But what is the picture which Hinduism has drawn of the finality of life to its followers? After the weary fugue of births and rebirths, with its interludes of many heavens and hells, the "self" passes on into final union with the Divine Soul. It loses all consciousness and self-knowledge; every vestige of personality and all that this implies is swept away; it is incapacitated for every emotion of joy and for every act of service. There is nothing that we associate with life at its best and sweetest which does not find here negation. It is a calm blank, a rest, indeed, but from every struggle of thought, will, and emotion. This is the consummation which India has for many centuries held aloft as an attraction to its weary pilgrims. Here, again, we observe how appropriate to the end in view is the supreme difficulty of the way. If the highest struggle of the soul in this world is against existence and its human actions and conditions, it is to be expected that a complete riddance of life and of all its accompaniments will be the _summum bonum_ of the final consummation. And if this struggle for emancipation is to continue through numberless births and earthly existences, it is natural that the coveted end should bring a loss of all that life connotes in highest sentiment as well as basest passion. I need not dwell upon the contrast between this and the anticipations entertained by every humble Christian. This whole eschatological system of Hinduism corresponds, as we have seen, to the teaching of that faith in reference to God, man, and earthly life and conditions. And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories of our heaven do not appeal to the stolid, weary, transmigration-ridden soul of the Hindu as they do to the youthful, hopeful, buoyant soul of the Christian. And this is a fact which the missionary would do well to keep in mind at all times. I might continue the list of the incompatibilities of Hindu and Christian ideals. But I have gone far enough to show, I trust, that the two faiths are at many points antipodal, and that their ideals clash in matters fundamental and crucial.