NEW RELIGIOUS IDEAS--ARE THERE ANY?
"From low to high doth dissolution climb.
* * * * *
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time."
WORDSWORTH.
[Sidenote: A Renaissance without a reformation.]
It would be interesting to speculate what the Renaissance of the
sixteenth century would have done for Europe had it been unaccompanied
by a Reformation of religion. Without the Reformation, we may aver there
would have been for the British nation no Bible of 1611, no Pilgrim
Fathers to America, and no Revolution of 1688, along with all that these
things imply of progress many-fold. What might have been, however,
although interesting as a speculation, is too uncertain to be discussed
further with profit. I only desire to give a general idea of the
religious situation in India at the close of the nineteenth century.
There has been a Renaissance without a Reformation.
Into the new intellectual world the Hindu mind has willingly entered,
but progress in religious ideas has been slow and reluctant. The new
_political_ idea of the unity of India and the consciousness of
citizenship were pleasing discoveries that met with no opposition; but
that same new Indian national consciousness resented any departure from
the old _social_ and _religious_ ideas.
[Sidenote: Meaning of the term _religious_.]
In speaking of the development of religious ideas in India, I use the
term _religious_ in the modern sense. Under religion, in India is
comprehended much that in Europe would be reckoned within the _social_
sphere. In India all questions of inter-marriage and of eating together,
many questions regarding occupations and the relations of earning
members of a family to idle members, are religious not social questions.
The case was similar among the Jews, we may remember. As recorded in the
fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, two of the three
injunctions of the Jerusalem Church to the Gentile Church at Antioch
deal with these same socio-religious matters. Blood and animals killed
by strangling were to be prohibited as food, and certain marriages also
were forbidden.
Perhaps among Europeans the question of burial _v_. cremation may be
instanced as a matter of social custom that has been made a religious
question. But in no country more than in India have customs, _mores_,
come also to mean morals. A halo of religious sanctity encircles the
things that have been and are. Taking "religion," however, in the modern
sense, we ask: Although there has not been any great Reformation of
religion, have religious ideas undergone no noteworthy development? It
is well to put the question definitely with regard to religion, although
in the opening chapter abundant testimony to a general change in ideas
has already been cited. There _is_ no lack of specific evidence as to
religious changes, and the adoption of certain Christian ideas.
Sir Alfred Lyall's observations let us first of all recall, for he
possesses all the experience of an Indian Civil Servant and Governor of
a Province--the United Provinces. He speaks both for officials and for
Europeans conversant with India.[47] Speaking in the person of an
orthodox brahman surveying the moral and material changes that English
rule is producing in India, he says: "We are parting rapidly under ...
this Public Instruction with our religious beliefs." The old brahman
warns the British Government that the old deities are being dethroned,
and that the responsibility for famines, formerly imputed to the gods,
is being cast upon the British Government. Another official witness
speaks still more plainly. _The Bengal Government Report_ upon the
publications of the year 1899 asserts: "All this revolution in the
religious belief of the educated Hindu has been brought about as much by
the dissemination of Christian thought by missionaries as by the study
of Hindu scriptures; for Christian influence is detectable in many of
the Hindu publications of the year." The writer of the _Report_ is a
Hindu gentleman. The _Report of the Census of India_, 1901, declares
that "the influence of Christian teaching is ... far reaching, and that
there are many whose acts and opinions have been greatly modified
thereby." After these statements from secular and official writers, we
may refrain from quoting from Mission authorities more than the
statement of the Decennial Conference of representative missionaries
from all India in 1902. The statement refers to South India.
"Christianity," we are told, "is in the air. The higher classes are
assimilating its ideas."[48] Thus from East and North and South, from
officials and non-officials, from Europeans and natives, comes
concurrent testimony. There is no declared Reformation, but Christian
and Western religious ideas are leavening India.
[Sidenote: Variety of religious ideas in India.]
To the student of Comparative Religion, or of Christianity, or of the
general progress of nations, that testimony from India is particularly
interesting. To the student of Comparative Religion, India presents a
particularly attractive field. Not hidden away in sacred classics or in
the records of travellers, but as elements of existing religions,
professed by men around, are illustrations of most of the types of
religious thought and practice. There are the pantheism of certain Hindu
ascetics, the polytheism of the masses, the animism of aboriginal races,
and the varieties of theism of Christians, Mahomedans, and the new
Hindus respectively. There are the curious phenomena of goddesses as
well as gods, and of distinctive features in the character and worship
of the female deities. There is the whole scale of worship up from
bloody sacrifices and self-tortures and from worship where the priest is
everything, to worship like that of Mahomedans and of Protestant
Christians, where a mediatory priesthood is virtually repudiated. There
is the stage, still farther beyond, at which the worshipper is supposed
to be able to say of himself "I am God." Of the first and last stages,
India may be called the special fields, for probably nowhere else in the
world are so many animals killed in sacrifice as at the temple of
Kalighat in Calcutta; and the last stage, as an observable religious
phenomenon, is peculiar to India. In India there is presented to us
salvation in the attainment of an eternal existence along with God, as
among Christians and Mahomedans and many of the less educated Hindus;
and there is salvation in deliverance from further lives, as among those
Hindus who hold the doctrine of transmigration. In India all these
varieties of religious thought and practice are actual, perceptible
phenomena, ready for first-hand observation by the student of
Comparative Religion. But still more interesting to him is that they are
there in mutual contact, and telling upon each other. For in the sphere
of human beliefs, the student is much more than an outside observer and
classifier. He has his own conception of truth, and is interested in
observing how far in each case there is a convergence towards truth or a
divergence from it. In the sphere of human beliefs he holds further,
that, given opportunity, the nearer to truth the greater certainty of
survival. Given opportunity, as already postulated, the law of beliefs
is the survival of the truest. Truth will prevail.
[Sidenote: Dynamical elements of Christianity.]
[Sidenote: Dynamical doctrines in other spheres]
To the student of Christianity, again, that same concurrent testimony is
profoundly interesting. Certain Christian ideas are being assimilated in
India. Certain cardinal aspects of Christianity are proving themselves
possessed of inherent force and attractiveness. They are showing that
they possess force not from authority, or tradition, or as part of a
system of doctrine, or as racially fitting, but when presented in new
and often very unfavourable surroundings. Borrowing an expression from
physical science, certain elements of Christianity are proving
_themselves dynamical_. For in non-Christian India, ecclesiastical
authority or tradition and the system of Christian doctrine as such,
possess no force. By illustrations from other spheres, let us make clear
what is meant by such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine
of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before
the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been
accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly
that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few
years earlier than the publication of _The Origin of Species_, another
body of new doctrine was propounded to Britain and the world, and
strongly urged by its upholders, namely, the doctrine of Free Trade--the
advantage to the community of buying in the cheapest market. True or
false, that body of doctrine has not proved dynamical among the nations,
for the great majority of peoples still repudiate the doctrines of Free
Trade. Similarly certain elements of Christianity are commending
themselves to new India, and certain others are failing to do so at this
time.
[Sidenote: Illustrations from the history of Christianity.]
From century to century these dynamical elements of Christianity may
vary; and it is profoundly interesting to the student of the history of
religious beliefs to observe the variation. In the early apostolic
times, when the apostles and disciples were "scattered abroad," we see
plainly in the Acts of the Apostles that the dynamical element of
Christianity is the Resurrection of Our Lord. It is that which tells,
and His coming reign--with Jewish audiences in particular. It was,
_e.g._, the manifestation of Christ to St. Paul on his way to Damascus
that completed the conversion of his life. And so, repeatedly throughout
the record of the Acts of the Apostles, they are described as
witness--bearers of the resurrection to the outside world. [Greek:
Megalê dynamei], "_with great power_ gave the apostles their witness of
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them
all."[49] And yet--dynamical elements vary--in the different atmosphere
of Athens (we are twice told in so many words) this same resurrection of
Christ dug a gulf between St. Paul and the Athenians.[50] Passing to a
very different period, the latter half of the eighteenth century, the
period of the rise of Methodism and the revival of religion in England,
the period of new interest in the inmates of prisons, of agitation for
the abolition of slavery, of the foundation of all the great missionary
societies, the period of the French Revolution and the demand at home
for extension of the franchise, all outcome of the same
inspiration,--what was the strong epidemic thought? Reading the
religious history of the time, we feel that the power that passed from
soul to soul was a tremulously intense realisation of the family of God
and the love of God for men, represented in Christ's voluntary death
upon the cross, love for the neglected and the enslaved in their sins
and their sorrows. And again in our own day, when we are tempted to say
that the consciousness of God and the eternal, the primary religious
instincts, are fading, what by common consent is really dynamical among
educated men? Assuredly not the shibboleths of High or Low Church. It is
the person of Jesus Christ that is dynamical; what He was on earth, what
He has been ever since in the hearts of individuals and in the Church.
In a real sense we are starting again from and with Himself.
Anticipating, let us say that these two elements most recently dynamical
in Britain have had force likewise in India.
[Sidenote: India a new touch-stone of Christianity.]
India in the nineteenth century has been indeed a new touchstone to the
Christian religion; and, in brief, to make plain how far Christianity
has proved its force and its fitness to survive will occupy the
remaining chapters of this book. What has been the nature and extent of
the impact of Christian and modern thought upon India, and particularly
upon Hinduism? Of course I am thinking particularly of the educated
native Hindu community that has sprung up during the century just
closed. The dynamic of Christianity, which it is our task to test,
implies a measure of conscious and intelligent approval. Japan is
another such testing ground. Indeed the only large fields where
Christianity is presented to bodies of non-Christian men able to yield
approval or refuse it on intelligent grounds, of which they are
conscious, are India and Japan. In China also there are no doubt large
bodies of literati, but as a class they have not yet come into the
modern world and into contact with Christianity. Even down to the Boxer
rising of 1900, the wall of conservative patriotism shut off the
literati in China from the outer civilisation and religions.
[Sidenote: Indians themselves to be our witnesses.]
Fortunately for students of India, her new literati are not merely in
touch with the modern world, but express their minds readily in public
meetings and in print. From themselves we shall chiefly quote in
justifying the statements that will be made regarding the former or the
modern religious opinions of India. To non-Christian or secular writers,
also, we shall chiefly go, that the bias may rather be against than for
the acknowledgment of change and progress. Our plan is to pronounce as
little as possible upon either the Christian or the Hindu positions. We
are observers of the religious ideas of modern India, and desire our
readers to come into touch with modern Indians and to see for
themselves.
[Sidenote: Obstacles to changes in religion.]
[Sidenote: Education strips new Indians of belief.]
Truth is great and will prevail, but let us not under-estimate the
difficulties in the way of new opinions in India, where these do not
appeal to the natural desires for power or status or comfort. I have
already referred to the deep-rooted notion that Hinduism is of the soil
of India, and adherence to it bound up with the national honour. I refer
to it here again only to glance at a kindred notion, common among
Anglo-Indians, that the Indian religion is the outcome of Indian
environment, and is "consequently" the best religion for India. That
superficial fallacy, undoubtedly, alienates the sympathy of many
Anglo-Indians from religious and social progress in India. Thrice at
least did one of the most distinguished viceroys, when addressing native
audiences, advise them to stick to their own beliefs, using these or
very similar words. He was addressing Mahomedans at one place, Hindus at
the second place, and Buddhists at the third, and we leave his advice at
one place to contradict his advice at another. Certainly let us allow
for variation in local usage, and in subjective opinion, while we are
insisting on the universality and objectivity of truth. For in spite of
new and strange environment, in spite of that prevailing notion that
religion is a racial thing, of the natural disinclination to change, of
modern agnosticism and materialism when the old ideas do give way--in
spite of these things, some of the cardinal features of Christianity are
commending themselves to educated India. Far from religion being racial,
the recent religious evolution of India suggests that in respect of the
religious instinct and the religious faculty, mankind are one, not
divided. _A priori_, therefore, we might anticipate that the elements of
Christianity which have proved dynamical with new India will be the same
that have proved their dynamic with educated men at home. So far as the
situation in India has been created by the destructive influence of
modern education, and by what may be called the modern spirit, the same
influences are telling both in Europe and in India; they have come from
Europe to India. There is the same unwillingness to believe in the
supernatural, and the same demand that religion shall satisfy ethical
and utilitarian tests. One difference, however, we may note. The
educated men of India may not be living so entirely in the modern
atmosphere as the men of Europe and America; but in India the modern
spirit finds usages and systems of thought more inconsistent with modern
ideas. As a consequence, where in India the modern spirit _has_ come, it
has stripped men barer of belief. Listen to the following curious
conglomeration, showing the influences at work, constructive and
destructive. It is a passage from the pamphlet already referred to, _The
Future of India_; the author is arguing for what he calls "practical
recognition of the Fatherhood of God"--one new positive idea. That idea
he takes to mean that "God is the Father of all nations and religions,"
and that _therefore_ "it does not matter much to what religion a man
belongs, so far as the future of his soul is concerned." Does not that
signify that he himself is stripped bare of belief? From which modern
notion, that religion does not matter much, he next argues that a man
ought to deny himself the luxury and "satisfaction of breaking his
religious fetters," _i.e._ of seceding from his own faith and joining
another. He ought to stick to his community, says this writer, and "have
the satisfaction of working for the elevation of his countrymen." There
we have the new political consciousness. The writer, it should be added,
says some plain things about the need of social reform.
[Sidenote: Three dynamical elements of Christianity.]
As proved by observation in India, the dynamical elements of
Christianity may be briefly enumerated as follows. Monotheism, tending
more and more to the distinctively Christian idea of God, Our Father, is
commending itself, and being widely accepted. Secondly, in a remarkable
degree, Jesus Christ Himself is being recognised and receiving general
homage. In a less degree, and yet notably, the Christian conception of
the Here and Hereafter is commending itself to the minds of the
new-educated Hindus. In the new religious organisations also, the
Christian manner of worship and of public worship commends itself almost
as a matter of course. In none of these spheres am I describing the
outcome of visible conflict or of any loud controversy. Rather,
Christianity brought close to the religious instincts and the religious
ideas of India has been like a great magnet introduced among a number of
kindred but non-magnetised bodies lying loosely around. In the presence,
simply, of these dynamical elements, or in contact with them, Indian
religious thought is becoming polarised. Towards and away from the same
great points, Indian religious thought is setting. These dynamical
elements of Christianity, and the illustration of their power, will be
considered in the following chapters.
Of the elements of Christianity that have proved themselves dynamical,
we may note the natural order in which they have come. The order in
which I have stated them is the order in which they asserted themselves,
first "God Our Father," then "Jesus Christ Himself." First, of this
world in which we find ourselves, when our _minds_ awake, we must have
some satisfying conception. The belief in one God, in Him for whom we
can find no better name than "Our Father," approved itself to awakened
India, to the _intellectually_ enlightened, and in the first place to
small groups of enlightened men in the large towns, the centres of
modern education and Christian influence. Then came an advance of a
different nature altogether. To those spiritually minded and more
intense men who needed a religious master, a hero, to whom their
_hearts_ might go out, there came, after certain obstacles had been
broken down, some knowledge of the actual historical Jesus Christ. The
first stage satisfied the _mind_ of modern educated India; the second
stage concerns the highest affections and the lives. We know the step,
when in the Apostles' Creed we pass from "I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," to the words "and in Jesus
Christ." Thereat we have brought theology down from heaven to earth; or
rather, in these days we would say, in Jesus Christ we have obtained on
earth, in actual history, in our affections, a foundation on which to
rear our system of actual and motive-giving belief.