has “spread His form of love throughout all the world.”[1]
It does not need much experience of ascetic literature to recognize the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a time and place. From the point of view of orthodox sanctity, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, Kabīr was plainly a heretic; and his frank dislike of all institutional religion, all external observance--which was as thorough and as intense as that of the Quakers themselves--completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion was concerned, his reputation as a dangerous man. The “simple union” with Divine Reality which he perpetually extolled, as alike the duty and the joy of every soul, was independent both of ritual and of bodily austerities; the God whom he proclaimed was
- ↑ Cf. Poems Nos. XXI, XL, XLIII, LXVI, LXXVI.
