Chapter Iii — The Growing Moral And Spiritual Supremacy Of Jesus
CHAPTER III
THE GROWING MORAL AND SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY OF JESUS
MANY who have looked for the Kingdom to come only by observation so that they could say “Lo, here,” and “Lo, there,” have been disappointed to find it come so slowly, but the more discerning have suddenly awakened to find that the Kingdom was in the midst of them and all around them. Christianity is actually breaking out beyond the borders of the Christian Church and is being seen in most unexpected places. If those who have not the spirit of Jesus are none of his, no matter what outward symbols they possess, then conversely those who have the spirit of Jesus are his, no matter what outward symbols they may lack. In a spiritual movement like that of Jesus it is difficult and impossible to mark its frontiers. Statistics and classifications lose their meaning and are impotent to tell who are in and who are not. Jesus told us it would be so.
He said that the Kingdom would come in two great ways: It would be like a grain of mustard seed, a tiny thing that grows into a great tree: this speaks of the outward growth of Christianity—men coming into the organized expression of the Kingdom, namely, the Christian Church. Again, it would be like leaven which would silently permeate the whole: this tells of the silent permeation of the minds and hearts of men by Christian truth and thought until, from within, but scarcely knowing what is happening, the spirit and outlook of men would be silently leavened by the spirit of Jesus—they would be Christianized from within.
We see these two things taking place with the impact of Christ upon the soul of the East.
We need not stop long at the first, though the growth by that method has been very considerable. In the last ten years the population has increased by 1.2 per cent, but the growth of the Christian Church has been 22.6 per cent. We have added about 100,000 souls to the Christian Church every year for the last ten years—about a million in ten years. These have been largely from the outcaste sections of society. There are 60,000,000 who are untouchables. These untouchables, who have lived on the edges of life, degraded and despised, are being stirred with new virile thinking. Hitherto they have been oppressed and have opened not their mouths. But not so now. They are catching from the high-caste leaders of the Nationalist Movement (beautiful irony!) the possibilities of passive resistance and are turning it against the Brahmans themselves. Last March a year ago began a struggle in South India that has had nation-wide consequences. Some of these untouchables appeared on a forbidden road in Travancore, the most caste-ridden section of India. They were promptly sent off to jail. The next day there was another group there ready to be sent off. That struggle has been going on for over a year. They go to jail, serve their sentence, and then quietly come back and sit upon the forbidden road—and India has an amazing power to sit! The sight of these silent, patient, passive resisters has shaken the caste system to its foundation, and has so stirred the high castes that some of the more sympathetic spirits among them formed a procession a thousand strong, walked on foot one hundred fifty miles, holding meetings to arouse sympathy as they went, and presented to her Highness the ruler of Travancore a petition asking that all the roads be thrown open to the untouchables. The latest word says that these low castes had won out and the roads had been thrown open. Patient suffering had won!
These outcastes are on the move. They are debating far into the night in their caste councils as to where they will find their spiritual destiny and destination. They are talking over the relative merits of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism (for Buddhism is being brought back into India from which it had been driven, in order, I presume, to provide a figure that is Indian to set over against the personality of Jesus) and Christianity. In the next ten or twenty years the spiritual destiny of a vast section of human kind will probably be settled. This quest of the outcaste is one of the most remarkable spiritual phenomena at the present time, for sixty million are on the move!
But there is a more remarkable movement at the other end of society among the higher castes. The movement among the low castes is called the Mass Movement; this other movement I would call a mass movement in mind toward Christ as a Person. Do not misunderstand me, they are not knocking at the doors for baptism, nor are they enamored of our ecclesiastical systems or our civilization, but there is an amazing turning in thought toward Christ. Now, “whatever gets your attention finally gets you,” and I do not think I overstate or exaggerate when I say that Jesus is getting the attention of the finest minds and spirits in India—and he is getting them.
If one asks for the evidence of this, I would find it difficult to put my finger upon it, for some of it is so subtle that one has to stand down amid these swirling currents of India’s life and feel a subtle change from bitterness and hate to understanding sympathy and inward love and allegiance. I can only throw open little windows through things that may seem insignificant in themselves, but which may let one see into a larger situation.
A few years ago I was talking to a devoted English missionary who was confused and discouraged about the national situation. She wondered of what use it was to try any more to do Christian work in India since Britain had lost moral hold upon India. There was such bitterness everywhere, and she could feel it. We talked about the inner meaning of things and I told her of what I had seen. I shall never forget the look on her face as she said: “I see the light. Christ is bigger than my empire, and his kingdom may come either through it or in spite of it. I see light bursting through these clouds that have hung over me.” A little window had let her see a great light.
Nine years ago in the National Congress at Poona a Hindu gentleman in addressing the Congress used the name of Christ. There was such an uproar and confusion that he had to sit down unable to finish his speech. That name of Christ stood for all that India hated, for he was identified with empire and the foreign rulers. He had not yet become naturalized upon the Indian Road. But in the meantime a disassociation of Jesus from the West had been made,. so that nine years later when that same National Congress met, the Hindu president in giving his presidential address quoted great passages from the New Testament, took out bodily the account of the crucifixion of Jesus from John’s Gospel: there were some seventy references to Christ in that Congress. Mrs. Naidu, India’s able poetess and Nationalist, sent a poem to the Congress to be read, entitled, “By Love Serve One Another”—a Scripture quotation.
Through the literature and addresses of India’s leaders phrases and sentences from the New Testament run almost like a refrain.
In one of the Provincial Congress addresses Dr. ———, the president, in the course of his address spoke of Mr. C. F. Andrews as “that real Christian,” and added, “Would that there were more real Christians!” Incidentally, let it be said that the Hindus often refer to “C. F. A.” as standing for “Christ’s Faithful Apostle”—a beautiful tribute, and a true one.
In a recent Congress meeting Mohammed Ali, the leader of the Mussulmans of India, in his presidential address spoke of Mahatma Gandhi as “that Christlike man.” Again and again Hindus rise in my meetings and ask if I do not think that Mahatma Gandhi is a Christlike man. I usually reply that I cordially differ with him in a good many things, nevertheless do think in some things he is a very Christlike man indeed. I have had them reply that they would go much further: they believed that he was the incarnation of Christ. A Hindu gave utterance to the same thought when listening to a preacher preaching in the bazaar in North India on the second coming of Christ: “Why do you preach on the second coming of Christ? He has already come—he is here—Gandhi.” Blasphemy? That is not the point—the point is that Gandhi is their ideal, and they are identifying that ideal with Jesus. It is the gripping of the mind by the Jesus ideal.
Even the Arya Samaj, which is our bitterest opponent and whose leader said in a recent speech, “You may forget your name, you may forget your mother, but do not forget that the missionaries are the enemies of your country and your civilization”—nevertheless, in a recent editorial in their principal organ, the Vedic Magazine, they call Gandhi “This modern Christ.” Against the missionary, but unconsciously for his message—Christ!
In an article written by a Hindu in an extreme nationalist paper there occurred this sentence: “Calvary, where another great of the East has suffered martyrdom for the sins of the world, has to-day its counterpart in Yerravada, where our Mahatmaji suffers martyrdom for the thraldom of the world. Just as Calvary stands for the world sinners, so Yerravada stands for the world’s down-trodden.” Yerravada is the prison where Gandhi was imprisoned. It is not a question whether these are real parallels or not, the significant thing is that the Indian people are seeing them.
I was talking to two of the followers of Mahatma Ghandi one day when I said, “My brothers, we must have unity between the Hindu and Mohammedan if our country is ever to be strong and free, but your Hindu-Mohammedan unity is based upon a wrong foundation. You have based it upon a religious pact, you should base it upon the unchanging fact that you are all Indians. Upon this basis you should come together. This other will not stand.” My Hindu friend replied, “But, Mr. Jones, isn’t it our Christian duty to help our Mohammedan brethren in their difficulties?” A Hindu talking about his Christian duty toward his Mohammedan brethren!
In the Ashram ¹ at ——— the atmosphere is one of beautiful courtesy and friendliness. A Parsee gentleman came into my little room there and placed some flowers on my table. It was a beautiful bit of thoughtfulness. I said, “My brother, that was very gracious of you. I thank you from my heart for that.” “Oh, no,” he replied, “that was my Christian duty,” and then, catching himself, he quickly added, “Yes, and also my Parsee duty.” But I wondered if the last portion was not a tribute he felt he must pay to past loyalties, rather like a waving salutation to a dying ideal in his mind? The thing that was gripping him—really gripping him—was that to be kindly and gracious was one’s Christian duty while he was still a Parsee—outwardly.
Two of the leaders of India, one in the political and one in the social realm, were talking to a friend of mine when the social leader remarked, “Well, Dr. ———, it is very difficult for us to say where our Hinduism ends and where our Christianity begins!” Turning to the political leader he said, “Isn’t that so, ———?” He pondered a moment and then thoughtfully replied, “Yes, that is so.” Our Hinduism ends—our Christianity begins!
At the close of one of my addresses on “Jesus and the Problems of the Day” the Hindu chairman, a prominent social thinker, in his chairman’s remarks said, “I suppose that the epitome of what the speaker has said is that the solution of the problems of the day depends upon the application of the mind and spirit of Jesus to those problems. Now, I am not a Christian, and you will be surprised to hear me say that I entirely agree with these conclusions.” He went almost immediately from our meeting to be the President of the All-India Social Conference, which deals with the pressing social problems of India’s life, and he went there with this underlying thought as to the solution of those problems. Another Hindu chairman put the matter in this way, “The problems of the day arise through the lack of the spirit of Jesus Christ in the affairs of men.”
At question time in the sacred city of ———, the editor of the local non-cooperation paper, a brilliant Hindu, a graduate of Oxford University, sent in a long list of keen questions which I was doing my best to answer, when two members of the secret police, the spy-system of India, got up and went behind a pillar and were whispering together and were disturbing him in his listening. These men were no friends of the editor, for they had probably shadowed him quite a bit. To this they were adding this present inconvenience. He twisted in his seat quite a bit and was very ill at ease, and then finally, turning to a friend of mine alongside of him, said, “Mr. J———, I feel most un-Christian toward those men!” Here was a Hindu talking about his un-Christian feelings toward the representatives of a Christian government! Mixed up, but illuminating.
In view of the above incidents, and many more like them, I was not surprised to have a Hindu college principal say to me one day, “There is growing up in India a Christ-cult, entirely apart from the Christian Church, almost under its opposition. The leading ideas of that cult are love, service and self-sacrifice.” He did not mean that there was any gathering of this scattered thought into an organization called the Christ-cult. Things are not propagated in India by blocked-off organization as we carry them on in the West. The method of propagation has been by ideas catching from life to life and thus silently leavening the whole. And this permeation that is taking place is running true to the genius of the past, for in the past it was thus that the ideas of the great reformers like Ramanuja and Shankara became dominant. This Christ-cult has become more like an atmosphere than an organization.
But the tremendous question presses itself upon us: Will the present Christian Church be big enough, responsive enough, Christlike enough to be the medium and organ through which Christ will come to India? For, mind you, Christianity is breaking out beyond the borders of the Christian Church. Will the Christian Church be Christlike enough to be the moral and spiritual center of this overflowing Christianity? Or will many of the finest spirits and minds of India accept Christ as Lord and Master of their lives, but live their Christian lives apart from the Christian Church? I believe in the Christian Church with all my heart, and believe that in it has centered the finest moral and spiritual life of the world, but here is a new and amazing challenge, for this outside Christianity is going straight to the heart of things and saying that to be a Christian is to be Christlike. This means nothing less than that ancient rituals and orders, and power at court and correctly stated doctrine avail little if Christlikeness is not the outstanding characteristic of the life of the people of the churches. If Christianity centers in the Christian Church in the future, it will be because that church is the center of the Christ-spirit. This constitutes a challenge and a call.
This whole chapter might be summed up in the statement of the Brahman who put his hand on my shoulder (and I am untouchable!) and said, “Sir, you perhaps become discouraged at the few who become Christians from the high castes. You need not be discouraged. You do not know how far your gospel has gone. Now, look at me. I am a Brahman, but I would call myself a Christian Brahman, for I am trying to live my life upon the principles and spirit of Jesus, though I may never come out and be an open follower of Jesus Christ, but I am following him. Sir, don’t be discouraged, you do not know how far your gospel has gone.”
I was not discouraged, my heart was singing to the music of things, for I saw my risen Lord entering behind closed doors once again and showing his hands and his side and speaking peace to disciples I had not known.
As the physical atmosphere becomes heavy with moisture, so heavy that it is precipitated into rain, so the spiritual atmosphere of India is becoming heavy with interest in Jesus Christ and is on the verge of and is actually being precipitated into Christian forms and Christian expression. I pray that the Christian Church may be the Christlike medium through which this spiritual precipitation may express itself.
But one word of caution before closing this chapter. Do not misunderstand me. I am not satisfied with an interest in Jesus—I cannot be satisfied this side of allegiance—utter and absolute. But if you give me an inch in the soul of India, I will take it and appeal for that next inch until the whole soul of this great people is laid at the feet of the Son of God.
Moreover, our final call to the world is not to love Christ, but to have faith in him. But since a nation is gradually won we will thank God for any stage on the way to the goal we can find. That final goal is faith in Christ.
But He who was grateful for the cup of cold water given in his name, who accepted the superstitious touch of a woman upon the border of his garment and let healing flow through that imperfect touch, who rejoiced in the faith of an outsider and said that he had not found so great faith in Israel, and gave him his heart’s desire, who would not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax, who saw in a grateful woman’s anointing of his feet a meaning deeper than she saw, declaring it to have significance for his burial, who caught and responded to the cry of a penitent thief for remembrance, certainly will not despise this day of small but prophetic beginnings and will bring these “other sheep who are not of this fold, that there may be one flock [R. V.] and one shepherd.”
¹ A place of religious retreat.