In this connection the question of the origin of Hinduism is important.

It was formerly laid down as a postulate of the Christian's belief that Hinduism is of the devil; and that, coming from below, it must be shunned as a study and denounced root and branch as a thing purely satanic. This theory has entirely given way to a more rational belief. The question whether the truths of Hinduism, with those of other ethnic religions, have filtered down from some primitive revelation and are the relics of a vanishing faith, divinely communicated to some of the earliest members of our race; or whether God has directly, from time to time, guided the thoughts and answered the deep yearnings of the soul of the Indo-Aryan, is one which is still discussed. But modern scholarship is practically of one voice in maintaining that God hath not left Himself without witness among the many nations of the earth,—a witness that has indeed been comparatively feeble—a revelation that is dim and starlike as compared with the noonday brightness of the Sun of Righteousness in the Christian religion. The day has come when the Christian must accept and believe that God has been dealing directly with this people through the many centuries of their history, leading them to important truths, even though their evil hearts and worse lives have caused them, in many cases, to "change the truth of God into a lie and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator." Many of the truths which are imbedded in the religion of that land find their solution in no other hypothesis than this.

This study of Hinduism will also lead us to realize the important truth of the many points of contact between that faith and our own. A knowledge of their sympathies cannot be of less importance than that of their antipathies. And this knowledge is indispensable to the Christian worker in India as it gives a new and a most direct way of approach to the Hindu heart, and a fresh and all-potent argument with them in behalf of Christianity.

This process also best illustrates the method and Spirit of Christ. Dr. Robson aptly remarks that "while no religion has done more to overthrow other religions than Christianity, no religious teacher has said less against other religions than Christ. We have from Him only one short saying condemning the Gentiles' aim in life, but not even one reflecting on the gods they believed in, or the worship they paid them. Was not this because He came not to destroy but to fulfill?"

I can refer to only a few of these common points and belief in the two faiths.



(a) Incarnation.

These are the only two faiths which have exalted, to primal importance, this doctrine. In Christianity it is basal, and in later Brahmanism, or Hinduism, it has overshadowed nearly every other teaching. In a sense the all-pervasive pantheism of Brahmanism made a certain form of incarnation a necessity from the earliest days. The ancient Aryans could not rest satisfied with the Unknown and the Absolute of their Vedantism; so they speedily began to erect for their evergrowing pantheon an endless procession of emanations. But it was, probably, the phenomenal success of Gautama, and especially the posthumous influence of his life and example, that opened the eyes of the Brahmans and suggested to them the supreme need of an avatar ("descent"), for the popularizing of their faith. And thus originated that vast system of descents, or incarnations, which have multiplied so greatly and developed so grotesquely all over the land. The common ground furnished by this doctrine to the two faiths is not adequately appreciated. This truth of incarnation, in its fundamental doctrinal bearing upon Hinduism, and in the strengthening of its hold, even until the present, upon the popular imagination and affection, should not go for nought in the mind of Christian critics, because of the content of the multitudinous descents, which is mostly grotesque, debasing and repulsive. They forget that the Christian doctrine of incarnation furnishes, perhaps, the best leverage with which the Christian missionary is to overturn the faith of that people, simply because the doctrine itself has been so popularized, even if debased, in India for many centuries. Christ should be none the less, yea the more, welcome to that land because the most popular god of the Hindu pantheon (Krishna) is also the leading incarnation of Vishnu.



(b) Vicarious Atonement.

In Christianity this is second in importance only to the doctrine of incarnation. In Brahmanism also it has maintained, from the first, a position of cardinal importance. In pre-Buddhistic days this found expression in sacrifices that were probably more numerous and more precious than those offered by any other people. This is partly shown by the fact that words used for sacrifice are more numerous in the Sanskrit than even in the Hebrew language. It is true that their idea of sacrifice, both as to its import and object, was different from ours or from that of the Israelites; and indeed their own ideas also varied at different times. Under the influence of Buddhism, sacrifice, as such, was practically abandoned; but the idea of atonement for sin, which was underlying them, they practically carried over into the doctrine of transmigration. For, however stiffly they contend that, through metempsychosis, the doctrine of karma is realized and every soul atones for its own sin, it nevertheless remains true that the element of consciousness separates the person who sinned from him who suffers; and one becomes the involuntary atoner and the other the atoned for.



(c) Spirituality.

It may, to some, seem absurd to bring the two faiths into anything but the relationship of contrast in this particular, when it is remembered that we are confronted daily by a Hinduism which is as grossly formal, materialistic and sensual as any religion known in any land. But it is unnecessary to remind us of the fact that the literature of the faith of this people is, in some respects, far removed from the low life and ritual of the present day; and in no greater respect than in this which we are now considering. All students recognize in many writings, vedic and post-vedic, profound seriousness and a sometimes strange depth of spiritual apprehension coupled with an other-worldliness which, to the western mind, seems absurdly impractical. Indeed, the naturally mystical bent of the Hindu mind has been regarded, and, doubtless, rightly regarded, as one of the chief obstacles to a true and easy understanding of much that is in their sacred writings by the too practical Westerner. We should not be blind to the lofty height of spiritual thought which we occasionally, and the deep spiritual yearning which we frequently, are permitted to witness in their books. In evidence of this we need only to refer to the powerful hold which the yoga system of philosophy and life has upon them. An intense meditativeness, a devotional ecstasy and an insight of true heavenly wisdom is the ideal of life to which the Hindu has been called from time very remote.



(d) Eschatology.

In Hinduism, as in Christianity, man is directed to look to a judgment-seat and a system of rewards and punishments in the world to come. While this doctrine again, in its development and detail, differs essentially from that of the Christian faith, it is well to call attention to it as a point of contact. It breathes the spirit of karma, which, in its retributive power, has been compared by some to the doctrine of heredity, and by others, to that of fate. Karma demands the full future fruition of every act done in the body; and many re-births, with intervals of keener suffering and bliss in numerous hells and heavens, are the countless steps in the doleful fugue of emancipation—a process which is enough to appall any but the patient, stolid soul of a Hindu. And yet this weary detail of a very long and sisyphean effort to shake off this mortal coil and to enter into rest is worthy of the missionary's attention, as it represents, perhaps, the most elaborate system of eschatology outside of the New Testament. It is also ethical in its character, and in its fundamental principles has chords which harmonize with those of the Christian doctrine.



(e) The Doctrine of Faith.

This doctrine maintains that, by devotion to a personal god, salvation is achieved. This idea separates this doctrine from, and apparently antagonizes, the prevailing philosophy of the land—Vedantism. This cult of Bhakti is connected with Krishnaolatry, which is the worship of the most unworthy and licentious god of the Hindu pantheon.

Of Vaishnavism, or the worship of Vishnu, in which the bhakti, or faith, doctrine prevails, Sir Monier Williams remarks:—"Notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions and hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, it is the only Hindu system worthy of being called a religion. At all events it must be admitted that it has more common ground with Christianity than any other form of non-Christian faiths." The basal truth of bhakti—that of supreme attachment to, or faith in, a personal god—could not fail of rousing within the devout lofty and stirring emotion. Bhaktar, i.e., those who have given themselves absolutely to this doctrine and make it the motive and inspiration of their lives, are oblivious to all other bonds, abjuring among themselves even caste and all its demands, and proclaiming the true oneness of the brotherhood of the faith among all the devotees of the same god.



Thus we have today a large and vigorous class of Hindus who have subordinated every doctrine and practice of their religion to that of faith, or bhakti. I believe, with not a few illustrious scholars, that this doctrine traces its origin to Christianity. Like everything else which Hinduism had absorbed, it has been considerably transmuted in the process. It has been necessarily and greatly affected and degraded by the character of the gods who have been its objects. It has been debased by contact with idolatry and error, with superstition and sensuality. And yet we trace its lineaments to its lofty, divine origin, and hesitate not to say that it furnishes a common ground of a fundamental truth of which Christian missionaries have not yet sufficiently availed themselves in their work for this people.

Hindus have also done not a little thinking in the elaboration of the doctrine of salvation. In their discussion as to the relative potency of divine grace and human agency in the salvation of man they became divided into two antagonistic schools, corresponding, very closely, to the Calvinistic and Arminian, among Christians—the Tengaliar maintaining the "cat theory" and the Vadagaliar the "monkey theory"; so called because one party holds that, just as the cat saves her kitten by seizing and carrying it away bodily, so God seizes and saves man without his own effort. This is the doctrine of absolute grace. The other party insists that the relation of the young monkey to its mother, whereby its rescue from trouble depends upon its own grasp, best represents the process of salvation in which man's cooeperation is necessary.

They have also developed the doctrine of growth in grace sometimes in a very instructive way. The spiritual development from saloka (in the same world with God) to samipa (in the divine presence) thence to sarupa (in the divine image) and finally to sayujya (complete identity with the divine Being) bears, in some respects, a striking resemblance to the teaching of St. Paul, where he writes that Jesus was "made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30).

In like manner they teach that, for the attainment of beatitude, it is necessary to pass through five stages—(1) that of santi, quiet repose or calm and contemplative piety; (2) that of dasya, the slave state—the surrender of the whole will to God; (3) that of sakhya, or friendship; (4) that of vatsalya, or filial affection; and (5) that of madhurya, or supreme, all-absorbing love.

I must refer briefly to only one other illustration of the probable influence of our religion upon the faith of India, and that is in its teaching on eschatology. The illustration is drawn from the tenth incarnation, Kalki avatar, of Vishnu. This incarnation is to take place hereafter, when Vishnu will come, at the close of the present Kali yuga, or iron age, and put an end to these growing evil times, destroying with them all the wicked and ushering in the new era of righteousness (Satya yuga) upon the earth. For this great work of the restoration and the renovation of all creation, he is to come seated upon a white horse with a drawn sword, blazing like a comet. Hindus at present look forward to this new incarnation as their future deliverer, when the sorrows and the depravity of this present, shall be swallowed up in the glories and joys of the future, age. The striking thing about this teaching is not the hope which it inculcates for the future; for that is practically a part of the Hindu conception of the succession of the ages of their time system. According to this the present era must yield to the coming good yuga, which must, in its turn, give way to the ages of lesser good and of evil, which again will go and come in their ever-changing cycle. What seems remarkable is the form in which this idea is here clothed. The coming of the Deliverer upon a Kalki—a white horse—with his great message of universal destruction and deliverance, brings directly to our memory the Bible prophecy of Rev. 6:2; 19:11-16, and also brings us into touch with the belief of many Christians today as to the appearance and the work of the Son of Man at the great day of His Second Coming.

The question arises as to how this avatar originated. It evidently seems to be an afterthought and of no ancient date among the series of Vishnu's descents. And following the ninth, or Buddha, avatar, which was clearly intended as a bait to Buddhists, and as a frank and full compromise with that hitherto supplanting and hostile faith, it seems natural to suppose that this tenth also came in the same way and with the same spirit as a palm leaf to another religion, even our own, whose prophetic words about the second coming of Christ could be so easily appropriated and so harmlessly adopted into the Hindu system. It thus introduced into their faith an element of future glory and triumph which the religion had not formerly possessed. Indeed this very element of aggression and conquest is one of the signs of its Western origin and Christian source.



Chapter III.

HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY CONTRASTED.

In the previous chapter I have endeavoured to show and emphasize the teachings common to Christianity and Hinduism.

But it must not be forgotten that if their consonances are neither few nor unimportant their dissonances are far more numerous and fundamental. They meet us at almost every point of our investigation and impress us with a sense of a vast contrast.

We will now give ourselves to a brief study of these divergences.

The two faiths differ essentially.



1. In their Initial Conceptions.

Their starting points are almost antipodal. This will seem evident when we study their views:

(a) In reference to religion itself. Christianity is briefly and beautifully explained by its Founder (Luke 15) as a divine method of seeking and saving the lost. It is the expression of the Father's love yearning for the return, and seeking the complete salvation, of the son. It is primarily and pervasively a "Thus saith the Lord"—a revelation from God manward. Hinduism on the other hand has been the embodiment of man's aspirations after God. Wonderfully pathetic, beautiful and elevating these aspirations have been at times; and doubtless guided at points by Him whom they so ardently sought. They perhaps represent the highest reach of the soul in its self-propelled flight towards its Maker. It is true that orthodox Hindus variously describe the Vedas as eternal, as a direct emanation from Brahma and as a divine entity in themselves. They constitute the "Sruti"—"the directly heard" message of God to man. But the authors of the Upanishads, which are a part of Sruti, absolve man from the necessity of accepting the four Vedas and propound a way of salvation entirely separate from, and independent of, vedic prayers and ritual. The direct influence of the Vedas upon religious life and ritual in India today is practically nil; while that of the Upanishads, which are the fons et origo of the all-potent philosophy, is felt in every Hindu life, however humble.

This aspect of the two faiths is not unexpected when we remember:

(b) Their very dissimilar conceptions of God. The monotheism of the one and the pantheism of the other are clear and uncompromising. They have stood for many centuries as representatives, to the world, of these very dissimilar beliefs. Christianity inherited from Judaism its passion for monotheism, and brings the "God of Israel" very near to our race as the infinitely loving Father. It has not only emphasized His personality but reveals, with incomparable power and tenderness, His supreme interest in our race and His loving purpose concerning it.

On the other hand Hinduism derived its highest wisdom and deepest convictions concerning the Divine Being from the ancient rishis through the Upanishads. There they accepted, once for all, the doctrine of the Brahm (neuter)—the one passionless, immovable, unsearchable, ineffable Being who, without a second, stands as the source and embodiment of all real being.

Barth truly remarks that "this is the most imposing and subtle of the systems of ontology yet known in the history of philosophy." This inscrutable Being is the only real existence, all else being illusion projected by ignorance. This doctrine of identity or nonduality (advaitha) lies at the foundation of all their religious thinking. This Being which is devoid of qualities (nirguna), because incomprehensible to man, can be of no comfort to him. In this respect the Hindu is an agnostic of a profound type.

For this mystical philosophy one word of praise is eminently due. It is not to be confounded with that species of Western pantheism which is rank materialism—making God and the material universe convertible terms. Sir William Jones emphasized this difference—the difference between a system which, in all that it sees, sees God alone, and that which acknowledges no God beyond what it sees. One is the bulwark of materialism; the other its most uncompromising enemy. Whatever the defects of this philosophy of the Upanishads it must be confessed to be deeply spiritual.

And yet in this very effort to conserve the spiritual and transcendental character of Brahm the Aryan sage has covered Him with the dark robe of mysticism and pushed Him into a far off realm beyond human ken.

So that the only intimations which man has of Him are confessedly false projection of ignorance. For all practical purposes this hypothetical deity—for the very existence of Brahm is only assumed as a working hypothesis by the theosophist—is a nonentity to the worshipper. How can a being lend itself to a devout soul in worship when it is rigidly devoid of every quality that can inspire or attract the soul? This very fact has led the ordinary Hindu to seek and develop something else as an object of his devotion. Hence the polytheism of Brahmanism. Let it not be supposed that there is any antagonism between their pantheism and their polytheism. One is the natural offspring of the other. The numberless gods which today are supposed to preside over the destiny of the people, are but emanations, the so-called "play" of Brahm. Properly speaking they are neither supreme nor possessed of truly divine attributes. Even the Hindu Triad—Brahma (masculine gender), Vishnu and Siva—are but manifestations of the delight of the eternal Soul to invest itself with qualities (guna). These three gods are no more real existences than are the myriad other children of illusion (maya) and ignorance (avidya) which constitute the universe. And as they had their existence, so will they find their dissolution, in the fiat of the Supreme Soul. India finds polytheism no more satisfying than it does pantheism. There is no more assurance of comfort in worshipping 330,000,000 gods, whose multitude not only bewilders but also carries in itself refutation to the claim of any one to be supreme, than there is in the yearning after an absolute, ineffable Being which cruelly evades human thought and definition. It is no wonder therefore that the growth of the Hindu pantheon is constant, and both follows, and bears testimony to, the craving of the human soul for a God who can satisfy its wants and realize its deepest longings.

(c) Their theories of the universe are also divergent. According to the Bible the outer world is the creation, by God, out of nothing. To the Brahman of all times the idea of pure creation has seemed absurd. Ex nihilo nihil fit is an axiom of all their philosophies. Whether it be the Vedantin who tells us that the material universe is the result of Brahm invested with illusion, or the Sankya philosopher who attributes it to prakriti—the power of nature; or the Veisashika sage who traces it to eternal atoms; they all practically posit that it is eternal.

Of course the Christian doctrine of creation from nothing does not, as the Hindu too often assumes, maintain that the universe is a result without a cause; for it teaches that God Himself, by the exercise of His sovereign will and omnipotence, is an all-adequate cause to all created things.

If the Vedantin claims that creation is impossible, how can he at the same time believe that ideas have from time to time sprung up in the mind of Brahm, which ideas themselves have put on illusion and appear to human ignorance as the universe? It is, to say the least, no easier for him, with his conception of Brahm, to account for the origin of such ideas than it is for the Christian to trace the source of the material universe to an all-wise and omnipotent God. Nor does the Sankya philosopher, by practically denying God and positing the eternal existence of souls and prakriti, remove half the difficulties that he creates.

(d) Again, the teachings of the two faiths concerning man are no less divergent. In the Bible man is represented as a son of God. He is fallen indeed, but with a trace, even in his degradation, of his Father's lineaments. We follow him in his willful rebellion against his Father; he plunges into the lowest depths of sin. But we still recognise in him the promise of infinite and eternal possibilities of spiritual expansion and happiness. Indeed we find at work a divinely benevolent scheme through which he is to be ultimately exalted to heavenly places in Christ Jesus and made the heir of infinite bliss.

On the other hand, Hindu Shastras represent man as mere illusion—the poor plaything of the absolute One. For man to assume and to declare his own real existence is, they say, but the raving of his ignorance (avidya). To the practical Western mind it seems almost impossible that a philosopher should be so lost in his philosophy as to aver that he, the thinker and father of his philosophy, has no real existence—is only illusion, concerning which real existence can only be assumed for practical purposes. What must be said of the philosophy begotten by such an illusive being? Shall it not also be doomed to vanish with him into the nothingness whence he came and which he now really is, if he only knew it? Sir Monier Williams aptly remarks,—"Common sense tells an Englishman that he really exists himself and that everything he sees around him really exists also. He cannot abandon these two primary convictions. Not so the Hindu Vedantist. Dualism is his bugbear, and common sense, when it maintains any kind of real duality, either the separate independent existence of a man's own spirit and of God's spirit, or of spirit and matter, is guilty of gross deception."

Another conception regards the human soul (jivatma) as a part of the Supreme Soul. This theory adds small comfort or dignity to it when we remember that this whole of which it is declared a part is an intangible, unattractive Being—devoid of all qualities (nirguna). If the soul existed from eternity as a part of the divine Soul and will ultimately resume that interrupted existence, what value, ethical or otherwise, can be attached to that bondage of manhood which was thrust upon the soul (or was it voluntarily assumed?)? This part of deity called individual soul certainly cannot be improved by its human conditions; and the question is not—"How soon can I pass through this slough of despond," but, "why was I thrust into it at all? Was it a mere sacred whim (tiruvileiadal) of Brahm?"

Moreover this view of human "self," or soul, carries one out too far into the sea of transcendental metaphysics to be of any practical use, religiously. We know something of man—this strange compound of soul and body—and we are deeply interested in his history and destiny; the more deeply because we are included in this category.

But who knows of the eternal soul—that part of the absolute—separate from human conditions and apart from all experiences of men? Is it not simply the dream of the philosopher, a convenient assumption to satisfy the needs of an impractical ontology? To magnify the soul apart from human life, and to interpret human life as the self's lowest degradation and something which is to be shaken off as quickly as possible, can hardly be sound philosophy, and is certainly bad theology. It simply reduces this life into an irremedial evil, with no moral significance or spiritual value.

This leads us to the second point of contrast:—



2. Their Ultimate Aim or Goal.

What do these two religions promise to do for those who embrace them? The work which Christianity proposes to itself is difficult and glorious. It takes fallen, sin-sodden, man and leads him out into a new life of holiness; it opens out to him a long and broad vista of life with an ever-enlarging, blissful, activity. Christ said that He came into the world that men might have life and have it abundantly. He came not only to save the lost but also to develop all the grand possibilities of the soul to their utmost, and to launch the human bark upon a voyage of everlasting life, which means unceasing growth in all its noblest qualities, activities and enjoyments.

Hindu philosophy and faith, on the other hand, unite in commanding that human endowments be starved, qualities suppressed, activity of all kinds stayed, ambition and every other desire, even the noblest and purest, quenched. All the essential elements of life itself are to be mortified that the soul may, unhampered by its own entanglement, reach that consummation which is supposed to be final. And what is it? Who can tell? The Aryan philosopher himself stands mute in its presence. All that we can predicate of it is not life and happiness, according to any standard of human experience known or imagined. The idea that the individual soul will finally sink into and blend with the Absolute Being as a drop of water returns to and mingles with its mother ocean may seem plausible to the philosopher; but of such an hypothetical existence we know absolutely nothing and can expect nothing that would inspire hope and kindle ambition.

In Hinduism there are heavens many and not a few hells. But unlike the places of reward and punishment connected with Christianity, they represent nothing final. They are more like the purgatory of the Catholics, and represent only steps in the progress of the soul towards emancipation.

Concerning the general view of human life, its import and outcome, the two faiths are antipodal. Christianity is brightly optimistic. The future of every Christian is to be as the sun shining more and more until the perfect day. Unceasing progress and eternal expansion are held out before him. His is an heritage that will abide and will resound in an ever increasing anthem of praise throughout time and eternity. Nothing can occur hereafter to rob him of that crown of glory which is the gift of God and which is to result in likeness to Him.

Hinduism, on the other hand, is essentially pessimistic. It teaches that human life is totally and irremediably evil. Every power of the soul must be exercised in the endeavour to shake off this terrible burden of separate human existence and escape all the conditions of this life. That is the only relief possible. To the Hindu the question so often discussed in Christian lands—"Is life worth living?"—has no interest, since it has but one answer possible. And even if the Indian sage forgets his present conditions and pessimism long enough to gaze down the long and dismal vista of numberless births to the final consummation (Sayujya)—the final union with God—he finds in that nothing which the Christian does not discover in tenfold richness and beauty in the Bible. To be partaker of the Divine Nature is a blessed reality to the Christian without his forfeiting, in the least, the dignity of self-identity and the glory of separate personal consciousness. To have the "life hid with Christ in God"; to be able triumphantly to exclaim—"I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me"; to experience the blessedness and power of abiding in Christ and to realize the answer to Christ's own prayer to the Father—"that they also may be in us"—all this is the joy and hope of the Christian in a manner and to a degree utterly impossible to the Hindu whose union with the supreme spirit is the loss and end of self, including all those faculties which are capable of enjoyment.

Looking from another standpoint, we perceive that the aim of the religion of Christ is the banishing of sin from the life and the establishing of character. Sin is the dark background of Christianity. It explains its origin and reveals its universality. Its whole concern is with the emancipation of man from the presence and power of sin. To the Vedantin, on the other hand, sin, in the Christian sense of it, is an impossibility. Where God is all and all is God there can be no separate will to antagonize the divine will. Monism necessarily, in the last analysis, carries every act and motive back to the supreme Will and establishes an all-inclusive necessitarianism which is fatal to human freedom; and it therefore excludes sin as an act of rebellion against God. Much is made of sin, so called, in the Hindu system, as we shall presently see; but nowhere is more care needed than here that we may distinguish between ideas conveyed by this word in these two faiths. In Christianity the ethical character of sin is emphasized. It is described as a thing of moral obliquity and spiritual darkness. According to the Upanishads the only defect of man is an intellectual one. He is in bondage to ignorance. Plato made ignorance the chief source of moral evil and proposed philosophy as a remedy for the malady. The Vedantin differs from the Greek philosopher only in his more absolute condemnation of (avidya) ignorance as the mother of all human ills. Remove this—let a man attain unto a true knowledge of self, of the fact that he has no real separate existence and is one with the Supreme Soul—and he becomes thereby qualified for his emancipation and ends his long cycle of births. Moreover, in the polytheism of the Puranas and in the laws and customs of Manu sin generally means only ceremonial defilement and the violation of customs and usages.

Hinduism, therefore, has never addressed itself to the task of helping man as a sinner—of regenerating his heart, of establishing within him that beautiful thing known in Christian lands and philosophies as a well rounded, symmetrical and perfect character. For many reasons and in many ways it has aimed at a very different consummation in man from that consistently sought by Christ and His religion.



3. The Agency and Means Recognized and Appealed to by those Faiths Respectively.

By what power and instrumentality are the above ends to be sought and attained? They will be, doubtless, quite as divergent as the aims themselves were found to be.

In Christianity God Himself is the agent who works out its scheme of salvation. He entered, through infinite condescension, into human life and relations in the Incarnation. He wrought, in the days of His flesh, the redemption of our race—a work which finds its climax in His atoning death. In the person of the Holy Spirit He is working and bringing to full fruition, in the hearts and lives of men, the redemption which He wrought.

Into this, man enters not as an efficient cause of his own redemption. He cannot atone for his past, nor has he the assurance within himself for the future. Hence the atoning sacrifice of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit of God which becomes in him a source of peace, of power and of hope. Yet, in this divine work, man is neither passive nor apathetic. In the exercise of saving faith he not only appropriates the works and gifts of God but also enters into full and active harmony and cooeperation with God in his own regeneration and salvation. So that the Apostle Paul aptly urges the Philippian Christians (Phil. 2:12) to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

How different is the picture presented to us by the Hindu Shastras of the means of human redemption—a picture, however, consonant with the aims which they have set before themselves to accomplish for man. The first and all-present fact of this faith is the terrible loneliness and isolation of man in the great struggle of life. His destiny is in his own hands, and he must fight single-handed against a thousand odds in the awful battle for emancipation.

Karma is the word used to express this thought which has possessed the Hindu mind from the earliest days to the present. This word may be translated "works," and means the acts by which the soul determines its own destiny. In Vedic times the all-powerful works were sacrifice and ritual. In the Upanishads they are meditation and self-mortification. Today they are ceremonial, with works of charity, self-renunciation or religious mendicancy generally added.

In pre-Buddhistic days sacrifice abounded in Brahmanism; and it grew to such proportions that the revolt headed by Gautama and incarnated in Buddhism became universal. But vicariousness was largely wanting as an element in, and as a cause of, their sacrifices. They were rather offered with a view to nourish the gods and as a means of acquiring power. He who sacrificed a hundred horses was said to gain thereby even larger power than Indra himself possessed—a power which enabled him to dethrone this god of the heavens. Such was the power said to inhere in sacrifice that the gods themselves combined to prevent men from the practice lest they should rise to larger power than themselves! With the triumph and subsequent absorption of Buddhism into Brahmanism the latter abandoned its sacrifices and accepted the Buddhistic emphasis upon Karma, and doomed every soul to the tread-mill of its own destiny. To every human word, deed or thought, however insignificant, there is fruit which must be eaten by the soul.

It is claimed for this doctrine that it well emphasizes the conservation of moral force. Christianity also conserves, to the last, moral force; not however by insisting upon man bearing himself the whole burden, but by enabling him to cast the burden upon the Lord who graciously offers to bear the load of human guilt belonging to every soul.

Another word in India which is synonymous with large power and merit is Yoga. It is inculcated in the Yoga philosophy and is supposed to stand for a high mental discipline which speedily qualifies one for absorption into the Deity. It is manifested in the form of abstract meditation and austerity—an austerity embodied in asceticism and self-mortification. From early times this method has been held high in honour, and today is universally esteemed as the most powerful and speedy boat wherewith to cross the sullen stream of human existence. The grand object of Yoga is to teach how to concentrate the mind—an object based upon the idea that the great and sole need of man is not moral and spiritual regeneration, but more light, i.e., a clear, intellectual apprehension of things. Not only is this basis of philosophy false in supposing that such intellectual gymnastics can finally exalt and save a soul, it is also radically defective in its general rules and practical results. No one who has studied the childish rules which are prescribed to the Yogis, or has observed in India many of even the better type of Yogis can fail to be impressed with the degradation to mind and morals which is indissolubly connected with it. Barth's observation on the processes of Yoga is eminently true. "Conscientiously observed," he says, "they can only issue in folly and idiocy; and it is, in fact, under the image of a fool or an idiot that the wise man is often delineated for us in the Puranas for instance."(9)

Meditation upon the Divine Being and upon self is a supreme duty inculcated by Christianity. Here God is a Personality upon whom the mind can be centred and find rest and exaltation. The self also is conceived as a being with a separate and infinitely high destiny marked out before it. Concentrated thought, deep emotion and lofty purpose, in view of these objects, is supremely profitable. But what is there left worthy of thought for the Vedantist Yogi when the Divine Being is the unknowable and the Yogi himself the deluded child of (Maya) illusion and (avidya) ignorance—those twin enemies to all true and worthy knowledge? It cannot be elevating to detach the mind from things worldly and attach it to nothing!

Incarnation, as we have seen above, has in later times become a popular doctrine in India. The avatars ("descents") of members of the Hindu pantheon, especially of Vishnu, the second member of the Triad, wield a large influence in the religious life of the masses. Yet the doctrines should, by no means, be regarded as identical or even similar in Hinduism and Christianity. It should be remembered that in Hinduism it is believed and magnified by those who also hold the law of Karma as supreme. There is hardly a Vaishnavite and Krishnaolater who does not believe firmly that his destiny is writ large upon his forehead—that nothing that this or any god may do can affect his adrishta which is that felt but unseen power working out the Karma vivaka, or fruition of works, done by him in former births. This belief directly antagonizes incarnation from the Christian standpoint, where it appears as God's mighty instrument of grace to man. Not so from the Hindu standpoint. The incarnations of Vishnu are referred to in their Shastras "as consequences of deeds which the god himself had performed. One was the fruit of sins he had committed; another of a curse which had been pronounced upon him." And yet they are doubtless frequently referred to as undertaken with a view to benefit and help our race. If such was their intention it is difficult to see how that benefit could be any other than racial and temporary; for there is no intimation in any of them of its being a means for the spiritual uplifting, or moral regeneration, of one human soul.

There is no finality of blessing supposed to be in any Hindu incarnation; and it would be sacrilege to compare the character of any one of them with the wonderful incarnation of Jesus. It is not so much that many of them appear as fish, fowl and beast, and as such are devoid of moral aim and efficiency; not a few are immoral, some of them, like Krishna, representing the worst type of sensuality and moral obliquity. Such examples, in the popular mythology of the land, have done, and are doing, inexpressible harm to the people and the country. "Like God like people"; and when the god is highly popular and conspicuously immoral the result will be correspondingly great.

In connection with the doctrine of avatar has arisen the well-known bhakti marga—"the way of faith." Many believe that the latter was the source of the former and that both were affected by Christian teaching. In any case they are closely connected. Among many this way of love and devotion to individual gods has gained preeminence over the other two ways of salvation—knowledge (gnana marga) and works (Karma-marga)—though it should not be forgotten that bhakti itself is regarded as a work of merit and is by no means synonymous with Christian faith. Yet it must be confessed, as we have seen above, that Hinduism comes nearer, at this point than at any other, to touching the religion of Jesus.

The blindness of this faith is also a serious objection to it. To the bhaktan "faith is the great thing." It matters not how hideous, morally and spiritually, the object of faith may be, bhakti will triumphantly vindicate itself in the ultimate salvation of the soul. "Repose faith in the idols, in ceremonial observances, in ascetic performances, in all that you religiously do, and blessing will rest upon you." This is the bhaktan's creed; it is essentially the teaching of the "Divine Song"—Bhagavad-Gita. And it is this which has so powerfully helped the moral and spiritual degeneracy of India during the past few centuries. Men have attached themselves absolutely to gods whose mythology, detailed in the Puranas and Tantras, is a narrative of lust and of moral crookedness, devotion to which can mean only moral contamination and spiritual death. Such a faith, in its nature and results, can only be contrasted with a loving devotion to the incomparably holy and lovely Jesus.



4. The Processes of These Two Religions.

In other words we inquire, in what manner do they propose to attain unto their respective ends?

Christianity brings man into the new, divine life through the narrow gate of a new birth. He stands justified before God and, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he begins that course of spiritual development which steadily progresses towards perfection in truth and holiness. He, "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord is changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord." And in the fullness of his acquired, or divinely bestowed, powers he passes through the gate of death, once for all, to enter upon the full glories of eternal life beyond.

In Hinduism metempsychosis is the great process. "As the embodied soul," says the Bhagavad-Gita, "moves swiftly on through boyhood, youth and age, so will it pass through other forms hereafter." This doctrine is universally regarded as the all-potent solvent of human ills and the process which alone can lead to ultimate rest. In transmigration the soul is supposed to pass on from body to body in its wearisome, dismal progress, towards emancipation. The bodies in which it is incarcerated will be of all grades, according to the character of the life in the previous births, from the august and divine body of a Brahman down to a tenement of inorganic, lifeless rock. From ancient times this weary process of working out the law of Karma has seized upon the imagination and wrought itself into the very being of the people of India; so that today it is the universal way of salvation believed and taught by the Vedantin, accepted with assurance by the idolater, and the one great bugbear in the mind of even the common coolie.

This doctrine has its roots in Vedantism and is an essential part of it. The Brahman theosophist taught that all souls emanated from Brahm and must return to their source along the way of metempsychosis. All acts, words and thoughts find their exact reward in future births. If a man steals a cow he shall be reborn as a crocodile or lizard; if grain, as a rat; if fruit, as an ape. The murderer of a Brahman endures long-suffering in the several hells and is then born again in the meanest bodies to atone for his crime. According to Manu the soul might pass "through ten thousand millions" of births. The passageway to absorption is through Brahmanhood only. Transmigration is the doom of all others.

The prevalence of this doctrine in India is one of the saddest facts connected with its life. It is sombre and depressing in the extreme and robs the mind of a good portion of the small comfort which the idea of absorption might otherwise bring to it. Though the doctrine has found a footing among other nations at different periods in their history, nowhere else has it prevailed so long and exercised such a mighty influence over high and low as it has in that land.

The doctrine is based upon a hypothetical identity of soul in different successive bodies—a hypothesis which can never be proved, and which contradicts the universal consciousness. Until that erratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Besant, appeared, no one claimed to possess the first intimation, through consciousness or memory, of a previous existence in another body. Ancient rishis and a few others were said by others to have possessed it. Strange, if such a re-incarnation were a fact, that none has ever been assured of it by any other agent than the philosopher in his search after truth. Stranger still that men in such countless millions should hang their whole destiny upon so rotten a cord—so unethical a theory—as is here involved. Why should any moral being be put through a course of discipline, or be punished, for a past of which he has no knowledge? To inflict a punishment for any conduct or thought to which the memory does not bear evidence, nor conscience furnish assent, nor the whole realm of conscious experience reveal a trace, is both unethical and in violation of the deepest laws of being.

Nor does it appear how this process, as a method of discipline, can achieve what is expected of it. It is maintained that, ultimately, all the myriads of separate souls will cross over this terrible stream of human existence and reach the further shore of emancipation. But what aptitude, or efficiency, there can be in metempsychosis itself to reach this end is not apparent. That the soul should ultimately reach beatitude rather than absolute, irremedial, degradation through this process is merely assumed, and that without adequate foundation in reason.

In view of the well-known power of sin and its tendency to settle down, through habit, into a permanent type of character; in view of the well-attested scientific doctrine of heredity—a doctrine which easily accounts for and explains every semblance of truth in transmigration—it seems incredible that any soul in India could, through transmigration, finally emerge out of the quicksand of sin and corruption which surround and overwhelm it, especially when it is assumed that it has already passed through many births.

It should also be remembered that, at its basis, this doctrine has its face turned, with equal repugnance, against all sorts of work. Desire of every kind, good as well as evil, is to be suppressed inasmuch as it is the source of action, and action must bear its fruit, the eating of which prolongs existence which, itself, is the burden to be removed. The question is not how to become good and to overcome evil in life, but how to shake off all personality. And this is accomplished, they say, by abandoning all action and suppressing all desire whatever. How this can result in holiness and lofty character is not evident. It is true that a certain sort of "good works" have large value in this process of emancipation. But quiescence rather than character is the thing emphasized. Noble thoughts and aspirations are as fatal as are the basest to immediate deliverance—they all disturb that equilibrium of the soul which ushers it into its final rest. "The confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain is of gold or of iron."

It is doubtless true that this doctrine has some elements of truth, otherwise it could not have survived and thriven as it has. It bears consistent testimony to the immortality of the soul. It also teaches the important truth that the soul must receive the full reward of all its deeds in a body. It is also, in a certain way, a response to that deep instinct of justice which is a part of human nature. But these cannot atone for its fundamental defects and errors. Some claim that its highest merit is that it is a powerful deterrent from sin and incentive to virtue. Beyond the remarks made above the all-sufficient refutation to such a statement is the present condition of the Hindu race itself. If any people on earth, more than others, sin with "fatal facility" and seem perfectly oblivious to the character and consequences of their deeds they are the descendants of the rishis of old and the heirs, in rich abundance, of this and its cognate doctrines. To judge this doctrine by its results in India is to pronounce it an error and a curse.



5. The Ideals of the Two Faiths.

No religion can regenerate or exalt men simply through a code of moral laws, or even through impassioned appeals to a higher life and threats of eternal punishment. There must be, above and beyond all this, a life which stands boldly forth as an example and inspiration to good men. The noble example of the royal Gautama did more perhaps than any other thing to disseminate Buddhism throughout India. His supreme renunciation and his loyalty to truth exalted him before his disciples and transformed him into an ideal for Buddhists of future ages. This also is a preeminent characteristic of Christianity. It is the religion of the Christ. He stands supreme in it—not merely as its Founder, Expounder and Life. He is also the embodiment of His own teaching, the ideal of life and conduct which He has brought to men. His command to all is not—"Do this or that"; but "Follow Me"—not, "Believe in this truth or another," but "Believe in Me," who am "the way, the truth and the life." For these twenty centuries He has stood before the world as the incomparable, unapproachable, perfect ideal which has wrought more for the regeneration of the world than all other forces put together.

Do we find any counterpart to this in Hinduism? Do we find any life or example which stands related to it as Buddha's to Buddhism or as Mohammed's to Mohammedanism, or, even in a slight degree, as Christ's to Christianity? None whatever. Starting with the absolute Brahm, we have seen this Supreme Soul shrouded in unfathomable, unapproachable darkness. We descend to the divine emanations of this eternal Soul and search in vain among the millions of beings which constitute the Hindu pantheon to find one who could become an ideal of life and an inspiration to the soul struggling against sin. "Godlike life could scarcely start from its examples of incarnations; for none of their lives is superhuman in holiness. Even Rama, the most blameless character in Hindu mythological literature, is by no means perfect; while the most popularly worshipped incarnation committed deeds so vile that even the narrator warns his hearers not to take him for their example. 'Listen to the story of Hari, but do not think of doing his deeds,' he says."

We look again at the sages and heroes of India with the hope that we may possibly find one who stood conspicuous among others as the perfect type of character and the helper of those struggling after a better and holier life. Here again we are wofully disappointed, though it must be confessed that there are loftier types of goodness and of self-discipline among them than we found among the gods. Thus, with no worthy ideal of life before them and no one to inspire them to better things, the wonder is that men in India have not descended to a lower level than they have. It is perhaps this very reason that has discouraged them and has led them to strive to attain unto beatitude, not by perfecting, but by destroying humanity. The renunciation and loss, rather than the realization, of self has thus become their aim and ambition. Perhaps it is for this same reason also that the votaries of this faith have constructed one of the most elaborate systems of ceremonial and ritual that the world has ever witnessed; whereby, in the absence of a high ideal and of a divine inspiration, the whole life from birth even until after death, may be directed and protected from evil.



6. The Credentials of the Two Faiths.

Each has its Scriptures in which are found its original teachings including a declaration of its source and message to man. Beyond this general statement very little can be predicated of these two in common. The theories of their inspiration are dissimilar. In the Bible there is no theory of inspiration taught. Its testimony to its own divine origin is indirect rather than direct. And yet the evidence, both internal and external, that the Bible was written by men under Divine guidance and inspiration is unmistakable and convincing. Whether we have regard to its prophetic utterances, its record of miracles, its plan of salvation, its delineation of the incomparable life and character of Jesus Christ; or whether we behold its marvellous power among men of all classes and of all countries and tongues—all that pertain to it point unmistakably to its divine origin.

Nor can any one fail to appreciate the beauty and sublimity of some of the Vedic hymns of the Hindus or the profound depth of the philosophic reach of the Upanishads, those sublime "guesses at truth," or the great excellence of the Bhagavad-Gita which is the gem of all Hindu literature. And yet the puerilities of many and the obscenity of others of the Vedic songs and prayers are well-known. So are the strange vagaries and the rambling character of many parts of the Upanishads. And as for the Bhagavad-Gita it is simply a dialogue whose gist is the argument of Krishna—"the Supreme God"—to urge the tender-hearted and the conscience-smitten Arjuna to slay his relatives in war. Its argument is that no evil which one man may do to another is of any moment, since he cannot touch his soul which is eternal and beyond the reach of any human power! In the destiny of a soul what can the destruction of one of its bodies signify? This is an argument which is subversive of morality and of social order.

When one leaves these earlier scriptures of Brahmanism and takes up the later productions—the Puranas and Tantras—he comes into a very different atmosphere, most of which is morally pestilential and spiritually degrading. The ascription of divine inspiration and special heavenly guidance in the production of such literature is nought else but blasphemy. To pass over from the study of the Bible, with its transcendent beauty, its perfect ethics, its heavenly spirit, its Divine Saviour and way of salvation, to the Scriptures of India, especially the more recent parts, is to exchange the pure air of heaven for the charnel house.

The "divine brevity" of the Bible is one of its most striking features. Few things could impress one with the heavenly source of this Book more markedly than its wonderful omissions.

How very different when we examine the countless tomes of the sacred literature of India! If the salvation of a soul depended upon the reading of even a hundredth part of these, who then could be saved? Their very multiplicity and their voluminous character debar any man, however learned, from an acquaintance with more than a small fraction of them. Moreover, among learned pandits of today the Smriti (traditions) are more frequently quoted as authority, and they wield a larger power over the life of the people, than the Sruti (revelation) itself.

In the Christian Bible we are permitted to see a progressive revelation. From age to age, and from page to page, we see new glimpses of truth and are attracted by the divine light whose illumination grows ever brighter from Genesis to Revelation. This is what we should have expected from a God-inspired book. We should have looked forward to a gradual transition from the starry midnight of the far-off past to the rising, in Christ, of the sun of righteousness with healing in His wings.

In Hindu literature this process is reversed. The surest, I may almost say, the only, evidence we have of divine guidance in the production of this literature is to be found among the earliest productions. There we see earnestness of purpose combined with heavenly aspiration and deep searching after truth. Subsequent to this we see the light vanishing and earnestness giving place to triviality of thought, to the ravings of superstition, to the inanities of ceremonialism and to the laws of social and religious bondage. All this progress downward is in direct ratio to our distance from Vedic times.

What could be more conclusive proof of the human source and direction of these prolific writings? Educated Hindus are sensible of this fact. They constantly hark back to the Vedas, to the Upanishads and to the Bhagavad-Gita, conscious of the fact that these represent the high water-mark of their faith and literature.



7. Other Distinguishing Traits.

These are not a few, and they aid in presenting the two faiths in bold relief.

(a) Their attitude towards the individual and Society. Nowhere are they more antipodal to each other than here. Christianity is preeminently a faith which exalts the individual. It presents, with marked clearness, his rights and responsibilities. His liberty of thought, of belief and of action, is fundamentally sacred and to be conserved at all hazards.

Hinduism is the staunchest foe of individual freedom. It concedes no right to the individual which others are bound to respect. It has erected above the individual, and in such a way as to overshadow him entirely, the stupendous caste system. And it has subordinated his every right and privilege to the whim of this demon caste. Man is its abject slave—cannot swerve one inch from its dictates; and these reach down to the smallest detail of his life. If the vast majority of the members of a caste were high in their morals and strict in their integrity and pure in their beliefs, the aid to a higher life which this system might render to the individual would, in small part, compensate for its destruction of his manly independence. But caste discipline directs itself to petty forms and observances and to the perpetuation of mean jealousies rather than to the development of character.

In India alone is caste a religious institution. The Brahman merged the individual in the corporate body, thus perfecting his bondage; and he set class against class to prevent the lower from rising and to make national union impossible. Men were said to have been created differently even as different kinds of animals; to bring them together is as unnatural as it is sinful.

Thus, every man within the pale of this religion has his social, as his religious, status fixed unchangeably for him before his birth; and woe be to him who tries to shake off this bondage, or even in a small degree to kick against the pricks. No better system than this has been devised under heaven to rob man of his birthright of independence and self-respect. And the population of India bears, in its character and conduct, ample testimony to the truth of this statement.

(b) Connected closely with this is another aspect.

The religion of Jesus fosters progress. Not only do we behold Christian nations the most progressive, we also find that as this faith obtains in its purity, so do its votaries enjoy the large spirit and results of progress, both in religion, science, the arts and in civilization. In India, on the other hand, conservatism is a fetish and custom a divine law of conduct. In the West the question asked, as men approach a certain line of action, is whether it be reasonable? Among Hindus the invariable inquiry is,—is it customary?—did our forefathers practice it? This again is the legitimate product of the caste system. It conserves and deifies the past. It never tolerates a question as to the wisdom of the ancients. The code of Manu, which is the source and supreme authority for this system, has done more to stereotype and degrade social and religious life in India than has any other code in all the history of other lands.

(c) Another marked feature of the religion of Jesus is its exclusiveness. It claims to be the only way of salvation. Not that it is unwilling to acknowledge the truths which are found in other faiths. While it recognizes such, it maintains that they are but broken lights of the Truth which it presents in all its full-orbed glory. It reveals Christ as the fulfillment of the good and pious of all nations, and His revelation as the realization of all truth wherever found. But as a means of salvation it stands alone, and will brook no rivalry nor accept divided homage.

In Hinduism, on the other hand, we see tolerance incarnate. It is true that the caste system lends itself readily to intolerance, that some of the most refined and cruel forms of persecution are conducted by it against Christians today. Yet in itself this faith has a genius for toleration. It does not go out of its way to attack other faiths. On the contrary it generally reaches forward the flag of truce and peace to them. It willingly appropriates much of their teaching and ritual. It placed in its pantheon its arch-enemy, Buddha, and has dignified many of the demons of the primitive cult of South India in the same way. And herein lie the subtle power and supreme danger which inhere in it to other faiths.

(d) It must also be remembered that the faith of India is an ethnic faith, with no ambition to reach to other peoples beyond that peninsula. This faith has a hundred ways of expelling and excommunicating its members and only one doubtful door by which it may receive outsiders, namely, by the formation of a new caste.

Christianity, on the other hand, is preeminently a missionary religion. It claims to be the universal faith. The last commandment of the Lord upon earth and the first work of the Holy Spirit upon His descent was to propagate the faith and to carry it to many lands and peoples. Hinduism is conserved by its social organism of caste; Christianity, by its leavening influence upon all that comes in contact with it, and the outreaching power of its life within.

(e) Another difference is observable in the fact that while Christianity is always held as a system of saving truth to be believed, Hinduism, in its acceptance, does not involve the necessary belief of any doctrine or system of doctrine. It is well understood that a man of any belief, or of no belief, may be a genuine and orthodox Hindu provided he observes caste rules and ceremonies. It has been more than once insisted upon that a man may accept Christ as his Saviour and His religion as his firm belief and still remain a Hindu if he only submit to the demands of caste. Not a few Hindus are trying to live up to this strange dual system today! And I fear some native Christians have not got rid of the same delusion.

(f) There is also a marked difference in the moral standards of the two faiths. In a certain sense the moral code of Brahmanism, at its best, is lofty if not perfect. It enjoins a man not to lie, not to steal, not injure another, to be just, brave, hospitable and self-controlled. Some savage races inculcate, with more or less severity, the same moral lessons. But to Hindus as to savages these injunctions have represented the moral code; and whoever, among them, attains unto these, mostly negative, virtues, is deemed worthy of praise. In a sense the ten commandments communicated through Moses, obtain among Christians and are enjoined upon them today. But they, rather than represent the Christian's ideal, indicate only the low water mark of his moral requirements. To say of a Christian gentleman today that he does not steal, or does not lie, is rather an insult than a compliment, since it assumes that he possesses only what is now considered a very elementary form of morality, such as the lower classes and children are supposed to practice. It is only as we follow Jesus Christ and sublimate this code in love (Matt. 22:37-40) that we rise to the full significance and divine content of morality. The Christian code rests not in negation, but commands a life of outgoing, active love. A lofty altruism must permeate his every act and give colouring to his whole life. Christ not only introduced and emphasized this golden rule; He taught that it was absolutely necessary (John 12:25; Matt. 5:44).

To the Hindu, on the other hand, the lex talionis is a law of life still enforced. See, e.g., Vishnu Purana 5:19. He never thinks nor is he commanded by his religion to think, of aught but outward conformity to a moral code which is altogether inadequate to keep, direct and inspire him in life. This difficulty is, of course, enhanced when we remember that in the whole realm of Hindu life—whether it be of gods or of men—there is no one who looms up as a perfect example. It is therefore little wonder that in India today morality is at so low an ebb and that even the code which prevails there is so sadly and universally violated.

Hopkins aptly remarks in this connection: "This Christian ideal of today, which makes fair-mindedness, liberality of thought, and altruism the respective representatives of the savage virtues of manual honesty, truth-speaking and hospitality, is just what is lacking in the more primitive ideal formulated in the code of savages and of Brahman alike.... In India all the factors of the modern code are entirely lacking at the time when the old code was first completely formulated. Liberality of thought comes in with the era of the Upanishads; but it is a restricted freedom. Altruism is unknown to pure Brahmanism."



Conclusion.

Considering therefore these two faiths in all their characteristics and tendencies we are warranted in concluding that Hinduism must wane and vanish. It is an ancient faith and has survived not a few storms. It has a strong place in the hearts of a great people. But the leaven of dissolution and death is mightily at work within it today. The times are changed, new circumstances are bringing in a revolution of thought. Foreign ideas, language and customs are the rage; a new civilization, the deadly foe to the strongholds of the faith, is supplanting the old. This faith has nothing to offer with a view to meeting this new and complicated situation. It opposes all progress; through its pundits and orthodox defenders it antagonizes modern civilization and scientific advancement at every point. It is given up to degrading idolatry and a debasing, all-absorbing ceremonialism. It is the foster-mother of ignorance.

The mighty influence of Christianity, on the other hand, is being felt by all in the land; and the thousand-headed, thousand-handed civilization of the West is grasping and slowly transforming all their ideas of life. Verily India is in the throes of a new birth. Hinduism has done some good, doubtless. It has had a mission in the world and that has unquestionably been, partly, in the conservation of the great doctrine of God's immanence at a time when the western world had largely forgotten it. But this work is no longer needed. Today this truth is emphasized also by the Christian Church, and in the safe and practical way, in combination and harmony with the personality and fatherhood of God.

We can therefore look forward with confidence to the ultimate issue of this great conflict and see, through faith, the day when Christ shall reign supreme in that land.



Chapter IV.

THE PRODUCTS OF THE TWO FAITHS IN INDIA. THE HINDU AND THE NATIVE CHRISTIAN—A STUDY.

During the many centuries of its history and working in India Hinduism has had ample opportunity to produce its own type of religious devotee, one who is thoroughly representative of its teaching and life. This type abounds in India today and is a faithful reflection of that faith. We shall now endeavour to study that living embodiment of Hinduism. In one respect it will be but another way of studying the faith itself—perhaps the best of all methods of studying a religion, for it is thus presented in life and action.

Protestant Christianity has not been sufficiently long in India to develop and foster an Indian type of character of its own. And yet we see it rapidly working towards that consummation. A century is too brief a time for this purpose. Moreover, native Christian life in that land is too much under the dominance and guidance of the West to enjoy a large degree of spontaneity; and without spontaneity life is not natural.

Nevertheless, the century that has passed has brought into existence the fourth generation of Protestant native Christians in India; and we are able to see, to some extent, among these descendants of native Christians that tendency and bent which will ere long develop into a definite and settled type of its own. For the time being we can only study the native Christian as a prophecy—a prophecy not for many years to be fulfilled in all its details, and yet worthy of study both in itself and for what it suggests.

Let us consider, then, these types of the two faiths which we see in that land.



1. And First, The Hindu.

The Hindu Devotee is a genuine product of his religion, wrought out during thirty centuries on its native heath. He stands before us as a distinct type whose characteristics differentiate him from the followers of any other religion.

It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. Neither in life nor in teaching does he represent the faith whose name he bears. He is a man who has studied Western thought and religion under the guidance and inspiration, perhaps, of the Christian missionary; and then in an ingenious way strives to interpret his own faith in the light of his Western attainments. He presents to us not orthodox Hinduism, but a mongrel doctrine and philosophy which are as foreign to the teaching of the orthodox Hindu pundit and as alien to the Hindu Scriptures as they are to Western philosophy and faith. It is a significant fact that all these Western-travelled Hindus have first to violate a fundamental injunction of their own religion—namely, that which prohibits sea travelling to a Hindu—before they can visit the West in order to commend their faith. And when they return to their native country they do so as the outcastes of their religion, and can be reinstated only after performing a work of atonement which includes the disgusting act of eating the five products of the cow!

The real Hindu, who stands today as the true exponent of his faith, is a very different man. He would no more cross the seas than he would cut off his right arm; for he knows that he can remain a true Hindu only so long as he remains at home. He is a conservative of the stiffest kind. He thinks on ancient lines and swears by the rishis of old.





(a) Study his prepossessions and then alone can you appreciate his heritage. Though he may not be a scholar or a philosopher, he is nevertheless fortified by a host of religious beliefs and prejudices. A thousand dogmas and prepossessions, the inherited treasures of thirty centuries, are his. He drank them in with his mother's milk; he has breathed them in as an essential part of his daily environment. They are more than second nature to him and constitute largely the world of his thought. His ideas of God, of himself, of sin, of salvation, of human life—all are far removed from ours and are peculiarly his own. He feels himself to be in the toils of an iron destiny which slowly grinds him to powder. His conception of God brings him no ray of comfort, or hope of release. His idea is that his sin and suffering of today are the inflictions, by some unknown power, for the sins of supposed former births. So that he must, through countless ages, work out his own salvation—a salvation which indeed means eternal rest; but it is a rest from all thought, emotion, self-consciousness and separate existence as well as from all work.

Within the mighty fascination of this Vedantism the people have been held through the centuries. And it is a doctrine which renders the highest morality impossible and has proved the mightiest soporific to the conscience. A few years ago a murderer in South India was being led from the court of justice to prison where, soon, he was to be executed for his crime. As he was struggling in the street with the police, a missionary accosted him, urging him to confess his sin against God and to seek his peace. Whereupon the man replied, "I did not commit the murder; it was the work of God Himself, in whose hands I am and of whom I am part." To this the missionary replied that this was neither true nor worthy, and that he would soon suffer the full penalty of the law for his crime. "Ah, yes," he exclaimed, "the god who wrought this in me and through me, will put me to death. It is all his and I am he."

Such is the line of thought which passes through the mind of the orthodox Hindu devotee under all circumstances, be they pleasant or disagreeable. And it is one of the most difficult things for him, under these circumstances, to cultivate a true sense of responsibility and a genuine conception of sin as a moral act.

(b) See again his ideals. He has many such which influence him largely in his life. Much depends upon what a man regards as the Summum Bonum of life. The supreme blessing which the Hindu ever holds before his eyes, as the highest and last attainment, is union with God. Not a union of sympathy, but a metaphysical oneness with Brahm. To lose himself entirely in the Divine Being and thus to cease having separate thought or existence, and to pass out of the turmoil and restlessness of human life into the calm of the passionless bosom of the Eternal—this, to him, is the ideal which alone is worthy of human attainment.

Again; we, Christians, look forward to a complete self-realization, to a perfect manhood and a full rounded character as our ideal. The opposite ideal is the Hindu's. He seeks the loss of all that we hold best—the elimination of every ambition and desire, the eradication of all love and altruism, the cessation of all activity—good as well as evil. His ideal is not greatness and goodness of heart, but the renunciation of all that animates and inspires. To him the highest virtue in its noblest activity has no charms; for he claims that he looks above and beyond all this to that absolute equilibrium of soul when passion, and when all desire, shall have been killed through self-mortification and self-abnegation and he shall have attained mental poise and repose rather than a perfect character. Thus, in its last analysis, his ideal is an intellectual, rather than a moral, one; for it is again absorption into the Divine Soul; and that he conceives to be the Supreme Intelligence rather than the Perfect Will. This difference of ideal between the two faiths is fundamental and must work for very diverse results.

In harmony with this is the other thought that the body, yea each and every body with which the soul may clothe itself, is an unmitigated evil because it is the highway to suffering and defers the final consummation. Hence, the Hindu has no respect for the body and longs for the day of final emancipation from flesh and all its ills.

How then shall the soul be freed from its many births so that it may pass out of this bondage into the final freedom of Sayutcha, or emancipation? To him Yoga, the way of meditation, represents the highest way of release. To wean the mind, through this process, from all desire and ambition and thus to reach absolute equilibrium of soul is the object of Yoga. This indeed is the only condition whereby the soul can rise above any future contact with earthly bodies.

Consequently the Hindu has, for many centuries, looked to the monastery and the wilderness as the only places where this ideal can be safely and speedily attained. To live among men, and thus to be subjected to corroding cares and to the swaying passions of human society, renders the attainment of beatification impossible. Under these circumstances the soul finds no way of emancipation. Therefore the watchword of the Hindu is, "flee from the world rather than overcome it." For the attainment of those qualities which ensure final repose he immures himself in a mutt or he flees into the forest where, apart from men, he gives himself to self-mortification and meditation that he may speedily find the desired release. At the root of this idea, as its animating motive, lies the worthy ambition of living a better life than the environments of a corrupt society favour. And with this desire is coupled the idea that a full rounded life and a perfected character are not only possible in the solitude of a wilderness but are nowhere else attainable. And thus it is, with many, a silent acknowledgment of failure and of the belief that in the rush and struggle of public life a godly, heavenly-minded character is impossible. According to the Hindu conception, a man may be successful in business matters, but he cannot be holy or fit for the highest communion with God unless he spend his time in separation from all his kind. Therefore the so-called pious and holy men of that land are ascetics. They eschew human society and seek to renounce all human good and every earthly ambition.

With this purpose, ostensibly, in view there are, as we saw, about 5,500,000 men in India who have given up all earthly employment, who live apart as ascetics and spend their time in roaming around the country as religious mendicants. These people are, in the main, doubtless possessed of the laudable ambition to be holy and to prepare themselves for union with Brahm. And yet, as a matter of fact, they are the most pestilential in their morals of all the people of the land. Many of them, at the same time, both regard themselves and are regarded by their co-religionists as the acme of piety. Nevertheless, they daily trample under foot every command of the decalogue. It is true that a few of them are different from the mass, and genuinely seek the higher life for the cultivation of which they have separated themselves. But into their ideal of life altruism hardly enters at all. It is not to do good unto others, but to escape contamination from others which is the concern of the Hindu devotee. At the basis of his higher aspirations concern for self is supreme, thoughts of others are absent.

A notable illustration of a high realization of the Eastern ideal we see in the famous Hindu ascetic Swamiji Bhaskara Nanda Sarasvati, of Benares, who recently died and to whom Dr. Fairbairn has referred so cordially. For many years he had given himself to devotion and meditation. He had subdued the body by the rigours of asceticism and had attained preeminence in self-restraint and in the highest wisdom of yoga culture. He had therefore retired from the world, spurned all its allurements, denied all its claims and devoted himself exclusively to thought and meditation. Thus immured within temple walls in the great city of Benares he was utterly oblivious to the sin and sorrow of the swarming multitudes of that city and did nought to relieve the suffering, or to improve the lives, of his fellow-beings. He died, and over his remains has been erected a shrine to which the thousands go for worship and for inspiration to attain unto that ideal of life which they believe him to have realized.

This ideal has, for centuries, taken possession of the Hindu mind, and never before did it rule with more absolute sway than it does at present.

Another ideal of life with the Hindu is the so-called "path of works." At present this term is synonymous with a life of ceremonialism. In modern parlance "works" means to the Hindu, ceremonial observance. His life is hedged in on all sides by a host of ceremonies and is permeated through and through with a most complicated ritual. There is nothing in the life of a Hindu devotee, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing or travelling, which is not religiously prescribed both as to time and method. And utterly regardless of the significance of these rites or the appropriateness of them to his life, he deems their observance as essential to his salvation and finds in their daily keeping the highest satisfaction and completest assurance of his spiritual progress.

The Hindu is no rationalist in his religion. He obeys implicitly, and without question, the ritual of his ancestors and finds no interest in the scrutiny or analysis of them.

So, to the ordinary Hindu, especially to him to whom the way of meditation in the wilderness seems impossible, ceremonialism becomes a matter of supreme concern. No other religion has furnished to its followers a more elaborate and pervasive system of observances than this. These rites exercise their influence upon the mind and are wielding today a most potent influence upon Hindu character. A man may think nothing of, nor have any ambition to attain unto, the spiritual aspect of his faith; he may give no time whatever to any of its teachings or spiritual instruction; but if he maintain its ritual with ordinary care he flatters himself with the thought that he has attained a perfection corresponding to his estate.

Moreover, the Hindu is a thorough fatalist. He believes that his destiny is "written upon the forehead." Nothing which he may do can affect this destiny. Nor does it seem to be a part of the divine purpose. So far as he is concerned it is an irrevocable fate. This belief manifests itself largely in his life and conduct. It is one of the inconsistencies of the Hindu's thinking that he, at the same time, worships a tribal god in whose hands he believes his affairs to be, and through whom prosperity can flow into his life for time and eternity; and yet he holds, with equal, yea with greater, persistence, the law of Karma, that is, the law of works, according to which law alone future life, both to himself and to all men, must be wrought out even to the last detail. It is strange that a man whose pantheon is so crowded as that of the Hindu, and who believes in such constant divine guidance and interference, should, also, at the same time, maintain a theory of life which practically dispenses with all divine action and makes human life the product of a blind and grinding fate. Nothing is more marked as a characteristic of Hindu thought today than a possession by the people of these mutually conflicting and contradictory views of life.

(c) Looking at the Hindu from a social standpoint we see him largely affected by the caste system. Not only is his life in bondage to this system, his view of life, too, is thoroughly coloured by his caste sentiments.

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 gods of the Hindu pantheon, leads men to prevaricate and encourages all forms of duplicity. Under these circumstances 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 associated 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 classes—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 coarse 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 gods 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 passion which find expression here through taking the name of God 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 gods and temple worship (there are 12,000 of these in South India alone), constitute 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 passive 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 circumstances. 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 superstitions 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.