THE NEW THEISM
"The idea of God is the productive and conservative principle
of civilisation; as is the religion of a community, so will be
in the main its morals, its laws, its general history."
_Vico_ and _Michelet_ (Prof. Flint's _Philosophy of History_).
[Sidenote: Polytheism receding before Monotheism.]
In some measure, then, we understand how Hindu polytheism, theism, and
pantheism are related to each other; we realise in some measure the
openness of the Indian mind, and we now ask ourselves how far the
Christian doctrine of God has impressed itself upon that open mind. Of
the polytheistic masses it has already been pointed out that intelligent
individuals will now readily acknowledge that there is truly one God
only. Further, that the polytheistic idolatry which is now associated
with the masses once extended far higher up the scale, is evident to
anyone reading the observations made early in the nineteenth century.
Early travellers in India, like the French traveller Tavernier of the
seventeenth century, speak of the Indians without distinction as
idolaters, contrasting them with the Mahomedans of India. In the
_Calcutta Gazette_ of 1816, Raja Rammohan Roy, the learned opponent of
Hindu idolatry, the Erasmus of the new era, is called the _discoverer_
of theism in the sacred books of the Hindus. Rammohan Roy himself
disclaimed the title, but writing in 1817, he speaks of "the system of
idolatry into which Hindus are now completely sunk."[71] Many learned
brahmans, he says in the same pamphlet, are perfectly aware of the
absurdity of idol worship, indicating that the knowledge belonged only
to the scholars. His own object, he said, was to declare _the unity_ of
God as the real thought of the Hindu Scriptures. Across India, on the
Bombay side, we find clear evidence of the state of opinion among the
middle class in 1830, from the report of a public debate on the
Christian and Hindu religions. The antagonists were, on the one side,
the Scottish missionary Dr. John Wilson and others, and on the other
side two leading officials of the highest Government Appellate Court,
men who would now rank as eminent representatives of the educated class.
One of these demanded proof that there was only one God.[72]
[Sidenote: The beginning of the nineteenth century.]
[Sidenote: Monotheistic belief a broadening wedge between pantheism and
polytheism.]
Returning to Bengal, it would seem from Rammohan Roy's evidence that in
1820 the standpoint of the learned at that time was exactly what we have
called the standpoint of an intelligent individual among the masses
to-day, namely, a plea that the multitude of gods were agents of the one
Supreme God. "Debased and despicable," he writes, "as is the belief of
the Hindus in three hundred and thirty millions of gods, they (the
learned) pretend to reconcile this persuasion with the doctrine of the
unity of God, alleging that the three hundred and thirty millions of
gods are subordinate agents assuming various offices and preserving the
harmony of the universe under one Godhead, as innumerable rays issue
from one sun."[73] Turning to testimony of a different kind, we find
Macaulay speaking about the polytheistic idolatry he knew between 1834
and 1838. "The great majority of the population," he writes, "consists
of idolaters." Macaulay's belief was that idolatry would not survive
many years of English education, and we shall now take note how in the
century the sphere of idolatry and polytheism has been limited. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, we may now say that Indian Hindu
society consisted of a vast polytheistic mass with a very thin, an often
invisible, film of pantheists on the top. The nineteenth century of
enlightenment and contact with Christianity has seen the wide acceptance
of the monotheistic conception by the new-educated India. The founding
of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic Association in 1828 by Rammohan
Roy has already been called the commencement of an indigenous theistic
church outside the transplanted theism of Indian Christianity and Indian
Mahomedanism. Strictly rendered, the divine name _Brahm[=a]_, adopted by
the Br[=a]hmas, expresses the pantheistic idea that God is the _One
without a second_, not the theistic idea of one personal God; but what
we are concerned with is, that it was in the monotheistic sense that
Rammohan Roy adopted the term. To him Brahm[=a] was a personal God, with
whom men spoke in prayer and praise. As a matter of fact the pantheistic
formula, "One only, no second," occurs in the creeds of all three new
monotheistic bodies, Br[=a]hmas, Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jists, and
[=A]ryas, but in the same monotheistic sense. The original Sanscrit of
the formula (Ekam eva advityam), three words from the Chh[=a]ndogya
Upanishad, is regularly intoned (droned) in the public worship of
Br[=a]hmas. Like a wedge between the polytheism of the masses below and
the pantheism of the brahmanically educated above, there came in this
naturalised theism, a body of opinion ever widening as modern education
enlarges its domain. It is one of the _events_ of Indian history. Now,
pantheistic in argument and polytheistic in domestic practices as
educated Hindus still are, they never call themselves pantheists, and
would resent being called polytheists; they call themselves theists.
"Every intelligent man is now a monotheist," writes the late Dr. John
Murdoch of Madras, an experienced observer.[74] "Many" (of the educated
Hindus), says a Hindu writer, "--I may say most of them--are in reality
monotheists, but monotheists of a different type from those who belong
to the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j. They are, if we may so call them, passive
monotheists.... The influence of the Hindu environment is as much
perceptible in them as that of the Christian environment."[75] Professor
Max Müller and Sir M. Monier Williams are of the same opinion. "The
educated classes look with contempt upon idolatry.... A complete
disintegration of ancient faiths is in progress in the upper strata of
society. Most of the ablest thinkers become pure Theists or
Unitarians."[76] That change took place within the nineteenth century, a
testimony to the force of Christian theism in building up belief, and to
the power of the modern Indian atmosphere to dissipate irrational and
unpractical beliefs. For, in contact with the practical instincts of
Europe, the pantheistic denial of one's own personality--a disbelief in
one's own consciousness, the thought that there is no thinker--was bound
to give way, as well as the irrational polytheism. Very unphilosophical
may have been Lord Byron's attitude to the idealism of Berkeley: "When
Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 'twas no matter what he said."
But that represents the modern atmosphere which New India is breathing,
and it is fatal to pantheism.
[Sidenote: The spread of monotheism traced.]
It is interesting to note how monotheism spread. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j
of Madras was founded in 1864, theistic like the mother society, the
Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j of Bengal. Three years later the first of similar
bodies on the west side of India was founded, the Pr[=a]rthan[=a]
Sam[=a]jes or Prayer Associations of Bombay. Their very name, the
_Prayer_ Associations, implies the dual conception of God and Man, for
the pantheistic conception does not admit of the idea of prayer any more
than it admits of the other dualistic conceptions of revelation, of
worship, and of sin. These movements, again, were followed in the United
Provinces and the North-West of India by the founding of the _[=A]rya
Sam[=a]j_, or, as I have called it, the Vedic Theistic Association, also
professedly theistic. Polytheism and pantheism alike, the [=A]ryas
repudiate. For the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, the founder
of the [=A]ryas declared there was no recognition in the Vedas.
Demonstrable or not, that is the [=A]rya position. The rejection of
pantheism by such a body is noteworthy, for pantheism is identified with
India and the Vedanta, the most widely accepted of the six systems of
Indian philosophy, and the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j is nothing if not patriotic.
It is above all pro-Indian and pro-Vedic. Their direct repudiation of
pantheism may not be apparent to Western minds. [=A]ryas predicate three
eternal entities, God, the Soul, and Matter,[77] and this declaration of
the reality of the soul and of matter is a direct denial of the
pantheistic conception, its very antithesis. One pantheistic formula is:
"Brahma is reality, the world unreality" (Brahma satyam, jagan
mithy[=a]). The Pantheist must declare, and does declare in his doctrine
of Maya or Delusion, that the soul and matter are illusions.
[Sidenote: The progress of monotheism seen in the _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_.]
A very striking illustration of the present insufficiency of the
pantheistic conception of God and of the movement of educated India
towards theism is to be found where one would least expect it--in
connection with the Hindu Revival. In 1903 an _Advanced Text-book of
Hindu Religion and Ethics_ was published by the Board of Trustees of the
Hindu College, Benares, a body representing the movement for a revival
of Hinduism. It was a heroic undertaking to reconcile, in the one
Text-book, Vedic, philosophic, and popular Hinduism, to harmonise all
the six schools of philosophy, to embrace all the aspects of modern
Hinduism, and lastly to satisfy the monotheistic opinions of modern
enlightened Hindus.
[Sidenote: What is Pantheism?]
To appreciate the testimony of the Text-book, we must enter more fully
into the orthodox Hindu theological position. Pantheism, or the doctrine
that God is all and all is God--what does it imply? Pantheism is a
theory of creation, that God is all, that there are in truth no
creatures, but only unreal phantasies appearing to darkened human minds,
because darkened and half-blind. As such, its nearest Christian analogue
would be the thought that in every phenomenon we have God's fiat and
God's reason, and that "in Him we live and move and have our being."
Pantheism is a theory of spiritual culture, that our individuality is
ours only to merge it in His, although on this line, the Christian soon
parts company with the Indian pantheistic devotee, who seeks to _merge_
his consciousness in God, not to train himself into active sonship.
Pantheism is a theory of God's omnipresence, and may be little more than
enthusiastic feeling of God's omnipresence, such as we have in the 139th
psalm, "Whither shall I go from Thy presence? and whither shall I flee
from Thy spirit?" That Oriental mysticism and loyalty to an idea we can
allow for. It is in that aspect that pantheism is in closest contact
with the belief of the new educated Hindu. But in brahmanical
philosophy, pantheism is nothing else than the inability to pass beyond
the initial idea of infinite preexistent, unconditioned, Deity. To the
pantheist, let us remember, there is Deity, but there are no real
deities; there is a Godhead, but there are no real persons in the
Godhead. In the view of the pantheist, when we see aught else divine or
human than this all-embracing Deity or Godhead, it is only a
self-created mist of the dim human eye, in which there play the
flickering phantasms of deities and human individuals and things. "In
the Absolute, there is no thou, nor I, nor God," said Ramkrishna, a
great Hindu saint who died in 1886.[78] In Hindu phraseology, every
conception other than this all-comprehending Deity is _Maya_ or
delusion, and salvation is "saving knowledge" of the delusion, and
therefore deliverance from it. The perception of _manifoldness_ is Maya
or illusion, says a modern pro-Hindu writer. And again, "To India, all
that exists is but a mighty curtain of appearances, tremulous now and
again with breaths from the unseen that it conceals."[79]
[Sidenote: Maya is implied in Pantheism.]
[Sidenote: The outcome of Maya.]
The doctrine of Maya is, of course, a postulate, a necessity of
Pantheism. Brahma is the name of the impersonal pantheistic deity. First
among the unrealities, the outcome of Maya or Illusion or Ignorance, is
the idea of a supreme _personal_ God, Parameswar, from whom, or in whom,
next come the three great personal deities, namely, the Hindu Triad,
Brahm[=a] (not Brahma), Vishnu, and Siva,--Creator, Preserver, and
Destroyer respectively. These and all the other deities are the product
of Maya, and thus belong to the realm of unreality along with
Parameswar.[80] Popular theology, on the other hand, begins with the
three great personal deities.
[Sidenote: The Hindu Text-book transforms Pantheism into Monotheism.]
Now come we again to the Text-book. Rightly, as scholars would agree, it
describes the predominant philosophy of Hinduism as pantheistic. The
Text-book, however, goes farther, and declares all the six systems of
Hindu philosophy to be parts of one pantheistic system.[81] The word
pantheism, I ought to say, does not occur in the Text-book. But here is
its teaching. "All six systems," we are told, "are designed to lead man
to the One Science, the One Wisdom which saw One Self Real and all else
as Unreal." And again, "Man learns to climb from the idea of himself as
separate from Brahma to the thought that he is a part of Brahma that can
unite with Him, and finally [to the thought] that he is and ever has
been Brahma, veiled from himself by Avidy[=a]" (that is, Ignorance or
Maya). Our point is that the _Text-book of Hindu Religion_ is
professedly pantheistic, and the above is clearly pantheism and its
postulate Maya. But in the final exposition of this pantheism, what do
we find? To meet the modern thought of educated India, the pantheism is
virtually given up.[82] Brahma, the One and the All, becomes simply _the
Deity Unmanifested_; who shone forth to men as _the Deity Manifested_,
Parameswar; of whom the Hindu Triad, Brahm[=a] and Vishnu and Siva, are
only three _names_. Maya or Delusion, the foundation postulate of
pantheism, by which things _seem_ to be,--by which the One seems to be
many,--is identified with the creative will of Parameswar. In fact,
Pantheism has been virtually transformed into Theism, Brahma into a
Creator, and Maya into his creative and sustaining fiat. The _Text-book
of the Hindu Religion_ is finally monotheistic, as the times will have
it.
[Sidenote: A Parsee claiming to be a monotheist.]
As further confirmation of the change in the Indian mind, we may cite
the paper read at the Congress on the History of Religions, Basel, 1904,
by the Deputy High-priest of the Parsees, Bombay. The dualism of the
Zoroastrian theology has hitherto been regarded as its distinctive
feature, but the paper sought to show "that the religion of the Parsees
was largely monotheistic, not dualistic."
The theistic standpoint of the younger members of the educated class of
to-day is easily discoverable. The word _God_ used in their English
compositions or speeches, plainly implies a person. The commonplace of
the anxious student is that the pass desired, the failure feared, is
dependent upon the will of God--language manifestly not pantheistic.
Religious expressions, we may remark, are natural to a Hindu.
[Sidenote: The conception of the Deity as female has gone from the minds
of the educated.]
In the new theism of educated Indians we may note that the conception of
the deity as female is practically gone. Not so among the masses,
particularly of the provinces of Bengal and Gujerat, the provinces
distinctively of goddesses. The sight of a man in Calcutta in the first
hour of his sore bereavement calling upon Mother Kali has left a deep
impression upon me.[83] Be it remembered, however, what his cry meant,
and what the name _Mother_ in such cases means. It is a honorific form
of address, not the symbol for devoted love. The _goddesses_ of India,
not the gods, are the deities to be particularly feared and to be
propitiated with blood. It is energy, often destructive energy, not
woman's tenderness that they represent, even according to Hindu
philosophy and modern rationalisers. We may nevertheless well believe
that contact with Christian ideas will yet soften and sweeten this title
of the goddesses.
[Sidenote: The new theism is largely Christian theism--God is termed
Father;]
[Sidenote: Or Mother.]
The new theism of educated India is more and more emphatically Christian
theism. Anyone may observe that the name, other than "God," by which the
Deity is almost universally named by educated Hindus is "The Father," or
"Our Heavenly Father," or some such name. The new name is not a
rendering of any of the vernacular names in use in modern India; it is
due directly to its use in English literature and in Christian preaching
and teaching. The late Keshub Chunder Sen's _Lectures in India_,
addressed to Hindu audiences, abound in the use of the name. The
fatherhood of God is in fact one of the articles of the Br[=a]hma creed.
In his last years, the Brahma leader, Keshub Chunder Sen, frequently
spoke of God as the divine _Mother_, but we are not to suppose that it
expresses a radical change of thought about God. Keshub Chunder Sen's
last recorded prayer begins: "I have come, O Mother, into thy
sanctuary"; his last, almost inarticulate, cries were: "Father,"
"Mother." Where modern Indian religious teachers address God as
_Mother_, it is a modernism, an echo of the thought of the Fatherhood of
God. The name is altered because the name of Mother better suits the
ecstasies of Indian devotion, where the ecstatic mood is cultivated. A
case in point is the Hindu devotee, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, who died near
Calcutta in 1886. "Why," Ramkrishna Paramhansa asks, "does the God-lover
find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? Because," his
answer is, "the child is more free with its mother, and consequently she
is dearer to the child than anyone else.[84] Another instance we find in
the appeal issued by a committee of Hindu gentlemen for subscriptions
towards the rebuilding of the temple at Kangra, destroyed by the
earthquake of 1905. The president of the committee, signing the appeal,
was a Hindu judge of the High Court at Lahore, a graduate from a Mission
College. "There are Hindus," thus runs the appeal, "who by the grace of
the Divine Mother could give the [whole] amount ... and not feel the
poorer for it."[85]
[Sidenote: The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j and the name Father.]
[Sidenote: The Hindu College, Benares, and the name _Father_.]
The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j, on the other hand, seems set against speaking or
thinking of God as the Father. Specially present to their minds and in
their preaching is the thought of God's absolute justice; and they hold
that His Justice and His Fatherhood are contradictory attributes. Virtue
_will_ have its reward, they assert, and Sin its punishment, both in
this and the following existences. We recognise the working of their
doctrine of transmigration, perhaps also the effect of a feeble
presentation of the Christian doctrine of the Father's forgiveness of
sin. Nevertheless, we may note in a hymn-book published in London for
the use of members of the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j resident there, such hymns as
"My God and Father, while I stray," and "My God, my Father, blissful
name," as if the name were not explicitly excluded. We also read that
the very last parting words of the founder of the [=A]ryas himself were:
"Let Thy will be done, O Father!"[86] The heart of man will not be
denied the name and the feeling of "God who is our home." Turning again
from the [=A]ryas to the new citadel of Benares, and Hinduism, the Hindu
College, Benares, we find that along with the Text-book already
mentioned, there was published a _Catechism in Hindu Religion and
Morals_ for boys and girls. One question is, "Can we know that eternal
Being (the "One only without a second," or "The All," _i.e._ pantheistic
Deity)? The answer is, "Only when revealed as Ishwar, the Lord, the
loving Father of all the worlds and of all the creatures who live in
them." That idea of the loving Father, of divine Law and Love in one
person, is new to Hinduism. The law of God may be only imperfectly
apprehended, but the loving Fatherhood of God, the approachable one, has
become manifest in India--one of Christianity's dynamic doctrines.
Strangest confirmation of all, a Mahomedan preacher of Behar a few years
ago was expounding from the Koran the Fatherhood of God. The name and
thought of the divine Father established, we may leave name and thought
to be invested with their full significance in the fulness of time.
"It is with Pantheism, not Polytheism, that a rising morality will have
to reckon," says Sir Alfred Lyall.[87] The result of all our observation
has been different. Pantheism is melting out of the sky of the educated,
and if nothing else take its place, it will be a selfish materialism or
agnosticism, not avowed or formulated yet shaping every motive, that the
new morality will have to reckon with.