Considering that Christendom is to a large extent composed of image-worshippers, why should there not be a synthesis between Hinduism and Islam on the one hand, and Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity on the other? The differences between these great religions are certainly not slight. But when we get behind the forms, may we not hope to find some grains of the truth? I venture, therefore, to maintain the position occupied above as that to which Indian religious reformers must ultimately come. I do not deny that Mr. Farquhar has made a very good fight against this view. The process of the production of an image is, to us, a strange one. It is enough to mention the existence of a rite of the bringing of life into the idol which marks the end of that process. But there are many very educated Hindus who reject with scorn the view that the idol has really been made divine, and the passage quoted by Mr. Farquhar (p. 335) from Vivekananda [Footnote: Sister Nivedita's teacher. ] seems to me conclusive in favour of the symbol theory. It would certainly be an aesthetic loss if these artistic symbols disappeared. But the most precious jewel would still remain, the Being who is in Himself unknowable, but who is manifested in the Divine Logos or Sofia and in a less degree in the prophets and Messiahs. INCARNATIONS There are some traces both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel of a Docetic view of the Lord's Person, in other words that His humanity was illusory, just as, in the Old Testament, the humanity of celestial beings is illusory. The Hindus, however, are much more sure of this. The reality of an incarnation would be unworthy of a God. And, strange as it may appear to us, this Docetic theory involves no pain or disappointment for the believer, who does but amuse himself with the sports [Footnote: See quotation from the poet Tulsi Das in Farquhar, _The Crown of Hinduism_, p. 431.] of his Patron. At the same time he is very careful not to take the God as a moral example; the result of this would be disastrous. The _avatâr_ is super-moral. [Footnote: See Farquhar, p. 434.] What, then, was the object of the _avatâr_? Not simply to amuse. It was, firstly, to win the heart of the worshipper, and secondly, to communicate that knowledge in which is eternal life. And what is to be done, in the imminent sifting of Scriptures and Traditions, with these stories? They must be rewritten, just as, I venture to think, the original story of the God-man Jesus was rewritten by being blended with the fragments of a biography of a great and good early Jewish teacher. The work will be hard, but Sister Nivedita and Miss Anthon have begun it. It must be taken as a part of the larger undertaking of a selection of rewritten myths.