India, Its Life and Thought Part 21

Indeed, we are witnessing, this very day, even in the far West, the influence of India in her monistic overemphasis upon the divine immanence, working toward a new Christian conception of G.o.d. Modern interchange of thought is thus giving to India, even in America, her influence in the shaping of modern belief. And if it be thus in matters of fundamental belief, much more will it be so in matters of outward expression and in the unessential forms of Christian truth.

Some of us of the West are seeing increasingly the serious incongruity which exists between our way of thinking and of putting our thought into living form, and the way of the people about us. And we are not convinced, as we perhaps once were, that it is the obtuseness, or the religious perversity, of the Indian mind which is the cause of this.

The sooner the better we realize that between the people of the East and of the West there is a wide mental gulf which may, indeed, by our a.s.sociating together, be narrowed, but never eliminated. And the outward type of Christianity, after western pressure has been taken away from this land, will depend upon the mental make-up and peculiar spiritual aspect of the Indian Christian. And until he is able to furnish and to enforce this, which I call the Oriental type of Christianity, he will never be able to make his faith appeal to his brothers, and to make it an indigenous faith in India.

Nor do I think that the Christianity which is to prevail in India will be encased in the present ecclesiasticism which a.s.sumes and claims monopoly of our faith. I can conceive the possibility of there being a vast amount of Christianity--a living and a self-propagating Christianity--outside the pale of organized and inst.i.tutional Christianity in India. It is so in the West to-day. The organized churches of the West have within themselves an ever diminishing portion of the vital Christian life and aspirations of the country.

Christianity has overleapt ecclesiastic bounds. Its spirit is overflowing, in living streams, into the life of a thousand organizations which are altruistic and philanthropic, outside the limits of ecclesiastical Christianity. It will be so in India, and throughout the world. And the Christian Church must take this into account and shape its policy accordingly.

However this may be, East Indians will increasingly claim, as the j.a.panese are now claiming, the right to decide for themselves the forms of polity and the types of ritual which they will choose and cultivate as their own.

I do not say, of course, that the present forms will be entirely discarded. But they will be so modified and supplemented that they will present an ecclesiastical type of their own.

And why should they not, if our faith is to fit well the Oriental mind, and is to become a gracious power in its life? The growing opposition among the educated men of India, at the present time, is not really antagonism to Christianity itself, but to its western garb and spirit. And there is much reason for this att.i.tude of mind.

Conciliation and adaptation has not been the characteristic of the mind of the West in presenting its faith to the East. This did not make so much difference, so long as the Indian was submissive and had not waked up to the spirit of self-a.s.sertion. But to-day, when that spirit is so rampant, and when a new nationalism and a half-spurious patriotism glories in everything eastern and is annoyed by all that is western, the matter of adaptation has become all-important.

The relative barrenness of our faith during past centuries in India was largely, if not entirely, due to its foreign ecclesiastical forms and its shibboleths p.r.o.nounced in foreign tongues. The Christianity of the future in India must breathe of the spirit, and speak forth in the language and life, of the people.

I am inclined to believe that the battle cry of the Christian Church will soon be lost in the ever swelling tide of enthusiasm for the Kingdom of G.o.d. Christians will seek less to promote this or that denomination, and more and more to cause to come in power the Kingdom of Heaven. And India is a land which will lend itself very readily to this transfer of emphasis. There is much in the mystical type of the Hindu mind that leads us to antic.i.p.ate preeminence for India in this change of emphasis from outward organization to deep-working spiritual forces and realities.

India, which has been the most prolific land in giving birth to religions, and in being at present the asylum of all the great faiths of the world, will not be slow to give to Christianity that form and aspect which will most please her.

It is therefore important that all the Christian leaders of India should not only take note of these facts, but should also do their utmost to help in the desired consummation, and make Christianity in India a faith that will appeal to every man and woman in the land.

III

The conquest of our faith in India will be not the less, but the more, thorough, because it will be not only of the letter but also and chiefly of the spirit.

There are a few things which are fundamental to our faith, and which will become the universal and permanent possession of India.

1. The spirit and principles of Christianity will prevail and will dominate the land. Christian, as distinct from Hindu, principles are already making wonderful headway in the country. Many new inst.i.tutions have been organized in the land, whose principles are those of Christ, and not of Manu. Even the oldest inst.i.tutions of the country are becoming affected by the desire to appear modern, which really means an ambition to introduce Christian methods and principles. Educated Hindus, especially, add to this the peculiar weakness of interpreting things Hindu by a Christian terminology. The philosophy which they have imbibed and the standpoint to which they have been accustomed are western and, chiefly, Christian. So that when they study their own faith they do so with these Christian prepossessions; and even when they defend their ancestral religion, they really defend not the indigenous product of India, such as is taught by the Hindu pandit and believed by the ma.s.s of the people, but Hinduism Christianized and clothed in the garb of the West and spoken in the accents of a Christian.

Hindu Swamis, who have been educated in Christian mission schools, and have spent a few years in the far West, surrounded by a Christian atmosphere, imbibing Christian sentiments, and unconsciously adopting the Christian viewpoint, return to India upon a wave of popular excitement and give public addresses and receive the plaudits of their grateful countrymen. But what is it that such men as Vivekananda and Abhedananda, and all the rest of the _Ananda_ tribe, teach upon their return to India? It is certainly not an orthodox Hinduism, nor is it the pure philosophy of the East. It is rather a strange compound in which Christianity figures as prominently as does Hinduism, and, perhaps, more conspicuously. What was the caste system recently enunciated by Abhedananda in Madras? It is certainly not a thing known in India by that name. And I have no doubt that his whole audience smiled when he presented his conception of a caste system so foreign to all Hindu ideas and practice. It is just so with his Vedantism, and with his interpretation of all the religious teachings of this land. They are now construed in terms foreign to the rishi and to the pandit. But (and this the point I wish to emphasize) these interpretations meet increasingly with the applause and acceptance of educated Hindu audiences. In other words, a Christian colouring and glamour thrown over Hinduism is adding to its popularity in the land.

In the general way of looking at religious things, and especially of apprehending religious thought, there is to-day almost as wide a gulf between the educated and cultured Hindu, on the one hand, and the authorized religious instructors of India, on the other, as there is between the same learned man of the East and the thoughtful man of the West.

Or, if we look at the multiplying inst.i.tutions of the country, which truly represent the thoughts and sentiments of the leading people of India, we can easily see that they are imbued with non-Hindu, if not anti-Hindu, ideas and motives. The various Somajes and other religious movements, which mean so much in the life of India to-day, are more or less an endeavour to interpret life from a non-Hindu standpoint, which often means a Christian standpoint. In any case, the religious reform movements of India at the present time breathe largely the spirit of rebellion against old Hindu conceptions.

When we think of such important movements as that of Social Reform, we can see the spirit of Christianity completely dominant, and in sharp ant.i.thesis to Hindu teaching and ritual. The Social Reform movement in India is the spirit of Christianity, trying to express itself with as little offence as possible to orthodox Hinduism, and yet constantly antagonizing its deepest principles and eating into its very vitals.

The two forces which, next to direct Christian effort, do most for the promulgation of Christian principles in this land, are the public schools and the government itself. The educational system which now prevails, and which is growing in power, is distinctly a promoter of Christian thought and principle. We often call these schools G.o.dless; but we do them an injustice. Their work may be largely negative; but their teaching turns the mind of the young away from the silly superst.i.tions and the absurd practices of popular Hinduism, and establishes modern conceptions, which, indeed, are Christian conceptions of life and of conduct.

The government is, in an important sense, established upon Christian principles; and in all its administrative processes exemplifies the Christian, as distinct from the Hindu and Brahmanic, view of justice and of right conduct; so that, if one were able to perceive clearly the spiritual forces at work in the inst.i.tutional and social life of India, he would see not only that the foundation, but also that largely the superstructure, is becoming Christian in its character.

2. In the second place, the Christ Ideal of Life is acquiring ever increasing attraction and power in the land. India has never possessed an incarnated ideal of her own. No G.o.d in all her pantheon, and not one among all her n.o.ble sages, has ever posed before the followers of Hinduism, or has ever been thought of by Hindu devotees, as the exemplar of men and the ideal of human life. To many thousands who are outward members of the Hindu faith, and who would not dream of being baptized into inst.i.tutional Christianity, Jesus Christ has become the Ideal of Life. He represents to them that moral type of perfection and ethical n.o.bility of manhood to which they daily aspire. Krishna may be praised by the millions, notwithstanding his immoralities; and Rama may be extolled and even loved for his limited virtue; Yudhistra may be called "Dharman," notwithstanding his unrighteous pa.s.sion for the dice. But Christ only, in the eyes of modern educated India, stands the perfect test of character. All over the land, Hindus of culture, of serious thought, and of ambition to reach after high ethical standards see in Jesus Christ the only inspiration and immaculate example of life that all history, myth, and legend present.

And there is not a town in India to-day where there are not found these men of power and influence who are studying eagerly the life of Jesus, are pondering over the Gospel narratives; and are reading such books of Christian devotion as Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." This last-named book is now being translated by a Brahman gentleman, a friend of the writer, and published by a Hindu firm for its Hindu readers! I have known such men for many years, and am a.s.sured that their tribe is increasing; they are men who for the first time have found the deepest yearnings of their soul answered in the example of Jesus.

Ask any of them for their reason, and they will tell you that Christ is of the East, like themselves, and that His example appeals to them with unique power.

In India, the ideal of life has been one of restraint. Starting with the conviction that human life is an unmixed evil, the restraint of pa.s.sion and the elimination of every human emotion (the best as well as the worst) has been to the Hindu the goal and consummation of life.

Nothing can be more inadequate than this; and the Hindu is beginning to feel it. Jesus represents Culture _and_ Restraint. With him the restraint of the lower pa.s.sions is with a view to the culture of the higher. The man of sin must die, that the man of G.o.d may live and prosper. This is the Christ ideal, as opposed to the Brahmanic. And the leaven of this ideal of life is spreading all over India and is transforming the aspirations of millions. There is nothing more inspiring or comforting than the a.s.surance which we have that the Christ life is becoming the dominant ideal among the cla.s.ses of India, as it is to a less degree among the ma.s.ses.

A Brahman gentleman had the presumption to say to me, recently, that he and his fellow-Brahmans and other Hindus were able to understand the Christ much better than we of the West. He also claimed that they could understand the deep significance and the delicate shading of His thought better than we who are not of the East, like them. As a man who had taught and had tried to live the Christ in this land for more than a quarter of a century, I smiled at the audacity of his remark. And yet I knew that that man had visions of Christ that I had not; and that he has a fondness for Thomas a Kempis's book, beyond, perhaps, what I myself possess. There are aspects of the teaching and of the life of Jesus which appeal more powerfully to his Oriental and deeply mystical nature than they can possibly to the minds of all western men. Of one thing, however, I am a.s.sured; namely, that there is a growing host of Hindus in high position, and in low, who are enamoured of that ideal of life which our Lord taught and exemplified; and the fact that they interpret that life differently from myself causes me less sorrow than it does a desire to understand better their standpoint of appreciation.

3. I believe also that the Incarnation of our Lord, in its uniqueness and supreme power as the true manifestation of G.o.d, is finding rapidly increasing appreciation among the people of India.

India is the land of a myriad incarnations. The doctrine has run to seed, as it were, among this people. They are burdened with the excess of their eagerness to find G.o.d, and with their manifold imagination in giving Him form and earthly existence. There is no doctrine in Hinduism which has been carried to such a _reductio ad absurdum_.

Hindus to-day would gladly accept Christ as one of Vishnu's incarnations, if Christians would permit. I am not sure but that the tenth incarnation of Vishnu was meant to represent Christ. In any case, their growing familiarity with Him is gradually creating in their minds a disgust with the monstrosities of their own incarnations. Many of them are learning that G.o.d's Incarnation in Christ is the only one which has "descended" to the earth for the spiritual uplifting and redemption of our race; and, therefore, that it is the only incarnation which has within itself the seed of permanence and of universality. The petty, grotesque, and local "descents" of India will satisfy no one in these days of growing breadth and union, when the people are aspiring after an all-India nationality.

In Christ only is India finding the perfect revelation of G.o.d, because He alone revealed Him as the Father of boundless love; G.o.d, the Father of all men, loving them with an infinite pa.s.sion and seeking them even unto death,--that is the message of the Christian Incarnation. And how strangely does it contrast with the moral obliquity and selfish indifference to human interest which characterize Hindu incarnations!

In Christ do we find that G.o.d is the ever present, personal, loving Father, seeking to bring home again His lost children. He is supremely just and holy as Ruler and Provider; but His justice and holiness are illumined and transfused by His love. And as the Eternal Spirit He is striving in the hearts of men to bring them to Himself. This is the incarnation which is gaining ever increasing power in this land and whose worship is spreading from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.

4. The cross of Christ will be accepted in India as the highest expression of G.o.d's love to man.

It is true that, among many Hindus to-day, as among the Greeks and Jews of old, the cross of Christ is an offence and a stumbling-block.

The idea of vicarious atonement runs counter to the long-cherished doctrine of _Karma_. And it is possible that the universal prevalence of the _Karma_ doctrine in the land will give to the doctrine of atonement the same one-sided aspect which it has obtained among many Christians of the West, in the present day, whereby the element of vicariousness, or its G.o.d-ward efficiency, has been considerably eliminated. They may remain content to consider the cross merely as a supreme manifestation of love, as that part of the divine example which has infinite power to attract men toward the highest life of lowest service and self-effacement. However this may be, at present, the cross in India has more significance than the trident to the Hindu. And the language of the cross appeals with increasing force to all men of thought. And I am encouraged to think that the modern commendable habit, among educated Hindus, of harking back to the oldest and the best of their religious writings, may carry India away again from its emphasis upon _Karma_ to the original, pre-Buddhistic idea of vicariousness, when, for instance, in the _Purusha Suktha_ of the Rig Veda, the _Purusha_ is represented as being sacrificed by the G.o.ds. In the _Brahmanas_, also, it is said that the _Prajabathi_ sacrificed himself in behalf of the G.o.ds.

Indeed, it has been well said that the doctrine of _Karma_ itself, as connected with the doctrine of transmigration, carries within itself a strong element of vicariousness; since the person suffering in this birth knows nothing of the experiences of a supposed previous birth, and is, therefore, suffering for a past of which he is ignorant and for which his conscience cannot hold him responsible.

5. I believe, also, that the Christian conception of sin is gaining ever widening acceptance in India and will ultimately prevail as against the Hindu idea.

The doctrine of atonement and the doctrine of sin are intimately related; where the atonement is ignored or slighted, the conception of sin is apt to lose its ethical content and to become formal. India, through Buddha, abandoned, largely, its long-cherished principle of vicariousness and the multiplicity of its sacrifices. The consequence has been the gradual emasculation of the principle of atonement, until the word has become emptied of content and degraded so as to mean only the eating of a filthy pill because of a certain ceremonial uncleanness, which all the best people of the land know to be no uncleanness whatever.

It is natural, under these circ.u.mstances, to see the idea of sin also cease to have reference to moral obliquity and violation of ethical principles, and to refer only to intellectual blindness and (more commonly) to ceremonial laxness and ritualistic malfeasance. It is not surprising, therefore, that under this double departure from the truth, conscience should have lost its place of importance and of authority to so large an extent in this land.

But the day of better things has dawned upon India. The ethical concept and the moral significance of life are beginning to grip India very thoroughly. And I believe that the day will soon come when sin will cease to be connected with intellectual delusion and ignorance, and also with ceremonial irregularity, and will be recognized in its true moral hideousness as a thing of will, and not of intellect, a thing of deepest life, and not of puerile ritual.

Thus, with the coming of Christ and the emphasis of western thought and western civilization upon moral integrity and n.o.bility of character, there is growing also a vision of sin in its right colour and perspective. The gradual training of the people in British law and in the social ethics of the West, and in the true meaning of the righteousness of the Kingdom of G.o.d as promulgated by the Christian faith, will, erelong, drive out the old pantheistic idea proclaimed by Vivekananda, when he said that the only sin that man was capable of was the sin of regarding himself as a sinner! It will also make it impossible for murderers to excuse themselves, as one did recently to our knowledge, as he was led to be executed, by saying that it was not he, but the G.o.d within him, that slew the man!

India is really pa.s.sing through a quiet, but, nevertheless, a mighty ethical revolution. Its fundamental principles of morality and of religion, as the interpreters of life, are being rapidly transformed.

Christianity is sowing everywhere its seed of life and of character, as they are exemplified in the perfect life of Jesus, and are elaborated in the four Gospels, in comparison with which the message of the four Vedas and of all subsequent Hindu literature is but as the dark and feeble groping of the blind after light.

These, then, are the five fundamental aspects of our faith which are among the eternal verities and which have come to India smiling with the impress of universality, and which are finding gradual acceptance in all portions of the land. These represent what one has aptly called "Substantive Christianity," as distinct from "Adjectival Christianity," which men are p.r.o.ne to overemphasize and to exalt unto the heavens. This latter we may love and cherish and promote with all our hearts; but it is sectional, partial, and transitory. The former, on the other hand, is abiding, and will shine throughout the ages of eternity. It will grow in influence and increase in its prevalence throughout this land until we all can say, with the late Chunder Sen, and with much more a.s.surance than he, "None but Jesus is worthy to wear this diadem, India; and He shall have it."