Chapter Vii — The Question Hour
CHAPTER VII
THE QUESTION HOUR
WHILE at one of the university centers of America it was announced that I would answer questions at the close if the audience desired. Among those who stayed were many students, American and foreign, and among them some Hindus from India. These Hindu students put me through a grilling for several hours. At the close I remarked to someone: “This is the first time I have really felt at home in America. I feel as though I have been in India to-night.” After almost every meeting in India we allow the non-Christians to ask questions—and grilled we are!
When I began to throw open my meetings in India for questions I knew I was inviting disaster, for the Hindu mind is quite as good as ours, and he loves argument. Besides the possibility of having everything you have said in your address upset by questions, I was quite conscious of another danger. Christianity cannot be understood except in a quiet mood of moral and spiritual receptivity and insight. Questions often change the quiet atmosphere to one of belligerency. Nevertheless, there was so much misunderstanding, so much rejecting of a caricature of Christianity, that I felt we should face everything fairly and dodge no issue.
I would not have dared to do it had I not been given in the very beginning of this work a verse that has seemed my very own: “And when they shall deliver you up before kings and governors for my name’s sake for a testimony unto them, be not anxious what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak, for it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” That assurance was sufficient for me. I believed it. I could do nothing less.
The question hour becomes tense at times, but we have tried to make it a point never to let it degenerate into a mere quibble, or to allow it to stir bad blood. To lose one’s temper would be to lose one’s case, for we are not there to win arguments, but to win men. I cannot remember when ill feeling has been left after any single meeting. We have tried to demonstrate incidentally that one can discuss these thorny questions with quiet good humor.
There is an amazing range of questions from those of a confused, but spiritually earnest, questioner, to the questions of the quibbler who desires to show off his smartness. To let you see what questions India is asking, I give a few samples taken almost at random from many hundreds sent up:
Ques.—Is Christianity a universal religion? If so, why are there sectional feelings going on? Catholics hate Protestants, the Greek Church contradicts both.
Ques.—Why did God make a world where he ought to have known evil would come, where brutes who trade on hunger, who convert into coin the patience of the poor, the sweat of slaves, would exist? Where rascally sycophants would have power and righteous men rot in jails; where, in short, Christ would be crucified? Who is responsible for such a world?
Ques.—Do you sincerely believe that there are many fine Christians having the true democratic spirit of Christ? How do you account for the feeling of racial superiority which the Westerners have? What Christian spirit is that which makes Australians, the Canadians, and the people of America, prevent Indians from coming into their country and enjoying equal privileges with them?
Ques.—Does not the present war—a war among the followers of Christ—prove that there is something wrong with the teachings of Christ?
Ques.—Supposing that from four corners in a square four men desire to get to the center. They will go in different directions, but they will get to the center. There are different religions but they all lead to the center: God. But the ways are not the same. Why do you say there is only one way? There are many ways. You cannot prescribe the same drug for every disease.
Ques.—In your lecture last evening you took it for granted that all the stories in the gospel are true. Is it not possible that the writers, who were not men of culture, either distorted the facts or exaggerated them? Could it not be that their enthusiasm misled them into wrong judgments and that they wrote out even false rumors among the ignorant masses?
Ques.—I will pay Christianity the compliment of thinking that if the world were ruled by strict Christian tenets, it would be a semi-paradise. But the grim fact of our experience is that it is the Christian that has by iniquitous means come by the major portion of this planet, which he keeps under his iron rod. So is it not more proper that the missionaries, with their gifts of head and heart, endeavored to moralize their own coreligionists instead of pursuing the wild-goose chase of conversion, for, after all, numbers are absolutely irrelevant to the greatness of a faith?
Ques.—How is it that divorces are a part of Christianity in the West?
Ques.—Is King George a real Christian? Then, pointing to a prominent Indian Christian in front, he asked, “Is Mr. J —— here a real Christian?”
Ques.—Don’t you think we could put Mohammedanism and Christianity together? Jesus lived a very high, a very lofty, a very ideal, a very sinless life, and he did not marry. Mohammed did marry, so I suggest that when we put these two religions together we make Jesus the theory or ideal of the religion and Mohammed the practice.
Ques.—We are two young men who after hearing your addresses desire to become Christians. But as you seem to be a holy man, we would like to test your powers; we are not going to sign this letter—can you tell us who we are?
Ques.—Why do Christians wear neckties? Is it the sign of the Cross or is it a custom?
Ques.—How is it that women in Christianity are in the lowest degradation, they are considered an object of scorn, they have no rights of any kind, while in Mohammedanism when Mohammed said, “What is due from her is due to her,” he raised her at one bound to an equality with man? Is this no improvement on Christianity? (Sent in by a Mohammedan.)
Ques.—If salvation of human beings lies only through faith in Jesus, what is to happen to those who cannot sincerely believe in the Christian gospel?
Ques.—What is to happen to the souls of those who have never had the opportunity of hearing the gospel of Christ?
Ques.—If I suffer for my misdeeds, and if it is right before God and man that I should suffer, why should a man in his ignorance come and help me in the name of love? Is he not unconsciously weakening my cause, and thwarting God’s plan and Nature’s law? Is not the social servant an indiscreet almsgiver?
Ques.—It is again said that after man fell even then God did not forsake him, but devised a plan by which he might be restored to a great happiness that he lost. And what forsooth is this “plan”? Why, he sent his Son to die for them, and this also after having allowed thousands of years to pass by and millions of people hopelessly to perish and to go to that place of torment called “hell,” which he had prepared for them. Now, is this not an old woman’s tale such as the nurses frighten the babes withal?
Ques.—Why does a Hindu accept Christ, but reject Christianity?
Ques.—Can moral life, even if it is touched with emotion, satisfy the human soul which is yearning for the imperishable and eternal union with the Eternal Spirit transcending all limitations of space and relativity?
Ques.—Is the world safe for Christ? If Christ were to come to-day among the Christian nations of the earth, do you think he would not be crucified?
Ques.—Can one be a Christian without baptism?
Ques.—Do you think that to be a follower of Christ fully and truly one should accept Christian dogma also? Would you agree with the Frenchman who defined dogma as the living faith of the dead and the dead faith of the living?
Ques.—May it be pointed out in all humility and reverence that it is necessary to preach Christ instead of Christianity to India?
Ques.—Is the idea of redemption peculiar to Christianity and foreign to other religions? Do you not think that the idea of God as Friend and Companion is the insistent note of the non-monistic school of Indian thought such as Vaishnavism?
Ques.—If Christianity is fitted to become a universal religion, what new and exclusive truths has it to teach over and above what other great religions like Hinduism or Buddhism have taught?
Ques.—If a religion should appeal to men of different natures and temperaments in order to claim universal acceptance, then has not Hinduism, which shows three paths, namely, Gnana, Karma, and Bhakti, better claim to it, than Christianity, which indicates only the paths of love and Bhakti?
Ques.—Is not Hinduism, which teaches belief in a personal as well as impersonal God, more satisfying to less developed as well as more developed souls alike than Christianity, which teaches only the former?
Ques.—As materialism, luxury, and intemperance have been known to follow in the wake of Christianity, how can it appeal to the Hindus, whose outlook on life and its problems is preeminently spiritual?
Ques.—As Christianity has no system of philosophy behind it, but is only a God of ethical conduct, how is it suited to satisfy the philosophically minded Hindu race?
Ques.—If Jesus is only a God-man, as you said yesterday, what better claim has he than other equally great God-men like Buddha or Rama, Krishna, Pramahamsa, to become a universal teacher?
Ques.—What tests shall I perform, if any, to understand the saving power of Christ?
My most difficult moments are not with the written questions, but in those meetings where oral questions are shot at one. I have been cross-examined by as many as thirty lawyers at one time trying for hours to beat down the evidence. But my verse has been true. I cannot remember a single situation in nine years where it has failed me. There have been some very close calls! For instance, one night a man arose and asked, “Can you put your finger on a verse where Jesus calls himself the Son of,God? Not where his disciples or someone else called him that, but where he himself did.” A sinking feeling went over me. I had a rather hazy notion about where there was such a passage, but I couldn’t remember just where it was, and he wanted me to put my finger on it! I turned to my New Testament with a prayer to find that verse. As I opened it the first verse my eyes fell upon was an entirely different one from the one I was looking for, the one where Jesus met the man whom he had healed and asked him if he believed on the Son of God. The man replied, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?” Jesus replied, “Thou hast both seen him, and he it is that speaketh unto thee.” I read it off as if I had known about it all the time! They never knew the quiet little miracle that God had performed to fulfill his promise that it should be given in that hour what one should speak! But I knew, and thanked him.
I have found a good many nervous Christians since coming home who are afraid that this whole thing of Christianity might fall to pieces if someone should get too critical, or if science should get too scientific. Many of the saints are now painfully nervous. They remind me of a lady missionary with whom I walked home one night after a very tense meeting in a Hindu theater. She said, “Mr. Jones, I am physically exhausted from that meeting to-night.” When I asked her the reason she said, “Well, I didn’t know what they were going to ask you next, and I didn’t know what you were going to answer, so I’ve been sitting up there in the gallery holding on to the bench with all my might for two hours, and I’m physically exhausted!” There are many like our sister who are metaphorically holding to their seats with all their might lest Christianity fall to pieces under criticism!
I have a great deal of sympathy with them, for I felt myself in the same position for a long time after I went to India. The whole atmosphere was acid with criticism. I could feel the acid eat into my very soul every time I picked up a non-Christian paper. Then there came the time when I inwardly let go. I became willing to turn Jesus over to the facts of the universe. I began to see that there was only one refuge in life and that was in reality, in the facts. If Jesus couldn’t stand the shock of the criticism of the facts discovered anywhere, if he wasn’t reality, the sooner I found it out the better. My willingness to surrender Christ to the facts was almost as great an epoch in my life as my willingness to surrender to him. In the moment of letting go I could almost feel myself inwardly turning pale. What would happen? Would the beautiful dream fade? To my happy amazement I found that he not only stood, but that he shone as never before. I saw that he was not a hothouse plant that would wither under the touch of criticism, but he was rooted in reality, was the very living expression of our moral and spiritual universe—he was reality itself.
I have, therefore, taken my faith and have put it out before the non-Christian world for these seventeen years and have said, “There it is, my brothers, break it if you can.” And the more they have smitten upon it the more it has shone. Christ came out of the storms and will weather them. The only way to kill Christianity is to take it out of life and protect it. The way to make it shine and show its genius is to put it down in life and let it speak directly to life itself. Jesus is his own witness. The Hindus have formed societies called Dharm Raksha Sabhas— Societies for the Protection of Religion. Jesus does not need to be protected. He needs to be presented. He protects himself.
I could therefore reply to my sister mentioned above that in that stormy meeting I had been having the time of my life, that I wanted them to go into the matter, for if they would only go deep enough, they would stand face to face with Jesus. For he did not come to bring a way of life—he came to be Life itself, and if they go deep enough into life, they would find themselves facing Jesus, who is Life itself. He did not come to bring a set of truths to set alongside of other truths, as some have superficially imagined, he came to be Truth; and if one goes far enough with truth, it will lead him by the hand till he faces him who is Truth itself. Dean Inge rightly says, “Jesus did not come to bring a religion but to be Religion,” and if we are seriously religious we will have to be according to his mind and spirit or else fail to be religious. In the language of Matthew Arnold, “Jesus is an Ultimate.”
Start in at the thing that you know is worth while and follow it back to its final form and see where it lands you. For instance, love is a worth-while thing in life. We ought to love. Then trace love back to its ultimate kind and you will not be far from Him who loved as never man loved. If purity is a good thing, then start with it and go on back and see what kind of ultimate purity it brings you to, and you will find yourself looking into the eyes of Him who was “the Purest among the mighty, and the Mightiest among the pure.” If self-sacrifice is life’s most noble quality, then run it back to its finest type and you will find yourself gazing upon a cross.
I am therefore not afraid of the question hour, for I believe that Jesus underlies our moral and spiritual universe deeper than the force of gravity underlies our material universe. And although I know I cannot answer many things—for the case is bigger than the pleader—I believe that some way, somehow, some time, men’s minds, groping like the tendril of the vine that reaches out for the wall and finally touching it fastens itself upon its solid reality, will ultimately fasten upon Jesus as that Reality.
But more difficult to meet than the question hour is when they test us not with questions but by whether we have truly caught the Christ spirit. The big question that India silently and relentlessly asks is not how keen a mind has he? but has he the mind of Christ?
This was brought vividly home to me one day when two Hindu youths, dressed very plainly and in bare feet, came to talk with me. I had had many interviews that day, but none of them did I enjoy like the hour I had with these young men. They were so eager and alert and responsive. The next day they came again, this time to make an explanation. They told me who they were—sons of the wealthiest and most prominent people in the city. They had purposely come the day before barefoot and with very poor clothes on to test me, to see whether I really meant it when I had said the preceding night that Jesus looked on people as such, apart from race and birth and color and possessions, and whether I would practice it in my attitude toward them dressed in poor clothes! They said that they had previously thought of becoming Christians and determined to make this a test as to whether they would or not. It was all done so naïvely and simply that one could not but feel it was genuine, especially when they said they were now ready to become Christians.
This event did not elate me, it sobered me, for the serious thought kept haunting me, how easy it would have been to have said the careless word and to have assumed a patronizing attitude—both of which I had often done—when so much hung upon the slightest act or attitude!
India is asking questions; those that she asks with her lips are serious and searching, but of far more vital concern are the silent weighings and inward judgments of us by which India comes to her conclusions about Christ.
The High Priest asked Jesus “of his disciples and of his teaching.” The non-Chistian world is asking those same two things and always in that order. “What life have you?” “What light have you?”
I took my lamp and went and sat
Where men of another creed and custom
Dwelt together in bonds of common search.
I pressed my lamp close to my bosom,
Lest adverse winds of thought and criticism,
And the damp of unsympathy should snuff it out.
And many a trembling prayer hung upon my lips.
But I determined that I would love—just love.
I loved and listened and learned, and now and then
Threw in a thought or word or observation.
I heard their gentle speech, saw their mild ways;
Felt the Hand of Peace rest gently on my soul.
Here was not the tearing of the flesh,
Nor the fierce agony of the spirit, in its quest for God.
They gently searched and, through the crevices of their thought,
The light of our Father’s Face streamed in.
They caught the footfalls of the Mighty Spirit,
As he moved each moment through palpitating Nature.
And I heard them tune their heart-strings to catch the music
Of God, as he hummed and sang through things.
But when, in sympathetic talk and mutual quest,
I asked the learned pundit whether he had found
A “jiwan mukta,” one who knew deliverance, here and now;
He sadly shook his head and said, “I have not seen.”
In his voice spoke an aching world: “I have not seen.”
Then there stole within my heart a quiet joy;
For I saw, amid the search of peoples and races,
One standing, who, with Chalice in hand, offered here and now
To thirsty souls a crystal draught of life eternal,
Which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst again.
Had I not drunk? Had he not put the Chalice
To my parched lips and, with thirst assuaged,
Had not my happy soul gone singing down the years?
A child had thus revealed to him, through prayer and
Surrender of the mind and will, that for which
The wise and prudent had vainly searched
And caught but glimpses; while I, unworthy,
Stood face to Face.
As I pondered thus, I glanced, with trembling, at my lamp—
And lo, it burned up brighter than before!