"O Mullah! why ascendest thou the minaret? The
Lord is not deaf.
For whose sake thou makest the call, behold him
even in (thy) heart."
Superstition and idolatry are boldly rebuked by Kabir:—
"Some one does not obey his living father,
When he dies he causes a Shradh to be said for him.
How shall the helpless defunct fathers also obtain
(the offering),
The crow and the dog eat it."
"Having made a Devi Deva (images) of earth,
Thou sacrificest before them an animal.
An animate being they slaughter, and worship a
lifeless thing."
"The gardener breaks off leaves (to offer to an idol), in
the leaves, in the leaves—life,
The stone, for the sake of which he breaks off the
leaves, is lifeless."
May it not be desirable for the Christian missionary addressing a heathen audience, to arrest attention by an occasional apt quotation from the writings of Kabir the weaver?
[A SON OF HEALING.]
[CHAPTER I.]
THE DOCTOR'S CHARMS.
SHIV DÁS was a Hindu doctor, widely famed for his skill. He knew the qualities of all manner of herbs, and the secret of cures for every sort of disease. Men afflicted with divers maladies came to him from great distances, and often returned to their villages rejoicing. Lame men from the effect of Shiv Dás's ointments sometimes threw away their crutches; women carried their sick children to his house as to the shrine of a goddess. Shiv Dás gave not only medicines, but he hung charms round the necks of his patients; he not only rubbed on ointments, but he muttered a number of spells. If he failed in making a cure, he said that the gods were not propitious; if a patient died under his care, he declared that the day had been unlucky. Shiv Dais was a clever doctor, but he was also a great liar; he had real skill, but under it lay a great deal of deceit, as under the sweet mango pulp is hidden the large hard stone.