X. An Indian Christianity

Christianity and National Genius

In Europe Christianity has become differentiated into three main types, Latin, Greek and Teutonic — the last being further differentiated into many sub-types. These correspond to the genius and temperament of the peoples predominant in different areas. It is to be expected that at no distant date, at least three more types will emerge — an Indian, a Chinese and a Japanese. But in Europe the differentiation of racial and national types of Christianity — a thing in itself inevitable and up to a point desirable — has come about in a way which has been whoUy disastrous. This no doubt has been mainly due to the fact that religious questions have been complicated with political; but the result has been that what was meant to be the religion of mankind as such, a bond of unity and peace transcending all divisions of race and class and culture, has in practice tended rather to enhance the bitterness of existing feuds. Energies, which properly applied might have regenerated the world, have been dissipated in internecine struggle. Perhaps the greatest problem before the rapidly maturing churches of the East is how to achieve a truly national expression of Christianity while avoiding mistakes, which, while not exactly the same, may well be as calamitous as those which have paralyzed the Christianity of Europe.

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Baron von Hügel, at his interview with the Sadhu, was particularly impressed by his views on this problem. In the memorandum which he wrote for us he very penetratingly sums up the Sadhu 's attitude. "The Sadhu most rightly does not, by a specifically Indian Christianity, mean a Christianity so much adapted to Indian thought as to cease to be a living Christianity. Thus his reaction, e.g.y against Brahman teaching and method, is assuredly not chargeable with insufficiency. Indeed the Sadhu 's entire general outlook, in all its positive features, does not, in its grandly non-pantheistic, its personalist and historical connections, simply echo or take over en hloc, any of the strains actually predominant in Indian philosophy and religion. He no more, because he is an Indian, takes over wholesale the extant, directly manifest, peculiarities of Indian thought than did St. Paul, because he was a Jew, take over wholesale the extant, directly manifest peculiarities of Jewish thought, or than St. Augustine, because he was an African Roman, took over wholesale the extant, readily seizable, special features of the African Roman mind. Yet both St. Paul and St. Augustine were proud of being respectively Jew and Roman, and were anxious to remain as Jewish and Roman as deep Christianity allowed. So also the Sadhu is most rightly proud of being an Indian, and is anxious to remain as Indian as deep Christianity allows. "

In our view, this exactly expresses the Sadhu 's position.

"Once when I was traveling in Rajputana," said the Sadhu, "there was a Brahman of high caste hurrying to the station. Overcome by the great heat, he fell down on the platform. The Anglo-Indian station-master was

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anxious to help him. He brought him some water in a white cup, but he would not take the water. He was so thirsty, but he said, " I cannot drink that water. I would prefer to die."We are not asking you to eat this cup,' they said to him. " I will not break my caste, ' he said, ' I am willing to die. ' But when water was brought to him in his own brass vessel, he drank it eagerly. When it was brought to him in his own way he did not object. It is the same with the Water of Life. Indians do need the Water of Life, but not in the European cup. "

The Sadhu's own method of teaching is characteristically Indian. A sage frequently, a popular teacher always, speaks in pictures and argues in pictures. Often he also thinks in pictures; and Sundar, coming as he does in the line of Indian seers and poets, follows the same method. This is even more noticeable in his ordinary talk than in his public addresses. The illustrations he uses in these latter might conceivably be the result of careful thought, but as one listens to him in private, one perceives that it is in and by vivid pictures that his own mind works; and often remarks thrown off on the spur of the moment are masterpieces of imagination and expression.

This, however, it might be said, is not so much Indian as Eastern; yet, among Easterns, who but an Indian would have been so enraptured by St. John 's philosophy of Logos, Life and Love, and have then translated it into vivid parable?

Specifically Indian, too, is the instinct which led the Sadhu in search of saints brooding in inaccessible spots on the Himalayas over God and Eternity, and which determined the intense interest he took in the venerable Maharishi, whom he found on Kail ash — a name hallowed in Hindu Literature by endless sacred associations. Both the hermit, who seeks the absolute solitude of forest, mountain-cave or desert to meditate alone, and the monk, to whom the life of communion with the Divine seems easier in a community of kindred souls, are to be found in East and West alike. But while corporate devotion — the Catholic Mass, the Evangelical prayermeeting, the Quaker silence — is characteristic of the West, India has been the hermit's classic land. It is the Indian in the Sadhu that longs to live the life of such solitary contemplation did not the love of Christ constrain him to choose rather work for the salvation of his fellow-men.

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One who is himself so completely Indian naturally desires a completely Indian Church.

"What will the future church of India be," he was asked, "Church of England, Wesleyan, Baptist, or what?" "There will be only an Indian Church," he replied, "a Church constituted according to Indian methods and ideals." He does not think the Indian Church can yet stand alone. Missionaries are still required to train Indian Christian leaders; but these must gradually be given more and more responsibility. " When a person wants to learn to swim he must first of all learn how he should swim on land. But he must then get into the water, first into the shallow, afterwards in the deep. So carefully trained Indian leaders must first be placed in places of moderate responsibility where they can learn, then by and by they will be able to make their churches strong and we may expect great things. In some places they have already begun to do that."

He enforces this estimate both of the strength and weakness of the Indian Church by a parable, probably

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suggested by the popular picture of "Mother India/' painted on the map with her head crowned by the Himalayas and her feet upon the lotus of Ceylon.

"We can compare India to a man. The Himalayas are his head. South India is his feet, Punjab his right hand and Bengal his left. If this man is to stand firm he has to stand on South India, his feet. South India is indeed fit for this. The Christians of South India are very advanced, in numbers as well as in education. But, though many of these churches are self-supporting, and though this man can stand on these feet, he is unable to walk now. What is the reason 1 I saw a Jew in the state of Cochin. He stood, but could not walk. Why? Because he had elephantiasis which made his legs swollen and heavy. The Indian Church is unable to proclaim the Gospel all-over India and to save the whole country because of the elephantiasis of the Indian Church of the south. Caste distinction is its main weakness. Through this and other causes there is lack of love, and therefore lack of anxiety to save others. If this disease is healed the Church of South India will be used as an instrument, and guide the other churches of India."

By adopting the life of a sadhu, Sundar is deliberately attempting to Indianize Christianity. And his attempt, as we shall indicate later, may raise issues more fundamental than he has probably foreseen. But in other respects the Indianization of Christianity he has in mind is mainly a matter of externals. To a friend

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who once asked him how Christianity could be nationalized in India, he replied: "The people should sit down on the floor in church. They should take off their shoes instead of their turbans. Indian music should be sung. Long, informal addresses should take the place of sermons. " So far as fundamentals are concerned, Christianity to the Sadhu is supra-national. It is the religion neither of the East nor of the West, but of Humanity.

Just as Christ said of the Jewish Law and Prophets, that He came not to destroy but to fulfill, so, as the Sadhu sees it, is His religion related to the nobler elements in Hinduism.

" Christianity is the fulfillment of Hinduism. Hinduism has been digging channels. Christ is the water to flow through these channels. The Bhagavad Gita is very much like St. John's Gospel. It is probable, as one of my friends suggested, that a Hindu took St. John's thoughts and put them into Hindu form. The Bhagavad Gita was composed in the second century a. d., and at that time there were Christians in India. Heat from the sun is stored up in the earth. It comes out when stone comes into friction with stone. Non-Christian thinkers also have received light from the Sun of Righteousness. The Hindus have received of the Holy Spirit. There are many beautiful things in Hinduism, but the fullest light is from Christ. Every one is breathing air. So every one, Christian as well as non-Christian, is

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breathing the Holy Spirit, though they do not call it by that name. The Holy Spirit is not the private property of some special people. "

Why then, it will be asked, does the Sadhu so often seem to go out of his way to assert that he himself gained but little from the study of the Hindu sacred books, and nothing at all from the characteristically Hindu religious practice of Yoga?

Converts are proverbially inclined to be the severest critics of their old faith. Naturally — a man does not at a great cost to himself exchange one religion for another unless he feels intensely the strong points of the new and the weak points of the old. Some Indian converts— Pandita Ramabi is a notable instance — can see nothing in Hinduism but a "power of darkness." But this does not explain the Sadhu 's attitude. The darker side of Hinduism he never alludes to, at least we can quote no such allusion. He rarely if ever denounces the grosser abuses of the popular religion. His criticisms of Hinduism appear to be mainly directed, not against its weak, but against its strong points — its philosophic Pantheism, the doctrine of Karma, the Path of Knowledge (Jnana-marga), the practice of Yoga, the Ascetic ideal.

The real answer to our question must be sought elsewhere. The Sadhu, as we have again and again reiterated, is a mystic whose mysticism centers on Christ, he is one who has fallen in love — though that or any metaphor is far too feeble — with Christ. And, compared with the light of the knowledge and love of Christ by which he himself now walks, the highest illumination

iCf. International Review of Missions, April, 1920, p. 223. 2Cf. p. 143.

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known to Hindu Saints seems to him as a twilight glimmer to the noonday sun. What they possessed no doubt was good. But now a far better thing is offered. And to choose the merely good when one may have the best is definitely to take the lower path.

Philosophic Pantheism

Hinduism, on its philosophical side, is far too imposing a structure to be demolished merely by telling epigrams and happily conceived illustrations. And any one who goes to the Sadhu's utterances for a reasoned intellectual criticism either of Pantheism or of doctrines like Karma or Jnana, which have been previously touched on, he will be disappointed. The Sadhu emphatically is not a philosopher. He himself would be the first to disclaim any pretense of being one. His mind is rather that of the prophet — a type closer akin to the poet than to the philosopher. Just as the artist is the man who can see beauty where others miss it and then show it to the world, so the prophet is one who has the eye for moral and religious values and the power vividly to present them to mankind. The intuitive perception of value, whether aesthetic or ethical, is different from the purely intellectual discernment of logical cogency, which is a mark of the philosopher, or from the capacity to appre&end the laws which coordinate the results of observation, which characterizes the scientist. The Sadhu 's criticisms of Hinduism are of importance, not as intellectual arguments, but as indications of just how and where his "prophetic" temper "senses" a deficiency in the matter of these values.

The fundamental assertion of Religion is that Reality

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is in the last resort good; and that, therefore, if we search long enough, we shall discover that the best is also the most true. But untutored man is no better judge of what is best than of what is most beautiful; moral insight is as rare as good taste. It is the special function of the prophet to help men to see more clearly what really is the best. The philosopher is required to prove that it is also true. But the philosopher can do this only if in his search the question he puts first is, not what is best, but what is most true. Accordingly it is very difficult for the same man to be both prophet and philosopher. The Sadhu conspicuously is not both. But surely in India, the land of philosophy, it will not be long before the Christian Church can produce a philosopher to match her prophet.

The Sadhu 's frequent criticisms of Pantheism are largely a reaction against his Indian environment. It would not be true to say that all Hindus are Pantheists — Ramanuja, for instance, whose philosophy has provided an intellectual basis for Bhakti worship, is the notable exception. Still, in India, a Pantheism based mainly on the Monism of the great Sankara, is the dominant philosophy of religion. The Christian mystics of the West, where popular religion has tended to emphasize only the Divine Transcendence, are usually to be found insisting on the aspect of Immanence. In an opposite environment, the Sadhu emphasizes the opposite aspect of the truth. But that element in Pantheism which constitutes its specifically religious value — its insistence on the closeness and intimacy and the inward character of the relationship of the soul to the Divine — is of the essence of his message.

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"Muhammadan and Hindu mystics have mistakenly sought an absorption into the Great Spirit like the sinking of the river in the ocean. The ideal is to be in, but not to lose yourself in, the Great Spirit." Again: "Hindus commonly like St. John's Gospel; I in You and You in Me appeals to them. But they are apt to be confused by their Pantheism. Christ's oneness -with the Father and His oneness with ourselves is different. Light is Sun, and Sun is Light. Heat is Sun, and Sun is Heat. But you cannot say Heat is Light. Christ is the Light of the World. The Holy Spirit is the Heat of the World. Christ is not the Holy Spirit. Pantheism which blurs a distinction between me and God loses the main point. If I am to enjoy God, I must be different from God. The tongue could not enjoy sweetmeats if there were no difference between it and them.

"If we are God," he once said, "there is no need for worship. Pantheism has no sense of sin, and so there is a tendency to immoral lives. '

Baron von Hügel remarked to him: "I am surprised that you are so free from Pantheism. "

"In the early stages of my Christian career," said the Sadhu, "I had some leanings towards Pantheism myself. I used to think that the wonderful peace I had was probably the result of my being God or a part of God. But two arguments have removed this doubt,

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the first, that while practicing Yoga I did not have that peace; the second, that occasionally I feel gloom and depression from the consciousness of God abandoning me. "

Yoga and Bhakti

The mystic tendency in India may be said, generally speaking, to have followed two main lines of development— that of Yoga and that of Bhakti. These are regarded sometimes as supplementary, sometimes as contrasted, methods to be followed in the quest for the Divine. There are many ways of Yoga and there are several sects of Bhakti — and these differ enormously in moral and spiritual value. There is a Yoga which, in principle, is not far removed from some of the contemplative devotions which the Catholic cloister has devised. There is a Yoga which is a mere trick of selfinduced hypnosis, a trance-practice profitless and enervating to mind and heart and will. There are Bhakti sects which can justly claim a place among the higher religions of the world. There are others which countenance, some which even aim at, a religious exaltation which finds symbols of mystic union in rites of an immoral character.

But between Yoga and Bhakti, apart from these essential differences within the connotation of each word, there is a broad and general distinction — a distinction which, if for the sake of a " bird's-eye view" we are content to ignore subtler shades and differences, we may roughly express in a series of contrasts. The Yogin seeks the bliss of contact with the Absolute by rigor and self-discipline; the Bhakta seeks it through the beauty of song, dance and hymn. The former tries to

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suppress his desires, the latter to express them. The watchword of the former is "concentration," mainly an intellectual effort; the watchword of the latter is " devotion," largely an emotional "abandon." To the Yogin Peace is the goal of the mystic quest; to the Bhakta, Joy. The former tries to satisfy man's craving for the changeless by penetrating ever deeper into the spiritual profound; the latter is allured by exuberant vitality, expressed symbolically in movement and rhythm. The former is individualistic, preoccupied with solitary meditation; the latter is social, deriving joy and inspiration from the company of kindred souls. The Yogin neglects the accompaniments of sacerdotal worship, and loves the seclusion of forest or cave; the Bhakta makes full use of temple, idol, hjrmn. The former may adore Eternal Being whether personally or impersonally conceived; the latter 's rich and full devotion is directed towards a Rama or a Krishna, who represents the supreme Divinity in human form.

The Sadhu frequently asserts that he has been influenced by neither the Yoga nor the Bhakti schools of thought, nor can it for one moment be maintained that the essential elements of his religion have been derived from outside the Christian tradition. An English reader, who had never heard of Yoga or of Bhakti, would say at once of the man who speaks in these pages that his outlook and experience have demonstrably been moulded by the New Testament — with perhaps here and there a touch of influence from St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas a Kempis — but that nothing elsa has counted.

And yet, and yet...

Yoga, or at least one of the ways of Yoga, as he constantly himself recalls, he tried as a boy, and persevered

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in trying — tried it and found it wanting. And the Yogin 's passion for peace was the form in which he first felt that thirst of the soul for higher things which, it would seem, in all men is a prelude to the divine illumination. Though the Yogin 's "peace" through "concentration"— the Sanskrit Samddhi is translated by either of those two words — is quite different from that joyous Peace of God of which the Sadhu speaks. Again, can we entirely disconnect with this early quest and practice the part played in his religious life by the fact of Ecstasy? The experience of Ecstasy is common with Western Mystics; but in the frequency of its occurrence, in the supreme importance he attaches to it, and, it must be added, in the entire lack of that misgiving which made many of the Catholic mystics inquire carefully about each vision before they dare be sure that all of them were of God — the mysticism of the Sadhu has points of contact with the higher Yogic type. There is, however, one difference, and that absolutely fundamental, between the Sadhu 's and the Yogic mysticism, namely, the intensification in his Ecstasy of the Christ-control of normal life.

There is no evidence that the Bhakti poets were among the Hindu books he specially studied as a boy; though in the Bhagavad Gita, which he knew by heart, there are elements closely akin to Bhakti. It is noticeable also that he never uses the erotic imagery familiar to Bhakti — found too in many Christian — mystics to express the soul's intimacy with or longing for the Divine. Profounder calm rather than enhanced excitement accompanies his religious experience when most intense. In his advice to others he shows awareness of the dangers of emotion in religion. But there is a strain in him of

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the Bhakta's longing, though rigorously controlled. Once when the conversation turned on the Bhakti poets, and how they often say that in hours of spiritual exaltation their hair stands on end, tears flow from their eyes, and their body thrills with rapture: ' " These, " he said, "are only outward expression. Reality is beyond them. Usually my joy has taken an exceedingly quiet form. Sometimes it has shown itself in a different way. My hair has stood on end. Tears have run down my cheeks. But my body has never shivered with ecstasy. The peace and joy which I experience are contagious. Once I found others in my company shedding tears of joy as I did."

He sought, and he has found, the Yogin's Peace, the Bhakta's Joy as well — found them and more also, and more abundantly, in Christ. Who that has read this book so far can fail to see that Christianity, as the Sadhu feels and lives it, is not only the religion of the New Testament unadulterated and undefiled, but is also, in a sense no Westerner can ever apprehend, the consummation and the crown of Hinduism — the Way, which has as goal the synthesis and sublimation of both the Yogin's and the Bhakta's quest?

The Sadhu Ideal

We come now to the most distinctively Indian element in the Sadhu 's conception and presentation of Christianity. In the Middle Ages, especially in the Franciscan movement, something similar was attempted in the West. The practice and ideals of St. Francis of Assisi are in many respects identical with those of Sundar Singh, and 1 Cf. also the remarks on this subject, p. 11 /.

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possibly even may have not been without some influence upon him. Yet the incentive to carry out the ideal in this twentieth century is definitely traceable to the admiratiou instilled into him by his mother for Hindu sadhus whom he visited in her company as a boy, and for their way of living. "You must not," she used to say, "be careless and worldly like your brothers. You must seek peace of soul and love religion, and some day you must become a holy sadhu." "It was the Holy Ghost," he said once, "who made me a Christian, but it was my mother who made me a sadhu."

Unlike, however, the typical Hindu sadhu, Sundar Singh is definitely not an ascetic who attempts to accumulate merit or achieve perfection by self-inflicted suffering. He prefers to describe himself as a "preaching friar." Nor does he say that the world and everything connected with it is evil. On the other hand, he often gives expression to the conviction that because God is good the world He has made must be also good.

"I tell Hindu sadhus: 'You are sadhus because you want to torture yourself. I am a sadhu to serve. I do not torture myself, though I have been tortured. I have not renounced the world. I want to be in the world and yet not of the world.'

"Once I passed through a village on the Himalayas and saw a huge pile of dirt and dung. The smell that issued from it was so bad that I vomited. After some days I passed the same place again. I noticed a sweet smell covering up the bad odor. I was surprised and I wanted to find out what had caused the difference. Some flowers had come out and spread fragrance around. Heat and light from the sun had given beautiful color and sweet smell to the flowers. The place was filthy but

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the filth itself had become manure. So we are living in the dirt and filth of this world. But if, like the flowers, our hearts are open to the Sun of Righteousness, then, just like flowers, we shall receive from Him spiritual color and fragrance, and the things of this world, like manure, will help us in our spiritual life.

" Sitting in a garden I have thought within myself thus: These flowers, fruits and so on have been created. They are not for God, nor for the angels, not for Satan, nor for the animals. They are for men. Then why should we renounce them?"

The supreme practical test of the meaning of these general principles will appear when we indicate his attitude towards Money and towards Marriage. But, in general, Sundar's motives for adopting the sadhu life are clear. He has done this because it gives him complete freedom, it releases him from the distractions of earthly business, it enables him to practice the virtues so extolled in Indian books, of regarding in the same spirit fortune as well as misfortune; because, principally, it seems to him the best way to commend the Gospel to the multitudes of India, perhaps, too — though he never says this — because that life more than any other makes possible the literal imitation of the life of Jesus, and, finally, because he has the unanalyzable but imperative conviction that he has been called by God to do so.

Money

He carries no money with him. How he manages in the West has already been described. Once indeed on the advice of friends he did start to carry money but iCf. p. 34.

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he soon gave it up. "I don't like to put my trust in my pocket but in God. There may be holes in pockets. There are also pickpockets. But we are safe if we trust in Him. We find in Him everything we desire. If I were a rich man, my resources, however large, would be limited. But, as God is my loving Father, all the world is mine."

In the earlier years of his life as a sadhu he often had to go without food, if no one invited him home for a meal, since he had no money with which to buy one. But now that his name is so well known this difficulty has largely disappeared. Indeed, sometimes when he has to go from one place to another, twenty-five people struggle to buy a ticket for him.

The wisdom of this practice of the Sadhu must be judged from the standpoint of Indian traditions. In the West it would not be possible for a man, however sincere, to live on alms without ultimately losing the respect of others, and probably in the long-run his selfrespect as well. Even if the experiment did succeed in the case of some exceptional individual, it would break down with his followers. The Franciscan ideal in its original form had ultimately to be practically abandoned, and it was more feasible in the Middle Ages than it would be now. The practice, however, of St. Paul, who supported himself while preaching the Gospel by what we should call "half-time work" as a tentmaker, is possible in the West and deserves, one might even say demands, revival. But India has a totally different tradition in these matters, and what would be a mistake in the West may well turn out to be an inspiration for India.

Renouncing money for himself, the Sadhu strongly

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condemns all, especially ministers of religion, who receive money for doing work, and do not do it heart and soul. "We ought to do God's work with the love which His children ought to have towards Him. Let us do it, not because, like hirelings, we feel we are going to be paid for our work, but, in the spirit of love, because it is our Father's work. And yet how many servants of God do their work perfunctorily, even though they receive salaries! Others there are who simply continue to receive their salary without doing any work. Their end is destruction.

"There was a governor in Nepal. He sent three men to work in his garden. One was to receive eight annas; another twelve annas; but the third, being a slave, was to receive nothing. The governor hid himself at a distance and watched their work. The man who was to receive eight annas laid himself down under a tree and slept without doing anything. The man whose wages were twelve annas worked hard. The slave was doing his work with aU his heart as if it were his own work. In the evening the master sent for the servants and began paying them. The servant who was to have received eight annas came. 'You were lazy and slept under a tree, ' said the master to him. ' So on that same tree I shall hang you.' And he hanged him on that same tree. The second man approached with fear. The master was pleased with him and besides the twelve annas appointed gave him a present. Then came the slave. 'What are your wages?' asked the master. Thou art the lord who hast purchased me,' said the slave. " I am bound to serve thee all my life. Thou art my father. What thou givest me for food and clothing is ample for me. "Because you wrought not for wages,

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but for the love you bore me,' answered the master, delighted at his faithfulness, 'hereafter you shall be my son. All my possessions shall become yours.' Not having any children of his own, he adopted the slave as his son. When the man who was to be hung saw this he was moved with deep sorrow, saying to himself, 'Alas! If I had worked like him, I might also have had the same good fortune.' "We also are sent to work in God's vineyard. To receive salary is not wrong; but to be idle though we receive a salary, or not to do God 's work on the ground that we shall do it only when we receive a certain salary, is wrong. If, like that slave, we work in a spirit of love, feeling it is our Father's work, we shall surely become heirs of his heavenly Kingdom. "

Marriage

One evening, when walking back from a meeting, he was asked: "Sadhuji, will you ever get married?" "I am already married," said the Sadhu. 'What! already married? " "Yes, I am already married to Christ. " "A friend once asked me why I did not marry, " he said another time. "I get greater happiness from the friendship of my Lord. " He seems also to have a fear, grounded on St. Paul's words, that if he married he might seek too much to please his wife, and would not devote his whole energy to God.

But while he himself does not think of marriage, he does not advise others to remain unmarried. A married clergyman, who was deeply moved by his addresses, inquired of him anxiously how he, being a married man, could serve the Lord as effectively as the unmarried

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Sadhu; the Sadhu assured him that even as a married inan he could be a faithful minister of God. The question of a head for a Kristikul — a proposed institution for training young men to be Christian Sadhus — came up for discussion once. He thought it was not necessary for that man to be celibate. "Was not a married man at the head of a Gurukul for several years? "

He has none of the ascetic's disposition to despise or avoid women. He emphasizes the love that women showed to Christ on earth, and how they used to tend Him; and he suggests that they appreciated the IMaster more than men did, because having a greater capacity for love than men, they had really more in common with Him. - The Sadhu himself moves among women with unembarrassed ease; and he has women friends with whom he keeps in close touch through correspondence. Of his dead mother he always speaks in terms of the deepest love and reverence, and perhaps it is when he sits among women, chatting informally, that the depths of tenderness and affection in his nature become most apparent.

A Hindu sannyasi may not even speak to a woman; a sadhu, less strict, sometimes will. And in Hindu sacred books quite often — as indeed not infrequently in the writings of Christian Fathers — woman is a thing of evil, a temptation and a snare, to avoid which is in itself a virtue. Here conspicuously has Sundar succeeded in Christianizing the Sadhu ideal. But it is just here also — where in certain ages the Christian Church of the "West has partly failed — that the sadhu ideal, if it be

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interpreted by men less deeply imbued than Sundar with Christ's own views of women and of marriage, might easily retard the healthy development of the Indian Church.

The Christian Sadhu and the Future

The consequences for India of this pioneer attempt to Christianize the sadhu ideal no man can foretell. Already four hundred young men have come to Sundar Singh, passionate to follow his example. Many of them he thought might be influenced by the emotion of the moment and would not have strength to persevere in so hard a life. Better not to attempt it than to begin and lay it down. He has told them to watch and pray; to make sure of, and then to follow the path, whatever it be, to which they are bidden by the Divine call. He has been asked to become the Head of a School to train men for the sadhu life. He declines. Buildings and organizations smack too much of the "West. If he does anything of the sort he will do it in the Indian way. Religious orders and institutions rarely keep their first spirit after the founder's death. The Indian Guru takes five or six pupils to be with him and to share his life. That, thinks the Sadhu, is the better way — or at least the only way he would care to try.

Suppose, then, that all over India there should arise Christian sadhus. In a country so open to the appeal of religion the effect might be stupendous....

But there would be some dangers.

St. Francis could acknowledge, and acknowledge joyfully, the authority of Pope and Church, in discipline and in theology. At the opposite pole of Western Christianity the Quaker mystic is subject, at least in conduct, to a very real discipline administered by the brotherhood. And experience suggests that for the individual himself, however much inspired, it may not be spiritually harmful to have to stop and think, perhaps even for a time to submit to some restraint of speech and action, at the instance of the leaders of his Church — provided always such restriction is not too unintelligent and too rigid, and that he is prepared, after due hesitation, to speak or act and take the consequences.

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But a sadhu acknowledges no such authority. His one standard in thought or in practice is the inner light. In the West, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, most men are up to a point, even though they do not recognize the fact, individualistic in religion. But let any one make a Gospel of his private views and he is at once regarded as a crank. A shrewd, though kindly, public tolerates its cranks, it may even be a little proud of them; but, before it accepts any man as prophet, he must have approved himself by lapse of time and by a variety of unwritten subtle tests, which few can pass who are not really prophets. But what may happen in a country where any one — given that he has a mystic or ascetic turn of mind, which in India are fairly common— may don a sadhu 's robe, and with it at least something of a sadhu 's prestige?

In the first and second centuries a.d. the wandering " prophet, " whether mystic, preacher, theosophist or ascetic, proved to be a useful ferment, a valuable stimidus to experiment and thought, but also a source of danger and distraction to the Church. Any one who has studied the intellectual, religious and social background of the Early Church as recovered by recent research, and then visits India, wakes up to find that, so far as the religious situation is concerned, the centuries have vanished and he is again — with differences, of course, history never quite repeats itself — in the GraecoRoman Empire of the second century. Many of the problems which perplexed the Early Church are likely to recur in India in only slightly different form. But with the experience of twenty centuries, the spread of education, the advance of science, and — where the value of visions or fancied revelations is the question — the advent of Psychology to light their path, the Church authorities of the present day should be able to solve them — always more easily, sometimes, perhaps, more wisely.

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Among the Christian sadhus of the future there may arise Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, but also, it may be. Anarchists, Antinomians, Heresiarehs. Some may be inclined in the one direction or the other by the attitude which Church authorities adopt towards them individually. Truth and right are one, error and unright are manifold, and where there is sympathy and a wise liberty — or better, where a liberty going beyond what most would consider wise is allowed — errors and extravagances tend to cancel one another.

A survey of the history of religion reveals the rule that progress has resulted wherever there has been successful cooperation between the men who are organizers of corporate worship and teachers of the achievement of the past in doctrine and in ethics, and the men who have the new vision, who embody the freedom of the Spirit —whether these two types be called priest and prophet,

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scribe and apocalyptist, theologian and mystic, or minister and free-lance. But where such cooperation has broken down, the result has always been stagnation, disaster and decline.

But another problem more specifically Indian may arise. A Hindu sadhu, it has been already said, is credited with magic powers. Sundar is alert to discourage that belief. Will every Christian sadhu in the future be so careful? More than that, there is the Indian doctrine, "Worship your Guru as God." Hindu philosophy teaches that man is identical with the great Spirit, and the Sannyasi who by "concentration" and asceticism realizes this can say, " I am God, " and as such receives worship — not other than the worship which is offered to a Hindu divinity. Sundar disclaims the salutation Swami (Lord). In a land where philosophy, tradition and popular acclamation conspire to offer such a bait to human vanity, will all withstand?

Probably some will succumb. But surely the majority will not. The Sannyasi ideal is not easy of attainment; and to have done so much as that and then to be able to say, with St. Paul, "I count not myself to have apprehended," is a far more difficult thing. Yet Sundar Singh has shown that it is an achievement by no means impossible to the Indian temperament when inspired by the Spirit of Christ.

It is the genius of Christianity not to crush out natural aptitudes, whether in nations or in men, but to inspire each to higher achievement along the line of his own individual gifts. The sadhu ideal is associated with much that is greatest in Indian religion, both in the realm of speculative thought and in that of practical devotion — 'witness the names of Sankara, Ramanuja, or

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the Buddha himself. The Christian sadhu movement has for India the immense promise that it is truly Indian. As interpretated by Sundar Singh, it is no less truly Christian.

There may be, there will be, times of danger and of conflict. But dangers foreseen and fairly faced can be overcome; if the true Spirit of Christ and the spirit of prayer be there, they will be overcome. If the regular ministers of the Church of India display always the gift of sympathy and "discerning of spirits" shown by Bishop Lefroy in his dealings with Sundar Singh; if Sundar Singh proves to be the first of a line of sadhus with even a half -measure of his humility and devotion, and his insight into the mind of Christ — it will be well with India.