HINDU RELIGIOUS IDEALS AS THEY AFFECT THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY
To the student of comparative religion there appear many striking
consonances between Hinduism and Christianity. Many a deep note in
religious thought and life finds common expression in these two great
faiths. Yet their dissonances are much more marked and fundamental.
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 Brahm 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 _sayutchia_ (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.