CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
THE TEACHING OF JESUS ON THE FUTURE LIFE
Any attentive reader of the Gospels marks a difference between the teaching of Jesus on the future life as given in the Synoptic
Gospels and His teaching as recorded in the Fourth Gospel.
The main difference consists in the fact that in the first three Gospels we read about the Kingdom of God and in the Gospel of St. John we read about eternal life.
The Kingdom of God The very first words in the Gospel of St. Mark describing the public ministry of Jesus are these:
" Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ' The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the good news.'"*
This is the outstanding note of the whole life and teaching of Jesus Christ.
To understand the conception of the Kingdom of God, we must go back to the books of the Prophets.
The idea that Jehovah rules over His people occurs again and again in the Old Testament.
There we find that men constantly looked back upon the reign of King David (which they idealized) and imagined that a far greater king would come from the house of David and inaugurate a glorious era of peace and prosperity to the people.
There was also the idea of "the Day of the Lord."
At first it was thought that the Lord of Hosts would conquer all Israel's enemies on that day and pass judgment on them.
The Hebrew prophets gave a new content to this idea.
They did not think of the Kingdom of God merely in terms of nationalist triumph and revenge.
In the book of Isaiah, for instance, the knowledge of God which the Hebrews had was regarded as spreading throughout the whole world and all the nations were considered as being bound together by a common worship, with its spiritual home at Jerusalem.'
At first divine judgment meant the slaughter of the enemies of the children of Israel.
Amos wrote trenchantly against those who looked forward with hope to God's day; on that day, said he, Divine * Mark i. 14, 15.
? Isaiah ii. 2-4.
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wrath would be poured out upon them.* It was the deep conviction of the Hebrew prophets that the judgment would certainly take place.
John the Baptist had this in mind when he exhorted men to flee from the wrath to come by repentance.
We must now turn for a moment to the picture of the Kingdom of God as it is given in the Apocalyptic writings.
The word "" Apocalypse " means unveiling and the Apocalyptic books are so called because they lift the veil from the future and try to penetrate into the secrets of God's dealings with men.
The book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the Revelation of St. John in the New Testament are examples of Apocalyptic books.
As parts of the Bible they have always been known in the Christian Church.
But in recent years several other Apocalyptic books have come to our knowledge and they are held to have been written from 200 B.C. to A.D. 100 by anonymous authors.
The Jews had been independent for a brief time under their own rulers, known as the Maccabees.
'This period of independence, though quite short, had been a glorious one.
But they soon lost their independence and were finally absorbed in the vast Roman Empire.
The Hebrew Prophets had thought that the judgment of God and His reign would come as a normal historical event.
But the future was so black that the Apocalyptic thinkers began to say that the reign of God would come not through any historical event (such as victory in a battle) but through powerful divine action, which would usher in a new age with a new heaven and a new earth.
The divine judgment would take place and the wicked Jews and the Gentiles would be sent to hell.
The dead, who had all suffered under the iron rule of oppressors, would rise from their graves to participate in this era of peace and prosperity.
But the Day of the Lord will only come after great tribulations—wars, famines and earthquakes.
We cannot be quite sure whether these Apocalyptic ideas were current only in small circles or were widely spread.
Jesus took over many of these ideas of the Prophets and Apocalyptists and put into them His own distinctive message.
One day as He sat on the mount of Olives some of His disciples asked Him, "' When shall these things be?
And what shall be the sign that these things will be accomplished?"
The long reply of Jesus to this question is given in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark.
It is so much like the Apocalyptic books that it has been called "the Little Apocalypse."
The material in this chapter is found also in Matthew and Luke.
In His * Amos v. 18, 19.
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LIFE.
reply Jesus describes the woes which must take place before the Kingdom of God could come. In His reply occurs also the saying,
'* Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." * Here Jesus plainly intimates that He did not know when the Kingdom would come in its full glory.
But He seems to have expected its coming very soon.
"And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There be some here of them that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Kingdom of God come with power." ° He exhorted His hearers earnestly to watch and pray because they did not know the hour.
He said that that day would come when no one expected it, like a thief in the night.
Along with the Prophets and the Apocalyptic writers, Jesus connected the coming reign of God with God's judgment.
In the Day of the Lord; which began the new age, there would be retribution and the just would be separated from the unjust.
In the Apocalyptic books all the Gentiles were condemned indiscriminately.
But Jesus taught that the members of the chosen race of Israel were just as likely to be punished as those outside.
""O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." ° He also said that while the children of Israel, who regarded themselves as possessed of special spiritual prerogatives, would be excluded from the Kingdom of God, outsiders would be taken in.
"And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven : but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth." '
During the reign of God the powers of evil would be finally defeated; in a moment of. ecstasy Jesus saw " Satan fallen as lightning from heaven."
Those who attain to the Kingdom of God would be as the angels and earthly conditions such as marriage would not prevail among them.
In it the rule of God would be complete and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus looked forward to the advent of a new and glorious *Mark xiii. 32.
° Mark ix. 1.
* Matthew xxiii. 37, 38.
™ Matthew viii. 11, 12.
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era with Himself as the Son of Man to inaugurate it.
This belief was fully accepted by the early Christians.
In St. Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians we read:
"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout,with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught. up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." *® This is the earliest Christian book known to us.
From this we may gather that in the early Church the Christians fully expected Christ to come and judge the world soon and we may also conclude that this hope of theirs was based upon the teaching of Jesus Himself.® The Christians in the first and second centuries earnestly expected the second coming of Christ.
This eagerly looked for event did not take place.
The meaning of Christ's teaching about His second coming has always been a real problem in the Christian Church.
Eternal life as Fellowship with God In the Gospel of St. John there is a significant answer to the great question of the real meaning of the second coming of Christ.
This book was written about the end of the first or the beginning of the second century after Christ.
The Christians at that time were sore perplexed about the second coming of Christ not taking place.
The phrase "the Kingdom of God" which occurs so frequently in the Synoptic Gospels is found only three times in the Gospel of St. John."
Even in these three passages its spiritual and unworldly nature is clearly set forth.
In the Gospel of St. John the doctrine of eternal life takes the place of the conception of the Kingdom of God.
This change of phraseology is attributed by modern scholars to the influence ° of Greek Philosophy.
The Apocalyptic ideas of the Jews were utterly alien to Greek Philosophy and the early Christians, who had either studied Greek Philosophy or had imbibed the fundamental ideas of Greek Philosophy which were floating in the air at that time, fourid it impossible to understand the Apocalyptic picture of the Kingdom of God.
Such an Apocalyptic Kingdom 51 Thessalonians iv. 15-17.
°W. R. Matthews, Christ, pp. 38-64.
John iii. 3; iii. 5; xviii. 36.
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had not actually come and perhaps Jesus did not mean that it would come.
| Jesus had sometimes spoken about eternal life and He had used it as the equivalent of His great phrase, "' the Kingdom of God."
In Matthew, for instance, we read:
'" And if thy hand or thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee: it is good for thee to enter into life maimed or halt, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the eternal fire. And if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is good for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire." ™*
Jesus says in St. Mark, " And if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out: it is good for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell." "
Here it should be noted that life and the Kingdom of God are used synonymously.
' And he said unto him, Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?
One there is who is good: but if thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments." **
"And Jesus seeing him said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God!" **
Here again life and the Kingdom of God are both used interchangeably.
It is probable that in His own teaching Jesus sometimes said " the Kingdom of God" and sometimes said " Life" or " Eternal
Life."
The Fourth Evangelist practically drops out the doctrine of the Kingdom of God with its many Apocalyptic associations which are so difficult to understand and replaces it by the doctrine of eternal life.
St. John's attitude towards this question, then, seems to be that the phrase " Kingdom of God " raises in the minds of people all sorts of wrong ideas (e.g. that the Kingdom is a worldly
Kingdom or that it is likely to come immediately), and that therefore it is safer to speak of eternal life, which has no such associations.
There are two main features in the teaching about eternal life as given in the Gospel of St. John.
Eternal life is fellowship with God.
" Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live." *°
" But these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;
™ Matthew xviii. 8, 9.
; ® Mark ix. 47.
% Matthew xix. 17.
* Luke xviii. 24.
* John xi. 25.
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and that believing ye may have life in his name." ** Believing in Christ does not mean here that we should accept with our mind certain intellectual propositions about Him but it means that we should devote ourselves entirely, with all our thought, feeling and will, to Him.
In other words, believing in Christ means being in fellowship with Him.
We take Him as the Lord of our life, accept the ideals which He puts before us, practise them to our utmost ability and receive of His indwelling spirit, which is also the Spirit of God.' Again in St. John's Gospel we read :
"He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him." "*
From these two verses it is clear that eternal life is the life of endless fellowship with Christ.
We must note that in speaking of life as fellowship with Christ, John is only developing fully certain germs of thought which are found in the Synoptic Gospels.
The most important passage in this connexion occurs in a discussion which the Sadducees had with Jesus.** They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.
This may have been either because as descendants of the old aristocracy they were conservative in their thinking or because they were worldly in their outlook and rejected any belief in the future life as likely to interfere with their worldliness.
Our Lord said to them:
'' Have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err."
In the Old Testament God is often called the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
In some important directions Christ rejected its teaching about God.
In the Old Testament, for instance, God is often spoken of as a vindictive and jealous Being.
This idea finds no place in the teaching of Christ.
It is significant that Christ accepts this name for God— the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—and sets the seal of His approval on it. We may assume that He regards this name as giving an adequate idea of His
Father.
It is therefore worthwhile seeking to find out what exactly it means.
God is the God of individuals.
He is, it is true, the Lord of * John xx. 31.
John vi. 54, 56. bas * Mark xii. 10-27.
Shs.
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the whole human race.
But He is even more; He is the Lord of each member of the human race.
God is not merely the Lord of the whole Christian Church; He is the Lord of every individual being who composes it. Sometimes it seems difficult to accept this teaching.
People ask: How can God be vitally concerned in each one of the millions of beings whom He has created?
It is easy enough to say, as some do, that He takes a personal interest in all the great men of the world.
But how can He watch over every one, whether important or not?
Our Lord's teaching is that the very hairs of our head are numbered.
*" Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not: ye are of more value than many sparrows." *® A Psalmist says, "' The Lord is my shepherd." *° All the sheep in a flock may appear alike to a stranger, but the shepherd knows each one of them by name.
He understands the tricks and the ailments of each sheep.
A mother may have several children.
To others all these children may more or less seem alike, but she knows them as quite distinct persons.
She remembers the food they had when they were young, the bright things they said and the friends with whom they played.
Years may pass but the mother's memory of their individuality never fades.
God is deeply interested in each person; He is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
It is not merely in this life that God is concerned with different individuals but also in the future life.
God continues to be the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob through eternity.
Christ uses this name for God when speaking of the future life, indicating that this is one of His names through eternity.
This name implies that in the future life Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will continue to be separate persons and not lose themselves in God.
The same thought is clear also in His words:
' And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven."?**
In the Kingdom of Heaven, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob shall continue to be different individuals and not become merged in God.
The question as to whether human personality survives in the future life or is lost in God has been discussed again and * Luke xii. 6, 7.
Psalm xxiii. 1.
*1 Matthew viii. 11.
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again in India.
Every thoughtful person who thinks of the future life at all is perplexed about it. Many Hindus hold that .the final goal of religion is absorption in God.
The fascination of this ideal for the Indian mind is tremendous.
Perhaps the reasons for such attraction are these :— 1.
There is a genuine desire to recognize the absolute supremacy of God (Brahman).
No one is equal to Him; He is all in all.
The highest ambition of the human soul is to lose itself in God.
Once a Christian theological student said to me in class, " Is it not a glorious ideal—this ideal of merging one's self in God?
Does it not show that ultimately God alone is supreme and that nothing else matters? "
The futility of the ego is another reason underlying this doctrine.
We are weak, miserable creatures; all our life is suffering and struggle; the sooner it ends the better.
3. The world moves in cycles.
Life and death take place alternately.
Trees put forth their fresh young leaves and afterwards shed them. Men and women are born and then die. The universe comes into being and is then dissolved into its original elements.
For this reason Hindu thinkers speak of different Kalpas or ages, in the beginning of which the worlds with all their living beings come into existence and at the end of which they all go back into Brahman.
Once a Hindu friend said to me:
" God is responsible for all His creatures.
He brings them into existence and His responsibility for them continues as long as they live.
That is why I hold that they are finally absorbed in Him.
This means that He takes them back into Himself.
Otherwise they are thrown on their own resources through eternity and His responsibility for them seems to cease."
It is clear, then, that for various reasons the ideal of absorption in God has proved most attractive to thoughtful men in India.
The Christian teaching on this subject is quite different.
It is that all through eternity men continue to be their distinctive selves.
They never lose their personality in God.
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob do not cease to be separate persons.
They continue all through eternity their varied existences.
They have their different thoughts and feelings, their different spheres of activity and their different tasks, but they are all wholly surrendered to God in love and devotion.
In a matter like this we cannot go merely by our own desires and hopes.
Some crave that their personality should be lost in God and others are anxious that their personality should survive in fellowship with Him. The real question is, what is the nature
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of God, not what we desire or like.
God is love.
That is His eternal character.
There can be love only when there is someone to love and someone to be loved.
God can be said to love only when there are other beings whom He could love.
If they cease to exist, how could He exercise His love towards them ?
To speak of God as love in and by Himself is meaningless.
There is a measure of truth in all the reasons which influence the Hindu mind to accept the doctrine of absorption, but not the entire truth.
1. God is supreme. But this does not mean that He is supreme in His isolated splendour.
Such supremacy counts for nothing.
He is supreme in His relation to His creatures.
They depend on Him completely.
Their life is wholly centred in Him.
His love for them is the greatest fact in their life; when it is gone, everything becomes dark and gloomy.
It is true there is a great deal of suffering and struggle in our life.
Much of this is due to a wrong development of our ego.
I think too much of myself.
I am attached too much to my own inclinations and desires.
I love certain things and hate certain others.
All this leads to misery and trouble, but life is not all misery.
As a Hindu friend once told me, " The ego is the source of our enjoyment too."
There is much joy in the world which is quite legitimate.
This joy is due to the fact of our separate personalities.
When God takes us back into Himself, He does not necessarily fulfil His responsibility in the best sense.
God's ways with us are mysterious and often unfathomable.
But in the light of our highest knowledge, there is a nobler and higher way in which He could continue to be responsible for us all through eternity.
That is, even if we have our separate feelings and thoughts and activities, He could go on helping us and guiding us.
He could stimulate our highest desires and stir up our noblest longings.
In this way He will continue to exercise His responsibility for us.
He does not leave us stranded on the shores of eternity. His Presence is real to us. His love for us is unbounded.
Just as these experiences are true of this life, so are they true of the life to come.
Dr. W. R. Inge writes:
''' God is not the God of the dead but of the living.'
This is the only argument for immortality from Christ's own lips; and we cannot go much further." "
An interesting story is told in the Katha Upanishad.
A Brah- * W.R. Inge, Article on " Eighty years Old," The Madras Mail, June 18, 1939.
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man youth went to the land of Yama, the god of death.
The god himself was absent and no one took the trouble to entertain the guest, who remained unfed for three days.
When Yama returned home he came to hear of the grievous offence he had committed; to neglect a Brahman guest was regarded as a serious crime.
To compensate for the insult, Yama offered to give Nachiketas (that was the name of the Brahman youth) anything for which he asked.
Nachiketas availed himself of this generous offer and asked Yama to tell him what would happen after death :
"This doubt there is about a man departed,— Some say, ' He is,' some, ' He does not exist'
; This would I know, instructed well by thee." 7° Yama was surprised at this request.
He had not expected it.
He did not want to reveal what was in store for men after their death.
So he tried his best to put off Nachiketas from pressing for an answer to this question by offering him sons and grandsons, cattle, elephants, gold and horses, far-flung dominions of the earth and long life.
But Nachiketas rejected them all scornfully :
"Ephemeral things!
They wear away, O Death, Whatever vigour of his powers a man may have.
All life, moreover, at the best is brief :
Thine be the chariots, thine the dance and song!
Never with wealth can man be satisfied.
Shall we get wealth if we have seen thee?
Shall we even live as long as thou shalt reign?
That boon then must I choose, and that alone.' 24
Thus pressed, with no way of escape, Yama expounded his teaching about the future life:
" The wise self is not born and does not die, From naught else comes it nor does aught become :
Unborn, eternal, endless, this the Ancient, Is slain not with the slaying of the body.
If the slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, Both of them do not understand, This slays not, neither is it slain." 7°
"The Katha Upanishad, i. 20, translated by J. N. Rawson, The Katha Upanishad, p. 75.
"The Katha Upanishad, i. 26, 27.
(Op. cit. p. 77.) * The Katha Upanishad, ii. 18, 19.
(Op. cit. p. 103.)
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The meaning here is that the soul or self is eternal and death a mere bodily appearance.
Then the Upanishad goes on to teach that immortality comes from the yoking of the individual spirit with the Supreme Spirit, which forms its inmost being and inspires it for the highest ends:
" Less than an atom, greater than the great, The Self is hid in every creature's heart :
The unstriving man beholds Him, freed from sorrow ; Through the Creator's grace, he sees the greatness of the Self." ?° There is a special aptness in St. John describing our fellowship with God as life or eternal life.
These terms indicate the genuinely inward character of the life lived in God.
There is nothing in the world which is more closely bound up with us than our life.
Life forms an absolutely essential part of ourselves and is the source of all that we are and do.
God is often spoken of in the writings of the Hindu saints as their life or as the life of their life.
"* As the Lord of Creation, thou movest in the womb.
*Tis thou thyself that art born again.
, To thee, O Life, creatures here bring tribute— Thou, who dwellest with living beings!
This whole world is in the control of Life." ?"
Eternal Life here and now II. The other main feature in the teaching about eternal life as given in the Gospel of St. John is that it begins here and now.
According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus teaches that the judgment of men is always taking place.
Christ does not sit in judgment on men on the final day, but men themselves by their various choices decide their own future destiny either for good or for evil.
This point has been discussed at some length elsewhere in the book and need not be considered again here."*
The great experience of eternal life, the Fourth Gospel teaches, is here and now possible to the soul.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth hath eternal life." *° " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgement, but * The Katha Upanishad, ii. 20.
(Op. cit. p. 106.) *™ Prasna Upanishad, ii. 7, 13, translated by R. E. Hume, The Thirteen
Principles of Upanishad, p. 382.
* See Chap. VII.
© John vi. 47.
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hath passed out of death into life." ® " And this ts life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." * sd Was this a part of the teaching of Christ or was it an addition by the Fourth Evangelist?
In the Synoptic Gospels we find that Jesus regarded the Kingdom of God not merely as coming in the future but as already being here, a fact which men have to accept immediately.
'"' And turning to the disciples, he said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I say unto you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye-hear, and heard them not." *
When Jesus sent out the seventy disciples He instructed them to teach, " The Kingdom of God has come nigh unto you," which does not mean that the people to whom the missionaries went had to prepare for the Kingdom which would come very soon but it means that the opportunity of entering the Kingdom, which is here and now, has been given to them.** When the Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come He answered :
"The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the Kingdom of God is within you." ** According to Jesus the main evidence for the Kingdom of God having come is the manifestation of new divine energy.
In this He is at one with the Prophets and the Apocalyptists.
To assure John the Baptist that the Messiah had indeed come Jesus said, "The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them.
And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me." * Thus we see that the thought that the Kingdom of God had already arrived is clearly present in the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels.
What St. John has done has been mainly to change the name from " the Kingdom of God " to " eternal life."
Before leaving the topic of the difference between the conception of the future life as found in the Synoptic Gospels and that in the Fourth Gospel, we may quote a remark by Dr. Fosdick:
"Far from being a matter of merely historic interest, * John v. 24.
* John xvii. 3.
** Luke x. 9.
" Luke xvii. 20, 21.
* Matthew xi. 5, 6.
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this contrast in the New Testament between Jewish and Hellenistic ways of thinking about the future life has remained ever since an unresolved dilemma in Christianity.
In general, the best thinking of the Church has followed the Fourth Gospel, but always the old picturesque apocalyptic drama, with its intermediate state, bodily resurrection, theatrical parousia, and millennial reign, has lured the imagination of multitudes." *
The idea that it is possible to experience here and now fellowship with God is quite popular in India.
A man who has attained such an experience is known as a fivan Mukta.
Practically all the schools of Hindu Philosophy accept the fact of this experience.
Only Ramanuja holds that to call a man ivan Mukta is a contradiction in terms; for if he is still in the body, he is not released.
In an interesting poem that modern Hindu saint, Aurobindo Ghose, says :
"There is a silence greater than any known To earth's dumb spirit, motionless in the soul
That has become Eternity's foothold, Touched by the infinitudes for ever.
A splendour is here, refused to the earthward sight, That floods some deep flame-covered all-seeing eye ;
Revealed it wakens when God's stillness Heavens the ocean of moveless Nature.
A Power descends no Fate can perturb or vanquish, Calmer than mountains, wider than marching waters,
A single might of luminous quiet Tirelessly bearing the worlds and ages.
A Bliss surrounds with ecstasy everlasting, An absolute high-seated immortal rapture
Possesses, sealing love to oneness In the grasp of the All-beautiful, All-beloved.
He who from Time's dull motion escapes and thrills Rapt thoughtless, wordless into the Eternal's breast,
Unrolls the form and sign of being, Seated above in the omniscient Silence.
Although consenting here to a mortal body, He is the Undying; limit and bond he knows not ;
For him the aeons are a playground, Life and its deeds are his splendid shadow." **
* HE. Fosdick, A Guide to Understanding the Bible, p. 290.
* Six Poems of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 22-26.
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It will be noted that the thoughts emphasized in this poem are the experience of God which is attained by the devotee in deep silence and the joy and the peace which flow into his soul from such experience.
A Christian fivan Mukta has also an experience of wonderful joy. When Sadhu Sundar Singh was thrown into prison for Christ's sake he wrote on the fly-leaf of his copy of the New Testament, " Christ's Presence has turned my prison to heaven."
A Christian Fivan Mukta not merely experiences joy but he also works for God.
The reality of his fellowship with God is tested by the abundance of his good deeds.
The Hindu doctrine speaks as if all action is wrong and that the saint who has become a fivan. Mukta goes on acting because of ~ certain impulses already present in his experience and that his actions will not in any way involve him in future births.
Thus the actions of the Hindu fivan Mukta are, as it were, conceded to him by the backdoor, whereas actions are the very life and soul of the Christian fivan Mukta.