Theological Study in England
THEOLOGICAL STUDY IN ENGLAND
21:
Kuruvilla became a Y.M.C.A. Secretary.
We sought to follow the ideal in N. V. Tilak's poem:
"Not at all separate, but one, Jesus and I are one; One, like a musician's hand and his lyre;
One, like thought and speech; One, like the nose and sweet odors; One, like mother and babe; One, like the guide and misled wanderer;
One, like life and body; One, like oil and the flame of the lamp; One, like rain and the lake it fills; One, like water and fish; One, like the sun and the day; Jesus and I are one, forever one.'
THEOLOGICAL STUDY IN ENGLAND
My father was in his seventies and my mother in her sixties.
I had not seen them for four years.
When I wrote to them in 1919 and asked for their permission to study in Oxford for three more years, they were disappointed.
In my letter I said: "You have allowed me to follow the noblest profession in the world, now. you must permit me to equip myself adequately for it.'
My mother rather reluctantly gave her permission on two conditions.
The first was, I should write to her regularly every week; the second, I should send her a new photograph of myself every year!
I agreed to both these conditions.
My father was pleased that I had won a travelling fellowship and promised to keep me at Oxford for three years.
The fellowship would cover only my major expenses during two years, so I was grateful for this additional allowance from my father.
I had known Dr J. N. Farquhar in India.
He had written The Crown of Hinduism and edited many books for the Y.M.C.A.
Publishing House.
He was now spending six months every year at Oxford and the other six months travelling around India, gathering materials for his books.
When I wrote to him that I would
A. J. APPASAMY
like to study at Oxford he immediately had me admitted to Queen's College.
He chose that college so that I could work under Canon B. H. Streeter who was the theological tutor there.
This choice proved very fruitful.
Canon Streeter was foremost among the younger theologians in England at that time.
He was in the prime of his life.
He worked terribly hard.
Though only in his forties he had the stooped shoulders of the scholar, and he had a beard which he fondled in his reflective moments.
He took an active interest in the boat races.
He was deeply concerned about missionary work and had visited India.
I had heard him read a learned paper on "Theological Reconstruction' at a Kodaikanal Missionary
Conference.
He had edited a few books like Foundations, Immortality, and The Spirit.
He was particularly gifted in gathering together scholars representing different points of view.
They would live together for a week or two, read papers, discuss them, re-write them, and then publish them as the outcome of their collective thinking.
He was keen tc expound Christian Doctrine so as to appeal to the modern mind trained in Science.
He welcomed new ideas and made stimulating suggestions. While he was not a great preacher, he worked earnestly to win young people for a reasoned acceptance of the Christian religion.
He would take young men and women for house parties lasting for a week or ten days so as to do some serious study and thinking.
He was a popular leader in the Student Christian Movement meetings in Swanwick.
On the strength of my M.A. from Harvard University I was accepted by Oxford as an advanced student and allowed to work for the Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Oxford always makes a distinction between itself and other universities.
I was told, for instance, that I could not have the status of an Oxford M.A. but would be treated only as an Oxford B.A.
'What difference would it make?' I asked.
I was told, 'If you are an Oxford M.A. you would be given a latch key and you could enter your lodgings any time day or night.
But for a B.A. the landlady would have to open the door every time he enters his lodgings and let him in; she will send a weekly report to the Dean of Queen's College informing him at what time he comes in every night; he will be fined or disciplined if he comes late.'
I bowed to the inevitable.
THEOLOGICAL STUDY IN ENGLAND
Our work at Oxford centred around the weekly essay. The tutor would suggest a subject for an essay, ask us to attend such lectures as would help us, study certain books and then write the essay which he discussed critically and personally with us,
This taught us to read up a subject for ourselves and to give the result in an attractive and readable form.
It developed in us originality of thought and expression and brought us into intimate contact with a tutor, who was generally an able scholar.
For my D.Phil. thesis I chose the subject, The Gospel of St John and Hindu Bhakti Literature.
From my experience in India and my studies while in America, I had become convinced that Hindu Bhakti Literature with its emphasis on a personal relationship with a God of Love has much significance for Christianity.
When the Gospel of St John is studied in close relation to Hindu Bhakti Literature, we may expect many new insights.
In February 1920, Sadhu Sundar Singh visited Oxford and spent a week there.
My close contact with him began then; it has been a formative influence in my life. When I was a theological student in America, Sundar Singh was becoming more and more well-known in South India. Glowing accounts of him were published in The Christian Patriot (Madras) and my soul burned within me whenever I read about this man of God.
His renunciation, his life of prayer, his active evangelistic work in forbidden lands like Tibet and Nepal, his eagerness to present the Gospel in genuinely Indian ways, the deep impression he made on multitudes of our people made me follow his work with real interest.
In the course of his preaching he constantly used striking parables, which appealed to both illiterate and highly educated people.
So when I heard that he was coming to the Community House of the Cowley Fathers, I went there and met him at the earliest possible opportunity. He agreed to speak at various meetings. He also promised to meet small groups of under-graduates and senior people and speak to them informally about his life and experience.
Canon B. H. Streeter became deeply interested in him. I said to him, 'There were Saints in the past.
Here is a living example from India. It will be a great help to the Church if we two could write a book about his life and teaching.'
Books had already been written by Mr Alfred Zahir and Mrs Parker, but these tended
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to emphasize the supernatural experiences in his life, to some of which no doubt he made claims.
But we felt that behind his life of outer activity lay a life of prayer and contemplation, for no man could do the work he was doing unless .he lived in close and continuous contact with God, the source of all power, love and goodness.
Though at first he hesitated to reveal his inner life to us, he gradually gained confidence in us and told us a great deal about his life of prayer.
The book that we wrote was published in 1921, under the title The Sadhu.
It went into eight editions and was translated into a number of languages.
As desired by Sundar Singh the royalties were sent to the National Missionary Society in India.
The book did a real service to Sundar Singh by the critical and restrained style in which it was written.
Canon Streeter often curbed my youthful admiration with the remark, "Let us aim at insight; that is far better than enthusiasm.'
Many people had tended to look upon him asa popular preacher wearing a saffron tobe, but without deep experience or independent thought.
This book showed him to be a man of genuine insight and spirituality who was living in close fellowship with God and had a vital message to give to the present generation.
The Indian feature of Sundar Singh which really attracted people was this.
He lived the life of a Sadhu. Homeless, wearing a single orange-coloured robe and carrying a New Testament in his hand, he travelled from place to place.
He did not know where his next meal would come from.
But he was never anxious.
His sole concern was to serve his Master and to make Him known to others.
The Sadhu method of work is an indigenous pattern which should be encouraged in the Indian Church, though not many of us possess the spiritual gifts needed for so high an ideal.
Immediately after the First World War, I found living im the Continent of Europe much cheaper than life in England.
So I spent six of my vacations in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, living for weeks at a time with friends in their homes.
I enjoyed particularly the visits to the Art Galleries.
I realized how in India we often limit European culture to Anglo-Saxon | culture; the Latin races have a rich culture of their own.
THEOLOGICAL STUDY IN ENGLAND
I was also able to save enough money to visit Palestine in 1922 for two months.
For several years I had been studying God's disclosure of Himself through events recorded in the Bible.
Now I longed to visit the land made holy by the footsteps of His lawgivers, prophets and psalmists, and above all' by His incarnate
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
For many years I had been praying earnestly that a way might open for me to study at Oxford.
Now God opened many doors in Europe and I found free access to such distinguished theologians as Baron Von Hugel, Archbishop William Temple, Mrs Herman,
Prof. Rudolf Otto, Prof. Heiler and others.
These opportunities were beyond my dreams and my heart was filled with gratitude to God.
Baron Von Hugel was a man of considerable means who dedicated himself to prayer and work.
Though in the very centre of London, he managed to live in an atmosphere of great peace.
His impressive study, lined from ceiling to floor with books, many of them well-thumbed, became a kind of shrine for me.
The tall, lean, haggard figure, bowed down with the weight of study and increasing weakness, the face furrowed with lonely thought and bodily pain, the hands thin, emaciated, and nervously grasping the ear-instrument in order to hear what was said—all these gave the impression that, though he had all that money could buy, he lived a life of intense toil and was being purified in the fire of suffering.
He said he had been in frail health all his life and during the time I knew him (1919-22) he could work only three or four hours a day without getting worn out.
He not only read widely but read deeply.
Every fact was investigated in all its bearings and thoroughly checked.
When he undertook to give an address he often laid aside his normal work for several weeks and concentrated.on the preparation of what he had to say.
Once I sent to him a manuscript of a few pages into which he went with his characteristic thoroughness and wrote a letter telling me that this work had taken him five days.
He also described himself as being a slow thinker and as having to brood for twenty-four hours before he could get a single new idea.
When Sundar Singh visited England, I wrote a letter to the Baron about him, and sent him a copy of Mrs Parker's book, and
A. J. APPASAMY
requested an appointment.
When we called I saw that he had read carefully Mrs Parker's book and had marked several points to discuss.
One of them was whether Sundar Singh had any other interest besides religion and what he did when he felt himself too depressed to engage in prayer or contemplation.
To this the Sadhu replied that he had not passed through any such experience and that there was no side-interest to his life.
In the Baron's book, Essays and Addresses, there is a reference to this talk: 'I was surprised and disappointed when, some fifteen months ago, that deeply sincere Indian convert, the Sadhu Sundar Singh, told me that, never since his conversion thirteen years before, had he ever suffered one moment of spiritual dryness.
I believe, with a very 'experienced psychologist and philosopher friend of mine, that this opinion indicates a strange lack of self-knowledge, perhaps also of what is precisely meant by such dryness, on the part of this devoted Christian' (p. 299).
The point which the Baron makes in the address on prayer in which this allusion occurs is that in order to have a healthy spiritual life, it is necessary to live on two levels of action and interest.
He gives as an example Jean Nicholas Grou whose spiritual writings remain fresh because he wrote on religious subjects only when the spiritual light was within him, and at other times he devoted himself to classical studies. In spite of the disappointment (really misunderstanding) to which he refers here, the Baron was greatly impressed by the Sadhu and wrote a memorandum suggesting several lines of thought when a book about him was projected.
This letter was of considerable use to us when The Sadhu was in preparation and has since been widely circulated and translated.
Though it claims to be only notes on the proposed book, it is largely a plea for the Sadhu to link himself closely to the Christian Church.
The Baron was a loyal member of the Roman Catholic Church and always stood up for it, though with characteristic courage he spoke also of its faults.
He had his eyes and ears open to all forms of religion and worship and was ever eager to discover what was fine and noble as well as to point out what was base and ignoble.
He founded and ran the London Society for the Study of Religion.
This, though a small organisation, was an important one, due largely to the inspiring presence and energy of the Baron.
About thirty scholars in London representing different religions met together every month to discuss seriously problems
THEOLOGICAL STUDY IN ENGLAND
Dag of religion.
All were distinguished scholars and leaders in one way or another.
For these small meetings the Baron prepared himself with as much thoroughness as for any large meeting. He invited me to attend one of its meetings and to take part in the discussion.
'This I gladly did.
The long and profound essay of the Baron on 'Suffering and God' was originally prepared for this
Society.
It is of particular importance to readers in India for he deals in it with the question as to whether God suffers.
The influence which the Baron exerted upon the religious life of the English-speaking world was deep.
Men of all creeds looked up to him as a venerable religious teacher of immense learning and penetrating thought.
Evelyn Underhill, whose books on Mysticism are so widely known and appreciated, looked up to him as her guru and regarded herself as his humble disciple.
The Mystical Element of Religion in two volumes is regarded as the greatest book in-English on the subject of Mysticism. The Baron said that he had great difficulty in getting a publisher for this book.
He also told me that a Baptist minister in America had written to him to say that if a second edition were published, he would dispose of one hundred copies. Thus did Roman Catholic theologian and Baptist minister meet in the realm of the spirit.
When I saw him last he spoke with great pleasure of the invitation which had been given to him by the Gifford Trustees to give a course of lectures, and expressed surprise at the high emoluments which had been offered to him in that connection, At that time he told me that he was working on the subject of the Reality of God for these lectures.
But before his work was complete he died, in his seventy-third year.