FICKLE DEVOTION OF THE WORLDLY-MINDED

Worldly persons may perform many pious andf charitable acts in the hope of earthly rewards, but at the approach of misfortune, sorrow and poverty, their piety and charity forsake them. They are like the parrot that repeats, ' Radha-Krishna, Radha-Krishna ' the livelong day, but cries, ' Kang, Kang ' when caught by a cat, forgetting the Divine name.

Therefore, I say unto you, preaching religion to such men will prove useless. In spite of all your sermons they are sure to remain as worldly as ever.

A spring cushion is pressed down when one sits upon it but soon resumes its shape when the pressure is removed. So it is with worldly men. They are full of religious sentiment as long as they hear religious talk; but as soon as they enter upon the routine of their daily life they forget all those high and noble thoughts, and become as impure as before.

Iron appears red-hot in the furnace, but becomes black soon after it is taken out. In the same way worldly men are full of religious emotion as long as they are in a temple or in the society of the pious; but no sooner do they leave these associations, than the flood of devotion in them subsides.

As the fly now sits on an unclean sore and next on offerings to God, so the mind of the worldly man is at one time engaged in religious topics and at the next loses itself in the pleasures of wealth and lust.

The heart of the worldly man is like the worm m a dung-hill. The worm always lives in the dung and loves to live therein. If by chance someone takes it out of that filthy habitation and put it on a lotus-flower, it will soon die of the fragrance of the flower. So the worldly man cannot live even for a moment outside the dirty atmosphere of worldly thoughts and desires.

Do you know what worldly people s idea of God is like ? It is like the children's prattle while they play among themselves. Sometimes they swear, saying, " By God, I say ! They learn this from their elders when they hear them taking an oath. Or, at best, it is like the utterance of the dandy who with all his foppish airs goes to a garden in one of his idle promenades, whistling and twirling his stick about, and picks up a flower and exclaims,

O what a beautiful flower God has made !" It is only a^ momentary mood like the sprinkling of a drop of water on a bar of redhot iron. So, I say, you must thirst for Him. You will have to take a deep plunge into the ocean.