A SUDDEN chime of bells, a blaze of lights waved before an altar--while without, the watching stars and purple blackness of the midnight sky look down--such is the solemn moment of the Birth of Krishna. Surely it is only in this country, where a temple perforce takes the form of a verandah, that Nature wholly mingles herself with worship, to bring the sense of the Divine to man. The Western monk chants his Hours--Lauds and Prime and Matins, and Terce and Sext and Vespers and Nones--but those footfalls of the Sun that he commemorates were trodden long ago in the deserts of the Thebaid, and he sings within closed doors, holding himself snug against the chill winds without. Here in India, however, we practise the Faith in the very land, and every day we realise afresh the cosmic events that gave it birth. Who has felt the stillness that falls on lawn and river at the moment of noon? Who, watching through long hours, has heard the distant music of the All the evening through the street had been full of passers up and down. And sudden bursts of The books say that it was the new-born child who instructed Vasudev to wrap him in his cloak, and pass out of the prison to the village on the far side of the Jumna, and then substitute him for the new-born girl of Nanda the cowherd and return. Was it so, indeed? Or was it overwhelming
