Chapter X — Christ And The Other Faiths
CHAPTER X
CHRIST AND THE OTHER FAITHS
As Christ meets India and her past what is his demand?
When Mohammedanism confronted Hinduism the demand was of absolute surrender—a complete wiping of the slate of the past and the dictates of the prophet written in its stead. It is no wonder that Hinduism withstood it, and does withstand it, for its very life and past are involved.
Does Jesus take that same attitude? Are his demands upon India the same as Mohammed? Is the slate to be wiped clean and the past absolutely blotted out?
It must be confessed that this has often been the attitude and demand of the Christian missionary. If Christianity is more or less identified with Western civilization and presented as such, or if it is a system of church government and a more or less fixed theological system, blocked off and rigid and presented as such, then I do not see how we can escape the attitude of the Mohammedan. The past must be wiped out and a clean slate presented for our theological systems, our ecclesiastical organizations, and our civilization to be written in its stead.
But if our message be Christ, and Christ alone, then this does not necessarily follow. He may turn to India as he turned to Judaism and say, “I came not to destroy but to fulfill.” Just as he gathered up in his own life and person everything that was fine and beautiful in Jewish teaching and past and gave it a new radiant expression, so he may do the same with India. The fact is that the words that he used would imply that, for it is a generic term: “I came not to destroy but to fulfill,” it is locally applied to the Law and the Prophets, but capable of a wider application to truth found anywhere.
There is no doubt that devout Hindus who see worth-while and beautiful things in their faith are deeply concerned as they see the decay of that faith and wonder what the future will bring. Hindus themselves frankly tell of that decay, but always with a pang. The brilliant Hindu editor of a newspaper in India said, “It is with a pang that I see Hinduism decaying and dying. . . . But I know how the Dhoms (outcastes) feel, for I myself am an outcaste.” He had been outcasted on his return from foreign study and spoke out of a bitter experience.
The Hindu census commissioner of Baroda in his report of 1921 states, “Hinduism perhaps more than other faiths shows on its social side and its religious practices increasing signs of disintegration.”
This open letter to M. T. Sheshagiri Aiyar, Member Legislative Assembly, who introduced legislation concerning the use of endowments to temples, appeared in The Hindu Message, an orthodox paper: “I belong to the orthodox section of Hinduism. . . . I believe that you are aware that the orthodox section, though in the majority, are weak, disorganized, and voiceless. They belong to a rapidly dying race. In a generation or two at the most they will be nowhere, and reformers like your esteemed self will have a smooth way in seeking your cherished objects. It is exactly therefore you that should show some compassion toward the orthodox community and allow it to pass away without feeling agony, for chivalry does not consist in striking a fallen foe. . . . In your recent bill which has become the law of the land you have not provided for religious efficacy, but simply took compassion on what you consider to be the woeful position of women and have shed pious tears. Thus you have helped to destroy the fabric of the ancient Hindu institutions. . . . Though weak, the orthodox has to live in this world until he is thoroughly exterminated, and until then he is destined to struggle for life.” That letter tells its own story.
This scene also has its own inner meaning. I was sitting in the train one day when two members of the Legislative Council for Madras began a heated conversation. One was a Brahman and the other a non-Brahman, both able men. They talked partly to me and partly at each other. I remained outwardly neutral. The non-Brahman in the midst of the argument said, “Yes, there was a time when we would wash your sacred feet and drink the water to purify ourselves, but now our eyes have been opened and we have thrown you over.”
“Yes,” replied the Brahman, “you have, and with it you have thrown over your religion.”
“Well,” shot back the other, “if this is religion, then religion be damned!”
There is no doubt that Brahmanism as a religion centering in the Brahman is being slowly undermined—very rapidly so, some would say. This feeling is at the back of the Brahman attack upon Gandhi for his anti-untouchability campaign.
A keen Hindu put the matter to me in rather vulgar but vivid language: “Christianity is increasing and Hinduism is dying—damn it!”
When he says that Hinduism is dying it must be qualified a bit. Some of the outward practices of Hinduism are dying, but there are behind these practices some ideas that constitute the living spirit of Hinduism and have made it survive through the centuries. Caste and idolatry and Brahmanism will drop away, but there will be left what will constitute the core of the Indian heritage. It will be worth preserving. A lady in Baltimore found some seeds in the hands of an Egyptian mummy and planted them. Morning glories came up. In the hand of the mummied forms and customs of Hinduism I think there are five living seeds: (1) That the ultimate reality is spirit. (2) The sense of unity running through things. (3) That there is justice at the heart of the universe. (4) A passion for freedom. (5) The tremendous cost of the religious life. I do not believe that the world can afford to lose those five things so deeply imbedded in India’s thought and life.
It is worth something that a nation is committed to the thought that the ultimate real is spirit. As Bernard Lucas says, “We of the West posit the material and infer the spiritual, but India posits the spiritual and infers the material.” India is sure that the spiritual is real, but not quite sure that the material is, in any sense, a reality. Is that not an outlook on life that may have been providentially held to be loosed upon the world just at the time when materialism is so rampant and deadening? Again, is it worth while to preserve that sense of the unity of things? India has gone too far and has slipped into pantheism—everything God—but that will be corrected to a panentheism—everything in God. This will bring us a sense of the unity of all life. It should make a more friendly and meaningful and kindly universe. Again, is it worth while that India feels that at the heart of things is a strict and unfailing justice? The ironlike and heartless inhumanities that have grown up around the thought of karma will be modified and cleansed away, but this thought that strict justice is at the heart of things may tend to correct a good deal of our tendencies toward an easy forgiveness. Then the passion for inner freedom, the craving to break the thralldom of the outward and the seeming—that is a beautiful passion that has beat in the soul of India, and, corrected by the passion for the freedom of others, will make a great contribution to our collective life. But above all, India standing for the tremendous cost of the religious life, that religion demands all and holds all, will correct much of our compartmentalized and tentative religious thinking and acting. It should bring us abandon .
The shell of Hinduism breaks and falls away and leaves us these values. How can they be preserved? This is of vital interest to both East and West.
I do not think that they can be preserved through the old forms. They are falling away. They cannot be revived. A new mold and motive must be supplied for them: “The seat of authority must be new,” says Maciver in another connection, but applicable here. “Insofar as the external sanctions fall away and cease to be determinants of men’s conduct, it is no use any more binding them back to these and attempting to supply them with motives. They must attain to a new unity of life—they cannot regain the old” (R. M. Maciver, Community , p. 300). Now where will that “new unity of life” be found?
Hindus themselves are beginning to see where it will be. Catch the significance of this scene and question. In ——— the Brahmans took absolute charge of our meetings. They sent out the notices through government chaprasis, or runners. They decided to have the meetings in the inclosed compound of a Hindu temple—an unheard-of place to hold a Christian meeting. It was specially decorated with streamers for the occasion. Hindu ushers ushered in the crowd and the leading Hindu of the city was the chairman of the meetings. Since there was no Christian to interpret for me they gave me a Hindu interpreter, a man of beautiful spirit and keen mind. He interpreted in a very dignified manner the first night, holding his hands on his cane in front of him, but the second night he so caught the spirit of things that he began gesticulating exactly as I was doing! When I was about half way through my address the first night the temple bells began to ring and the conch shells to blow for evening worship. As the temple was within a few feet of us there was a terrible racket. I could scarcely hear myself talk. I stood there nonplussed, when a Hindu gentleman arose and said: “Sir, just sit down. It will all be over in ten minutes; we will sit here and wait.” I sat down. Not a half dozen people of that great crowd went into the temple. They sat and waited. It was all over in five or six minutes, and I resumed as though nothing had happened. The next night I spoke on the “Universality of Jesus.” At the close a Hindu lawyer arose and asked this question: “Don’t you think that Hinduism will gradually evolve and change into Christianity without losing its good points?” I assured him that I thought that very thing was taking place! He saw that there was a constant drift away from the old and he was anxious that its good points should be preserved. I could assure him from my heart that Jesus came not to destroy that good, but to preserve it. This new unity of life that India must have—is it Christ? It is.
A leading Hindu lawyer of Madras expressed his belief in that conclusion in these words: “The reinvigoration of Hinduism is only possible through the Christ spirit.” A Hindu High Court judge put it even more pointedly: “Christ is the only hope of Hinduism.”
Would these ideas that form the finest things in India’s past find new life should they die into Christianity? Would they be expressed in a new living way? Would Christ be the new mold and motive?
I believe that “these divine ideas which had wandered through the world until they had almost forgot their divine origin will at last clothe themselves in flesh and blood, the idea and the fact will meet together and will be wedded henceforth and forevermore.” Jesus is that flesh and blood in which they will reclothe themselves, and that Fact in which the ideas will find living expression.
The rôle of the iconoclast is easy, but the rôle of the one who carefully gathers up in himself all spiritual and moral values in the past worth preserving is infinitely more difficult and infinitely more valuable. Hence we can go to the East and thank God for the fine things we may find there, believing that they are the very footprints of God. He has been there before us. Everywhere that the mind of man has been open, through the crevices of that mind the light of God has shone in. That scattered light which lighted every man that came into the world was focused in the person of Jesus, and the Life became the Light of men.
To see how Jesus remarkably fulfills the finest striving of both East and West note the ends of life discovered by the Greeks and those discovered by the Hindus and the announcement that Jesus made about himself. The Greeks were the brain of Europe and did its philosophic thinking, just as the Hindus are the brain of Asia and have done the philosophic thinking for Asia. The Greeks said the ends of life were three: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The Hindus also say the ends of life are three: Gyana, Bhakti, and Karma. With this difference that the Hindus were the more religious people and made these ends means—the end was Brahma, the means to attain that were the three ways: the Gyana Marga, the way of knowledge; the Bhakti Marga, the way of devotion or emotion; the Karma Marga, the way of works or deeds.
Jesus stood between the Greeks and the Hindus, midway between East and West, and made this announcement, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Turning toward the Greeks he says, “I am the Way”—a method of acting—the Greek’s Good; “I am the Truth”—the Greek’s True; “I am the Life”—the Greek’s Beautiful, for Life is beauty—plus. Turning toward the Hindus he says, “I am the Way”—the Karma Marga, a method of acting; “I am the Truth”—the Gyana Marga—the method of knowing; “I am the Life”—the Bhakti Marga—the method of emotion, for Life is emotion—plus.
Jesus thus says: “I am the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; I am Gyana, Bhakti, and Karma, for I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
The Greeks’ ends were only beautiful ideas before Jesus made them fact. “Ideas are poor ghosts,” says George Eliot, “until they become incarnate.” Then they look out at us from sad eyes and touch us with strong hands; then they become a power. Only as the Word becomes flesh does it move us. “The Universal Beauty must create a picture before I can say, I see. Universal Goodness must perform an action before I can say, I love. Universal Truth must have a biography before I can say, I understand.” Jesus is that Universal Beauty become a Picture, that Universal Goodness become an Act, that Universal Truth become a Biography. He is the concrete universal.
The Gyana Marga is devotion to an Idea; the Karma Marga is devotion to a Code; the Bhakti Marga is devotion to a Person. Jesus is that Idea become a Fact, the code is now a Character, the person, the Supreme Person.
But Jesus not only faces the Greeks and the Hindus; he faces human personality everywhere and fulfills it. The modern thinker analyzes personality into Intellect, Feeling, and Will. Jesus says: “I am the Way”—here is the response of the Will; “I am the Truth”—here is the response of the Intellect; “I am the Life”—here is the response of the Feeling. Jesus is the great “Amen,” the great “Yes” to human personality. He is its fulfillment, since he is the Supreme Person.
But more, he faces all thought and culture of all ages of the world and says, “I am the Way”—that is Ethics; “I am the Truth”—that is Philosophy; “I am the Life”—that is Religion. Jesus is Ethics, Philosophy, and Religion, for he is Life, and Life includes all these and overflows them. He is the Word that sums up all other words.
But someone objects—then all these things were here before him. There was nothing new in him. Mackintosh tells of an antiquarian who shows his friend how one by one the characteristic features of Greek sculpture had been anticipated by the Assyrians, the Hittites and the Egyptians, and he exclaimed in triumph that the Greeks had, in fact, invented nothing. “Nothing,” rejoined the other, “except the Beautiful.” Jesus invented nothing new? He himself was the new.