In India, pantheism may be said to be the creed of intellectual Hindus, but it cannot. be held to be a generally satisfying or useful cult to the world. When a man believes that he is a part of God, and that God, who pervades space, pervades him also, moral obligation must obviously be relaxed. Nor can supplications be satisfactorily addressed to nature, with its elemental forces, even though God be held to reside therein. Pantheism is too cold and too abstract to satisfy the reasonable aspirations of the human soul. And the fact admitted by most philosophers, that men are endowed with free will, must make them pause before they accept the pantheistic philosophy in its entirety. Moreover, to gratify his emotional instinct, man must have access in spirit to a personal God to appeal to in order to grant him favours, to afford him solace in affliction, to love him as a son, and as a kind and merciful friend to take an interest in him when he needs assistance. According to the Sikh Gurus, God was a being to be approached and

[1. The ancient Greeks also believed that God made man in the divine image. Thus Plato--{Greek W!s d`e kinhðe'n au?to` kai` zw^n e?no'hse tw^n a?ïdi'wn ðew^n gegono`s a?'galma o! gennh'sas path'r, h?gasðh te kai` eu?franðei`s e?'ti dh` ma^llon o!'moion pro`s to` para'deigma e?peno'hsen a?perga'sasðai} (The creative Father seeing that this image of the immortal gods had both motion and life was pleased, and in his delight considered how he might fashion it still more like its prototype'), Timaeus.]

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loved as a fond and faithful wife loves her spouse, and human beings were to be regarded with equality as brothers, and not to be considered as divided into castes which were at variance with or despised one another.

But though the Sikhs believe in a personal God, He is not in man's image. Guru Nanak calls Him, Nirankar--that is, without form. Gur Das speaks of Him as formless, without equal, wonderful, and not perceptible by the senses. At the same time all the Gurus believed that He was diffused throughout creation. Guru Nanak wrote, 'Think upon the One who is contained in everything.' This same belief was again enunciated by Guru Ram Das, 'Thou, O God, art in everything and in all places.' And, according to Guru Gobind Singh, even God and His worshipper, though two, are one, as bubbles which arise in water are again blended with it. This belief, according to the Guru, admitted of no doubt or discussion.[1] It is the error of men in supposing distinct existence, together with the human attributes of passion and spiritual blindness, which produces sin and evil in the world and renders the soul liable to transmigration.