veneer over them which is meant to dazzle and catch into its flame the unlearned worldly sinking soul in order that she may rise there from like the phœnix into the heaven of Devotion. Is then this a lewd religion as they say ? Is this mere worship of the fetish as they say ? Most certainly not. As I understand and realize the depth of this sweet girl's heart, she is not more distant from the highest purity and the abstractest devotion than Cowper was when he loved and worshipped the Eternal Fair in his Olney hymn. The girl's vision is at this moment stretched over the vistas of Infinity and Beauty and Love far beyond this man - manufactured Idol, far beyond this Temple of clay and stone, exactly like the vision of Byron's Dying Gladiator looking at his distant Dacian dame and children as if they were present before his eyes in the midst of the Roman audience against whom he had closed them. Her ideal is sweet and harmless, and has all the pleasure and sport which they in the West get from their balls and dances ! If there be no vice in the latter, surely there is none in this – the former. And have my countrymen a right to object to all this as being a wrong side of religion ? No –no-not until the generation that frowns at this can boast of the birth of a new poet of God whose fervor of soul shall be able to soar as high as does the spirit of this song in the child ! And - the Christian missionaries - ? I think I realize what must always make them fail in a country so rich in the light of
