By a similar contradiction the more the devout worshipper knows of God the less he knows, because the process of knowledge is a process of “effacement;” the closer the gradual union becomes the fainter is the self-personality, till at length it fades away entirely, and is merged and lost as a drop in the illimitable sea.  This is the so-called “rest” which Krishna promises as the reward of knowing him.  It is rest in the sense of extinction; it is death; while that which Christ promises is eternal Life with unending and rapturous activity, with ever-growing powers of fellowship and of love.

Take another alleged parallel.  Chapter VI. commends the man who has reached such a measure of indifference that “his heart is even in regard to friends and to foes, to the righteous and to evil-doers;” and this is held up as a parallel to the Sermon on the Mount, which commends love to enemies that we may be children of the heavenly Father who sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust.  In the one case the apathy of the ascetic, the extinction of susceptibility, the ignoring of moral distinctions, the crippling and deadening of our noblest powers; in the other the use of these powers in all ways of beneficence toward those who injure us, even as God, though his heart is by no means “even” as between the righteous and the wicked, stills shows kindness to both.  Now, in view of the great plausibility of the parallels which are thus presented to the public—­parallels whose subtle fallacy the mass of readers are almost sure to overlook—­one can hardly exaggerate the importance of thoroughly sifting the philosophy that underlies them, and especially on the part of those who are, or are to become, the defenders of the truth.[79]

But turning from particular parallels to a broader comparison, there is a general use of expressions in the New Testament in regard to which every Christian teacher should aim at clear views and careful discriminations; for example, when we are said to be “temples of the Holy Ghost,” or when Christ is said to be “formed in us the hope of glory,” or it is “no longer we that live, but Christ that liveth in us.”  It cannot be denied that defenders of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the whole Indo-pantheistic philosophy, might make out a somewhat plausible case along these lines.  I recall an instance in which an honored pastor had made such extravagant use of these New Testament expressions that some of his co-presbyters raised the question of a trial for pantheism.  But it is one thing to employ strong terms of devotional feeling, as is often done, especially in prayer, and quite another to frame theories and philosophies, and present them as accurate statements of truth.  The New Testament nowhere speaks of the indwelling Spirit in such a sense as implies an obliteration or absorption of the conscious individual ego, while “effacement” instead of fellowship is a favorite expression in the Bhagavad Gita.  Paul in his most ecstatic language never gives any hint of extinction, but, on the contrary, he magnifies the conception of a separate, conscious, ever-growing personality, living and rejoicing in Divine fellowship for evermore.