Or if further illustration be needed of the incompatibility of the ideas of pantheism and sin, listen to the striking prayer of Sankarachargya, the pantheistic Vedantist of the eighth century A.D., with whom is identified the pantheistic motto, "One only, without a second."[120] It attracts our attention because Sankarachargya is professedly confessing sins. Thus runs the prayer: "O Lord, pardon my three sins: I have in contemplation clothed in form thee who art formless; I have in praise described thee who art ineffable; and in visiting shrines I have ignored thine omnipresence."[121] Beautiful expressions indeed, confessions that finite language and definite acts are inadequate to the Infinite, nay, contradictions of the Infinite, expressions fit to be recited in prayer by any man of any creed who feels that God is a Spirit and omnipresent! But in a Christian prayer such expressions would only form a preface to confession of one's own _moral_ sin; after adoration comes confession. Whether, like Sankarachargya, we think of the Deity objectively, as the formless and literally omnipresent Being, the _pure Being_ which, according to Hegel, equals nothing, or whether like Swami Vivekananda we think of man and God as really one, all differentiation being a delusion within the mind--there is _no second_, neither any second to sin against nor any second to commit the sin. [Sidenote: The masses and the sense of sin.] [Sidenote: Prescriptions for sinners.] For the ignorant masses, the sense of sin has been worn out by the importance attached to religious and social externals and by the artificial value of the service of a hereditary monopolist priesthood. These right, all is right in the eyes of the millions of India. When one of the multitude proposes to himself a visit to some shrine or sacred spot, no doubt the motive often is some divine dissatisfaction with himself; it is a feeling that God is not near enough where he himself lives. But what is poured into his ears? By a visit to Dwaraka, the city of Krishna's sports, he will be liberated from all his sins. By bathing in the sacred stream of the Ganges he will wash away his sins. All who die at Benares are sure to go to heaven. By repeating the Gayatri (a certain verse of the Rigveda addressed to the sun) a man is saved. "A brahman who holds the Veda in his memory is not culpable though he should destroy the three worlds"--so says the Code of Manu. The Tantras, or ritual works of modern Hinduism, abound in such prescriptions for sinners. "He who liberates a bull at the Aswamedika place of pilgrimage obtains _mukti_, that is salvation or an end of his rebirths." "All sin is destroyed by the repetition of Kali's thousand names." "The water of a guru's [religious teacher's] feet purifies from all sin." "The man who carries the guru's dust [the dust of the guru's feet] upon his head is emancipated from all sin and is [the god] Siva himself." "By a certain