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it may be brought into consonance with the true spiritual ideals of humanity. The best way is to enligten men as to tho fundamental principles underlying all religions.
. Lastly it is sometimes urged against idol worship that it engenders the spirit of bargaining with the God and that it is thus degrading to institute a kind of barter between two beings; one of them always cccapies the position of inferiority and the other of superiority. Such a relation between man and God tends to make man powerless because he is always face to face with a Being who is much too powerful for him and whose plans remain always beyond his scrutiny.
Whatever force there may be in this objection as regards other religions, it fails to be applicable to Jainism.
The characteristic of a trae Jaina is most aptly expressed by Ratna Shekhara in the opening lines of his Sambodha Sattari, which reads as follows:
“No matter, whether he is a Shvetāmbara or Digambara, a Buddha or a follower of any other creed, one who has realised in himself the self-sameness of the soul, i. e., one who looks on all creatures alike his own self, is sure to attain Salvation."
Jainism is a universal-religion its object being to help, as it does, all beings to Salvation and to open its arms to all, high or low, by revealing to them the real truth. The Highest Good is found in Moksha or Nirvana-the Absolute Release of the Soul from the fetters of births and deaths.
The same is the case with the variations in the images selected as the object of concentration. True worship being
idealatry' and not idolatry,' as repeatedly pointed out before, anything which has the tendency to bring us nearer to the ideal in view is a fit object of holy concentration. The images of those Great Ones who have attained to
