India, Its Life and Thought Part 10

It is equally disastrous to the conception of the common people concerning their faith that so large a body of recognized hypocrites should, nevertheless, be so highly esteemed as types of piety.

The existence of this cla.s.s of worthless men reveals, also, another striking fact which characterizes the religion of India, and that is the utter divorce of faith and morals. Hinduism has never recognized any connection, and least of all any essential union, between piety and ethics. As we have seen, the most pious men in the land, according to Indian ideas, may be the most immoral. This has been one of the fatal defects of Hinduism from the earliest times. Conscience has found very small place in this religion of the Brahmans.

9. Modern Hinduism, also, inculcates the spirit of pessimism among its people. The Puranas tell us, and the people universally believe it, that we are now living in _Kali Yuga_, the iron age, in which all things are evil, and in which righteousness is a thing largely unknown to the people. All the forces of this age are against the good, and it leaves no encouragement to any one to try to do, and to be, good.[4]

[Footnote 4: See Chapter X, Kali Yuga.]

10. Add to this the even more potent belief of the people in astrology. The planets and the stars, the moon and the nodes are living G.o.ds, they say, which wield an influence over the life and destiny of human beings. The astrologer is perhaps the most important functionary in the social and religious life of the people. No marriage can be performed unless the horoscope of the bride and the bridegroom harmonize. No social or domestic event of importance, and specially no religious ceremony of any consequence, can be carried on save during what are called auspicious days and moments. Astrology is the right hand of Hinduism, and it has supreme authority in the direction of most of its affairs.

Add to this the belief in omens, which enters very largely into human life and thought. A Hindu will not start upon a journey save on what is astrologically an auspicious day; and if even a crow crosses his path from left to right, after he has begun his journey, it is regarded as an ill omen, and he will at once return home. He spends much of his time in watching such omens; even an a.s.s's bray carries a significance to him. If it is heard in the east, his success will be delayed; in the southeast, it portends death; in the south, it means wealth; etc. It matters not how important it may be that a man should undertake a journey or a task at a certain time, he will not do it at that time if he finds it to be inauspicious. When the new governor of Madras recently arrived at his destination, the reception to be given to him by the Hindus had to be postponed because it was ignorantly put at an hour which was _Rahu Kala_--an inauspicious hour!

In a thousand similar ways, the Hindu people are controlled and handicapped by silly superst.i.tions which make life a burden to them and which rob them of efficiency and sanity.

This, then, is the Hinduism of the ma.s.ses; and no other people devote themselves so faithfully to their faith as do these. And none, for this very reason, are more worthy of our sympathy and of our a.s.sistance to rise to better things in the realm of faith.

CHAPTER VIII

HINDU RELIGIOUS IDEALS AS THEY AFFECT THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY

To the student of comparative religion there appear many striking consonances between Hinduism and Christianity. Many a deep note in religious thought and life finds common expression in these two great faiths. Yet their dissonances are much more marked and fundamental.

In nothing are Christianity and Hinduism more antipodal than in the ideals which they exalt, respectively, before their followers; and this conflict of ideals is the most stubborn, as it is the most pervasive, that Christianity has to face in India. The vision of G.o.d and of man, of human life and attainment, which we present before an orthodox Hindu, does not impress him as it should, simply because it does not fit into his thinking. It antagonizes his inherited prepossessions; it violates many of the most cherished ideals of religious life and spiritual endowment, which, from time immemorial, have been handed down to him.

It is an interesting question how much of this difference is of the essence of the two religions, and how much is the product of the mental and spiritual make-up of the tropical East, on the one hand, and of the more northern West, on the other. The climatic and national idiosyncrasies are more potential in the complexion of the two faiths than we are wont to think.

But whether these different ideals are, or are not, essentially characteristic of the two faiths, is not a question quite germane to my present purpose. It is enough to remember that the western conception of Christianity, which the missionary has inherited and which he is eagerly presenting, and can hardly avoid presenting, to the people of this land, is far removed from what the Hindu has always been taught to believe that a religion should bring into a man's life and possession.

It is easy enough to prove to the man of ordinary intelligence the debasing influence of idolatry, the accursed slavery of the caste system, the gross immorality of the Hindu pantheon, and the dwarfing and degrading character of the ceremonialism of modern Hinduism.

But behind and above all these, the Hindu has inherited a number of ideals which allure and command him. They are his ultimate criteria and resort, and they conflict with those which the supplanting faith presents as the _summum bonum_ of life. It is not until the Christian teacher can show to him, in a way that will move him, the excellence of the supreme ideals of Christianity above those of the old faith, that his work can be said to have achieved a triumph in his life.

Hence the great--I might almost say the transcendent--importance of mission schools of all grades through which are sown the seed of a new philosophy of life. Herein also lies the even more valued service which a sane and a strong Christian literature in English and in all the vernaculars of the land can render, and is rendering, to the cause of Christ in India. For the fight in India is, more than it is or has been in any other land, one that gathers around basal conceptions and fundamental postulates about G.o.d and man and life; and Christianity can never seem attractive to an intelligent Hindu until it has conquered his a.s.sent at these points of vital importance.

Let us consider a few of these ideals which everywhere and always obtrude themselves upon us in India.

I

_The Divine Ideal_

In the conception of the G.o.dhead which obtains in Christianity and that which dominates modern Hinduism there is found a difference of emphasis which amounts almost to a contrast. To the Hindu, the Supreme Soul or Brahm is idealized Intelligence; to the Christian G.o.d is perfect Will. To the former, He is supreme Wisdom; to the other, He is infinite Goodness. The devotees of each faith aspire to become like unto, or to partake of, their Divine Ideal. Hence the goal of the one is _brahma gnana_ (Divine Wisdom); of the other, it is supreme love or goodness. Thus at its foundation the religion of India has always placed _perfect intelligence_ as its corner stone, while the basis of the rival faith has been an ideal of _ethical perfection_. Hence, that process of intellectual gymnastics which so markedly characterizes the higher realms of Hindu sainthood and effort, on the one hand, and the altruistic fervour and outgoing charity of the ideal Christian, on the other. For this reason, also, the great root of bitterness which Hinduism has, from the first, sought to remove has been ignorance (_avidia_)--that intellectual blindness which persists in maintaining that the self and the Supreme Soul are separate realities and which is the only barrier to the self's final emanc.i.p.ation and final absorption into the Divine. To the Christian, on the other hand, the dread enemy is sin--that moral obliquity which differentiates the soul from the perfect ethical beauty of G.o.d. In consonance with this, the salvation which is exalted as the _summum bonum_, to be forever sought by the one, is self-knowledge, by the other self-realization in conformity to the Divine Will. I would not affirm that moral rect.i.tude is absent as a desideratum from the ambition of the Hindu, nor that the Christian does not accept with his Lord that "this is eternal life to _know_ G.o.d," and that he does not aspire with the great Apostle "to know even as I am known." But the supreme emphasis which is given by the one to nescience as the evil to be removed, and to wisdom as the crowning grace to be achieved, and, by the other, to rebellion of heart against G.o.d as the great sin, and to transformation to His moral image as perfected salvation, is much too marked to be overlooked by the student of these two faiths, and by the Christian missionary in the land.

And all of this comes as a natural consequence from the different concepts which the two religions have of G.o.d Himself. Indeed, these two standpoints from which the G.o.dhead is conceived account for the deepest divergencies of Hindu and Christian philosophy and theology.

II

_The Hindu and Christian Conceptions of Incarnation are similarly Divergent_

Incarnation is a fundamental doctrine of the religion of Jesus. It is also an overshadowing tenet of modern Hinduism. For this reason, the Christian missionary finds in this doctrine the best leverage wherewith to raise the Hindu to our faith. Yet at this very point his efforts are largely frustrated by the very different conceptions which obtain in the two religions. The Christian incarnation must be, and is, first of all, of a perfect ethical type--an ideal of transcendent moral beauty and spiritual excellence. The least flaw or crookedness in His character would vitiate His pretensions, and would be the death-blow to the doctrine of His incarnation and divinity. In Hinduism, on the other hand, moral criteria have no application to the "descents" or incarnations of Vishnu. To his three first incarnations (of the fish, the tortoise, and the boar), moral tests are, of course, out of place; nor are they any more applicable to the grossly sensual Krishna, who is the only "full" incarnation of the G.o.d, and who is the supremely popular modern incarnation of the Hindu pantheon. Hindus have never dreamt of squaring the "going" of their incarnations with ethical demands and standards.

Whatsoever of good Vishnu, in his descent, is said to have come to achieve in the world, it certainly was not a moral or a spiritual good. So an appeal to the moral excellence, or to the atoning work and purpose, of the Christ does not, at first, in any way impress them as an argument for His divine character or heavenly origin, any more than the moral obliquity of their own "descents" argues to the contrary.

Moreover, the Hindu conception of incarnation largely resembles the Jewish. It must be a triumphant descent. Vishnu, in all his incarnations, came to destroy rather than to suffer himself to be put to death. A suffering and a dying G.o.d is to-day, to the Hindu, what it was twenty centuries ago to the Jew and Greek--a stumbling-block and a foolishness. It is true that Buddha, who was in more recent times adopted as an incarnation, in order to win over to modern Hinduism the followers of his faith, is somewhat of an exception to this rule. But not, according to the Hindu interpretation of it.

So the two elements of glory in the incarnation of Christ--His spotless character and His Cross and death--do not ordinarily appeal to the inhabitants of this land as in any sense necessary or important.

III

_Ideals of Life_

From the above considerations it will be natural to conclude that the ideals of life entertained by the East and West are far removed. The conflict of these ideals is the primary cause of the many strange religious and social movements which to-day send their ramifications into every town and hamlet of this land; and it creates the mighty revolution now at work in India.

Consider first the religious ideals which dominate this land and the "Far West." Hinduism has exalted asceticism as the highest type of life and the best method of holy attainment. From time immemorial the religious mendicant, with his ideals of self-renunciation and ascetic practices, has found universal admiration among this people, and his motives and methods stand as the most highly approved in all the annals of this religion.

It is true that this was universally exalted above all other forms of life among Christians also at one time, as it continues to be among, perhaps, the majority to-day. And is not the Cross, which is the emblem of self-renunciation and self-effacement, the motive power of our faith, as it is also the embodied ideal of our Life? True; but there is this marked difference between the two faiths. In Christianity the Cross is only a means. The Cross of self-effacement is the pathway of Christ and of the Christian to the crown of self-realization. We despise the lower good in order that we may attain unto the higher.

In Hinduism, the rigours of asceticism are, indeed, sometimes a means to an end; but that end is not character or any spiritual achievement, but power with the G.o.ds. Nearly all the notable instances of religious austerities and self-torture practised by _yogis_, and recorded in Hindu legend and history, were undertaken for the purpose of acc.u.mulating thereby a great store of merit through which power might be acquired over men or G.o.ds. Thus many an ascetic is said to have so subdued and afflicted his body that nearly the whole Hindu pantheon trembled in the presence of the power thus acquired by him.

But when the Hindu ascetic has not this object in self-renunciation, his austerities are an end in themselves. He renounces all--not simply the mean things of life, but also the n.o.blest ambitions and the most heavenly sentiments--because they are a fetter which bind him to the world. He indeed calls a good deed, or a holy thought, a "golden fetter," but it is, just the same, regarded by him as an evil which prolongs his human existence; and these human conditions must be ended as soon as possible.

The Christian, on the other hand, suppresses his pa.s.sions in order that his holy desires may prevail; the Hindu struggles equally against the worst pa.s.sions and the n.o.blest sentiments of his heart; for they all delay that calm equilibrium of the _self_ which is the doorway into _sayutchia_ (absorption). Thus character, or the prevalence of the n.o.bler sentiments of our nature above the meaner, is not, and never has been, the aim of Hindu asceticism. And in consonance with this fact is the other, namely, that nine-tenths of the five and a half million ascetics, sadhus, and fakhirs of India are universally recognized as pestilential in their morals, and as distinguished examples of what the laity of the land should avoid being or becoming.

The Christian seeks, as his ideal, the perfect blending of the ethical and the spiritual in his life; in Hinduism, faith has always been divorced from morality, and there has never seemed to be any incongruity, in their minds, in the act of ascribing true saintliness and spiritual excellence to those who are known daily to trample under foot every command of the Decalogue.

Thus the ideal life which has captivated India from time immemorial, and which at this present wields a mighty influence over the people, is not the generous, the upright, and morally spotless life, so much as the wandering, the monastic, or the secluded forest life of the ascetic, regardless of its spiritual character. In other words, it is not a stern and n.o.ble victory over sin and worldliness in the common relationships of life, but a fleeing from the sin and duties and responsibilities of life into the _mutt_, or wilderness, which has fascinated the inhabitants of this peninsula as the best type of life possible.

Now, in view of all this, what shall the Christian teacher do in this land? Shall he also exalt this ideal and temper it with Christian wisdom and chasten it with Christian meaning? Doubtless the wise missionary will consider well the amount of emphasis which this aspect of life requires in India, in view of the ideal which Hinduism has presented to the popular mind. He will also, I think, hesitate, on the one hand, to bring his faith into comparison with Hinduism in the matter of mere ascetic rigour and severe self-mortification, in which the Christian has always lagged far behind the Hindu devotee and monk.

On the other hand, he will not be likely to exalt over-much this type of life in a land in which, for more than three thousand years, it has ruled supremely but has had so little of moral significance and has achieved such meagre spiritual results.

Another phase of life which furnishes to the people an ideal is the _ceremonial_. Among the myriad G.o.ds of the Hindu pantheon and all the sages of its history and legend, there is not one who is worthy to be exalted as an ideal of character. The reason is not far to find. With this, however, we are not at present concerned. It is enough if we remember that this absence of an incarnate ideal in the religion has led to the exaltation of rules and ceremonies as the safeguards of--yea, more, as the very essence of--a worthy and n.o.ble life. There is no sadder fact in India at present than that of this great religion, of two hundred and thirty million souls, being largely emptied of moral content as related to the common life, and built up of numberless petty external ceremonies which hara.s.s the individual, and grip the life with a dead hand at all points. The ceremonialism of the Scribes and Pharisees in the days of our Lord and which excited His supreme wrath, was not a consequence as compared to that of Hinduism to-day. From conception even to the burning-ground, every detail of life, individual and communal, religious and social (there is no social as apart from religious life in Hinduism), is cast into a mould of ceremony or ritual which robs it of ethical content, and makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired.

But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu conscience is perverted, and the true distinction between right and wrong is buried deep under this greatest and most elaborate ma.s.s of ceremonial that the world has ever known. To a people who have thus inherited the ceremonial instinct, who are Pharisees by a hundred-fold heritage and by sweet choice, it is not an easy thing for the man of the West, with his natural distrust of all that is formal and outward in life, to present effectively his Lord, whose bitterest woes were p.r.o.nounced against the formalists of His time, and whose commands are always ethical, and whose life is, first of all, and last of all, spiritual.

Another ideal of life which has too exclusive emphasis in this land is that which is denominated _quietism_--an ideal which extols the pa.s.sive virtues as distinguished from the manly, aggressive ones. I would by no means claim that these two ideals are Hindu and Christian, respectively. They are rather begotten of the countries and climes under which the two religions have been, for many centuries, fostered.

To the eastern and tropical Christian, the teaching of our Lord furnishes abundant warrant for a glorifying of the pa.s.sive and non-resisting virtues. And I am inclined to believe that we of the West have few things of greater importance and of deeper religious significance to learn from the East than the appreciation of such graces of life as patience and endurance under evil. We stand always prepared to fight manfully for our convictions, and to obtrude them at all points upon friend and foe alike. It is not in the nature of the East to do this. We say that he has no stamina. We call him, in opprobrium, "the mild Hindu." But let us not forget that he will reveal tenfold more patience than we under very trying circ.u.mstances, and will turn the other cheek to the enemy when we rush into gross sin by our haste and ire. His is one of the hemispheres of a full-orbed character. Ours of the West is the other. Let us not flatter ourselves too positively that our a.s.sertive, aggressive part is the more beautiful or the more important. Yea, more, I question whether ours is the stronger and more masculine part of life and character; for is it not to most of us an easier thing to fling ourselves in vehemence against an evil in others than it is to sit calmly and patiently under a false accusation, as our Lord Himself did? At least it must be left an open question as to whether the impulsive and domineering vigour of the West is preferable to the "mildness" of the East.

What I wish to emphasize is the dissimilarity between our western type of life and the eastern, and to warn the Christian worker from the West against the danger of a.s.suming that Christian life must be adorned with only those western traits and excellences of character which are foreign and unpalatable to the East--the very fault which also characterizes the Hindu on his side, and which makes him feel so superior at times and so inaccessible to Christian influence. For, let it not be forgotten that the Hindu regards what we call our foibles of petulance, arrogance, and intolerance, with the same disapprobation and disgust as we do their more frequent violation of the seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments of the Decalogue. And who is to decide as to which catalogue is the worse and the more heinous in the sight of G.o.d?

IV

_The Hindu Conception of Ultimate Salvation presents Another Point of Divergence from the Christian Ideal of Life Beyond_