Even if there were no pantheistic differential at the foundation of these utterances, it would not be at all strange if exhortations to an all-embracing devotion should thus in each case be made to cover all the daily acts of life.  But aside from this there is a wide difference in the fundamental ideas which these passages express.  Paul’s thought is that of loving devotion to an infinite Friend and Saviour; it is such an offering of loyalty and love as one conscious being can make to another and a higher.  But Krishna identifies the giver with the receiver, and Arjuna is taught to regard the gift itself as an act of God.  The phrase “commit that to me” is equivalent to “ascribe that to me.”  In the context we read:  “Of those men, who thinking of me in identity (with themselves), worship me, for them always resting in me, I bear the burden of acquisition and preservation of possessions.  Even those the devotees of other gods, who worship in faith, they worship me in ignorance.”  In other words, the worshipper is to make no difference between himself and the Infinite.  He is to refer all his daily acts to the Infinite as the real actor, his own personal ego being ignored.  This is not Paul’s idea; it is the very reverse of it.  It could give comfort only to the evil-doer who desired to shift his personal responsibility.

Let us consider another alleged resemblance.  In the fifth chapter Krishna declares that whoever knows him “attains rest.”  This is presented as a parallel to the words in Christ’s prayer:  “This is life eternal that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

In both passages the knowledge of God is made the chief blessing to be sought, but in the one case knowledge means only a recognition of the Infinite Ego as existing in one’s personal ego:  it is a mere acceptance of that philosophic theory of life.  Thus one of the Upanishads declares that “whoever sees all things in God, and God in all things, sees the truth aright;” his philosophy is correct.  On the other hand, what Christ meant was not the recognition of a pantheistic theory, but a real heart-knowledge of the Father’s character, a loving experience of his divine mercy, his fatherly love, his ineffable glory.  The one was cold philosophy, the other was experience, fellowship, gratitude, filial love.

What pantheism taught was that God cannot be known practically—­that He is without limitations or conditions that we can distinguish Him from our finiteness only by divesting our conception of Him of all that we are wont to predicate of ourselves.  He is subject to no such limitations as good or evil.  In Chapter IX., Krishna says:  “As air existing in space goes everywhere and is unlimited, so are all things in me....  I am the Vedic rite, I am the sacrifice, I am food, I am sacred formula, I am immortality, I am also death; also the latent cause and the manifest effect.”  To know the God of the Bhagavad Gita is to know that he cannot be known.  “God is infinite in attributes,” says Mr. Chatterji, “and yet devoid of attributes.  This is the God whom the Bhagavad Gita proclaims.”