Very different is the condition of the perfect saint. He is in a far higher position, for he has but one step to take before plunging into the ocean of non-existence. He is on the verge of the bliss of extinction, and can guide others to it. He can never be dragged down again to earthly imperfection and sin. He alone is a worthy object of adoration. All other beings--divine and demoniacal--are to be dreaded, not worshipped. "There is no god superior to the Arhat," says the Kalpa-s[=u]tra (Stevenson, p. 10). True worship, indeed, is not possible with Jainas any more than with Buddhists. They have no supreme Eternal Being, omniscient and omnipresent, ever at hand to answer prayer, ever living to be an object of meditation, devotion, and love to his creatures. Yet a Jaina who acts up to the principles of his faith is a slave to a ceaseless round of religious duties. The late Bishop of Calcutta told me that he once asked a pious Jaina, whom he happened to meet in the act of leaving a temple after a long course of devotion, what he had been asking for in prayer, and to whom he had been praying? He replied, "I have been asking for nothing, and praying to nobody." The fact was he had been meditating on the perfections of some extinct Jina, doing homage to his memory, and using prayer as a mere mechanical act, not directed towards any higher Power capable of granting requests, but believed to have an efficacy of its own in determining the character of his subsequent forms of existence. It may be said that the Br[=a]hmanical idea of a saint is much the same as that of Buddhists and Jainas. But with Br[=a]hmans the perfect saint is not so solitary and independent in his spiritual pre-eminence. He is one of a numerous band of similar sainted personages. He has endless names and epithets (such as Rishi, Muni, Yog[=i], Tapasv[=i], Jitendriya, Yatendriya, Sanny[=a]s[=i]), all of which indicate that he, like the Buddha and Jina, has attained the perfection of knowledge and impassiveness, either by abstract meditation (_yoga_), or self-mortification (_tapas_), or mastery over his sensual organs (_yama_). He may also combine the functions of a true teacher and guide to salvation (_T[=i]rtha_). He may even, like the Buddha and Jina, have acquired such powers that any of the secondary gods, including Brahm[=a], Vishnu, and S´iva, may be subject to him. Finally, he may be himself worshipped as a kind of deity. Yet radically there is an important distinction between the Br[=a]hman and the Jaina saint, for the Br[=a]hman saint makes no pretence to absolute finality and supremacy. However lofty his position, he can never be exalted above the One Supreme Being (Brahma), in whose existence his own personal existence is destined to become absorbed, and union with whose essence constitutes the object of all his hopes, and the aim of all his aspirations.