offering of an earthly devotee. Therefore, the devout Hindi offers God a share in all his gratifications of appetite—thus living out, indeed, the Christian Apostle's admonition of "whether we eat or drink, do all to the glory of God."
Too often, it is true, this doctrine is perverted into an excuse for sensual excesses, the debauchee soothing his conscience by an offering to the god whom he worships. Thus has this sacred inner mystery become degraded by the unworthy. But even the tried and staunch initiate of the first and second degree, unless he holds grace as he enters upon this third degree, unless he holds fast to the teaching: "Aspire to the highest." Only in reverent and earnest aspiration to the Divine, to the Source of all things, to the Eternal Energy of the Universe, may this third degree be entered upon, either in Borderland or earthly wedlock. The more intense the emotion, the more absolute the necessity for aspiring with all one's faculties to union with the Divine. Every element of selfish desire must be eliminated; one must aspire at that time because it is right and beautiful to bring one's holiest and tenderest and most ecstatic emotions into the presence of the Great Thinker, in order that they may there be purged of all dross and be a worthy expression of our own best self. That is the first half of this highest degree. The second half is entered upon when spontaneously—not from selfish desire—it dawns upon us that to offer God a share of our pleasure at the moment may give him pleasure. When single-heartedly, and in all sincerity and benevolent feeling toward God we invite him to become the third partner in the marital union, then, indeed, do we understand what it is to love and to be loved. We enter thus into a personal relation with God in which, Impersonal Force though He be, we realize vividly that we are one with Him, and with Him one with all the universe. For that in us which thinks—the apex of our particular sector of the circle of the universe is, on the one hand, in unclouded relation with our physical self on the outer rim, and on the other hand, it is merged into the Great Thinker, the Great Nucleus who is at the
