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Lesson VII: Bhakti Yoga.361
praying to their God for success over their enemies, each imagining that
God is on their side. In the great war now being waged between Japan and
Russia each nation is praying to its particular conception of God, beseeching
that He march with them to battle against His enemies. They do not realize
that they are both worshiping the same God, under different names, and
that this real God loves them both equally well. In the late Civil War in the
United States, each side prayed for victory, and believed that God must be
with them. Churches were rent in twain by the war, and there was thought
to be a God of the North and a God of the South—the one hating slavery
and wishing to kill those who favored it—the other believing slavery to be a
Divine Right and privilege, and wishing to defeat those who would abolish
it. And yet, each side was merely seeing God through their own spectacles,
and seeing him as themselves, somewhat magnified. And now both sides
again agree upon certain conceptions of God, and see slavery as something
that had its rise, progress, and fall, in the evolutionary progress of Man. And
yet, God has not changed—but Man’s conception of Him has.
Men have persecuted others because they had a different conception of
God from the persecutors. And the persecuted, in turn, when they gained
power, persecuted weaker men who held to a third conception of the
same God. And each thought he was doing his God’s will in persecuting,
and the persecuted thought that they were being persecuted in their God’s
cause. The Puritans were driven out of their native land because of their
peculiar conceptions of Deity, and when they had established themselves
in a new land, they proceeded to punish the peaceful Quaker Friend whose
conception of Deity offended them. And each thought he was pleasing God
by punishing those who did not agree with him in his conception of Him.
How childish it all seems to those who have attained the broader view, and
are able to see all men as children of God, each doing the best he can, and
worshiping the highest conception of Deity possible to them. And yet none
are to be blamed for this narrowness and blindness—they, too, are doing
the best they can. And all are worshiping God—the one God—the true