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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
moment, the least delay in turning to the true path is liable to have the most calamitous consequences for the soul. It should never be allowed to escape the mind that all evil traits of character, arising from the activity of speech, mind or body, have to be eradicated before the attainment of final emancipation can be brought within the pale of practicability, and that every action repeated a number of times becomes habitual and makes it all the more difficult for the soul to acquire control over the channels of its worldly activity. With the advance of age, habits become more firmly rooted and the tenacity with which old people stick to the notions imbibed in the earlier period of life is well known. Finally, when the powers of the body and mind have become too enfeebled by age to bear the severe strain of training required for the understanding and practising of religion, blankness of despair alone remains staring one in the face. Add to this the fact that the human birth is very difficult to obtain, so that he who wastes his opportunity now may have, for ages to come, to wander in the lower grades of life where the soul is generally too much over-burdened with karmic impurities to acquire the truth or to be benefited thereby. He who delays in respect of the ascertainment and adoption of truth, therefore, is the greatest enemy of bimself.
It is also essential that our children should be imparted the truth and trained, in their very infancy, to a life of severe rigidity required by religion, for childhood is the age of impressionability, and the mind of infancy is like a green twig which may be
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