India, Its Life and Thought

"I do urge most emphatically that, whatever may have been the original intention, and whatever may be the esoteric meaning, the millions that perform idolatrous practice in this country see nothing symbolic behind the image and take the whole show quite literally. And can anything be more degrading to an intelligent human being? We know that all religions are necessarily more or less anthropomorphic. But our popular Hinduism surpasses everything else in this respect, too. There is a famous shrine in this Presidency where the deity's chota hazri [early meal] begins with bread and butter, and he goes on eating without respite till midnight, when he appropriately takes a decoction of dried ginger to help his digestion before he retires to his bedroom with his consorts; there is another famous shrine where a cigar is left in the bedroom every night for his godship to smoke; in another shrine, under the management of a nominal ascetic, fetters are applied to the god's feet whenever the temple's exchequer runs low, to extort money offerings from the devotees and pilgrims; in numerous other shrines the deity is taken out in procession and whipped publicly for having committed petty thefts; in one shrine the whole process of a high-way robbery is acted out in detail during the annual festival; births, marriages, deaths, and similar occurrences are, of course, as common and frequent in our temples as in our homes. Gentlemen, can any amount of esoteric whitewashing justify these disgraceful and fairly incredible practices? Then there are the deva dasies, our 'vestal virgins,' of whom even small and poor temples have one or two to boast. They are the recognized prostitutes of the country, and many sociologists are of opinion that no 'civilized' human society can completely get rid of such a class. Is that any reason why we should associate them with our religion and tempt the devil himself with their presence in our holiest places and shrines?"

4. Another marked feature of modern Hinduism is its devil-worship. This is peculiarly manifest in South India. In the Madras Presidency, whose fifty million population is mostly Dravidian, nine-tenths of the people follow the faith of their ancestors, which is Demonolatry.

When Brahmanism came to South India, many centuries ago, it found intrenched among the people, everywhere and universally, this ancient cult. The Brahmans, recognizing this, did what they have always done; they said to the people: "We have not come to destroy your religion; we will take your demons and demonesses, marry them to our gods, and give them shrines and worship in our temples. Come with them and be a part of our religion. We will give to you the privileges, and confer upon you the dignity and blessing, of our great religion." The people were impressed by this offer, accepted the situation, and were absorbed, with their religion, into the Brahmanical faith. From that time forward they have been recognized as Hindus, and have, after a fashion, been loyal members of that faith.

But let it not be supposed that, by becoming Hindus, they have deserted their ancestral religion, and have ceased to be devil-worshippers. Far from it. Hinduism proper is to them a mere plaything, or a festival pastime. On special Hindu holidays, and perhaps on occasions of pilgrimage, they will visit these Hindu temples and bring their offering to the deities of Brahmanism. But their chief concern and their daily religious occupation is found in the appeasing of the many devils whose abode is supposed to be in their countless village shrines and under well-known trees in their hamlets. They have not abated one jot of their belief in the supremacy of these devils in their life-affairs; and they always stand in fear of them, and do what they can to satisfy their bloody demands.

Thus at least nine-tenths of the people of South India are, first of all, demonolaters, and secondly, but a long way behind, are Hindus. And yet a great many people in the West think of these people as the pure worshippers of the highest type of the Brahmanical faith!

And it should not be forgotten that all over India there are probably fifty millions of people who are the so-called outcasts of the land, the miserable product of the caste system of Hinduism. They are "the submerged tenth" of India. They are not only socially ostracized, they are under the definite ban of the Hindu faith. They are the hewers of wood and drawers of water of Brahmanism. They have no place in Hinduism proper; they are not permitted to enter any of its temples. They have no right to receive whatever comforts religion may confer; its rights and its privileges are entirely denied to them. But the tyranny of the religion has been such, during the many centuries of the past, as to keep this class of people not only in absolute social servitude, but also in religious dependence; and has taught them (because it has compelled them) to be satisfied with the spiritual crumbs which are the meanest remnants of what the religion professes to give its members.

I have often felt, as I have talked with these poor, miserable Pariahs, that I was incapable of understanding their willingness to remain thus loosely attached to a faith which denied to them its most elementary comforts and blessings. The mystery is doubtless to be explained by their supreme abjectness and helplessness, which have been ground into them by many centuries of bondage. The consequence is, that while these many millions of outcast people are numbered among the Hindus, and regard themselves as Hindus, Hinduism itself has for them nothing but curses, and, more than all others, they must be satisfied with the devil-worship of their fathers.

5. Beneath all these lower aspects of popular Hinduism is still found what may be called its lowest stratum—Fetichism. There are many people and tribes in India who have not ascended sufficiently high, in religious conception, to make for themselves definite images of the gods they worship. Like the African, they are content to take natural objects, such as a rock or a stone, and regard it as possessed of some spirit and worship it. Sir Alfred Lyall, that well-known authority on India, has told us that one can find in India, as in no other land, religion of all forms and in all grades of development,—from the lowest step of animism to the most spiritual and abstruse pantheism. I myself have seen, within the area of one acre of land in South India, the instruments of these varied forms of worship, from a greasy, round stone, before which the lowest classes prostrated themselves, to an image of one of the supreme gods of Hinduism. There is not a phase of worship, however high or mystic, or however mean or degraded, which has not its devotees in this land.

6. Modern Hinduism is also guilty of harbouring and fostering immorality.

This is a cruel statement to make concerning any faith. But justice compels me to add this as one of the characteristics of Hinduism. Some of the most revered and popular writings of this religion are so full of obscenity and impure suggestion, that, to publish them in a Christian land, in the English tongue, would make the publisher liable to imprisonment. When, years ago, Lord Dalhousie, the Viceroy of India, enacted a law punishing obscenity, the leaders of the Hindu religion were so exercised by it that the government had to exempt religious writings of Hinduism, and emblems of that faith, from the action of the law. There are many religious books in India to-day which are classical in the beauty of their language, but which the Universities of India decline to use as text-books because of their gross obscenity.

Among the most demoralizing institutions to the youth of India are the temple cars, which are found in every village of any consequence throughout the land. They are erected at great expense, by temple authorities, are most elaborately carved, and are used for the conveyance of the gods through the village streets upon festival occasions. There is hardly one of these cars, in South India at any rate, which is not disfigured by grossly sensual carvings such as ought to bring blushing shame to any decent and self-respecting community. They are open to the public gaze, and children of the village play under their shadow, and gaze daily upon their vile and disgusting sights. The government would forbid the erection of such cars to-morrow, if they had not pledged themselves not to interfere with the religion of the people!

In the Vaishnava cult of Hinduism there is at least one sect, well known throughout the land, whose worship is loaded with impurity, and whose worshippers, at certain festivals, specially, yield themselves to all forms of sexual practices such as cannot be mentioned.

Sakti worship, or the worship of the goddesses, lends itself definitely to this gross evil; and the leading Tantraic books of this cult are so filthy that they are not fit to be translated. In Bengal, where the worship of Durgai, the wife of Siva, is dominant, the Hindus themselves are beginning to protest against the lewdness, obscenity, and licentiousness which prevail at their great Holi festival, which is the annual festival of the goddess.

Another institution connected with the temple worship of India, and of which Hindus ought to be heartily ashamed, is that of dancing-girls. Little girls in their infancy are devoted and dedicated by their own mothers to the temples. They are supposed to be married to the gods of the temple, and are called "the servants of the gods." They dance in attendance upon the gods, upon festival occasions, and are an inherent part of the temple worship. But the sad thing about these women is that their own mothers knew, when they dedicated them in infancy, that they were binding them to a life of shame. For the dancing-girls are the professional prostitutes of India. There are a host of these women (twelve thousand in South India alone) who, without their own consent, and in the sacred name of religion, have been handed over to this life of shame, to corrupt and debase the youth of the land. Their life is a loud cry against their mother-faith, which systematically devotes them to destruction of soul and body. Some educated men of the land denounce this as an evil which should be stopped. But the leaders of the faith turn a deaf ear to all such cries.

7. The treatment of woman within Hinduism is worthy of attention.

Hinduism has never looked with kindness or consideration upon women. It seems to have been its settled policy to treat them with contempt and unkindness. The consequence is that the girl babe is never welcome in the Hindu family. And from the cradle to the grave woman has no independence or right within the pale of this faith. During childhood she is in bondage to her father, during her marriage she must give implicit obedience to her husband, and as a widow she remains the ward of her sons.

Look at the disabilities under which the Hindu woman labours to-day.

She is held in ignorance. Only six Hindu women out of one thousand are able to read and write. She has never been regarded as worthy of education. Her ignorance has been regarded as her safety, and has been the studied policy of Hinduism.

She has never been regarded as worthy to know the sacred books of her own faith. It is a sin in Hinduism to-day for any man to teach a woman the most sacred truths of the faith. Her mind is not a fit receptacle for such truths.

While she has nothing to do in choosing for herself a husband, she is bound in infancy, through holy wedlock, to a child like herself. Her child husband may die before he attains manhood, when she becomes a widow. And, because her stars are supposed to have had influence in his death, she is treated with cruelty and is regarded as the evil star of the home.

Owing to this evil custom of child marriage, there are to-day twenty-six million widows in this land, of whom four hundred thousand are under fifteen years of age. It is not simply that the lot of these poor women is one of greatest hardship and contempt; they also become the prey of lustful men and fall into grossest sins. In modern times the government has tried to lighten the burdens of womanhood in the land; but the representatives of Hinduism, and its custodians, all stand in the way of any helpful legislation, and are determined to keep woman in servitude at all hazards.

8. The religious ascetic represents one of the characteristic features of modern Hinduism.

Religious asceticism has been the ideal of the Hindu life from time immemorial. The man who has given up all earthly pursuits and wanders with beggar's cup in hand from place to place, making pilgrimages to the holy places of India, or who separates himself entirely from men and devotes years to the solitude of the wilderness in the cultivation of piety,—he it is who is the admiration of the whole Hindu community. And it is for this very reason that so many men in India to-day don the yellow robe of this profession, and make capital out of this sentiment of the people.

There are millions of these religious mendicants who are entirely non-productive and live upon the common people. A few of them, doubtless, are sincere and are seeking after communion with God. But the vast majority are lazy and rotten to the core. Their life is known to be utterly worthless, and they are morally pestiferous in their influence upon the whole community. And yet the people accept them as the highest types of piety in the land. Even the poorest among them would give his last morsel to these worthless men. There are, indeed, very few in the community who would dare to refuse an offering to these beggars, because they are so ready to invoke dreadful imprecations upon those who decline to give anything to them. There are few things that an orthodox Hindu dreads more than the curse of a religious ascetic.

Thus, though these men are known to trample under foot every law of God and are utterly useless to the whole community, the people nevertheless regard them very highly and shower their blessings upon them.

In any land the maintenance of such an army would be a great burden upon the people; in India, where they are so poor, how heavy this burden must be, and how great must be the curse of such a host preying both morally and physically upon the rest of the community!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I

The Divine Ideal

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

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

II

The Hindu and Christian Conceptions of Incarnation are similarly Divergent

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

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

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

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

III

Ideals of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, in view of all this, what shall the Christian teacher do in this land? Shall he also exalt this ideal and temper it with Christian wisdom and chasten it with Christian meaning? Doubtless the wise missionary will consider well the amount of emphasis which this aspect of life requires in India, in view of the ideal which Hinduism has presented to the popular mind. He will also, I think, hesitate, on the one hand, to bring his faith into comparison with Hinduism in the matter of mere ascetic rigour and severe self-mortification, in which the Christian has always lagged far behind the Hindu devotee and monk. On the other hand, he will not be likely to exalt over-much this type of life in a land in which, for more than three thousand years, it has ruled supremely but has had so little of moral significance and has achieved such meagre spiritual results.

Another phase of life which furnishes to the people an ideal is the ceremonial. Among the myriad gods of the Hindu pantheon and all the sages of its history and legend, there is not one who is worthy to be exalted as an ideal of character. The reason is not far to find. With this, however, we are not at present concerned. It is enough if we remember that this absence of an incarnate ideal in the religion has led to the exaltation of rules and ceremonies as the safeguards of—yea, more, as the very essence of—a worthy and noble life. There is no sadder fact in India at present than that of this great religion, of two hundred and thirty million souls, being largely emptied of moral content as related to the common life, and built up of numberless petty external ceremonies which harass the individual, and grip the life with a dead hand at all points. The ceremonialism of the Scribes and Pharisees in the days of our Lord and which excited His supreme wrath, was not a consequence as compared to that of Hinduism to-day. From conception even to the burning-ground, every detail of life, individual and communal, religious and social (there is no social as apart from religious life in Hinduism), is cast into a mould of ceremony or ritual which robs it of ethical content, and makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired. But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu conscience is perverted, and the true distinction between right and wrong is buried deep under this greatest and most elaborate mass of ceremonial that the world has ever known. To a people who have thus inherited the ceremonial instinct, who are Pharisees by a hundred-fold heritage and by sweet choice, it is not an easy thing for the man of the West, with his natural distrust of all that is formal and outward in life, to present effectively his Lord, whose bitterest woes were pronounced against the formalists of His time, and whose commands are always ethical, and whose life is, first of all, and last of all, spiritual.

Another ideal of life which has too exclusive emphasis in this land is that which is denominated quietism—an ideal which extols the passive virtues as distinguished from the manly, aggressive ones. I would by no means claim that these two ideals are Hindu and Christian, respectively. They are rather begotten of the countries and climes under which the two religions have been, for many centuries, fostered. To the eastern and tropical Christian, the teaching of our Lord furnishes abundant warrant for a glorifying of the passive and non-resisting virtues. And I am inclined to believe that we of the West have few things of greater importance and of deeper religious significance to learn from the East than the appreciation of such graces of life as patience and endurance under evil. We stand always prepared to fight manfully for our convictions, and to obtrude them at all points upon friend and foe alike. It is not in the nature of the East to do this. We say that he has no stamina. We call him, in opprobrium, "the mild Hindu." But let us not forget that he will reveal tenfold more patience than we under very trying circumstances, and will turn the other cheek to the enemy when we rush into gross sin by our haste and ire. His is one of the hemispheres of a full-orbed character. Ours of the West is the other. Let us not flatter ourselves too positively that our assertive, aggressive part is the more beautiful or the more important. Yea, more, I question whether ours is the stronger and more masculine part of life and character; for is it not to most of us an easier thing to fling ourselves in vehemence against an evil in others than it is to sit calmly and patiently under a false accusation, as our Lord Himself did? At least it must be left an open question as to whether the impulsive and domineering vigour of the West is preferable to the "mildness" of the East.

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

IV

The Hindu Conception of Ultimate Salvation presents Another Point of Divergence from the Christian Ideal of Life Beyond

Even in the methods and processes of redemption pursued by the two religions we see fundamental differences. In Christianity, God is the prime Agent in human salvation. He worketh for us, in us, and through us. In our own redemption we are only co-labourers with Him.

In Hinduism, man stands absolutely alone as the agent and cause of his salvation. And, as the stupendous task rests upon his shoulders, it is no wonder that he has sought relief in the doctrine of metempsychosis, whereby it is believed that millions of rebirths furnish to him an adequate time and a sufficient variety of opportunity for the great consummation. But he has never given to himself, or to us, the first reason for believing that this endless fugue of rebirths will accomplish that which he accepts without questioning; namely, the ultimate glorification of all souls. There is nothing in this long and tedious process itself which assures us that any soul will reach final beatification rather than permanent and irremediable degradation. And yet the ultimate absorption of all souls into the Divine is assumed as a matter of course by him. This process, and that of Christianity, are expressive of the characteristics of the two faiths and of the two peoples. The slow and patient East, and the faith which it has begotten, spins out its theory of time and of human existence almost ad infinitum. Multitudinous births alone can satisfy the demands of the tedious process of human emancipation. But, in Christianity, one passage through this world, with human hands clasped in the Divine, suffices to open the door of eternal bliss to the redeemed soul. And this idea is consonant with the more youthful nature of the West, to whose people one birth, followed by a life of energy, furnishes an entrance into eternal joy beyond.

It is equally important that we take note of that which is connoted by the final consummation offered by each of these two faiths to their followers. To the Christian there is a conscious, blessed life beyond death—a separate, personal existence which will last throughout eternity in the sunshine of the Heavenly Father's presence and in the ineffable joy and glory of His fellowship. It is the idealized life built upon the foundation of what is best and most stirring and beautiful here upon earth. It is life, in all that this blessed word signifies of sweet contemplation, of blissful activity, of imperishable love, and of unspeakable joy. All the most beautiful and enticing imagery of earth has been used to portray, or rather to suggest, the "eternal life" of the Christian religion.

But what is the picture which Hinduism has drawn of the finality of life to its followers? After the weary fugue of births and rebirths, with its interludes of many heavens and hells, the "self" passes on into final union with the Divine Soul. It loses all consciousness and self-knowledge; every vestige of personality and all that this implies is swept away; it is incapacitated for every emotion of joy and for every act of service. There is nothing that we associate with life at its best and sweetest which does not find here negation. It is a calm blank, a rest, indeed, but from every struggle of thought, will, and emotion. This is the consummation which India has for many centuries held aloft as an attraction to its weary pilgrims.

Here, again, we observe how appropriate to the end in view is the supreme difficulty of the way. If the highest struggle of the soul in this world is against existence and its human actions and conditions, it is to be expected that a complete riddance of life and of all its accompaniments will be the summum bonum of the final consummation. And if this struggle for emancipation is to continue through numberless births and earthly existences, it is natural that the coveted end should bring a loss of all that life connotes in highest sentiment as well as basest passion. I need not dwell upon the contrast between this and the anticipations entertained by every humble Christian.

This whole eschatological system of Hinduism corresponds, as we have seen, to the teaching of that faith in reference to God, man, and earthly life and conditions. And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories of our heaven do not appeal to the stolid, weary, transmigration-ridden soul of the Hindu as they do to the youthful, hopeful, buoyant soul of the Christian. And this is a fact which the missionary would do well to keep in mind at all times.

I might continue the list of the incompatibilities of Hindu and Christian ideals. But I have gone far enough to show, I trust, that the two faiths are at many points antipodal, and that their ideals clash in matters fundamental and crucial.

Further, I wish to repeat that I do not maintain that Christian ideals are always, or even ever, represented in their fulness, or with the right emphasis, by us of the West. Hinduism is an ethnic faith, and it must be weighed and valued by the ideals which the people of this land have imbibed from it and invariably connect with it. Christianity is a world faith, and no one nation or continent can be a full exemplar, or an all-wise interpreter, of its life and ideals. Hence I claim that one of the considerations which demand closest attention from a western teacher, as he imparts his faith to the people of India, is that of the choice and emphasis of ideals which he shall present to them. Let him neither assume, on the one hand, that Hindu ideals are unchristian, nor, on the other, that our western ideals, both in their emphasis and exclusiveness, are the all-in-all of Christian truth and life. Christianity in the East, when it becomes thoroughly indigenous, will reveal and glorify a different type of life from that of the West. It will be less aggressive and assertive, but more contemplative and more deeply pious and other-worldly than anything we have been wont to see in the West.

The day has come when missionaries must study with more seriousness the religion of India, that they may understand its true inwardness and discover its sources of power. Above all, they must be conversant with its highest ideals and understand the relationship of the same to those of their own faith. And they must not forget that they must approach this study with genuine sympathy and appreciation, in order to find the best in Hinduism, as well as to be fortified against its worst features.

Never before did the educated men of this land stand up with more determination for their old ideals, and this is a matter of serious concern to our cause. On the other hand, the most encouraging fact in the realm of Christian work in India at the present time is that of the marvellous place which our Lord has found among the people of the land, especially the educated, as the ideal of life. They will have none of Him as a Saviour, and His death has no significance to them. But His blessed life has become the inspiration and the ideal of life to the cultured classes of India, in a way which is transforming their ethical conceptions and which largely eclipses all other life-influences among them. Herein lies our hope and assurance for India. But what they crave, and what they say they must have, is "an Oriental Christ," a Christ who is not presented in a western garb of life and thought. Herein do we learn a most important lesson for our life-work, as Christian missionaries in this land of the East.

CHAPTER IX

It is in the home that the natural religious bent of the Hindu finds its full scope and most touching manifestations. Generally speaking, one may say that the house of a Hindu is his sanctuary, where the tutelar god has its niche or shrine to which daily worship is rendered. There is hardly any event connected with home life which is not religiously viewed and made the occasion of definite family worship. Of the sixteen events in the life of a man, from birth to death, there is not one which is not viewed from a religious aspect, and is not accompanied by an elaborate ritual.

There is hardly a respectable Hindu household in which there is not a shrine containing an idol of stone or of some metal which corresponds in value to the measure of the family's wealth. "Every morning and evening it is worshipped by the hereditary purohit, or priest, who visits the house for the purpose twice a day, and who, as the name implies, is the first in all ceremonies, second to none but the Guru, or spiritual guide. The offerings of rice, fruits, sweetmeats, and milk, made to the god, he carries home after the close of the service. A conch is blown, a bell is rung, and a gong beaten at the time of worship, when the religiously disposed portion of the inmates, male and female, in a quasi-penitent attitude, make their obeisance to the god and receive in return the hollow benediction of the priest."[5]