There was no guru or religious guide, and without one the people were pushing one another to their destruction. Sin prevailed throughout creation. Pure religion was weeping day and night, and finally began to disappear from men's gaze beneath the earth. She was weighed down by human transgressions. In lowly attitude she appealed to God for a guide. God observing men's anguish and hearing their piteous cries, conferred supernatural attributes on Guru Nanak. He bestowed on him the supreme wealth of the Name and humility, and sent him into the world to relieve its sufferings. When Guru Nanak contemplated the world, he everywhere saw spiritual darkness, and heard the cry of pain. He endured the greatest privations and travelled to different countries in order to regenerate the human race.

He pointed out to men the straight way--that there was but one God, the primal and omnipresent. He restored the three legs which religion had lost, and reduced to one the four castes of the Hindus. He placed the king and the beggar on a spiritual equality, and taught them to respect each other.

[1. Hanifi, Shâfai, Mâliki, and Hanbali.]

{p. 193} He preached to all a religion of the heart as distinguished from a religion of external forms and unavailing ritual.

He found that the acts and austerities practised by professedly religious men of his age and country were without divine love or devotion, and consequently contained no merit before God. He satisfied himself that Brahma, the reputed author of the Veds, did not include love in them, nor was it mentioned in the Simritis. He declared that God who has no form or outline was not found by wearing religious garbs, but by humility, and that if men rejected caste and worshipped God in spirit they should be accepted in His court.

The Guru examined all religious sects, contemplated the gods, goddesses, and spirits of earth and heaven, and found them all immersed and perishing in spiritual pride. He scrutinized Hindus, Moslems, priests, and prophets, and found not one godly person among them. They were all groping in the blind pit of superstition.