1 154 THE RELIGION OF THE SIKHS.
2 with a sense of the virtue of charity, and did not
3 scruple, when launched into a commercial life, to
4 apply the capital with which he had been pro-
5 vided, to relief of wandering faquirs. He was
6 then sent to attend upon cattle in the fields,
7 but this did not prevent his practising austerities,
8 and leading a life of such remarkable purity that
9 people of rank did homage to him, and urged his
10 father to put him again into business. It was
11 however, all in vain. Nothing could conquer
12 his utter disregard of worldly goods. He gave
13 to the poor all that he earned, and at length
14 formally renounced secular occupations and be-
15 came a faquir, wandering over India and teach-
16 ing the doctrines which his reflective mind, and
17 possibly a share of that inspiration which we
18 believe to have animated other great reformers,
19 satisfied him had their foundations in truth. The
20 unity and omnipresence of God were the tenets
21 he enforced ; and the immediate object which his
22 teaching professed to have was to reconcile the
23 conflicting faiths of the Hindoo and the Maho-
24 medan. An enemy of discord, he treated the
25 convictions of others with great deference, though
26 he firmly maintained that they were founded in
27 error; and coupling this course of teaching with
28 an extremely simple and devout manner of life,
29 he neither created cabals among the people
30 whom he visited, nor raised up personal enemies