India's Problem, Krishna or Christ Part 8

Just as ceremonialism covers all his personal life, even so caste observance defines for him all his social relations. There is not a tie or an influence which binds man to man that is not, to the Hindu, a part of the great and all-embracing caste system. So all-pervasive is this social tyranny that a man dare not withstand it; yea, more, he has learned to look at it as the prime necessity of his social being and therefore invariably regards it as the highest good. He may indeed believe that, in the abstract, caste is an evil and that it has been a curse to the people of the land. But he nevertheless maintains that, as it is an ancient part, and a most important part, of his ancestral faith, it must be submitted to in all obedience and regarded as the ideal of life.

The Bhagavad-Gita is regarded today not only as the gem of all Hindu literature; it is also held up by educated Hindus as the highest authority among their _Shastras_. Concerning caste duties this "Divine Song" speaks as follows:

"Better to do the duty of one's caste, Though bad and ill-performed and fraught with evil, Than undertake the business of another, However good it be. For better far Abandon life at once than not fulfill One's own appointed work; another's duty Brings danger to the man who meddles with it.

Perfection is alone attained by him Who swerves not from the business of his caste."

Therefore the Hindu has come to regard caste observance as the supreme claim of his faith. As we have seen, a man may believe or disbelieve any doctrine he please; that does not affect his status as a Hindu so long as he is loyal to caste rules and observances. As one has aptly remarked, the seat of other religions may be in the mind; the seat of Hinduism is preeminently in the stomach. It is not what he thinks but what and how and with whom he eats that gives him his religious status.

The Hindu regards himself as socially devoid of any right of initiative and choice; he has no will of his own. His social conscience is in the keeping of his caste. This has gained its rules from the past and exercises no discretion or judgment of its own in the social direction of its members; but it insists upon implicit obedience, by every one, to past customs which have crystallized into irrevocable laws. And to these laws the Hindu is always and everywhere a willing and an abject slave. To violate any of them is, he well knows, to be recreant to his faith and to be an outcaste among his people.

(_d_) The Hindu is not strong in character, as Westerners regard strength.

As we have seen, his religion is not favourable to the highest development of conscience. Hence, sincerity and truthfulness are not among his strong points. Not only does pantheism undermine conscience, the example of the most prominent G.o.ds of the Hindu pantheon, leads men to prevaricate and encourages all forms of duplicity. Under these circ.u.mstances it were strange if the Hindu were conspicuous in honesty and in loyalty to the truth. And in like manner he is wanting largely in those convictions which, in the West, are so inseparably a.s.sociated with earnestness, integrity and lofty purpose. If, to the Hindu devotee, religion is not a system of truth to be believed and loyally followed, but a series of ceremonies to be observed and of caste rules to be obeyed, then loyalty to truth becomes a very secondary matter and integrity of mind will be regarded by him as of no great moment. Therefore it is that hollowness is so often found at the core of their life. Lying and stealing are all but universal. It is said in our District in South India that the regular price of a court witness is two annas (four cents); and he stands ready to perjure himself to any extent for this paltry sum. The ordinary Hindu seems too often to have a predilection for falsehood and uses truth with rare economy! There, dishonesty and petty larceny are foibles too frequently condoned because too generally practiced. Even among the higher cla.s.ses-the cultured and elite-open-faced and open-handed frankness and sincerity are too rare. Hypocrisy and duplicity are too often cultivated as a fine art. It seems to be the pride and pleasure of an Oriental to conceal his mind and purpose and to say and do things by the greatest indirection possible.

India has been extolled as a land where there is no profanity. This is true and she should have the credit for this abstinence. And one never feels like giving her this credit more than when he returns from that country to this and is compelled to endure the coa.r.s.e profanity which pervades our streets as a terrible stench.

Yet one can hardly see how the Hindu could find interest in, and a strong grip upon, profanity, so long as the G.o.ds of his pantheon have so little of his respect and enter so rarely into the serious compacts of his life.

Moreover it should not be forgotten that obscenity fulfills in India the function of profanity in the West. The bursts of pa.s.sion which find expression here through taking the name of G.o.d in vain gain utterance there in language unspeakably bad of the other kind. And this is only a part of the larger subject of the prevalence of social immorality in India-an evil which is largely fostered under the protection of the religion of the land. When Lord Dalhousie, the Viceroy of India, was considering an act for the suppression of obscenity in the country, he was compelled by Hindu sentiment to exempt all temples and religious emblems from the operation of the act! What better commentary could one desire upon the source and prevalence of this vice in that land? When such an evil is intrenched behind the religion of the people and is symbolized and fostered by its emblems and ceremonies-when _tasies_, or women dedicated to the Hindu G.o.ds and temple worship (there are 12,000 of these in South India alone), const.i.tute the public characters of the land-then the hope for the purification of life is at the lowest ebb.

It is also very rare that one finds a Hindu whose convictions and loyalty to certain beliefs are such that he is willing to suffer in their behalf.

That masculine vigour and manly persistence under difficulty in maintaining what he believes to be right and true is not germane to the Hindu character.

On the other hand, the Hindu is strong in the so-called pa.s.sive virtues.

In harmony with his religious beliefs, patience and meekness and endurance of evil have become second nature to him. This side of his character has, indeed, received undue emphasis during the many centuries of his history.

He cannot understand the rush and impatience, the push and aggressiveness of the Westerner any more than he of the West can understand the Hindu's cool, quiet, patient, bearing under most trying and adverse circ.u.mstances.

He has a large lesson to teach us in the art of self-control and in the ability to endure with complacency evils which cannot be remedied.

Thus as we look at the Hindu from the various standpoints of life and character we see how strange a compound he is, and how unlike the man of the West at nearly all points in our examination. He is preeminently weak where we are strong, and he manifests strength where we seem to need it most. His religion has developed within him traits and tendencies which, through these many centuries, have wonderfully wrought in his life and character, and have largely made him what he is today.

Moreover all this enables us to see what a serious problem Christianity has in hand in India today, namely the conversion of 230,000,000 people so far removed in life and sentiment from those who have gone to preach Christ to them. Yea, more, we have seen what mighty influences and forces Christianity has to overcome, what hosts of prejudices to destroy, before she can lay her hand in power upon that great land and claim it as her own.

2. Let us Now Study The Native Christian.

The Indian Christian, as we have seen, is a recent product, so far as Protestant Christianity is concerned. And yet we are glad to witness a marked development in the life and character of those who are connected with the Protestant missions. It is true that fully one-half of the Christian community there found has been connected with our faith no more than a quarter of a century. But as we compare these recent accessions to our faith with those Christians of a second, third and fourth generation we are much encouraged by the growth in Christian character and principle which is taking place. I have often studied these differences between the recent convert and the Christian-born member of the community. I have also compared those of the second, with those of the third and fourth, generation of Christian heritage; and I have been much encouraged to see that our faith is adding to its power over the life and character of the native Christian community as the years and generations increase. And if the work continues, with the present insistence and vigour, it will not take many generations more before Christianity will have become thoroughly indigenous, because it will have developed a type of character in that land fully in harmony with its own genius and teaching.

It is necessary, however, in considering this question, that we remember specially that the antecedents and the environment of the native Christian have been entirely Hindu. His ancestral faith has coloured, and must colour, largely his religious preceptions and conduct. Let it not be thought that, when a man abandons Hinduism and becomes a Christian, he thereby, once and for all, drives out of his mind all those prepossessions, prejudices and superst.i.tions which he has inherited from the past. It will take a long time for him to separate himself from these and their influence. Many of them will probably cling to him during his whole life. It is as much as we can hope that Christian truth will take increasing possession of his mind and gradually supplant the old and unworthy beliefs of Hinduism.

There are moreover certain elements of truth in that old faith which we do not care to eliminate from his mental furnishing, but which must find new adjustment and be properly located in the new religion which he has adopted.

It should also be remembered and made prominent in our consideration of this subject that the people of India are an Oriental people and are the children of the tropics and, as such, will always remain and must remain very different from us of the Northwest. Their climatic and meteorological conditions, their outer, physical life, their social customs and the trend of their civilization, have always been, and will continue to be, far removed from our own. Nothing could be more fatal to our success in our effort for the conversion of India than the idea that we must in every respect mold them after the pattern of Western life and habits. A large portion of their life is the result of the conditions which I have mentioned and must largely remain unchanged; and it would be folly for the missionary to regard these as a part of the faith to be supplanted, and to teach that western social customs are inseparable from Christianity and must be accepted by the Orient with our faith. The Christian of India will always be, and it is well that he should be, differentiated from the Anglo-Saxon Christian.

It should also be remembered that the people of India, at least the ma.s.ses, are low in civilization. It should not be expected that those who are in that low estate, when they become Christians, will leap with one bound into the full possession of a high civilization and be clothed upon with some of those beauties of western life and character which we inevitably a.s.sociate with the term, "A Christian Gentleman." They, indeed, become truly and sincerely the disciples of Christ; but they will, at the same time, manifest some of the crudities and weaknesses of the low social grade of which they have been and still remain a part. They should not be judged by standards Western or of a high civilization.

Looking, then, at the native Christian of India let us have regard to his condition socially, morally, religiously and spiritually.

(_a_) Studying this product of the Christian faith in that land from a _social_ standpoint we find encouragement. He differs from his Hindu neighbour by a growing freedom from the trammels of caste. He feels, in his best moments, that caste has been and continues to be the greatest curse of the land, that he has been emanc.i.p.ated from it, and that he is ambitious to enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ has made him free. And yet, unfortunately, he does not remain constantly in the possession of this sane mind. The roots of the caste system have reached down into the lowest depths of his being. Even at times when he believes that he is absolutely independent of caste considerations, there is in him a blind persistence which clings to caste bondage. I have often felt that Hinduism can be dispensed with by our convert with vastly more ease in all other particulars than in its caste feelings and affiliations. This relic of the past clings to him with a tenacity which is phenomenal and most sad.

Though everything teaches him that this caste system is the greatest enemy of Christianity and will prevent any one who believes and practices it from fully imbibing the spirit of Christ; and though he aspires to be an earnest and an efficient Christian and to love all his brethren, this remnant of Hinduism in his heart returns to rob him of the joys and blessings of his Christian birthright. I have seen this frequently disfigure what would otherwise have been a beautiful Christian character.

I have witnessed it blast the prospects of Christian congregations dooming them to stagnation and death. I have known it to palsy the arm and deaden the heart of more than one Christian worker.

All this is inevitable when we remember the mighty influence and the long continued dominance of caste in that land. But even at this point, where the missionary finds the greatest discouragement, there are marked signs of progress. So long as the missionary fought this evil alone there was little hope of success. But, during the last few years, the conscience of the native Christian Church itself has been roused on this question. The Indian Christian today, as never before, has the conviction that this caste evil saps the spiritual life of every member and of every church which entertains it, and that it is his supreme duty to fight it steadily in his own heart, home and church. And there is an increasing number, especially of the young Christians, who are pledging themselves to an unceasing warfare against the demon caste. Christians are also organizing themselves into Caste Suppression Societies. All this is highly encouraging, but needs large furtherance and development before the native Christian can be said to be freed from this most subtle curse of the ancestral faith.

The old Hindu Joint Family System is the foster-mother of the caste idea, and it is cheering to see native Christians increasingly abandoning that system for the Western idea of home which encourages thrift, independence and liberty among the various members of a family and clan.

In India, for many years to come, this blight of social narrowness, exclusiveness and divisiveness will affect more or less the native Christian character and give colour to the native Christian Church. For centuries it may prove the weak spot of Indian Christianity.

(_b_) _Morally_, the native Christian develops slowly. One writer has recently claimed that the Christian of India manifests little, if any, preeminence over the Hindu, in this respect. This is not true. He is certainly moving forward and upward morally. But it should be remembered that moral character is not one of the first results of Christian conquest among such a people. It is rather the highest and last fruit upon the tree of Christian life. It should not be forgotten that what we regard in the West as the high moral traits of a Christian gentleman are the product of more than 1,000 years of Christian living.

The native Christian manifests, in this respect, the weakness of his antecedents and his environment. When we remember that weakness of character to which we have referred as belonging to the Hindu it is not surprising that the native Christian, who is daily surrounded by men of that faith and who imbibes the atmosphere of that religion, should largely be affected by the same evil. A few years ago an English barrister complained to me of certain Christian witnesses who had given evidence in a case recently conducted by him in Madura. "I hate to have your Christians as witnesses in any of my cases," he says; "for whenever they venture to give false evidence they instantly falter and stumble and are caught by the opposing counsel. A Hindu, when he gives false evidence, will tell a straight and a plausible story. But your Christians are too much affected by twinges of conscience." What was embarra.s.sing and annoying to him was encouraging to me! That our Christians should occasionally give false evidence did not surprise me; but that they, in this matter, should be differentiated, by this disinterested observer, from Hindu witnesses is a reliable testimony in favour of their growing veracity.

Among the higher cla.s.s of native Christians, which is annually increasing in number, there is marked improvement in character. Especially among mission agents do we have opportunity to witness this development. They are growing in sincerity and reliability. The missionary is learning, with increasing pleasure, to place confidence in their veracity. And yet, we must mourn that moral progress among our people, both high and low, is not more rapid and satisfying.

Social immorality, as we have seen, is very prevalent in that tropical country. It is natural that this should annoy and worry us greatly among our native Christians. It is a sad fact that more of our mission agents are dismissed on account of this sin than any other. Hindu society is not only largely demoralized by this evil, there is also no public sentiment against it. But, under the influence of a growing sentiment in behalf of chast.i.ty and purity, the evil is gradually diminishing among our native Christians.

One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as noticeable as their profession of piety. n.o.body there questions their lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their G.o.ds; nor will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a n.o.ble life, can be severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the publicly immoral ones.

It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find, not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), "to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience"; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.

(_c_) _Religiously_, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the clinging brood of superst.i.tions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of those childish superst.i.tions and charms which were largely their main stay in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm; but the many little superst.i.tions which are connected with private life and social customs have still a quiet influence and a lingering power over them.

These largely belong to the life of those who have _recently_ accepted the Christian faith. It may be that some of them will never make that progress in life which will lift them entirely above some of these Hindu superst.i.tions. But the great majority of native Christians today have religiously had no connection whatever with Hinduism and have entirely subst.i.tuted Christian rites and observances for those of the Hindu religion. And they apparently have large satisfaction in them. The old Hindu idea of the supreme value of asceticism is largely yielding to a Christian altruism which abandons self-centred, self-seeking, activity in favour of loving sympathy for, and an endeavour to do good to, men.

We also notice that among them the idea of the efficacy of certain forms and ceremonies is lessening in favour of a conviction of the power of the inner life of faith.

And yet it should be constantly kept in mind that ceremony and ritual must always find a larger place in the religious life of India than in that of the United States. The inhabitant of India is tropical and poetic in temperament. He beholds things, and appreciates and appropriates spiritual blessings, more through the help of forms and ceremonies than does the man of the West. A rite appeals to his nature more strongly and lends to him greater facility in getting at its underlying truth and ant.i.type than it does to us. Indeed it is his nature to look at Christian truth through the eyes of a poet; and ceremonies consequently convey to him the largest significance and are more revealing of the spirit within. We seek divine truth and spiritual blessings more directly than he. It would be therefore a mistake for us to expect that practical, unpoetic mind of ours in the Oriental, or to present religious truth to him in its nakedness, unadorned and unenforced by rite and ritual. It has been, and, to some extent, continues to be the fault of our Congregational Missions in India that they try to lift the native Christian to those dry, unadorned, simple forms of religious service which indeed satisfy the missionaries, but which ignore the great difference of nature and temperament between themselves and the converts. It should be remembered that in India people think vocally. Even as they must and do read aloud in order to read intelligently, so must they worship aloud in order to worship feelingly and thoughtfully. Hence the wisdom and urgency for them of a ritual and a responsive service.

(_d_) _Spiritually_, the Indian Christian is slowly and surely developing on definite lines of his own.

The simplicity of his faith is beautiful. He has none of those questions of doubt or misgivings of unbelief which are so prevalent in the West. He takes the Bible in all fullness of acceptance. His prayers are not crossed and frustrated by any rationalistic theories, but have the simplicity of childish directness, filial trust and full expectancy. Nothing has touched me more in my contact with native Christians than to feel the directness, simplicity, unquestioning trustfulness of their prayers even in times of greatest adversity.

The native Christian possesses a mystic temperament. The inhabitants of that land, through many centuries of training, have become natural mystics in religion. This national heritage the native Christian retains; and properly chastened and directed by Christian truth and faith it will add depth, beauty and power to his religious life. Under these conditions I shall have no fear of mysticism in the Christian Church in India. Deep spirituality and a yearning after the hidden things of religion is more natural to the East than to the West. The West is practical and worldly; the East is mystical and other-worldly. The native Christian, at his best, is manifesting some of this spiritual power. He takes naturally to the Pauline emphasis upon the life "hid with Christ in G.o.d," and to the mystic union which exists between Christ and His own.

It is here that the native Church in India is, I believe, to show an inspiring example to the Church of the West. If the Christian of India is not to be as practical or indeed as spiritually sane as his brother of the West, he will probably ill.u.s.trate more of the hidden mysteries and power of the spiritual life. In this respect the spiritual power of the East and that of the West will be, in their separate emphasis, mutually complementary.

The Indian Christian, true to his native temperament, is and will continue to be strong in the so-called pa.s.sive virtues, and weak in the positive or aggressive ones. Patience, meekness, gentleness, endurance-these are the graces which preeminently adorn him and which give colour and shape to his religious character. Here, again, his life will be very different from that life which has characterized, thus far, the Western Christian. The masculine virtues of a.s.sertion, boldness, aggressiveness have characterized the West. We have been strong and continue strong in that aspect of our faith which we a.s.sociate with the words a.s.sertion and attack. The West has, true to its environment and training, developed Christian character mostly, I will not say exclusively, on the positive side of life. The equally important pa.s.sive virtues we of the West have much neglected if not despised as weakness. The East is even today manifesting the blessedness, and the native Christian will increasingly ill.u.s.trate, the beauty and potency, of the pa.s.sive virtues-of the spiritual element of endurance and non-resistance. He will show to us that a true and perfected character-a character molded after that of the divine Exemplar-must have also, and with equal emphasis, the sweet and feminine pa.s.sive graces of life as an essential element. In India today the Anglo-Saxon is wont to speak with contempt of "The mild Hindu." That mildness which we are too apt to despise contains the germs of that half of Christian character which is too largely wanting in the spiritual life of the Anglo-Saxon and which the Christian Church of India will increasingly ill.u.s.trate and gradually seek to respect, honour, and ultimately, to adopt.

Thus, speaking broadly of the native Christian of India today we find him almost as much a product of heredity and environment as he is of Christianity. He holds out Christ before himself as his ideal of life, and His words as the all-satisfying truth. He seeks in His redeeming work rest and salvation of soul; but many of the deepest yearnings of his heart come to him through old channels worn out by his ancestral faith. Hinduism gives more or less of colouring to his religious thought and aspirations; and not a few of its forms and ceremonies are retained, but filled with a new Christian content, and are utilized to aid in the development of Christian life. Even as the Jews of old entered into possession and appreciation of Christian life through Jewish rites and ceremonies, so do native converts enter Christian life through Hindu forms today. From the necessity of their thought and being they utilize not a few of the processes of the old, in order to acquire and enjoy the blessings of the new, faith. This cannot be avoided nor do we desire that it should be avoided.

[Ill.u.s.tration: House Of A Missionary In India.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Village Christian Church.]

The study of the Indian Christian character in its peculiarities and tendencies is of importance, because, as I have said above, I believe it is to affect our conceptions of life in the West. At the present time not a few of the religious vagaries which infest our land such as Christian Science and Theosophy, have chiefly come to us from India. At least, whatever of philosophy they may possess, and all of the occultism and mysticism which they court and magnify, are thoroughly Eastern and Indian.

And from the popularity of such movements in this land it would seem as if the boast of some men that Hindu thought is invading the West is partially true. But the invasion which I desire and expect, in the not distant future, is the invasion of an Oriental _Christian_ thought, _Christian_ life and _Christian_ character. This will come in its time as truly as, and much more fully than, the other has come, and it will do this country as much good as the other is now doing evil.

As an ill.u.s.tration of what I mean in reference to the influence of Eastern thought upon the West I would prophesy that ere long the Indian Christian Church will formulate for itself and enunciate to the world an advanced and helpful doctrine of the Holy Ghost beyond anything that the West has enunciated. India, which for these many centuries has been the home of an all-prevalent spiritual pantheism, when it comes to elaborate the doctrine of G.o.d, from a Christian standpoint, will give as much emphasis to His immanence as the West has given to His transcendence. G.o.d with us and in us and working in all creation, even the Holy Spirit of G.o.d,-this is the conception which the Indian Christian will elaborate and illuminate beyond anything that the West has thus far attempted.

There is danger, today, and it is inevitable, that missionaries from the West be too ambitious to occidentalize the native Christian community, ignorant of, or indifferent to, the grand possibilities of thought and of life which lie in Eastern character and teaching. It is much easier to thrust upon them everything Western than it is to appreciate and to conserve many things Eastern. The future missionary will learn wisdom from the past and will enter upon his work with less depreciation of things Oriental and with a larger desire to conserve to the utmost Eastern habits of thought and social customs, so long as, and so far as, they can be made the vehicles of Christian thought and the channels of Christian life.