JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF
"Tandem vicisti, Galilaee"
--said to have been uttered by Julian, the Apostate emperor.
[Sidenote: Pantheism does not lead to belief in "the Son of God."]
Pantheism, it has been said, lends itself to the lead to belief idea of
avatars or incarnations of deity, and Hinduism, therefore, is familiar
with avatars. Observation contradicts this _à priori_ reasoning, nay, it
justifies a statement almost contrary. To the philosopher who is
thinking out a pantheistic system, or to the ascetic who is seeking
after identity of consciousness with the One, the Hindu Avatars are only
a part of the delusion, the Maya, in which men are steeped. To a
pantheist, holding that his own consciousness of individuality is
delusion, born of spiritual darkness and ignorance, the conception of an
avatar or concrete presentation of deity as an individual is only still
grosser delusion. "The name of God and the conventions of piety are as
unreal as anything else in Maya," writes a modern British apostle of
Hinduism, while advocating the realisation of Maya as our salvation.[88]
It does not seem to me justifiable to say that through Pantheism the
Indian mind can approach the thought of Christ the Son of Man and the
Son of God. But pantheism, with its allied doctrine of transmigration,
may encourage the thought that our Lord was a great jogi or religious
devotee, the last climax of many upward transmigrations, and that Christ
had attained to the goal of illumination of the jogi, namely, identity
of consciousness with deity, when he felt "I and the Father are one."
That statement about Our Lord is sometimes made in India.
[Sidenote: The avatars of popular theology.]
It is not through the pantheism of the brahmanically learned and of
religious devotees that the Indian mind has come within Christ's sphere
of influence, but rather through the beliefs of the multitude and the
new education of the middle class. And how, we ask, has Christ been
introduced to India by association with the popular beliefs--how,
rather, has the attempt been made to do so? The theology of the people
begins, as has been already stated, with the Hindu Triad, the three
great personal deities, namely, Brahm[=a], Vishnu, and Siva,--Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer respectively. From these and other deities, but
particularly from Vishnu, the Preserver, there descended to earth at
various times and in various forms, human and animal, certain
avatars.[89] Best known of these avatars of Vishnu, the Preserver, are
Ram, the hero of the great epic called after him, the R[=a]m[=a]yan; and
secondly, Krishna, one of the chief figures of the other great Indian
epic, the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rat; and thirdly, Buddha, the great religious
teacher of the sixth century B.C. Ram and Krishna have become deities of
the multitude over the greater part of India. Buddha, latest in time of
these three avatars, and unknown as an avatar to the multitude, has not
yet been lost to history. Such is the genealogy of certain of the Hindu
gods and their avatars, and the object of setting it forth is to enable
us to see how Jesus Christ has presented Himself or been presented to
the Hindu people.
[Sidenote: Parallels in Christian and Hindu theology.]
When Christian doctrine was presented to India in modern times, the
Christian Trinity and the Hindu Triad at once suggested a
correspondence, which seemed to be confirmed by the coincidence of a
Creator and Preserver in the Triad with the Creator and the Son, Our
Saviour, in the Trinity. The historical Christ and the avatars of Vishnu
would thus present themselves as at least striking theological and
religious parallels. "On the one hand, learned brahmans have been found
quite willing to regard Christ himself as an incarnation of Vishnu for
the benefit of the Western world."[90] On the other, Christian
missionaries in India have often preached Christ as the one true
avatar.[91] The idea and the word _avatar_ are always recurring in the
hymns sung in Christian churches in India. Missionaries have also sought
to graft the doctrine of Christ's atonement upon Hinduism, through one
of the avatars. A common name of Vishnu, the second member of the Triad,
as also of Krishna, his avatar, is _Hari_. Accepting the common
etymology of _Hari_ as meaning _the taker away_, Christian preachers
have found an idea analogous to that of Christ, the Redeemer of men.
Then the similarity of the names, _Christ_ and _Krishna_, chief avatar
of Vishnu, could not escape notice, especially since Krishna,
Christ-like, is the object of the enthusiastic devotion of the Hindu
multitude. In familiar speech, Krishna's name is still further
approximated to that of Christ, being frequently pronounced _Krishta_ or
_Kishta_. In the middle of the nineteenth century the common opinion was
that there was some historical connection between Krishna and Christ,
and the idea lingers in the minds of both Hindus and Christians. One is
surprised to find it in a recent European writer, formerly a member of
the Indian Civil Service. "Surely there is something more," he says,
"than an analogy between Christianity and Krishna worship."[92]
Much has been made by the late Dr. K.M. Banerjea, the most learned
member of the Indian Christian Church of the nineteenth century, and
something also by the late Sir M. Monier Williams, of a passage in the
Rigveda (x. 90), which seems to point to Christ. The passage speaks of
Purusha (the universal spirit), who is also "Lord of Immortality," and
was "born in the beginning," as having been "sacrificed by the Gods,
Sadyas and Rishis," and as becoming thereafter the origin of the various
castes and of certain gods and animals. A similar passage in a later
book, the _T[=a]ndya Br[=a]hmanas_, declares that "the Lord of
creatures, Prajapati, offered himself a sacrifice for the devas"
(emancipated mortals or gods). Of the parallelism between the
self-sacrificing Prajapati, Lord of creatures, and the Second Person in
the Christian Trinity, propitiator and agent in creation, we may hear
Dr. Banerjea himself: "The self-sacrificing Prajapati [Lord of
creatures] variously described as Purusha, begotten in the beginning, as
Viswakarma, the creator of all, is, in the meaning of his name and in
his offices, identical with Jesus.... Jesus of Nazareth is the only
person who has ever appeared in the world claiming the character and
position of Prajapati, at the same time both mortal and immortal."[93]
[Sidenote: These parallels ineffective.]
[Sidenote: Christ Himself attractive.]
But it must be confessed that these parallels, real or supposed, between
Christianity and Hinduism have not brought Christ home to the heart of
India. In themselves, they only bring Christianity as near to Hinduism
as they bring Hinduism to Christianity. Uneducated Hindus feel that the
two religions are balanced when they have Krishna and Christians have
Christ. Educated Hindus, as we shall see, are employing some of these
very parallels to buttress Hinduism. Far be it from me, however, to
depreciate the labours of scholars and earlier missionaries who have
thus established links between Hindus and Christians, and have thus at
least brought Christ into the Hindu's presence. To Indian Christians
also such reasoning has often been a strength, furnishing as it were a
new justification of their baptism into Christianity; for looking back
they can perceive the finger of Hinduism itself pointing the way. But
had no other influence been exerted on the Indian mind, one could not
say what I now say, that Christ Himself is the feature of Christianity
that has most powerfully moved men in India. The person of Christ
Himself has been the great Christian dynamic. I am now speaking of
educated India, the India that is not dependent solely upon the preacher
for its religious ideas and feeling.
[Sidenote: Christianity identified with Britain and therefore
unpopular.]
[Sidenote: The anti-foreigner instinct.]
The grand new political idea in India is the idea of nationality, and
one of its corollaries is the championing of things Indian and
depreciation of things British. The strong anti-British bias among the
educated is one of the noteworthy and regrettable changes in the Indian
mind within the last half-century. It is not surprising then that all
over India the influence of Christ and of Christianity is lessened from
the identification of Christianity with the British. For a native of
India to accept the British religion is to run counter to the prevailing
anti-British and pro-Indian feeling; it is unpatriotic to become a
convert to Christianity. "Need we go out of India in quest of the true
knowledge of God?" wrote a distinguished Indian littérateur a few years
ago.[94] All that feeling is of course in addition to the instinctive
hostility to things foreign that has been nowhere stronger than in
self-contained India--self-contained between the Himalayas and the seas.
The exclusiveness of caste is based upon that feeling. The statement of
the late Rev. M.N. Bose, B.A., B.L., a native of Eastern Bengal,
regarding his youth [1860?] is: "I had a deep-rooted prejudice against
Christianity from my boyhood.... At this time I hated Christianity and
Christians, though I knew not why I did so."[95] We find the instinctive
hostility more bluntly expressed in China in the cry that drops
spontaneously from the opening lips of many Chinamen, as their greeting,
when they unexpectedly behold a European. The involuntary ejaculation
is: "Strike the foreign devil."
[Sidenote: Christ reverenced; Christians disliked.]
In the first part of the nineteenth century, along with the great
development of modern missions, and of modern education, we may say that
Christ came again to India. The national and anti-British feeling had
not then arisen to interpose in His path, but, coming as an alien, His
name evoked great hostility. The popular mood was _Christianos ad
leones,_ as many incidents and witnesses testify. Now, in spite of the
old anti-foreign hostility and the new currents of feeling, a remarkable
attitude to Christianity--far short of conversion, no doubt--is almost
everywhere manifest. There is a profound homage to its Founder, coupled
with that strong resentment towards His Indian disciples. Christ Himself
is acknowledged; His church is still foreign and British. Resentfully
ruled by a Christian nation, but subdued by Christ Himself, is the state
of educated India to-day. In spite of His alien birth and in spite of
anti-British bias, Christ has passed within the pale of Indian
recognition. Indian eyes, focused at last, are fastened upon Him, and
men wonder at His gracious words. Again I direct attention to a
significant event in Indian history--the incoming of an influence that
will not stale, as mere ideas may. "Is there a single soul in this
audience," said the Brahmo leader, the late Keshub Chunder Sen,[96] to
the educated Indians of Calcutta, mostly Hindus, "who would scruple to
ascribe extraordinary greatness and supernatural moral heroism to Jesus
Christ and Him crucified?"
"That incarnation of the Divine Love, the lowly Son of man," writes
another, even while he is rejoicing over the revival of Hinduism.[97]