I am to speak of certain indirect tributes borne by the non-Christian
religions to the doctrines of Christianity. One such tribute of great
value we have already considered in the prevalence of early monotheism,
so far corroborating the scriptural account of man's first estate, and
affording many proofs which corroborate the scriptural doctrine of human
apostasy. Others of the same general bearing will now be considered. The
history of man's origin, the strange traditions of his fall by
transgression and his banishment from Eden, of the conflict of good with
evil represented by a serpent, of the Deluge and the dispersion of the
human race, have all been the subjects of ridicule by anti-Christian
writers:--though by turns they have recognized these same facts and have
used them as proofs that Christianity had borrowed them from old myths.
The idea of sacrifice, or atonement, of Divine incarnation, of a
trinity, of mediation, of a salvation by faith instead of one's own
merits, have been represented as unphilosophical, and therefore
improbable in the nature of the case.
It becomes an important question, therefore, whether other religions of
mankind show similar traditions, however widely they have dwelt apart,
and however diversified their languages, literatures, and institutions
may have been in other respects. And it is also an important question,
whether even under heathen systems, the consciousness of sin and the
deepest moral yearnings of men have found expression along the very
lines which are represented by the Christian doctrines of grace. To
these questions we now address ourselves. What are the lessons of the
various ethnic traditions? And how are we to account for their striking
similarities? The most obvious theory is, that a common origin must be
assigned to them, that they are dim reminiscences of a real knowledge
once clear and distinct. The fact that with their essential unity they
differ from each other and differ from our Scriptural record, seems to
rather strengthen the theory that all--our own included--have been
handed down from the pre-Mosaic times--ours being divinely edited by an
inspired and infallible author. Their differences are such as might have
been expected from separate transmissions, independently made.
We have, first of all, the various traditions of the Creation. In most
heathen races there have appeared, in their later stages, grave and
grotesque cosmogonies; and a too common impression is, that these
represent the real teachings of their sacred books or their earliest
traditions. But when one enters upon a careful study of the
non-Christian religions, and traces them back to their sources, he finds
more rational accounts of the Creation and the order of nature, and
sees striking points of resemblance to the Mosaic record. The story of
Genesis represents the "Beginning" as formless, chaotic, and dark. The
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The heavens and the
earth were separated. Light appeared long before the sun and moon were
visible, and the day and night were clearly defined. Creation proceeded
in a certain order from vegetable to animal life, and from lower animals
to higher, and last of all man appeared. In heathen systems we find
fragments of this traditional account, and, as a rule, they are more or
less clear in proportion to their nearness to, or departure from, the
great cradle of the human race.[167] Thus Professor Rawlinson quotes
from an Assyrian account of the creation, as found upon the clay tablets
discovered in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, a description of
formlessness, emptiness, and darkness on the deep--of a separation
between the earth and sky--and of the light as preceding the appearance
of the sun. That account also places the creation of animals before that
of man, whom it represents as being formed of the dust of the earth, and
as receiving a divine effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an
Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of
1,000 years each. In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the
second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun,
moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the
sea; in the sixth, man. According to a passage in the Persian Avesta,
the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods
or thousands of years: in the first, the heavens with the stars; in the
second, the water and the clouds; in the third, the earth and the
mountains; in the fourth, the trees and the plants; in the fifth, the
beasts which sprang from the primeval beast; in the sixth, man.[169]
As we get farther away from the supposed early home of the race, the
traditions become more fragmentary and indistinct. The Rig Veda,
Mandala, x., 129, tells us that:
"In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught; There was
neither day nor night nor light nor darkness; Only the EXISTENT ONE
breathed calmly. Next came darkness, gloom on gloom. Next all was
water--chaos indiscrete."[170]
Strikingly similar is the language quoted in a former lecture from the
prayer of a Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty. It runs thus: "Of old,
in the beginning, there was the great chaos without form and dark. The
five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine.
In the midst thereof there presented itself neither form nor sound.
Thou, O Spiritual Sovereign, didst divide the grosser parts from the
purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth: Thou madest man."
There is a possibility that these conceptions may have come from
Christian sources instead of primitive Chinese traditions, possibly from
early Nestorian missionaries, though this is scarcely probable, as
Chinese emperors have been slow to introduce foreign conceptions into
their august temple service to Shangte; its chief glory lies in its
antiquity and its purely national character. Buddhism had already been
in China more than a thousand years, and these prayers are far enough
from its teachings. May we not believe that the ideas here expressed had
always existed in the minds of the more devout rulers of the empire? In
similar language, the Edda of the Icelandic Northmen describes the
primeval chaos.
Thus:
"'Twas the morning of time
When yet naught was,
Nor sand nor sea was there,
Nor cooling streams.
Earth was not formed
Nor heaven above.
A yawning gap was there
And grass nowhere."
Not unlike these conceptions of the "Beginning" is that which Morenhout
found in a song of the Tahitans, and which ran thus:
"He was; Toaroa was his name,
He existed in space; no earth, no heaven, no men."
M. Goussin adds the further translation: "Toaroa, the Great Orderer, is
the origin of the earth: he has no father, no posterity."[171] The
tradition of the Odshis, a negro tribe on the African Gold Coast,
represents the creation as having been completed in six days. God
created first the woman; then the man; then the animals; then the trees
and plants; and lastly the rocks. God created nothing on the seventh
day. He only gave men His commandments. The reversal of the order here
only confirms the supposition that it is an original tradition. We find
everywhere on the Western Hemisphere, north and south, plain recognition
of the creation of the world by one Supreme God, though the order is not
given. How shall we account for the similarities above indicated, except
on the supposition of a common and a very ancient source?
Still more striking are the various traditions of the Fall of man by
sin. In the British Museum there is a very old Babylonian seal which
bears the figures of a man and a woman stretching out their hands toward
a fruit-tree, while behind the woman lurks a serpent. A fragment bearing
an inscription represents a tree of life as guarded on all sides by a
sword. Another inscription describes a delectable region surrounded by
four rivers. Professors Rawlinson and Delitzsch both regard this as a
reference to the Garden of Eden.
"The Hindu legends," says Hardwick, "are agreed in representing man as
one of the last products of creative wisdom, as the master-work of God;
and also in extolling the first race of men as pure and upright,
innocent and happy. The beings who were thus created by Brahma are all
said to have been endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they
abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts
were free from guile; they were pure, made free from toil by observance
of sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they
were filled with perfect wisdom by which they contemplated the glory of
Vishnu.
"The first men were, accordingly, the best. The Krita age, the 'age of
truth,' the reign of purity, in which mankind, as it came forth from the
Creator, was not divided into numerous conflicting orders, and in which
the different faculties of man all worked harmoniously together, was a
thought that lay too near the human heart to be uprooted by the ills and
inequalities of actual life. In this the Hindu sided altogether with the
Hebrew, and as flatly contradicted the unworthy speculations of the
modern philosopher, who would fain persuade us that human beings have
not issued from one single pair, and also, that the primitive type of
men is scarcely separable from that of ordinary animals...."[172]
Spence Hardy, in speaking on this subject, describes a Buddhist legend
of Ceylon which represents the original inhabitants of the world as
having been once spotlessly pure, and as dwelling in ethereal bodies
which moved at will through space. They had no need of sun or moon. They
lived in perfect happiness and peace till, at last, one of their number
tasted of a strange substance which he found lying on the surface of the
earth. He induced others to eat also, whereupon all knew good and evil,
and their high estate was lost. They now had perpetual need of food,
which only made them more gross and earthly. Wickedness abounded, and
they were in darkness. Assembling together, they fashioned for
themselves a sun, but after a few hours it fell below the horizon, and
they were compelled to create a moon.[173] An old Mongolian legend
represents the first man as having transgressed by eating a pistache
nut. As a punishment, he and all his posterity came under the power of
sin and death, and were subjected to toil and suffering.[174] A
tradition of the African Odshis, already named, relates that formerly
God was very near to men. But a woman, who had been pounding banana
fruit in a mortar, inadvertently entering His presence with a pestle in
her hands, aroused His anger, and He withdrew into the high heavens and
listened to men no more. Six rainless years brought famine and distress,
whereupon they besought Him to send one of His counsellors who should be
their daysman, and should undertake their cause and care for them. God
sent his chief minister, with a promise that He would give rain and
sunshine, and He directed that His rainbow should appear in the
sky.[175] The inhabitants of Tahiti have a tradition of a fall which is
very striking; and Humboldt, after careful study, reached the conclusion
that it had not been derived through any communication with Christian
lands, but was an old native legend. The Karens of Burmah had a story of
an early temptation of their ancestors by an evil being and their
consequent apostasy. Many other races who have no definite tradition of
this kind have still some vague notion of a golden age in the past.
There has been everywhere a mournful and pathetic sense of something
lost, of degeneracy from better days gone by, of Divine displeasure and
forfeited favor. The baffled gropings of all false religions seem to
have been so many devices to regain some squandered heritage of the
past. All this is strikingly true of China.
Still more clear and wellnigh universal are the traditions of a flood.
The Hindu Brahmanas and the Mahabharata of a later age present legends
of a deluge which strikingly resemble the story of Genesis. Vishnu
incarnate in a fish warned a great sage of a coming flood and directed
him to build an ark. A ship was built and the sage with seven others
entered. Attached to the horn of the fish the ship was towed over the
waters to a high mountain top.[176] The Chinese also have a story of a
flood, though it is not given in much detail. The Iranian tradition is
very fragmentary and seems to confound the survivor with the first man
of the creation. Yima, the Noah of the story, was warned by the
beginning of a great winter rain, by which the waters were raised 19,000
feet. Yima was commanded to prepare a place of safety for a number of
chosen men, birds, and beasts. It was to be three stories high, and to
be furnished with a high door and window, but whether it was a ship or a
refuge on the mountain top does not appear. The same tradition speaks of
Eden and of a serpent, but the account is suddenly cut short.[177]
The Greek traditions of a flood varied according to the different
branches of the Greek nation. The Arcadians traced their origin to
Dardanus, who was preserved from the great flood in a skin-covered boat.
The Pelasgians held the tradition of Deucalion and his wife, who were
saved in a ship which was grounded on the summit of Pindus. As the water
receded they sent out a dove to search for land. The Assyrian account,
which was found a few years ago on a tablet in the palace of
Assur-bani-pal, claims to have been related as a matter of personal
experience by Sisit, the Chaldean Noah, who was commanded to construct a
ship 600 cubits long, into which he should enter with his family and his
goods. At the time appointed the earth became a waste. The very gods in
heaven fled from the fury of the tempest and "huddled down in their
refuge like affrighted dogs." The race of men was swept away. On the
seventh day Sisit opened a window and saw that the rain was stayed, but
the water was covered with floating corpses; all men had become as clay.
The ship rested on a mountain top, and Sisit sent forth a dove, a
swallow, and a raven. The dove and the swallow returned, but the raven
was satisfied with the floating carcasses. Sisit went forth and offered
sacrifice, around which "the gods hovered like flies."
Professor Rawlinson thinks that these accounts and those given in
Genesis were both derived from the earlier traditions, the Assyrian
version having been greatly corrupted. The Chaldean tradition is
slightly different. The Noah of the Chaldeans was commanded in a dream
not only to build a ship, but to bury all important documents and so
preserve the antediluvian history. As the flood subsided he, his family,
and his pilot were transferred to heaven, but certain friends who were
saved with them remained and peopled the earth. Among the ancient
Peruvians we find a tradition of a great deluge which swept the earth.
After it had passed, the aged man Wiracotscha rose out of Lake Titicaca
and his three sons issued from a cave and peopled the earth.[178] Hugh
Miller and others have named many similar traditions.
The fact that in nearly every case those who were rescued from the flood
immediately offered piacular sacrifices suggests the recognition in all
human history of still another fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the
universal sense of sin. This conviction was especially strong when the
survivors of a Divine judgment beheld the spectacle of a race swept away
for their transgressions; but there are abundant traces of it in all
ages of the world. The exceptions are found in those instances where
false systems of philosophy have sophisticated the natural sense of
guilt by destroying the consciousness of personality. All races of men
have shown a feeling of moral delinquency and a corresponding fear. The
late C. Loring Brace, in his work entitled "The Unknown God," quotes
some striking penitential psalms or prayers offered by the Akkadians of
Northern Assyria four thousand years ago.
The deep-seated conviction of guilt which is indicated by the old
religion of the Egyptians is well set forth by Dr. John Wortabet, of
Beyrut, in a pamphlet entitled "The Temples and Tombs of Thebes." He
says: "The immortality of the soul, its rewards and punishments in the
next world, and its final salvation and return into the essence of the
divinity were among the most cherished articles of the Egyptian creed.
Here (in the tombs), as on the papyri which contain the 'Ritual of the
Dead,' are represented the passage of the soul through the nether world
and its introduction into the Judgment Hall, where Osiris, the god of
benevolence, sits on a throne, and with the assistance of forty-two
assessors proceeds to examine the deceased. His actions are weighed in a
balance against truth in the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of
wisdom, and if found wanting he is hounded out in the shape of an
unclean animal by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the infernal regions.
The soul then proceeds in a series of transmigrations into the bodies of
animals and human beings and thus passes through a purgatorial process
which entitles it to appear again before the judgment-seat of Osiris. If
found pure it is conveyed to Aalu, the Elysian fields, or the 'Pools of
Peace.' After three thousand years of sowing and reaping by cool waters
it returns to its old body (the preserved mummy), suffers another period
of probation, and is ultimately absorbed into the godhead. One of the
most impressive scenes in the whole series is that where the soul, in
the form of a mummified body, stands before Osiris and the forty-two
judges to be examined on the forty-two commandments of the Egyptian
religion. Bearing on its face the signs of solemnity and fear, and
carrying in its hand a feather, the symbol of veracity, it says among
other things: 'I have not blasphemed the gods, I have defrauded no man,
I have not changed the measures of Egypt, I have not prevaricated at the
courts of justice, I have not lied, I have not stolen, I have not
committed adultery, I have done no murder, I have not been idle, I have
not been drunk, I have not been cruel, I have not famished my family, I
have not been a hypocrite, I have not defiled my conscience for the sake
of my superiors, I have not smitten privily, I have lived on truth, I
have made it my delight to do what men command and the gods approve, I
have given bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty and clothes to
the naked, my mouth and hands are pure.' Now what strikes one with great
force in this remarkable passage from the walls of the old sand-covered
tombs is the wonderful scope and fulness with which the laws of right
and wrong were stamped upon the Egyptian conscience. There is here a
recognition, not only of the great evils which man shall not commit, but
also of many of those positive duties which his moral nature requires.
It matters not that these words are wholly exculpatory; they
nevertheless recognize sin."
But perhaps no one has depicted man's sense of guilt and fear more
eloquently than Dean Stanley when speaking of the Egyptian Sphinx.
Proceeding upon the theory that that time-worn and mysterious relic is a
couchant lion whose projecting paws were long since buried in the desert
sands, and following the tradition that an altar once stood before that
mighty embodiment of power, he graphically pictures the transient
generations of men, in all the sin and weakness of their frail humanity,
coming up with their offerings and their prayers "between the paws of
deity." It is a grim spectacle, but it emphasizes the sense of human
guilt. Only the Revealed Word of God affords a complete and satisfactory
explanation of the remarkable fact that the human race universally stand
self-convicted of sin.
There is also a tribute to the truth of Christianity in certain traces
of a conception of Divine sacrifice for sin found in some of the early
religious faiths of men. All are familiar with the difference between
the offerings of Abel and those of Cain--the former disclosing a faith
in a higher expiation. In like manner there appear mysterious references
to a divine and vicarious sacrifice in the early Vedas of India. In the
Parusha Sukta of the Rig Veda occurs this passage: "From him called
Parusha was born Viraj, and from Viraj was Parusha produced, whom gods
made their oblation. With Parusha as a victim they performed a
sacrifice." Manu says that Parusha, "the first man," was called Brahma,
and was produced by emanation from the "self-existent spirit." Brahma
thus emanating, was "the first male," or, as elsewhere called, "the born
lord." By him the world was made. The idea is brought out still more
strikingly in one of the Brahmanas where the sacrifice is represented as
voluntary and all availing. "Surely," says Sir Monier Williams, "in
these mysterious allusions to the sacrifice of a representative man we
may perceive traces of the original institution of sacrifice as a
divinely appointed ordinance, typical of the one great offering of the
Son of God for the sins of the world." The late Professor Banergea, of
Calcutta, reaching the same conclusion, says: "It is not easy to account
for the genesis of these ideas in the Veda, of 'one born in the
beginning Lord of creatures,' offering himself a sacrifice for the
benefit of deified mortals, except on the assumption that it is based
upon the tradition of the 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world.'"
No doubt modern scepticism might be slow to acknowledge any such
inference as this; but as Professor Banergea was a high-caste Hindu of
great learning, and was well acquainted with the subtleties of Hindu
thought, his opinion should have great weight. And when we remember how
easily scientific scepticism is satisfied with the faintest traces of
whatever strengthens its theories--how thin are some of the
generalizations of Herbert Spencer--how very slight and fanciful are the
resemblances of words which philologists often accept as indisputable
proofs--how far-fetched are the inferences sometimes drawn from the
appearance of half-decayed fossils as proofs and even demonstrations of
the law of evolution--we need not be over-modest in setting forth these
traces of an original divine element in the institution of typical
sacrifices among men.
It is never safe to assume positively this or that meaning for a
mysterious passage found in the sacred books of non-Christian systems,
but there are many things which seem at least to illustrate important
precepts of the Christian faith. Thus the slain Osiris of the Egyptians
was said to enter into the sufferings of mortals. "Having suffered the
great wound," so the record runs, "he was wounded in every other wound."
And we read in "The Book of the Dead" that "when the Lord of truth
cleanses away defilement, evil is joined to the deity that the truth may
expel the evil."[179] This seems to denote an idea of vicarious
righteousness.
The Onondaga Indians had a tradition that the celestial Hiawatha
descended from heaven and dwelt among their ancestors, and that upon the
establishment of the League of the Iroquois he was called by the Great
Spirit to sanctify that League by self-sacrifice. As the Indian council
was about to open, Hiawatha was bowed with intense suffering, which
faintly reminds one of Christ's agony in Gethsemane. He foresaw that his
innocent and only child would be taken from him. Soon after a messenger
from heaven smote her to the earth by his side. Then, having drank this
cup of sorrow, he entered the council and guided its deliberations with
superhuman wisdom.[180] In citing this incident nothing more is intended
than to call attention to some of the mysterious conceptions which seem
to float dimly through the minds of the most savage races, and which
show at the very least that the idea of vicarious sacrifice is not
strange to mankind, but is often mysteriously connected with their
greatest blessings. The legend of "Prometheus Bound," as we find it in
the tragedies of Æschylus, is so graphic in its picture of vicarious
suffering for the good of men that infidel writers have charged the
story of the Cross with plagiarism, and have applied to Prometheus some
of the expressions used in the fifty-third chapter of the Prophecy of
Isaiah. We are often told that there is injustice in the very idea of
vicarious suffering, as involved in the Christian doctrine of salvation,
or that the best instincts of a reasonable humanity revolt against it.
But such criticisms are sufficiently met by these analogies which we
find among all nations.
Let me next call attention to some of the predicted deliverers for whom
the nations have been looking. Nothing found in the study of the
religious history of mankind is more striking than the universality of a
vague expectation of coming messiahs. According to the teachings of
Hinduism there have been nine incarnations of Vishnu, of whom Buddha was
admitted to be one. But there is to be a tenth avatar who shall yet come
at a time of great and universal wickedness, and shall establish a
kingdom of righteousness on the earth. Some years ago the Rev. Dr. John
Newton, of Lahore, took advantage of this prediction and wrote a tract
showing that the true deliverer and king of righteousness had already
come in the person of Jesus Christ. So striking seemed the fulfilment
viewed from the Hindu standpoint, that some hundreds in the city of
Rampore were led to a faith in Christ as an avatar of Vishnu.
A remarkable illustration of a felt want of something brighter and more
hopeful is seen in the legends and predictions of the Teutonic and Norse
religions. The faiths of all the Teutonic races were of the sternest
character, and it was such a cultus that made them the terror of Europe.
They worshipped their grim deities in the congenial darkness of deep
forest shades. There was no joy, no sense of divine pity, no peace. They
were conscious of deep and unutterable wants which were never met. They
yearned for a golden age and the coming of a deliverer. Baldr, one of
the sons of Woden, had passed away, but prophecy promised that he should
return to deliver mankind from sorrow and from death. "When the twilight
of the gods should have passed away, then amid prodigies and the crash
and decay of a wicked world, in glory and joy he should return, and a
glorious kingdom should be renewed." Or, in the words of one of their
own poets:
"Then unsown the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr;
With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace,
Shrines of gods the great and holy,
There the just shall joy forever,
And in pleasure pass the ages."
The well-known prediction of the Sibyl of Cumæ bears testimony to the
same expectation of mankind. The genuine Sibylline Oracles were in
existence anterior to the birth of Christ. Virgil died forty years
before that event, and the well-known eclogue _Pollio_ is stated by him
to be a transcript of the prophetic carmen of the Sibyl of Cumæ. But for
the fact that it has a Roman instead of a Jewish coloring, it might
almost seem Messianic. The oracle speaks thus: "The last era, the
subject of the Sibyl song of Cumæ, has now arrived; the great series of
ages begins anew. The virgin returns--returns the reign of Saturn. The
progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy
by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the
whole world shall commence. Whilst thou, O Pollio, art consul, this
glory of our age shall be made manifest, and the celestial months begin
their revolutions. Under thy auspices whatever vestiges of our guilt
remain, shall, by being atoned for, redeem the earth from fear forever.
He shall partake of the life of the gods. He shall reign over a world in
peace with his father's virtues. The earth, sweet boy, as her
first-fruits, shall pour thee forth spontaneous flowers. The serpent
shall die: the poisonous and deceptive tree shall die. All things,
heavens and earth and the regions of the sea, rejoice at the advent of
this age. The time is now at hand."[181] Forty years later the Christ
appeared. Whether Virgil had been influenced by Hebrew prophecy it is
impossible to say. It may be that the so-called Sibyl had caught
something of the same hope which led the Magi of the East to the cradle
of the infant Messiah, but in any case the eclogue voiced a vague
expectation which prevailed throughout the Roman Empire.
In modern as well as in ancient times nations and races have looked for
deliverers or for some brighter hope. Missionaries found the Hawaiians
dissatisfied and hopeless; their idols had been thrown away. The Karens
were waiting for the arrival of the messengers of the truth. The
Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish conquest, were looking for a
celestial benefactor. The very last instance of an anxious looking for a
deliverer is that which quite recently has so sadly misled our Sioux
Indians.
Mankind have longed not only for deliverers, but also for _mediators_.
The central truth of the Christian faith is its divine sympathy and help
brought down into our human nature. In other words, mediation--God with
man. The faith of the Hindus, lacking this element, was cold and
remorseless. Siva, the god of destruction, and his hideous and
blood-thirsty wives, had become chief objects of worship, only because
destruction and death led to life again. But there was no divine help.
The gods were plied with sharp bargains in sacrifice and merit; they
were appeased; they were cajoled; but there was no love. But the time
came when the felt want of men for something nearer and more sympathetic
led to the doctrine of Vishnu's incarnations: first grotesque deliverers
in animal shapes, but at length the genial and sympathetic Krishna. He
was not the highest model of character, but he was human. He had
associated with the rustics and frolicked around their camp-fires. He
became Arjuna's charioteer and rendered him counsel and help in that low
disguise. He was a sharer of burdens--a counsellor and friend. And he
became the most popular of all Hindu deities.
The important point in all this is that this old system, so
self-sufficient and self-satisfied, should have groped its way toward a
divine sympathizer in human form, a living and helpful god among men.
Hinduism had not been wanting in anthropomorphisms: it had imagined the
presence of God in a thousand visible objects which rude men could
appreciate. Trees, apes, cattle, crocodiles, and serpents had been
invested with an in-dwelling spirit, but it had found no mediator. Men
had been trying by all manner of devices to sublimate their souls, and
climb Godward by their own self-mortification; but they had realized no
divine help. To meet this want they developed a veritable doctrine of
faith. They had learned from Buddhism the great influence and power of
one who could instruct and counsel and encourage. Some Oriental scholars
think that they had also learned many things from Christian
sources.[182]
However that may be--from whatever source they had gained this
suggestion--they found it to accord with the deepest wants of the human
heart. And the splendid tribute which that peculiar development bears to
the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith, is all the more
striking for the fact that it grew up in spite of the adamantine
convervatism of a system, all of whose teachings had been in a precisely
opposite direction. It was old Hinduism coming out of its intrenchments
to pay honor to the true way of eternal life. Probably the doctrine
first sprang from a felt want, but was subsequently reinforced by
Christian influences.
The late Professor Banergea, in his "Aryan Witness," gives what must be
regarded as at least a very plausible account of the last development of
the so-called Krishna cult, and of this doctrine of faith. He thinks
that it borrowed very much from western monotheists. He quotes a passage
from the Narada Pancharata, which represents a pious Brahman of the
eighth century A.D., as having been sent to the far northwest, where
"white-faced monotheists" would teach him a pure faith in the Supreme
Vishnu or Krishna. He quotes also, from another and later authority, a
dialogue in which this same Brahman reproved Vyasa for not having
celebrated the praises of Krishna as supreme. This Professor Banergea
regarded as proof that previously to the eighth century Krishna has been
worshipped only as a demigod. But the whole drift of the old Brahmanical
doctrines had been toward sacrifice as a debt and credit system, and
that plan had failed. It had impoverished the land and ruined the
people, and had brought no spiritual comfort. Men had found that they
could not buy salvation.
Moreover, Buddhism and other forms of rationalistic philosophy, after
prolonged and thorough experiment, had also failed. The Hindu race had
found that as salvation could not be purchased with sacrifices, neither
could it be reasoned out by philosophy, nor worked out by austerities.
It must come from a Divine helper. Thus, when Narada had wearied
himself with austerities--so we read in the Narada Pancharata--he heard
a voice from heaven saying: "If Krishna is worshipped, what is the use
of austerities? If Krishna is _not_ worshipped, what is the use of
austerities? If Krishna is within and without, what is the use of
austerities? If Krishna is _not_ within and without, what is the use of
austerities? Stop, O Brahman; why do you engage in austerities? Go
quickly and get matured faith in Krishna, as described by the sect of
Vishnu who snaps the fetters of the world." "We are thus led," says
Professor Banergea, "to the very genesis of the doctrine of faith in
connection with Hinduism. And it was admittedly not an excogitation of
the Brahmanical mind itself. Narada had brought it from the land of 'the
whites,' where he got an insight into Vishnu as the Saviour which was
not attainable elsewhere." And he then persuaded the author of one of
the Puranas to recount the "Lord's acts"--in other words, the history of
Krishna, with the enforcement of faith in his divinity: "Change the
name," says Banergea, "and it is almost Christian doctrine."[183]
It is an interesting fact that Buddhism, in its progress through the
centuries, has also wrought out a doctrine of faith by a similar
process. It began as a form of atheistic rationalism. Its most salient
feature was staunch and avowed independence of all help from gods or
men. It emphasized in every way the self-sufficiency of one's own mind
and will to work out emancipation. But when Buddha died no enlightened
counsellor was left, and another Buddha could not be expected for four
thousand years. The multitudes of his disciples felt that, theory or no
theory, there was an awful void. The bald and bleak system could not
stand on such a basis. The human heart cried out for some divine helper,
some one to whom man could pray. Fortunately there were supposed to be
predestined Buddhas.--"Bodisats"--then living in some of the heavens,
and as they were preparing themselves to become incarnate Buddhas, they
must already be interested in human affairs, and especially the
Maitreyeh, who would appear on earth next in order.
So Buddhism, in spite of its own most pronounced dogmas, began to pray
to an unseen being, began to depend and trust, began to lay hold on
divine sympathy, and look to heaven for help. By the seventh century of
our era the northern Buddhists, whether influenced in part by the
contact of Christianity, or not, had subsidized more than one of these
coming Buddhas. They had a complete Trinity. One person of this Trinity,
the everywhere present Avolokitesvara, became the chief object of
worship, the divine helper on whom all dependence was placed. This
mythical being was really the God of northern Buddhism in the Middle
Ages, and is the popular sympathizer of all Mongolian races to the
present day. In Thibet he is supposed to be incarnate in the Grand Lama.
In China he is incarnate in Quanyen, the goddess of mercy. With sailors
she is the goddess of the sea. In many temples she is invoked by the
sick, the halt, the blind, the impoverished. Her images are sometimes
represented with a hundred arms to symbolize her omnipotence to save.
Beal says of this, as Banergea says of the faith element of the Krishna
cult, that it is wholly alien to the religion whose name it bears: it is
not Buddhism. He thinks that it has been greatly affected by Christian
influences.
Another mythical being who is worshipped as God in China and Japan, is
Amitabba, a Dhyana or celestial Buddha, who in long kalpas of Time has
acquired merit enough for the whole world. Two of the twelve Buddhist
sects of Japan have abandoned every principle taught by Gautama, except
his ethics, and have cast themselves upon the free grace of Amitabba.
They have exchanged the old atheism for theism. They have given up all
dependence on merit-making and self-help; they now rely wholly on the
infinite merit of another. Their religious duties are performed out of
gratitude for a free salvation wrought out for them, and no longer as
the means of gaining heaven. They live by a faith which works by love.
They expect at death an immediate transfer to a permanent heaven,
instead of a series of transmigrations. Their Buddha is not dead, but he
ever liveth to receive into his heavenly realm all who accept his grace,
and to admit them to his divine fellowship forever. By a direct and
complete imputation they are made sharers in his righteousness, and
become joint heirs in his heavenly inheritance. Whatever the genesis of
these strange cults which now prevail as the chief religious beliefs
among the Mongolian races, they are marvellously significant. They have
come almost to the very threshold of Christianity. What they need is the
true Saviour and not a myth, a living faith and not an empty delusion.
Nevertheless, they prove that faith in a divine salvation is the only
religion that can meet the wants of the human soul.
There is something very encouraging in these approaches toward the great
doctrines of salvation. I do not believe that these sects have come so
near to the true Messiah without the influence of the Spirit of God, and
without more or less light from Christian sources. But partly they have
been moved by those wants which Hinduism and Buddhism could not satisfy.
The principle of their faith is worthy of recognition, and the
missionary should say as Paul said: "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him
declare I unto you."
It is a very significant fact that most of the Brahmo Somajes of India
have adopted Jesus Christ as the greatest of the world's prophets.
Chunder Sen sometimes spoke of him as a devout Christian would speak.
The Arya Somaj would not own His name, but it has graced its Hindu creed
with many of His essential doctrines. Quite recently a new organ of the
Brahmo Somaj, published at Hyderabad, has announced as its leading
object, "to harmonize pure Hinduism and pure Christianity, with Christ
as the chief corner-stone." In the exact words of this paper, called
_The Harmony_, its aim is "to preach Christ as the eternal Son of God,
as the Logos in all prophets and saints before and after the
incarnation, as the incarnate, perfect righteousness by whose obedience
man is made righteous.... Christ is the reconciliation of man with man,
and of all men with God, the harmony of humanity with humanity, and of
all humanity with Divinity." This prospectus condemns the average
Christianity of foreigners in India--the over-reaching, "beef-eating,
beer-drinking" Anglo-Saxon type, "which despises the Hindu Scriptures
and yet belies its own;" but it exalts the spotless and exalted Christ
and builds all the hopes of humanity upon Him. How will the mere
philosopher explain this wonderful power of personality over men of all
races, if it be not Divine?
But perhaps the most remarkable tribute to the transcendent character of
Christ is seen in the fact that _all_ sects of religionists, the most
fanatical and irrational, seem to claim Him as in some sense their own.
Mormonism, even when plunging into the lowest depths of degradation, has
always claimed to rest on the redemption of Jesus Christ.
Mohammedanism--even the Koran itself--has always acknowledged Christ as
the only sinless prophet. All the others, from Adam to Mohammed, stand
convicted of heinous offences, and they will not reappear on earth;
while He who knew no sin shall, according to Mohammedan prophecy, yet
come again to judge the earth. The worshippers of Krishna, some of whom
are found among us in this land, claim Christ as one of the true avatars
of Vishnu, and heartily commend His character and His teachings. Our
western Buddhists are just now emphasizing the idea that Christ was the
sacred Buddha of Palestine, that he studied and taught "the eight-fold
path," became an arahat, and attained Nirvana, and that the Christian
Church has only misrepresented His transcendent wisdom and purity. The
ablest tract on Theosophy that I have yet seen is entitled "Theosophy
the Religion of Jesus."
How marvellous is all this--that Theosophists, Aryas, Brahmos,
Buddhists, Moslems, though they hate Christianity and fight it to the
death--still bow before the mild sceptre of Christ. As the central light
of the diamond shines alike through every facet and angle, so His
doctrine and character are claimed as the glory of every creed. Many
types of heathen faiths honor Him, and many schools of philosophic
scepticism. Some of the noblest tributes to His unearthly purity have
been given by men who rejected His divinity. In spite of itself the most
earnest thought of many races, many systems, many creeds, has
crystallized around Him. History has made Him its moral centre, the
calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the anniversary of His
birth is the festival of the civilized world. The prediction that all
nations should call Him blessed is already fulfilled.