Into these seven acts, as it were, the life-history may be divided, and each of them might serve as the study of a life-time instead of our compressing them into the lecture of a morning. We will, however, take them in turn, however inadequately; for the hints I give can be worked out by you in detail according to the constitution of your own minds. One aspect will attract one man, another aspect will attract another; all the aspects are worthy of study, all are provocative of devotion. But most of all, with regard to devotion, is the earliest stage of His life inspiring and full of benediction, those early years of the Lord as infant, as child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in the forest of Brindâban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wives and their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. It is noticeable--and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would not have been uttered--that Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa chose to show Himself as the great object of devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the form of a child, not in that of a man. Come then with me to the time of His birth, remembering that before that birth took place upon earth, the deities had been to Viṣhṇu in the higher regions, and had asked Him to interfere in order that earth might be lightened of her load, that the oppression of the incarnate Daityas might be stayed; and then Viṣhṇu said to the Gods: Go ye and incarnate yourselves in portions among men, go ye and take birth amid humanity. Great Ṛishis also took birth in the place where Viṣhṇu Himself was to be born, so that ere He came, the surroundings of the drama were, as it were, made in the place of His coming, and those that we speak of as the cowherds of Vraja, Nanda and those around Him, the Gopîs and all the inhabitants of that wondrously blessed spot, were, we are told, "God-like persons"; nay more, they were "the Protectors of the worlds" who were born as men for the progress of the world. But that means that the Gods themselves had come down and taken birth as men; and when you think of all that took place throughout the wonderful childhood of the Lîlâ[10] of Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa, you must remember that those who played that act of the drama were the ordinary men, no ordinary women; they were the Protectors of the worlds incarnated as cowherds round Him. And the Gopîs, the graceful wives of the shepherds, they were the Ṛishis of ancient days, who by devotion to Viṣhṇu had gained the blessing of being incarnated as Gopîs, in order that they might surround His childhood, and pour out their love at the tiny feet of the boy they saw as boy, of the God they worshipped as supreme. [Footnote 10: Play.]