His piety had its reward. The
god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised
that a portion of his, that is, of Gunputty's holy spirit should
abide with him and with his seed after him even to the seventh
generation. The divine promise was fulfilled. Seven successive
incarnations, transmitted from father to son, manifested the light
of Gunputty to a dark world. The last of the direct line, a
heavy-looking god with very weak eyes, died in the year 1810. But
the cause of truth was too sacred, and the value of the church
property too considerable, to allow the Brahmans to contemplate with
equanimity the unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world
which knew not Gunputty. Accordingly they sought and found a holy
vessel in whom the divine spirit of the master had revealed itself
anew, and the revelation has been happily continued in an unbroken
succession of vessels from that time to this. But a mysterious law
of spiritual economy, whose operation in the history of religion we
may deplore though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles
wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days cannot compare with
those which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by; and it
is even reported that the only sign vouchsafed by him to the present
generation of vipers is the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he
annually entertains to dinner at Chinchvad.
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