JESUS CHRIST THE LODESTONE
"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto myself."
--ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL, xii. 32.
[Sidenote: Instances of Indian homage to Christ, and dislike of His
Church.]
[Sidenote: Bengal.]
[Sidenote: Bombay.]
[Sidenote: Madras.]
Interesting phases of that divided mind--homage to Christ, resentment
towards His disciples--may be found on opposite sides of the great
continent of India. In Bengal, a not-infrequent standpoint of Br[=a]hmas
in reference to Christ is that _they_ are the true exponents of Christ's
spirit and His teaching. Western Christian teachers, they say, are
hidebound by tradition; and the ready-made rigidity of the creeds of the
Churches is no doubt a factor in the state of mind we are describing.
Looking back as far as to 1820, we see in _The Precepts of Jesus_,
published by the founder of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, that standpoint of
homage to Christ and dissent from accepted views regarding Him.
Illustrative of that Br[=a]hma standpoint, we have also the more recent
book, _The Oriental Christ_, by the late Mr. P.C. Mozumdar, the
successor of Keshub Chunder Sen. But the attitude is by no means limited
to Brahmas. "Without Christian dogmas, cannot a man equally love and
revere Christ?" was a representative question put by a senior Hindu
student in Bengal to his missionary professor. In South India,
Mahomedans sometimes actually describe themselves as better Christians
than ourselves, holding as they do such faith in Jesus and His mother
Mary and His Gospel. The case of Mahomedans is not, of course, on all
fours with that of Hindus, since Mahomedans reckon Christ as one of the
four prophets along with their own Mahomed. In Bombay province, on the
other side of India from Bengal, we find Mr. Malabari, the famous
Parsee, pupil of a Mission School, doubting if it is possible for the
Englishman to be a Christian in the sense of _Christ's Christianity_,
the implication being that an Indian may. What element of truth is there
in the idea, we may well ask? From Indian Christians, be it said, we may
indeed look for a fervency of loyalty to Christ that does not enter into
our calculating moderate souls; and from India, equally, we may look for
that mystically profound commentary on St. John's Gospel which Bishop
Westcott declared he looked for from Japan. But to return. About Mr.
Malabar! himself, his biographer writes: "If he could not accept the
dogmas of Christianity, he had imbibed its true spirit," meaning the
spirit of Christ Himself. "The cult of the Asiatic life" is the latest
definition of Christianity given by a recent apologist of Hinduism, one
of a small company of Europeans in India officering the Hindu revival.
Crossing India again and going south, we find the late Dr. John Murdoch,
of Madras, an eminent observer, adding his testimony regarding the
homage paid to the Founder of Christianity. "The most hopeful sign," he
writes, "is the increasing reverence for our Lord, although His divinity
is not yet acknowledged."[98] And of new India generally, again, we may
quote Mr. Bose, the Indian historian. "The Christianity [of
North-western Europe] is no more like Christianity as preached by Christ
than the Buddhism of the Thibetans is like Buddhism as preached by
Gautama." Take finally the following sentences from a recent number of a
moderate neo-Hindu organ, the _Hindustan Review (vol._ viii. 514):
"Christ, the great exemplar of practical morality ...; the more one
enters into the true spirit of Christ, the more will he reject
Christianity as it prevails in the world to-day. The Indians have been
gainers not losers by rejecting Christianity for the sake of
Christ."[99]
[Sidenote: Desire to discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures.]
[Sidenote: Christ and Krishna set alongside.]
Another phase of that same divided mind, acknowledging Christ and
resenting Indian discipleship, may be perceived in the willingness to
discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures, and Christ-like features
in Hindu deities and religious heroes. To express it from the Indian
standpoint,--they see Christ and Christianity bringing back much of
their own "refined and modernised." In a sense, as a Bengali Christian
gentleman put it, Christ and Christianity have become the accepted
standards in religion.[100] Again we quote from the same page of the
_Hindustan Review_: "A revival of Hinduism has taken place.... It
[Christianity] has given us Christ, and given us noble moral and
spiritual lessons, which we have discovered anew in our own Scriptures,
and thereby satisfied our self-love and made our very own." We have
mentioned how missionaries used to find the doctrine of the atonement in
the name of the Indian God Hari; the argument has now in turn been
annexed by Hindus, and employed as an argument in their favour. Within
the last twenty years, there has been a great revival of the honouring
of Krishna among the educated classes in Bengal and the United
Provinces. Krishna has set up distinctly as the Indian Christ, or as the
Indian figure to be set up over against Christ. A Krishna story has been
disentangled from the gross mythology, and he has become a paragon of
virtue,--the work of a distinguished Bengali novelist. I mean no
sarcasm. From the sermon of a Hindu preacher in a garden in Calcutta in
1898, I quote: "The same God came into the world as the Krishna of India
and the Krishna of Jerusalem." These are his words. From the catalogue
of the Neo-Krishnaite literature in Bengal, given by Mr. J.N. Farquhar
of the Y.M.C.A., Calcutta, it appears that since 1884 thirteen Lives of
Krishna or works on Krishna have appeared in Bengal. Many essays have
appeared comparing Krishna with Christ. There have been likewise many
editions of the Bhagabat Gita, or Divine Song, the episode in the
Mahabharat, in which Krishna figures as religious teacher. It may be
called the New Testament of the Neo-Krishnaite. Perhaps the most
striking of these Neo-Krishnaite publications is _The Imitation of
Sri-Krishna_, a daily-text book containing extracts from the Bhagabat
Gita and the Bhagabat Puran. The title is, of course, a manifest echo of
"The Imitation of Christ," which is a favourite with religious-minded
Hindus. The _Imitation of Buddha_, likewise we may observe, has been
published. About "The Imitation of Christ" itself, we quote from a
Hindu's advertisement appended to the life of a new Hindu saint,
Ramkrishna Paramhansa. "The reader of 'The Imitation of Christ,'" it
says, "will find echoed in it hundreds of sayings of our Lord
Sri-Krishna in the Bhagabat Gita like the following: 'Give up all
religious work and come to me as thy sole refuge, and I will deliver
thee from all manner of sin.'" The notice goes on: "The book has found
its way into the pockets of many orthodox Hindus."
[Sidenote: Christ and Chaitanya of Bengal.]
From Krishna we turn to Chaitanya, surname Gauranga, the fair, a
religious teacher of Bengal in the fifteenth century, who is also being
set up as the Christ of Bengal, in that he preached the equality of men
before God and ecstatic devotion to the god Krishna. A Christ-like man,
indeed, in many ways, Chaitanya was, and the increased acquaintance of
educated Bengal with Jesus Christ naturally brought Chaitanya to the
front. The new cult of Chaitanya and his enthronement over against Jesus
Christ are manifest in the titles of two recent publications in Bengal,
the first entitled, _Lord Gauranga, or Salvation for all_, and the
other, _Chaitanya's Message of Love_. Chaitanya and his two chief
followers, it should be said, were called the great _lords_ (prabhus) of
the sect, but the title "Lord Gauranga" is quite new, an echo of the
title of Jesus Christ. With regard to the new power of Christ's
personality, it should be noted that the author of _Lord Gauranga_
strongly deprecates the idea that his desire is to demolish
Christianity, or other than to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He
declares that Jesus Christ is as much a prophet as any avatar of the
Hindus, and that Hindus can and ought to accept him as they do Krishna
or Chaitanya. This is in accord with the spirit of Hinduism--namely, the
fluidity of doctrine, and the free choice of guru or religious teacher,
as set forth in a previous chapter--although it is still an advanced
position for a Hindu to take up publicly.
[Sidenote: Eccentric manifestations of the power of Christ's
personality.]
Could we observe the course of evolution down which a species of animals
or plants has come from some remote ancestry to their present form, with
what interest would we note the specific characteristics gathering
strength, as from generation to generation they prove their "fitness to
survive"! The whole onward career of the evolving species would seem to
have been aimed at the latest form in which we find it. Yet quite as
wonderful phenomena as the species that has survived are the many
variations of the species that have presented themselves, but have not
proved fit to survive. One species only survives for hundreds of
would-be collaterals that are extinct. The religious evolution that we
have been observing is the growing power of Christ's personality in New
India; and now, as further testimony to its power, a number of
collateral movements, similarly inspired yet eccentric and hardly likely
to endure, attract our attention. In these eccentric movements the power
of Christ's personality is manifest, and yet it appears amid
circumstances so peculiar that the phenomena in themselves are
grotesque.
[Sidenote: The Punjab--two have set themselves up as Christ come again.]
[Sidenote: Hakim Singh.]
[Sidenote: Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad.]
Three of these strange movements let us look at as new evidence of the
power of Christ's personality in India. All three occur in still another
province than those named, the Punjab, a province _sui generis_ in many
ways. Within a generation past, at least two men have arisen, either
claiming to be Christ Himself come again, or a Messiah superior to Him.
A third received a vision of "Jesus God," and proclaimed Him, wherever
he went, as an object of worship. Of the first of the three leaders, Sir
Alfred Lyall tells us, one Hakim Singh, "who listened to missionaries
until he not only accepted the whole Christian dogma, but conceived
himself to be the second embodiment [of Christ], and proclaimed himself
as such and summoned the missionaries to acknowledge him." It sounds
much like blasphemy, or mere lunacy; but in India one learns not to be
shocked at what in Europe would be rankest blasphemy; the intention must
decide the innocence or the offence. Hakim Singh "professed to work
miracles, preached pure morality, but also venerated the cow,"--strange
chequer of Hindu and Christian ideas.[101] The second case is the better
known one of Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad, of Q[=a]di[=a]n, who sets up a
claim to be "the Similitude of the Messiah" and "the Messiah of the
Twentieth Century." As his name shows, he is a Mahomedan, but the
assumption of the name "Messiah" also shows that it is in Christ's place
he declares himself to stand. At the same time, his appeal is to his
fellow-Mahomedans; for he explains that as Jesus was the Messiah of
Moses, he himself is the Messiah of Mahomed. His superiority to Christ,
he expressly declares. "I shall be guilty of concealing the truth," he
says in his English monthly, the _Review of Religions_, of May 1902, "if
I do not assert that the prophecies which God Almighty has granted me
are of a far better quality in clearness, force, and truth than the
ambiguous predictions of Jesus.... But notwithstanding all this
superiority, I cannot assert Divinity or Sonship of God." He claims "to
have been sent by God to reform the true religion of God, now corrupted
by Jews, Christians, and Mahomedans." Doubly blasphemous as his claims
sound in the ears of orthodox Mahomedans, who reckon both Christ and
Mahomed as prophets, his sect is now estimated to number at least
10,000, including many educated Mahomedans. Whatever its fate--a mere
comet or a new planet in the Indian sky--it indicates the religious
stirring of educated India in another province, and the prominence of
Christ's personality therein. Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad himself
recommends the reading of the Gospels. As to Christ's death, Mirz[=a]
Ghol[=a]m Ahmad has a theory of his own. The Koran declares, according
to Mahomedan expositors, that it was not Christ who suffered on the
cross, but another in His likeness. Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad teaches
that Jesus was crucified but did not die, that He was restored to life
by His disciples and sent out of the country, whence He travelled East
until He reached Thibet, eventually arriving at Cashmere, where He died,
His tomb being located in the city of Srinagar.[102] According to the
latest report of this reincarnation, he now claims to be at once Krishna
come again for Hindus, Mahomed for Mahomedans, and Christ for
Christians.
[Sidenote: Chet Ram claimed to be an apostle.]
The third movement is that of the Chet Ramis, or sect of Chet Ram, whose
strange history may be found in _East and West_ for July 1905. Chet Ram
was an illiterate Hindu, a water-carrier and then a steward in the
Indian army that took part in the war with China in 1859-1860. Returning
to his native district not far from Lahore, Chet Ram, the Hindu, came
under the spell of a Mahomedan ascetic Mahbub Sh[=a]h, left all and
followed him as his "familiar" disciple. How this relationship between
Hindu and Mahomedanism is quite possible in India, we have already
explained on pages 163-4; Mahbub Sh[=a]h's strange combination of
religious asceticism with the consumption of opium and wine, it takes
some years' residence in India to understand. Then Mahbub Sh[=a]h died,
and the disciple succeeded the master. According to one account, Chet
Ram made his bed on the grave in which his master lay; according to
another, for three years his sleeping place was the vault within which
his master was buried. It was at this time that he had the vision of
"Jesus God," already referred to, between the years 1860 and 1865. Like
Caedmon, he has described his vision in verse--
"Upon the grave of Master Mahbub Shah
Slept Sain Chet Earn.
A man came in a glorious form,
Showing a face of mercy.
Sweet was his speech and simple his face,
Appearing entirely as the image of God.
He called aloud, 'Who sleeps there?
Awake, if thou art sleeping.
Thou art distinctly fortunate,
Thou art needed in the Master's presence.'
'Build a church on this very spot,
Place the Bible therein.'
Then said that luminous form,
Jesus, the image of Mary:
'I shall do justice in earth and heaven,
And reveal the hidden mysteries.'
Astonished there alone I stood,
As if a parrot had flown out of my hands.
Then my soul realised
That Jesus came to give salvation.
I realised that it was Jesus God
Who appeared in a bodily form."[103]
[Sidenote: The Followers of Chet Ram.]
[Sidenote: Their indefinite composite theology.]
Whence came the Christian seed of Chet Ram's vision? His master Mahbub
Shah was a Mahomedan, and Jesus Christ is reckoned one of the Mahomedan
prophets. But it is the Christ of Christianity, not of Mahomedanism,
that Chet Ram saw in his vision of the glorious form showing the face of
mercy, at once the dispenser of justice, the revealer of mysteries, and
the giver of salvation. Whatever the source of the vision, Chet Ram saw
and believed and began to hold up Jesus Christ before other men's eyes,
and Chet Ram himself thus became the guru or religious teacher of what
may be called an indigenous Christian Church. A moderate estimate
reckons the Chet Ramis at about five thousand souls, the religious force
of the sect being represented by the Chet Rami ascetics, who go about
making their gospel known and living on alms. Chet Ram himself died in
1894, and at the headquarters of the sect at Buchhoke, near Lahore, his
ashes and the bones of his master Mahbub Shah are kept in two coffins,
which the faithful visit, particularly on certain Chet Rami holy-days,
on which fairs are held. In keeping with the command of the vision,
several copies of the New Testament and one complete Bible were also on
view when the writer of the article in _East and West_ visited the
sanctuary in 1903. The _Census Report_ for 1901 sums the Chet Ramis up
by saying that "the sect professes a worship of Christ," and that is our
present point of view. But we cannot leave them without noticing also
how Indian they are in their unwillingness to define their thought, and
in their readiness to enthrone a holy man and his relics. Undefined
thought we see expressed in symbol. There are _four_ doors to the
sanctuary at Buchhoke,--the fakiri [Chet Rami ascetics'] door, the
Hindu, Christian, and Mahomedan doors--expressing the openness of the
Chet Rami sanctuary to all sects. Their theology is a corresponding
conglomeration. It includes a Christian trinity of Jesus Son of Mary
[the Mahomedan designation of Christ], the Holy Spirit, and God; and a
Hindu triad of the world's three potencies, namely, Allah, Parameswar,
and Khuda, a jumble of Hindu and Mahomedan names, but representing the
Hindu triad of the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer.
[Sidenote: Parallel between the nineteenth century in India and the
second, third, and fourth centuries in the History of the Church.]
[Sidenote: The Theosophists and the Neo-Platonists.]
[Sidenote: The Neo-Platonists and New India's homage to Christ.]
[Sidenote: The Neo-Platonists and the Hindu Revivalists.]
In respect of the phenomenon of the homage shown to Christ over against
the hostility shown to His Church, the second, third, and fourth
centuries in the history of the Church present a striking parallel to
the nineteenth century in India. Steadily in these centuries
Christianity was progressing in spite of contempt for its adherents,
philosophic repudiation of the doctrines of the _superstitio prava_, and
official persecution unknown in British India at least. Then also, as
always, Christ stood out far above His followers, lifted up and drawing
all men's eyes. Such in India also, in the nineteenth century, has been
the course of Christianity; parts of the record of these centuries read
like the record of the religious movements in India in these latter
days. Describing the Neo-Platonists of these centuries, historians tell
us that at the end of the second century A.D. Ammonius of Alexandria,
founder of the sect, "undertook to bring all systems of philosophy and
religion into harmony, by which all philosophers and men of all
religions, Christianity included, might unite and hold fellowship."
_There_ are the four doors of the Chet Rami sanctuary. There also we
have the Theosophical Society of India, professing in its constitution
to be "the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, representing
and excluding no religious creed." Ammonius, founder of the
Neo-Platonists, was a pantheist like the present leader of the
Theosophical Society, Mrs. Besant, and like her too, curiously, had
begun as a Christian.[104] We recall that of Indian Theosophy in
general, in 1891, the late Sir Monier Williams declared that it seemed
little more than another name for the "Vedanta [or Pantheistic]
philosophy." Exactly like the earlier theosophists also, Ammonius, the
Neo-Platonist, held that the purified soul could perform physical
wonders, by the power of Theurgy. In its constitution the Theosophical
Society professed "to investigate the hidden mysteries of nature and the
psychical powers latent in man." Many can remember how, in the eighties,
Madame Blavatsky took advantage of our curiosity regarding such with
air-borne letters from Mahatmas in Thibet. Again Ammonius, we read,
"turned the whole history of the pagan gods into allegory." There we
have the Neo-Krishnaites of to-day. "He acknowledged that Christ was an
extraordinary man, the friend of God, and an admirable Theurgus." There
we have the stand point of the educated Indians who have come under
Christ's spell. For two centuries the successors of Ammonius followed in
these lines. "Individual Neo-Platonists," Harnack tells us, "employed
Christian sayings as oracles, and testified very highly of Christ.
Porphyry of Syria, chief of the Neo-Platonists of the third century,
wrote a work "against Christians"; but again, according to Harnack, the
work is not directed against Christ, or what Porphyry regarded as the
teaching of Christ. It was directed against the Christians of his day
and against the sacred books, which according to Porphyry were written
by impostors and ignorant people. There we have the double mind of
educated India,--homage to Christ, opposition to His Church. There also
we have the standpoint of Sahib Mirza Gholam Ahmad of Qadian. Some, we
read, being taught by the Neo-Platonists that there was little
difference between the ancient religion, rightly explained and restored
to its purity, and the religion which Christ really taught, not that
corrupted form of it which His disciples professed, concluded it best
for them to remain among those who worshipped the gods. There is the
present Indian willingness to discover Christian and modern ideas in the
Hindu Scriptures, especially in the original Vedas that the new [=A]rya
sect declare to be "the Scripture of true knowledge." The practical
outcome of the Neo-Platonic movement was an attempt to revive the old
Græco-Roman religion,--Julian the apostate emperor had many with him.
There we have the revival of the worship of Krishna in India, and the
apologies for idolatry and caste. The most recent stage of the
Theosophical Society in India reveals _it_ as virtually a Hindu revival
society. Finally, we read, the old philosopher Pythagoras, Apollonius of
Tyana, and others were represented on the stage dressed in imitation of
Christ Himself, and the Emperor Alexander Severus [A.D. 222-235] placed
the figure of Christ in his lararium alongside of those of Abraham,
Orpheus, and Apollonius. There we have the modern Indians who fully
recognise Christ alongside of their own avatars. The whole parallel is
complete.[105] In spite of the feebleness and, it may be, unworthiness
of His Church, through the force of Christ's personality, the Roman
history of the second, third, and fourth centuries has been repeating
itself in India in the nineteenth and twentieth, and unless the force of
Christ's personality be spent, the parallels will proceed.
From new reasonings about God, her new monotheism, New India has been
brought a stage farther to actual history. From theologies she has come
to the first three Gospels. New India has been introduced to Christ as
He actually lived on earth before men's eyes; and to India, intensely
interested in religious teachers, the personality of the Christ of the
Gospels, of the first three Gospels in particular, appeals strongly. To
the pessimistic mood of India He appeals as one whose companionship
makes this life more worth living; for Christ was not a jogi in the
Indian sense of a renouncer of the world. His call to fraternal service
has taken firm hold of the best Indians of to-day. Of the future we know
not, but we feel that the narrative of the first three Gospels naturally
precedes the deeper insight of the fourth.