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.
[Illustration: Idol Worship.]
[Illustration: Religious Mendicants.]
(_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 Brâhm. 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 Brâhm. 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 preëminence 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
preëminently 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 élite—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 preëminently 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.
There are moreover certain elements of truth in that old faith which we do
not care to eliminate from his mental furnishing, but which must find new
adjustment and be properly located in the new religion which he has
adopted.
It should also be remembered and made prominent in our consideration of
this subject that the people of India are an Oriental people and are the
children of the tropics and, as such, will always remain and must remain
very different from us of the Northwest. Their climatic and meteorological
conditions, their outer, physical life, their social customs and the trend
of their civilization, have always been, and will continue to be, far
removed from our own. Nothing could be more fatal to our success in our
effort for the conversion of India than the idea that we must in every
respect mold them after the pattern of Western life and habits. A large
portion of their life is the result of the conditions which I have
mentioned and must largely remain unchanged; and it would be folly for the
missionary to regard these as a part of the faith to be supplanted, and to
teach that western social customs are inseparable from Christianity and
must be accepted by the Orient with our faith. The Christian of India will
always be, and it is well that he should be, differentiated from the
Anglo-Saxon Christian.
It should also be remembered that the people of India, at least the
masses, are low in civilization. It should not be expected that those who
are in that low estate, when they become Christians, will leap with one
bound into the full possession of a high civilization and be clothed upon
with some of those beauties of western life and character which we
inevitably associate with the term, “A Christian Gentleman.” They, indeed,
become truly and sincerely the disciples of Christ; but they will, at the
same time, manifest some of the crudities and weaknesses of the low social
grade of which they have been and still remain a part. They should not be
judged by standards Western or of a high civilization.
Looking, then, at the native Christian of India let us have regard to his
condition socially, morally, religiously and spiritually.
(_a_) Studying this product of the Christian faith in that land from a
_social_ standpoint we find encouragement. He differs from his Hindu
neighbour by a growing freedom from the trammels of caste. He feels, in
his best moments, that caste has been and continues to be the greatest
curse of the land, that he has been emancipated from it, and that he is
ambitious to enjoy the liberty wherewith Christ has made him free. And
yet, unfortunately, he does not remain constantly in the possession of
this sane mind. The roots of the caste system have reached down into the
lowest depths of his being. Even at times when he believes that he is
absolutely independent of caste considerations, there is in him a blind
persistence which clings to caste bondage. I have often felt that Hinduism
can be dispensed with by our convert with vastly more ease in all other
particulars than in its caste feelings and affiliations. This relic of the
past clings to him with a tenacity which is phenomenal and most sad.
Though everything teaches him that this caste system is the greatest enemy
of Christianity and will prevent any one who believes and practices it
from fully imbibing the spirit of Christ; and though he aspires to be an
earnest and an efficient Christian and to love all his brethren, this
remnant of Hinduism in his heart returns to rob him of the joys and
blessings of his Christian birthright. I have seen this frequently
disfigure what would otherwise have been a beautiful Christian character.
I have witnessed it blast the prospects of Christian congregations dooming
them to stagnation and death. I have known it to palsy the arm and deaden
the heart of more than one Christian worker.
All this is inevitable when we remember the mighty influence and the long
continued dominance of caste in that land. But even at this point, where
the missionary finds the greatest discouragement, there are marked signs
of progress. So long as the missionary fought this evil alone there was
little hope of success. But, during the last few years, the conscience of
the native Christian Church itself has been roused on this question. The
Indian Christian today, as never before, has the conviction that this
caste evil saps the spiritual life of every member and of every church
which entertains it, and that it is his supreme duty to fight it steadily
in his own heart, home and church. And there is an increasing number,
especially of the young Christians, who are pledging themselves to an
unceasing warfare against the demon caste. Christians are also organizing
themselves into Caste Suppression Societies. All this is highly
encouraging, but needs large furtherance and development before the native
Christian can be said to be freed from this most subtle curse of the
ancestral faith.
The old Hindu Joint Family System is the foster-mother of the caste idea,
and it is cheering to see native Christians increasingly abandoning that
system for the Western idea of home which encourages thrift, independence
and liberty among the various members of a family and clan.
In India, for many years to come, this blight of social narrowness,
exclusiveness and divisiveness will affect more or less the native
Christian character and give colour to the native Christian Church. For
centuries it may prove the weak spot of Indian Christianity.
(_b_) _Morally_, the native Christian develops slowly. One writer has
recently claimed that the Christian of India manifests little, if any,
preëminence over the Hindu, in this respect. This is not true. He is
certainly moving forward and upward morally. But it should be remembered
that moral character is not one of the first results of Christian conquest
among such a people. It is rather the highest and last fruit upon the tree
of Christian life. It should not be forgotten that what we regard in the
West as the high moral traits of a Christian gentleman are the product of
more than 1,000 years of Christian living.
The native Christian manifests, in this respect, the weakness of his
antecedents and his environment. When we remember that weakness of
character to which we have referred as belonging to the Hindu it is not
surprising that the native Christian, who is daily surrounded by men of
that faith and who imbibes the atmosphere of that religion, should largely
be affected by the same evil. A few years ago an English barrister
complained to me of certain Christian witnesses who had given evidence in
a case recently conducted by him in Madura. “I hate to have your
Christians as witnesses in any of my cases,” he says; “for whenever they
venture to give false evidence they instantly falter and stumble and are
caught by the opposing counsel. A Hindu, when he gives false evidence,
will tell a straight and a plausible story. But your Christians are too
much affected by twinges of conscience.” What was embarrassing and
annoying to him was encouraging to me! That our Christians should
occasionally give false evidence did not surprise me; but that they, in
this matter, should be differentiated, by this disinterested observer,
from Hindu witnesses is a reliable testimony in favour of their growing
veracity.
Among the higher class of native Christians, which is annually increasing
in number, there is marked improvement in character. Especially among
mission agents do we have opportunity to witness this development. They
are growing in sincerity and reliability. The missionary is learning, with
increasing pleasure, to place confidence in their veracity. And yet, we
must mourn that moral progress among our people, both high and low, is not
more rapid and satisfying.
Social immorality, as we have seen, is very prevalent in that tropical
country. It is natural that this should annoy and worry us greatly among
our native Christians. It is a sad fact that more of our mission agents
are dismissed on account of this sin than any other. Hindu society is not
only largely demoralized by this evil, there is also no public sentiment
against it. But, under the influence of a growing sentiment in behalf of
chastity and purity, the evil is gradually diminishing among our native
Christians.
One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief
among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and
morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy
devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the
decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as
noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their
lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor
will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and
sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does
believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a noble life, can be
severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are
largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the
publicly immoral ones.
It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing
error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find,
not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in
unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked
in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their
offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is
not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language
of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), “to hold the mystery of the faith in a
pure conscience”; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and
conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.
(_c_) _Religiously_, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the
clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most
recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of
those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay
in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith
so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to
them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may
be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm; but the many
little superstitions which are connected with private life and social
customs have still a quiet influence and a lingering power over them.
These largely belong to the life of those who have _recently_ accepted the
Christian faith. It may be that some of them will never make that progress
in life which will lift them entirely above some of these Hindu
superstitions. But the great majority of native Christians today have
religiously had no connection whatever with Hinduism and have entirely
substituted Christian rites and observances for those of the Hindu
religion. And they apparently have large satisfaction in them. The old
Hindu idea of the supreme value of asceticism is largely yielding to a
Christian altruism which abandons self-centred, self-seeking, activity in
favour of loving sympathy for, and an endeavour to do good to, men.
We also notice that among them the idea of the efficacy of certain forms
and ceremonies is lessening in favour of a conviction of the power of the
inner life of faith.
And yet it should be constantly kept in mind that ceremony and ritual must
always find a larger place in the religious life of India than in that of
the United States. The inhabitant of India is tropical and poetic in
temperament. He beholds things, and appreciates and appropriates spiritual
blessings, more through the help of forms and ceremonies than does the man
of the West. A rite appeals to his nature more strongly and lends to him
greater facility in getting at its underlying truth and antitype than it
does to us. Indeed it is his nature to look at Christian truth through the
eyes of a poet; and ceremonies consequently convey to him the largest
significance and are more revealing of the spirit within. We seek divine
truth and spiritual blessings more directly than he. It would be therefore
a mistake for us to expect that practical, unpoetic mind of ours in the
Oriental, or to present religious truth to him in its nakedness, unadorned
and unenforced by rite and ritual. It has been, and, to some extent,
continues to be the fault of our Congregational Missions in India that
they try to lift the native Christian to those dry, unadorned, simple
forms of religious service which indeed satisfy the missionaries, but
which ignore the great difference of nature and temperament between
themselves and the converts. It should be remembered that in India people
think vocally. Even as they must and do read aloud in order to read
intelligently, so must they worship aloud in order to worship feelingly
and thoughtfully. Hence the wisdom and urgency for them of a ritual and a
responsive service.
(_d_) _Spiritually_, the Indian Christian is slowly and surely developing
on definite lines of his own.
The simplicity of his faith is beautiful. He has none of those questions
of doubt or misgivings of unbelief which are so prevalent in the West. He
takes the Bible in all fullness of acceptance. His prayers are not crossed
and frustrated by any rationalistic theories, but have the simplicity of
childish directness, filial trust and full expectancy. Nothing has touched
me more in my contact with native Christians than to feel the directness,
simplicity, unquestioning trustfulness of their prayers even in times of
greatest adversity.
The native Christian possesses a mystic temperament. The inhabitants of
that land, through many centuries of training, have become natural mystics
in religion. This national heritage the native Christian retains; and
properly chastened and directed by Christian truth and faith it will add
depth, beauty and power to his religious life. Under these conditions I
shall have no fear of mysticism in the Christian Church in India. Deep
spirituality and a yearning after the hidden things of religion is more
natural to the East than to the West. The West is practical and worldly;
the East is mystical and other-worldly. The native Christian, at his best,
is manifesting some of this spiritual power. He takes naturally to the
Pauline emphasis upon the life “hid with Christ in God,” and to the mystic
union which exists between Christ and His own.
It is here that the native Church in India is, I believe, to show an
inspiring example to the Church of the West. If the Christian of India is
not to be as practical or indeed as spiritually sane as his brother of the
West, he will probably illustrate more of the hidden mysteries and power
of the spiritual life. In this respect the spiritual power of the East and
that of the West will be, in their separate emphasis, mutually
complementary.
The Indian Christian, true to his native temperament, is and will continue
to be strong in the so-called passive virtues, and weak in the positive or
aggressive ones. Patience, meekness, gentleness, endurance—these are the
graces which preëminently adorn him and which give colour and shape to his
religious character. Here, again, his life will be very different from
that life which has characterized, thus far, the Western Christian. The
masculine virtues of assertion, boldness, aggressiveness have
characterized the West. We have been strong and continue strong in that
aspect of our faith which we associate with the words assertion and
attack. The West has, true to its environment and training, developed
Christian character mostly, I will not say exclusively, on the positive
side of life. The equally important passive virtues we of the West have
much neglected if not despised as weakness. The East is even today
manifesting the blessedness, and the native Christian will increasingly
illustrate, the beauty and potency, of the passive virtues—of the
spiritual element of endurance and non-resistance. He will show to us that
a true and perfected character—a character molded after that of the divine
Exemplar—must have also, and with equal emphasis, the sweet and feminine
passive graces of life as an essential element. In India today the
Anglo-Saxon is wont to speak with contempt of “The mild Hindu.” That
mildness which we are too apt to despise contains the germs of that half
of Christian character which is too largely wanting in the spiritual life
of the Anglo-Saxon and which the Christian Church of India will
increasingly illustrate and gradually seek to respect, honour, and
ultimately, to adopt.
Thus, speaking broadly of the native Christian of India today we find him
almost as much a product of heredity and environment as he is of
Christianity. He holds out Christ before himself as his ideal of life, and
His words as the all-satisfying truth. He seeks in His redeeming work rest
and salvation of soul; but many of the deepest yearnings of his heart come
to him through old channels worn out by his ancestral faith. Hinduism
gives more or less of colouring to his religious thought and aspirations;
and not a few of its forms and ceremonies are retained, but filled with a
new Christian content, and are utilized to aid in the development of
Christian life. Even as the Jews of old entered into possession and
appreciation of Christian life through Jewish rites and ceremonies, so do
native converts enter Christian life through Hindu forms today. From the
necessity of their thought and being they utilize not a few of the
processes of the old, in order to acquire and enjoy the blessings of the
new, faith. This cannot be avoided nor do we desire that it should be
avoided.
[Illustration: House Of A Missionary In India.]
[Illustration: A Village Christian Church.]
The study of the Indian Christian character in its peculiarities and
tendencies is of importance, because, as I have said above, I believe it
is to affect our conceptions of life in the West. At the present time not
a few of the religious vagaries which infest our land such as Christian
Science and Theosophy, have chiefly come to us from India. At least,
whatever of philosophy they may possess, and all of the occultism and
mysticism which they court and magnify, are thoroughly Eastern and Indian.
And from the popularity of such movements in this land it would seem as if
the boast of some men that Hindu thought is invading the West is partially
true. But the invasion which I desire and expect, in the not distant
future, is the invasion of an Oriental _Christian_ thought, _Christian_
life and _Christian_ character. This will come in its time as truly as,
and much more fully than, the other has come, and it will do this country
as much good as the other is now doing evil.
As an illustration of what I mean in reference to the influence of Eastern
thought upon the West I would prophesy that ere long the Indian Christian
Church will formulate for itself and enunciate to the world an advanced
and helpful doctrine of the Holy Ghost beyond anything that the West has
enunciated. India, which for these many centuries has been the home of an
all-prevalent spiritual pantheism, when it comes to elaborate the doctrine
of God, from a Christian standpoint, will give as much emphasis to His
immanence as the West has given to His transcendence. God with us and in
us and working in all creation, even the Holy Spirit of God,—this is the
conception which the Indian Christian will elaborate and illuminate beyond
anything that the West has thus far attempted.
There is danger, today, and it is inevitable, that missionaries from the
West be too ambitious to occidentalize the native Christian community,
ignorant of, or indifferent to, the grand possibilities of thought and of
life which lie in Eastern character and teaching. It is much easier to
thrust upon them everything Western than it is to appreciate and to
conserve many things Eastern. The future missionary will learn wisdom from
the past and will enter upon his work with less depreciation of things
Oriental and with a larger desire to conserve to the utmost Eastern habits
of thought and social customs, so long as, and so far as, they can be made
the vehicles of Christian thought and the channels of Christian life.
Herein must lie the best means for a speedy coming of the Kingdom of
Christ in India.