symbols--often startling and even revolting to the unaccustomed taste--is in direct proportion to the exaltation of their spiritual life. The works of the great Sūfīs, and amongst the Christians of Jacopone da Todi, Ruysbroeck Boehme, abound in illustrations of this law. Therefore we must not be surprised to find in Kabīr’s songs--his desperate attempts to communicate his ecstasy and persuade other men to share, it--a constant juxtaposition of concrete and metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of apprehending man’s communion with the Divine. The need for this alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of God; and unless we make some attempt to
