________________
77
they are. Would to God that this world was full of men, who were as intense in their love and as world-wide in their sympathies! But such are only few and far between. Yet we know that it is practicable to educate large numbers of human beings, into the ideal of a wonderful blending of both the width and the intensity of love; and the way to do that is by this path of the Ishta Nishtha or by devotion to a "chosen ideal." Every sect of every religion presents only one ideal of its own to mankind, but the eternal Vedantic religion opens an infinite number of doors for ingress into the inner shrine of Divinity, and places before humanity an almost inexhaustible array of ideals, there being in each of them a manifestation of the Eternal One. With the kindest solicitude the Vedanta points out to aspiring men and women, the numerous roads hewn out of the solid rock of the realities of human life, by the glorious sons
THE CHOSEN IDEAL.