PHi':;'' HIGHER ■■ 
 
 HINDUISM IN 
 
 ELATION TO 
 
 3HK1ST1/^NITY 
 ^E. SLATER 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BL 1201.S63 1906 
 
 3 1924 022 925 634 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022925634 
 
THE HIGHER HINDUISM 
 IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 
 
The best thanks of the Author and Publisher are 
 due to the Rev. J. P. Ashton, M.A., late of Calcutta, 
 for his kindness in correcting the proofs of this work 
 in the absence of the Author. 
 
The Higher Hinduism in 
 Relation to Christianity 
 
 Certain Aspects of Hindu Thought 
 from the Christian Standpoint -i- 
 
 BY 
 
 T. E. SLATER 
 
 OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE 
 REV. JOHN HENRY BARROWS, D.D. 
 
 ' From the unreal lead me to the real, 
 From darkness lead me to light, 
 From death lead me to immortality/ 
 
 Brihad'Aranya Upanishad. 
 
 CHEAP EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 1906 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I TAKE great pleasure in writing a few words of introduction 
 to this important essay by my friend Rev. T. E. Slater, of 
 the London Mission, Bangalore. The present work was 
 submitted in 1899 to the Saxon Missionary Conference at 
 Leipzig in response to an invitation for a ' Missionary 
 Prize Essay ' on ' a presentation of the fundamental views 
 of the Hindus, religious and philosophical, according to 
 the Vedas, Upanishads, and of the Brahminic (especially 
 the Vedanta) philosophy, and an estimate of the same 
 from a Christian point of view.' The Essay (which thus 
 determined the form and context of the present work) was 
 to have in view the fact that, in the intellectual struggle 
 which has been evoked by Christian missions in India, 
 the educated Hindus are, indeed, ready to throw over the 
 popular religion, but cling so much the more tenaciously 
 to their more ancient faith as contained in their best 
 religious literature. It was designed to instruct educated 
 friends of missions at home in the true genius of the Hindu 
 religion and its fundamental distinction from Christianity, 
 as well as to aid the missionary abroad in his conflict with 
 Hinduism. 
 
 In response to this invitation, eight essays were sent in, 
 five of which were written in German and three in English. 
 The prize was awarded by three German scholars to a 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 German missionary in India, and of the essay contained 
 in the following pages they remark : ' This work reviews 
 Sanskrit literature over a fairly wide range. There are 
 constantly the movements of the thought of a highly- 
 cultured and judicious man, who perhaps looks for that 
 which concerns Christianity — salvation for India — rather 
 in a gradual change in all the modes of thought in India, 
 especially among the cultured and thinking classes, than in 
 the immediate winning of some thousands of single souls. 
 Both ways may lead to the same goal. The writer knows 
 the religious movements in India from personal observation. 
 That which he adduces with regard to the already apparent 
 influence of Christian ideas upon Hindu modes of thought 
 is very instructive. 
 
 I have found great inspiration and valuable guidance 
 in the reading of Mr. Slater's essays and annual reports 
 on Hinduism and Christianity. His work on the Upani- 
 shads is one of rare insight, and I know of no other man 
 in India better fitted to interpret Christianity to the Hindus 
 and Hinduism to all intelligent Christians. My own obser- 
 vations and studies have convinced me that the method of 
 sympathetic approach is the only proper method in dealing 
 with the educated non-Christian classes of Asia. By 
 training, experience, and by the cast of his mind, Mr. 
 Slater has illustrated the true and wise Christian temper 
 in the approach of the Occidental to the Oriental spirit. 
 
 JOHN HENRY BARROWS. 
 Oberlin College, 
 Ohio, U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CfiAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE CHARACTER OF HINDUISM . . .1 
 
 II. THE HINDU REVIVAL . . .II 
 
 III. PERIODS OF HINDU LITERATURE . 23 
 
 IV. VEDIC LITERATURE . . . -36 
 V. VEDISM AND HINDUISM . • • 59 
 
 VI. THE UPANISHADS AND VEDANTISM . . 69 
 
 VII. ANCIENT VEDANTISM . . .84 
 
 VIII. PRACTICAL RESULTS OF VEDANTISM . I06 
 
 IX. THE BHAGAVAD-GITA . . .125 
 
 X. THE VEDANTA AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE . 1 48 
 
 XI. IDENTITY AND ABSORPTION . . .167 
 
 XII. THE DOCTRINES OF KARMA AND REDEMPTION . 194 
 
 XIII. THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMIGRATION . .219 
 
 XIV. HINDU ASCETICISM . . -253 
 XV. VEDANTISM AND CHRISTIANITY . -279 
 
 vil 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF HINDUISM 
 
 Historical Value of India— Sympathetic Study of the People— Com- 
 parative Religion— Christ, the FulfiUer— Fragmentary Char- 
 acter of Hindii Truths— The Religious Instinct of the Hindu 
 — Hinduism a Vague Eclecticism — Heterogeneous Character of 
 Modern Hinduism — Philosophical and Popular liinduism — 
 Pantheistic Defence of Image-worship. 
 
 India is pre-eminently the abode of religions, and the 
 richest mine of psychological ideas. The land of the 
 Vedic hymns — those ' Songs before Sunrise ' — the home of 
 Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, the refuge of 
 Zoroastrianism and Mohammedanism, there is no country 
 where we can better study the origin, growth, and decay of 
 religion than in India. 
 
 And if we want to judge of a religion fairly, we must try 
 to study it, as far as possible, in the mind of its founder or 
 chief masters ; understand its best ideals, and not see only 
 the depraved and repulsive side. At the same time, an 
 estimate of a religion can never be accurate and complete 
 unless based on its manifestations in the daily life of the 
 masses, on the tone of mind and type of character it 
 produces. Yet he who reverently and sympathetically 
 studies the way in which various races have worshipped 
 God, while loathing the degrading rite still loving the 
 
2 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 misguided devotee, will increase his power to lead on his 
 fellow-men to greater light ; since the measure of a man's 
 love is the measure of his power. We shall never gain the 
 non-Christian world until we treat its religions with justice, 
 courtesy, and love ; ' treat them as a rich man should treat 
 his poorer brothers ; drawing near to them, getting on 
 common ground with them, and then sharing with them 
 his rich inheritance.' For those religious truths that have- 
 been venerated for ages as the felt facts of man's inner 
 consciousness, we claim for the spiritual Christ who was 
 immanent as grace and truth in human thought prior to 
 the Incarnation, the Light of every saint and seer who has 
 relieved the darkness of the pagan world. ^ 
 
 Religions illuminate one another : and though it is true 
 that other Sdstras yield the student of the New Testament 
 little spiritual aliment for his own soul, yet Christianity 
 cannot be fully appreciated unless viewed in relation to 
 other historic faiths ; and the study of comparative religion, 
 which should be diligently pursued by all intending 
 missionaries, and which demonstrates, not only that man 
 was made for religion, but wkat religion he was made for, 
 is one of the most promising and fruitful for the future of 
 the Church and of the world. Discovering, as it does, 
 points of contact and elements of truth in systems outside 
 our own ; that no religion lies in utter isolation from the 
 rest, but that each, being the manifestation of a human 
 want, has had a raison d'etre, a place to fill, and a work to 
 do, in the great evolutionary scheme; it has led to the 
 cultivation of a broader and more generous spirit towards 
 
 ' Like the Scandinavian idea of Balder the Beautiful, so the Hindu 
 thought of the Sat-Guru or Saguna-Murtti, the Buddhist thought of 
 Sakya Muni and of the Grand Llama of Thibet — ' the true high priest 
 of the universe ' — together with the theophanies claimed by Hindus as 
 well as Hebrews, point to the wide diffusion of the Christ idea. 
 
HINDUISM AND CHRISTIAN THEISM 3 
 
 these ancient faiths which have endured precisely according 
 to the amount of truth they have contained, to the fitness 
 of their doctrine for the special circumstances of race and 
 culture, and to the degree in which they have witnessed to 
 Him wfio is the ' Heir of all the ages,' the Fulfiller of ' the 
 unconscious prophecies of heathendom.' 
 
 In the light of a Providential guidance, those religious 
 societies that have advanced through centuries, of growth, 
 and written the pathetic story of their human interests and 
 endeavours, their aspirations and their miseries, in their 
 temples, laws, and homes, are destined for a diviner 
 purpose than to be swept away as vestiges of evil, with no 
 message to be delivered to the modern world. For, rightly 
 conceiving the depth and height and exceeding breadth of 
 Christ's religion, we behold it assimilating and adapting all 
 that was valuable in the ancient civilizations ; drawing into 
 its pure and onward current all that was best in the fields 
 of virtue and of truth ; finding expression for all the 
 various aspirations that are separately emphasized by the 
 old religions ; gathering up, explaining, and consummating 
 the lessons of all previous revelations ; while, at the same 
 time, fully and for ever proving the incompleteness or the 
 falsity of the views that have kept humanity from God. 
 
 For the best and brightest products of the Hindu spirit 
 are still partial and one-sided, faint approximations of the 
 sum and circle of Christian theism, fragmentary truths that 
 lose their power over the mind and life because they lack 
 the support of other kindred verities, and cannot be welded 
 together in one definite body of belief. It is not the same 
 thing to see precious stones scattered in different quarries 
 and to see them combined in a beautiful mosaic. The 
 Hindu writings are the product of a national genius, but 
 there is no orderly development, no progressive manifestation 
 of truth ; they lead up to no commanding eminence from 
 
4 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 which all becomes clear. They constitute an anthology, 
 not one organic whole : whereas, in the historical Christ, 
 the idea and the fact are for ever wedded ; the substance 
 of all ancient shadows is revealed. 
 
 Nevertheless, behind the outward expression we have 
 to recognise the deep rehgious instinct of the Hindu. 
 Religion has been an aspect of his very existence ; indeed, to 
 him existence has had no other meaning than the realization 
 of religion. Even secular education has been imparted in 
 India through a religious medium ; while all the social 
 functions of the community are religious to the core. If to 
 the old Greek the universe was an expression of art and 
 beauty, if to the Roman it was an expression of law and 
 order, to the Hindu it is an expression of the Divine. His 
 one absorbing ideal has been to penetrate into the mystery 
 of being. An Anglo-Indian Collector once stated, in a- 
 certificate given to a Hindu clerk of his, that he was in 
 every way a very good clerk, but that he was 'always in 
 search of God' ; ' whom,' the Collector added, ' he will 
 never be able to , find ! ' The Hindu poet-philosopher, 
 casting a glance at the beautiful flower with which he 
 might worship the Deity, asks : ' How can I bring myself 
 to pluck it, seeing that it is Thyself that is there ? ' He 
 sees the Divine everywhere and in everything. It is the 
 one ultimate certainty, the underlying reality of all 
 existence. Religion to such a one is an implanted desire, 
 an imperious necessity ; his ritual being no mere symbol, 
 but the channel through which flows his religious feeling to 
 its final beatitude ; and often, when he is mastered by it, it 
 becomes a passion, and, when manifested in extreme forms, 
 even a vice. It claims all, and he is its very slave. Under 
 its commanding influence, numbers of devotees have left 
 home, and wife, and children ; and powerful monarchs 
 have abandoned their thrones and palaces to meditate in 
 
HINDU ECLECTICISM 5 
 
 solitary forests on the problems of existence, and to seek to 
 attain the Divine. 
 
 The spirit of India's religions has thus been a reflective 
 spirit, hence its philosophical character; though Hindu 
 mythology as well as philosophy — the popular as well as 
 the esoteric side — are alike a world of religious ideas ; and, 
 to understand and appreciate them, we must look beyond 
 the barbaric shows and feasts and ceremonies, and get to 
 the undercurrents of native thought. Hinduism is a 
 growth from within ; and, to study it, we have to lay bare 
 that inward, subtle soul which, strangely enough, explains 
 the outward form with all its extravagances ; for India's 
 gross idolatry is connected with her ancient systems of 
 speculative philosophy, and with an extensive literature in 
 the Sanskrit language; her Epic, Puranic, and Tantric 
 mythologies and cosmogonies have a theosophic basis. ^ 
 
 What is styled ' Hinduism,' however, is a vague eclec- 
 ticism ; the amalgam of all the rehgious ideas and usages 
 of the past ; the sum total of manifold shades of belief, and 
 still more, in the present day, of rigid caste laws and 
 accumulated customs ; for its one changeless feature is its 
 social order, and wherever caste is Hindflism exists. We 
 cannot properly speak of the religion of India any more 
 than we can speak of India as a country. It is not a 
 political name, but only a geographical expression, marking 
 the territory of many nations and languages. So almost 
 every phase of religious thought and philosophic specula- 
 tion has been represented in India. Some of the Hindu 
 
 ' The Tantric idea of the production of the universe by the blending 
 of the male and female principles — the quiescent and the active (saiii) 
 — which lies at the root of the whole of the later mythology of India, 
 owes its development to the popularization of the Sankhya philosophic 
 idea of the union of the two principles Purusha (soul of the universe) 
 and Prairiti, the primordial essence and evolvent of all things. 
 
6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 doctrines are theistic, some atheistic and materialistic, 
 others pantheistic — the extremest form of idealism. Some 
 of the sects hold that salvation is obtained by practising 
 austerities, and by self-devotion and prayer; some that 
 faith and love (bhakti) form the ruling principle ; others, 
 that sacrificial observances are the only means ; while 
 others, again, teach that knowledge is the ' highest way.' 
 Some hold the doctrine of predestination ; others, that of 
 free grace. No assumption of its being a universal religion 
 is therefore possible ; it is rather a congeries of divergent 
 systems of thought, of various types and characters of 
 the outward life, each of which at one time or another 
 calls itself Hinduism, but forms no part of a consistent 
 whole. 
 
 In its contact with Buddhism, ancient Brahmanism 
 became modern Hinduism, which is generally admitted 
 by Hindus themselves to have been a degeneration. 
 Buddhism was taken by the hand, and drawn back into 
 the Brahmanical system by the Brahmans, who met it 
 half-way by popularizing their own faith, and by providing 
 popular deities for the people to counteract the com- 
 manding influence of the founder of Buddhism, and who 
 ended by boldly adopting the Buddha himself— in spite 
 of his atheistic teaching — as an incarnation of Vishnu. 
 That has always been the astute policy of the Brahmans. 
 Not being guarded by a severe religious monotheism, 
 firmly set in a historical revelation, as in the case of the 
 Hebrews, they have perceived the power of compromise, 
 and have overcome opposition by wise concessions and 
 partial adaptations. 
 
 The term Hinduism thus expresses Brahmanism after 
 it had degenerated, and is now made up of that com- 
 plicated system of polytheism and caste which has 
 gradually resulted from the mixture of Brahmanism and 
 
HETEROGENEOUSNESS OF HINDUISM 7 
 
 Buddhism with the non-Aryan creeds of Dravidians ' and 
 aborigines. By the practice of a continuous compromise 
 and receptivity, carried on for more than 2,000 years, it 
 has arrived at its present condition. It has first borne 
 with, and then accepted and digested and assimilated, 
 something from almost all creeds. In this manner it has 
 adopted much of the fetishism of the aborigines, and 
 stooped to the practices of the various hill tribes, in- 
 corporating something of their sacrificial worship, and 
 not scrupling to encourage demonolatry and the cult of the 
 fish, boar, serpent, rocks, stones, and trees. It is true 
 that this onward course has been regarded as a natural 
 evolution of the Indian mind, which sees the Divine 
 in everything ; and pantheism has certainly been the 
 strength as well as the weakness of Hinduism. It has 
 enabled the Brahman to adopt almost every god with 
 which he came into contact,^ to acknowledge nearly 
 every idol, and to supply a philosophic or theosophic 
 basis for its worship; but when thus guided by religious 
 expediency Brahmanism entered on a path where descent 
 was easy and rapid, and religion passed from the region 
 of thought to the realm of fable, in spite of the efforts 
 of philosophers and the protests of successive reformers. 
 
 In the present day, this eclectic and heterogeneous 
 character of Hinduism is freely admitted by Hindus 
 
 ' The name is given to the races of Southern and Central India, 
 who speak languages other than those derived from the Sanskrit. 
 See Caldwell's ' Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Lan- 
 guages.' 
 
 ' One of the mediteval additions to the Hindu pantheon would seem 
 to have been Jagannath in Orissa, which was originally a fetish of 
 the non-Aryan forest-man. The common story current in Cuttack, 
 as given by Dr. Hunter in his ' Imperial Gazetteer,' points to this. It 
 shows how the ' blue god ' of the aboriginal fowler became the 
 Jagannath, the ' Lord of the World,' of the Brahman. 
 
8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 themselves, who are quite unable to define it. Mr. 
 Praraatha Nath Bose, F.G.S., M.R.A.S., the accom- 
 pHshed author of 'Hindu Civilization during British 
 Rule,' observes (p. 45) : 
 
 ' In one sense it is a very ancient religion, in another sense it is not. 
 Though professedly based upon the Vedas, it is no more like the 
 Vedic religion than man is like the protoplasmic germ out of which 
 he is supposed to have been evolved. It has grown during 3,000 years 
 to be what it is at present. It is not the creed of the Rig-veda, nor of 
 the Brahmanas, nor of the Upanishads, nor of the Puranas ; it is 
 neither Saivism nor Vaishnavism, nor Saktism ; yet it is all these. 
 It can hardly be called a homogeneous religion in the sense that 
 Judaism and Zoroastrianism are among the older, or Christianity 
 and Mohammedanism are among the more recent religions.' 
 
 Hinduism has thus many sides ; but in all ages it has 
 been presented in two different phases, apparently 
 antagonistic — the philosophical and the popular. One 
 of the most striking features of the religious life of India 
 is that, side by side with culture and refinement and a 
 keen philosophic spirit, is to be seen a grovelling and 
 ignorant mass of idolatrous worshippers. And yet there 
 is nothing incongruous in this. Pantheism and poly- 
 theism are in principle the same. They are but a higher 
 and a lower form of one and the same view of the world. 
 Pantheism is the refined, polytheism the vulgar, mode 
 of deifying Nature. Pantheism, whether Hindti or Greek, 
 seeks after unity amid individual phenomena ; polytheism 
 stops short at the phenomena and personifies them. So 
 that Hinduism is at once Nature-worship or physiolatry 
 in its main aspects, and fetish in its recognition of 
 particular aspects of the forces that make for good 
 or evil ; polytheistic and pantheistic ; idolatrous, cere- 
 monial, and sectarian, and yet spiritualistic and trans 
 cendental. 
 
POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM g 
 
 To the Hindu mind there is no inconsistency in all 
 this, which has simply to be stated to be condemned by 
 the Western and monotheistic mind. All men, it is held, 
 have finally to reach the same goal — union with the 
 Supreme; but the paths are different, according to the 
 nature of the individual, and every one is led on by easy, 
 natural steps. That is why we see in India a manifold 
 expression of religion and religious worship, varying from 
 the grossest symboHsm to an occult philosophy of the 
 divine ; from the adoration of personal and innumerable 
 deities, whose pantheon stands unrivalled, to the calm con- 
 templation of an impersonal Spirit. 
 
 And the philosopher has a subtle way of justifying the 
 image-worship. ' We let the popular forms and belief 
 work upward,' he says, ' until, by symbolical interpretation, 
 they are seen to be the rough-hewn figures of a divine 
 idea, as the mathematical diagram is only an outward 
 help to pure reasoning. And, conversely, we work alle- 
 gorically, embodying in an image or myth some abstract 
 notion of the Energy that underlies all phenomena.' The 
 Supreme Spirit, though never directly worshipped except 
 by turning the thought abstractedly in — for 'It' is in 
 all things — and having no temple in the whole of India, 
 is yet held to be the real object of all offerings and 
 religious services, whoever may be the particular god, or 
 even fetish, worshipped. It is this conception that leads 
 Brahmans, by their all-pervading symbolism, to maintain 
 that, though they appear polytheists, they are in reality 
 monotheists — more correctly pantheists — and that Indian 
 idolatry, unlike that of any other country, is of a distinctly 
 spiritual kind; the affirmation growing out of the under- 
 lying unity that pervades the pantheon. That is the 
 philosophical and orthodox defence of Hindu idolatry, 
 which does not, however, divest it even of its grosser 
 
10 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 excrescences. The character of the deities is more or 
 less puerile and impure, and there are no compensating 
 temples consecrated to Truth, Chastity, Clemency, 
 Justice, Liberty, and other virtues, such as characterised 
 the worship of the Greeks and Romans. The countless 
 millions are left in the depths of ignorance and darkness, 
 without any attempt to promote their elevation. The 
 unthinking, ritual-loving masses are absorbed in the 
 pursuit of ceremonialism, debauched by idolatrous and 
 often obscene practices, and fascinated by a devotion to 
 -individual gods. 
 
 But when a Hindu begins to think seriously upon 
 higher things, and to reason out his relation to the 
 unseen and eternal, he invariably does so on the lines 
 laid down some 3,000 years ago by Indian rishis, or seers, 
 in what is called the Vedanta philosophy of the land. 
 This line of thought, which rests on a fundamental basis 
 altogether different from our own, is as instinctive with 
 the Hindu of to-day as is the Christian doctrine of God 
 and of life with the thinker of the West. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HINDU REVIVAL 
 
 Western Education in India — The Hindu Revival — Contributing 
 Causes — Study of Sanskrit — Theosophical Society — Sentiment 
 Qf Nationality — Power of Christianity — The Arya Samaj — ■ 
 Transformed Idea of God — Christian Meanings read into 
 Hindu Phraseology — The Brahma Samaj — How influenced by 
 Christianity. 
 
 The last decade in India has been marked by a new 
 religious enthusiasm, and the present time, so far as the 
 condition of the more thoughtful classes is concerned, 
 may be not inaptly described as the Renaissance period 
 in the history of the Hindus. The scientific and rational- 
 istic spirit that is now abroad is the outcome of the 
 Western education that has been imparted during the 
 last fifty years in our schools and colleges through the 
 medium of the English language, which is coming to 
 occupy much the same position in India as the Greek 
 language did in the old Jloman Empire, and is fast 
 becoming a bond of union. For a widespread and liberal 
 education such as this, conducted by Western scholars 
 on a Western basis, cannot exist in an Eastern land for 
 half a century and produce no changes, religious and 
 political, in the opinions, character, and aspirations of 
 those who have been brought under its influence. 
 
12 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Previous to this period few people dreamed of question- 
 ing the meaning and utility of their religious and social 
 institutions ; but now a spirit of inquiry is abroad which 
 subjects everything to critical examination, the inevitable 
 result being a decay of superstitious beliefs and often much 
 more than this. 
 
 Looking, therefore, at the educated classes generally, 
 a state of religious unsettlement best describes them, 
 though the sceptical spirit that was in vogue ten or 
 twenty years ago has been gradually giving place to a 
 reaction in favour of ancient Hinduism. There is, as a rule, 
 a deeply-felt and openly-expressed dissatisfaction with 
 popular and mythological Hinduism, and a growing in- 
 difference to its ceremonial, while a strong undercurrent 
 has set in towards what is styled the Aryan or Vedic 
 faith. Just as the scholars of mediseval times in Europe 
 appealed to the reason and the imagination by eulogizing 
 the speculations and poetry of the ancient world, so the 
 Hindus of to-day turn to their long-forgotten literature, 
 and seek to meet the needs of society by a renovated 
 Hinduism. The more thoughtful of the people have 
 beaten a retreat from their temples to their sacred books. 
 Conscious of the unsoundness of much of the outward 
 structure of their faith, they have fallen back with the 
 boldness of despair on their ancient philosophy, which is 
 now thrust to the front as the main support of Hinduism. 
 And it would be strange indeed if patriotic and naturally 
 religious minds, in the midgt of the modern ferment of 
 thought, did not first turn to their own religious sources, 
 and seek to bring out from their treasure-house things 
 new and old. It is well, too, that they should carefully 
 study their own highest ideals, in order to have re- 
 vealed their utter inadequacy to satisfy the spirit when 
 thoroughly awakened, and, above all, when alive to such 
 
THE HINDU REVIVAL 13 
 
 a sense of sin and need that only a Divine Saviour can 
 meet the case. The religion of Christ must be the 
 gainer ultimately. 
 
 Several circumstances have contributed to bring about 
 the recent revival or reaction in favour of what may be 
 called Neo-Hinduism. 
 
 Foremost must be placed the study of Sanskrit and 
 Sanskrit literature .by European scholars, the first impulse 
 to which was given a hundred years ago by Sir William 
 Jones, Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who 
 founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and translated the 
 greatest of Hindu dramas, ' Sakuntala,' and also the ' Laws 
 of Manu.' He was followed by the careful researches of 
 Henry Thomas Colebrook, the first comprehensive explorer 
 of the literature of the Veda ; by H. H. Wilson ; and by 
 such German Sanskritists as Schlegel, Bopp, Lassen,' Max 
 Miiller, Roth, and Weber. There has been no more recep- 
 tive soil for the spirit of ancient Indian literature than 
 Germany, whose absolute philosophy is closely allied to 
 higher Indian thought, and the monumental work of 
 Professor Max Miiller, extending for nearly half a century, 
 has enabled the East as well as the West to form some 
 scientific estimate of the Hindu classics. 
 
 These labours have been popularized in India by such 
 native scholars as Rajendralala Mitra and Romesh Chandra 
 Datta and Ananda Ram Barua, so that the educated classes 
 generally now understand something of the history of their 
 religion, and know that their ancient faith was very different 
 from modern Hinduism. 
 
 Further, the revival of Sanskrit learning in India itself, 
 since the establishment of the three Presidency Universities 
 in 1858, and the teaching of the Sanskrit language in the 
 high schools and colleges of the land, have tended in the 
 
 ' A Norwegian who became naturalized in Germany. 
 
T4 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 same direction; while a scientific English training has 
 enabled Hindus to sift the treasures of their literature, and 
 to make a -far more practical use of them than did the 
 Pandits of an older school. 
 
 Again, the Theosophical Society, founded at New York 
 in 1875 by Colonel Olcott, who, accompanied by Madame 
 Blavatsky, went to India in 1880 and established branches 
 in many places, with their headquarters at Madras, and 
 which from the first has been distinctly anti-Christian, has 
 done much to direct the attention of Hindus to their own 
 religion, which has ever been the home of the occult. 
 Closely connected with this movement have been the 
 phenomenal successes of two striking personalities, Mrs. 
 Annie Besant and the late Swami Vivekananda,' who 
 figured at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893, 
 and who the last few years have extolled before adiniring 
 thousands of Hindus the ancient glories of the East. 
 
 Then of late a strong feeling of nationality has been 
 rising in the country. Educated Hindus have been drink- 
 ing the feverish wine of modern European thought, and 
 understand what is meant in the West by progress and 
 agitation. On the political side this spirit is manifested in 
 the Indian National Congress, which assembles in large 
 numbers every year to discuss, if not to deal practically 
 with, the burning questions of the day ; and, feeling that 
 they belong to a great historic nation, Hindus proudly 
 attach themselves to the historic religion of the land. At 
 the bottom of the ' Hindu revival,' and of all the present 
 restlessness and ill-feeling towards Christianity, is the 
 patriotic desire to preserve the integrity of Bharata Kanda, 
 the ancient land of spirituality. As formerly in Japan, so 
 in India now, Christianity and Christians are chiefly dis- 
 
 " His real name was Narendra Nath Datta ; he was a graduate of 
 the Calcutta University. 
 
THE SENTIMENT OF NATIONALITY 15 
 
 liked because these terms appear to be synonymous with 
 whatever is opposed to the honour and independence of 
 the nation. Every movement in India that would insure 
 success must ally itself with this sentiment of nationality ; 
 hence the greater success of the Arya Samaj movement, 
 which is based on Indian lines, than of the Brahma Samaj, 
 which owes its origin mainly to Christianity. 
 
 It would seem, indeed, during the present transition 
 stage, as though the main instruments of Western enlighten- 
 ment — education and the printing-press — were telUng 
 almost as much in favour of reaction as of progress. Those 
 brave Indian reformers, who are but a feeble band, and 
 who propose to remove something more than the moss 
 that has grown over the ancient fortress of Hinduism, are 
 regarded by the more orthodox as deficient in a sense of 
 beauty and taste, and are looked down upon as the courtly 
 Cavaliers looked down upon the innovating Puritans of 
 former times. The old culture movement in England, 
 represented by Matthew Arnold, which took the form of 
 sympathy towards ways of thought and life that had an 
 old-world air about them, has found an echo in India ; but 
 there it has resulted in narrowing the Hindu's range of 
 vision, and in centering his sympathies within his own 
 creed. It is their own past that has the old-world air ; 
 it is their ancient ideals that are the lost causes ; and 
 admiration of the paganism of the Sanskrit classics breeds 
 sympathy sometimes even for popular Hinduism, as seen 
 in the revival of the Krishna cult among some Hindus and 
 the rise of a Sivaji cult among the Mahrattas. 
 
 And here we may note a significant fact in which the 
 inhererit weakness of Hinduism is disclosed. If it looks 
 to the revival of the national faith in regard to religion, it 
 yet looks to the West for its social and political ideals. In 
 this strange divergence it confesses its utter weakness as 
 
i6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 a social force ; that there is nothing in its ancient institu- 
 tions to revive which will fit the nation for its keen 
 struggle for existence ; but that for the elaboration of a 
 better order of society it must look outside itself This 
 severance of religion from sociology, this failure of 
 Hinduism as a reforming agency, a regenerator of society, 
 an instrument of progress, robs it of half its strength, 
 and encourages the Christian advocate to hope that, as 
 the thoughtful men of India come to study the socio- 
 logical results of Christ's religion in the West, and see 
 it to be the pioneer of all true progress, the only effective 
 agency in destroying the old evils, they may be led to 
 pay a deeper respect to its underlying and distinctive 
 truths. Applied Christianity is now the demand of the 
 Western world, and possibly the great Indian nation, 
 born to new life in the present age, may find a way to 
 Christ through the social and political avenues of our 
 time. 
 
 And while the circumstances that have been described 
 have all contributed to bring about the present national 
 awakening and uplifting, and ferment of thought, there 
 can be no doubt that Hinduism has been put upon its 
 mettle by the advancing power of Christianity, whose 
 illuminating and quickening ideas have already modified, 
 and in some directions completely changed, the religious 
 impressions of the people. The fact is that, though a 
 new spirit is abroad working under the old forms of 
 Hinduism, whose ethics are gradually being penetrated 
 and transformed by the ideals of the West, this move- 
 ment is not so much the result of an honest conviction 
 of the soundness of either the dogmas or the institutions 
 of Hinduism as a patriotic attempt to harmonize its higher 
 ideals with those of Christianity, which are seen to be 
 everywhere gaining ground in the world. It bears certain 
 
THE ARYA SAM A J 17 
 
 resemblances to the pretensions of the Gnostics of Alex- 
 andria in the second century, who held the key to the 
 higher spiritual philosophy which attempted to unify 
 Christ's teaching with the esoteric wisdom of Greece and 
 Egypt. The leaven of Christianity will work, and in its 
 own way, and in its natural affinity with certain pre- 
 existing conditions of thought will form semi-Christianized 
 philosophies Hke the neo-Platonism of Alexandria, which 
 explained away the objectionable features of the old 
 mythology, and tried to fight Christianity largely with 
 its own weapons ; and these eclectic systems will, for a 
 time at least, give a distinct support to the old religions 
 of the country, and even infuse new life into them, present- 
 ing many features of the Gospel, though non-Christian in 
 their basis. 
 
 Such a movement is seen in the Arya Samdj of North 
 India, founded at Lahore in 1877 by Pandit Dayananda 
 Sarasvati, and the outcome of the solvent action of 
 Western science and Christian influence upon modern 
 Hinduism. The revelations of God in the Vedas and in 
 Nature are the basis of this faith, though the arbitrary and 
 extravagant interpretations of their ancient literature by the 
 founder and his followers do not find favour with orthodox 
 Hindus. Idolatry and its attendant rites are held to have 
 no place in the true religion, while Rama, Krishna, and 
 other objects of popular adoration, are treated euphemisti- 
 cally as ' pious or powerful princes of the olden times.' 
 The Samaj opposes Indian theism — the supposed mono- 
 theism of the Vedas — to what is called ' foreign theism,' 
 and enlists on its side the patriotic preference for Indian 
 literature and thought. But in attempting to bring, the old 
 Aryan faith into line with the results of natural science, it 
 is at issue with the findings of Sanskrit scholars, who 
 represent the Vedic literature as that of a primitive people 
 
 3 
 
1 8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 innocent of scientific accuracy. Its life has undoubtedly 
 been quickened by the presence of Christianity, whose 
 weapons it freely uses in an active and hostile propaganda. ' 
 Perhaps the most remarkable transformation that has 
 come over the educated mind of India is seen in con- 
 nection with the idea of God, which has become more 
 refined and accurate, and with the corresponding idea of 
 prayer. There was a time when the Divine personality 
 could not be perceived except in terms of polytheism, nor 
 Divine omnipresence except in terms of pantheism, nor 
 Divine holiness except in terms of dualism. But into the 
 midst of the pantheism of ages there has slowly penetrated, 
 through the medium of Christian teaching, the idea of a 
 personal and holy God, the foundation-truth of all real 
 religion. Islam, which, with its severe monotheism, had 
 a splendid chance in India, never acted thus on the religious 
 mind of the people. A century ago God was not spoken 
 of nor thought of as He is now. One seldom sees now in 
 print the names of the Hindu deities, with their peculiar 
 attributes attached to them, such as may be found in 
 Ziegenbalg's ' South Indian Gods,' a faithful representation 
 of Hinduism as it existed two centuries ago, unchristianized 
 by Western importations. One rarely sees even the name 
 Brahman used, the name given to the Great Spirit, the 
 Atman, or Self of the Upanishads. The general and more 
 personal name Ishvara is rather employed, and He is 
 spoken of much in the same terms as a Christian would 
 speak of God. Holiness and hatred of sin, and mercy 
 apart from human merit, are not attributes often found 
 ascribed to God in past Hindu literature ; but now we have 
 frequent reference to them, although the moral and logical 
 inconsistency of the position does not strike those who, 
 
 « For an account of the Arya Samaj, see the Pan jab Census Report 
 for 1891. 
 
CHRISTIAN AND HINDU THEISM iq 
 
 while professing theisrrij yet remain members of a system 
 that denies it. 
 
 Hindus who have acquired enlightened notions of 
 religious truth through coming into contact with Christi- 
 anity are apt to think that certain words and phrases used 
 in their religious books may be understood m the same 
 sense which they themselves now attach to them, and so come 
 to claim for those books some of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of Christianity. Take the very first article of 
 Christian theism — God the Creator of the heavens and the 
 earth. That is now the faith of many ; but it cannot by 
 any contrivance be got out of Hinduism, with its uncreated 
 material cause, on the one hand, or its doctrine of Maya 
 or illusion on the other, according to the philosophical 
 system that may be followed. And so we find the late 
 Nilakantha Goreh, ^ an eminent Sanskrit scholar, who 
 became as eminent a Christian scholar, declaring that, as 
 an orthodox Hindu, believing in what the Hindu scriptures 
 taught, he held that nothing was created, and that the 
 universe had an illusory existence. Such, he says, was his 
 firm belief and the belief of his forefathers. And ' if I had 
 not learned it from Christianity^ he adds, ' I could never 
 have known, as none of my countrymen, learned or un- 
 learned, has ever known, that God has created all things 
 without any pre-existing material cause.' In the same 
 way Christian truth has given Hindus very different con- 
 ceptions from those that their books convey of the Divine 
 omnipotence generally, which is limited in Hindflism by 
 uncreated, self-existent substances and beings ; of the 
 
 ' He received in baptism the name of Neheniiah, and was the author 
 of one of the most vakiable treatises on Hindu philosophy, which was 
 translated from Hindi into English, under the title 'A Rational 
 Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems. ' See the ' Life of 
 Father Goreh,' by C. E. Gardner, S.S.J.E. (Longmans, Green and 
 Co.). 
 
20 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Divine mercy, which is conditioned by the merit and 
 demerit of souls ; of the Divine holiness, which is com- 
 promised by the unholy acts of certain incarnations. 
 
 Students of missions are familiar with the almost 
 Christian tone of much of the writings of the members 
 of the Brahma Samdj, or Theistic Church of New India, 
 which was founded by the Raja Ram Mohan Ray, who 
 was born in 1774, and died in England in 1842; was 
 then guided by Debendra Nath Tagore, but was chiefly 
 associated, from 1862 to 1884, with the name of Keshab 
 Chandra Sen, and since his death with that of Protap 
 Chandra Mazumdar.' This body of devout men has 
 drawn largely from the Bible, and gathered much inspira- 
 tion from Christ. Its genesis was once well described by 
 Chandra Sen : ' Christianity came, and moved with our 
 Oriental faith, and from that time we grew,' though since 
 his death, and under the influence of the more distinctly 
 ' Hindu Revival,' which has been overshadowing it, there 
 has been some reaction towards the older Hinduism. 
 Still, Brahmist theology is saturated with Christian ideas, 
 though rejecting many Christian doctrines. 
 
 Especially is the devotional spirit of India being 
 stimulated by the presence of the Christian leaven. The 
 prayers that are offered in Brahmist assemblies and the 
 prayer unions among some young Hindus are due to 
 Christian influence. Public worship, as understood and 
 practised by Christians when they meet for praise and 
 prayer and popular religious instruction, has been hitherto 
 unknown in India. No assembly of Hindus, with the 
 solitary exception of the Brahma Samaj, is ever convened 
 for offering spiritual homage to the Supreme Being, or 
 
 ' For the history of the Samaj, see Miss Collet's ' Brahmo Year- 
 Book,' London, 1883, and ' Life of Keshab Chandra Sen,' by Protap 
 Chandra Mazuradar. 
 
THE BRAHMA SAMA'J 21 
 
 for teaching the people how to know and serve Him. 
 Ceremonial worship is offered to every conceivable form of 
 being, but none to Him who is admitted to be the only 
 source of Being. No temple exists to His honour, nor 
 are there any rites prescribed for His worship. 
 
 The distance, then, that the Brahma Samajes have 
 travelled from the old creeds and practices of India is thus 
 ■ very great, and we have only to think of such men as Ram 
 Mohan Ray and his ' Precepts of Jesus,' and Keshab 
 Chandra Sen and his religious utterances in Calcutta and 
 England, and Protap Chandra Mazumdar, the present 
 cultured and devout leader of the Samaj, and his ' Oriental 
 Christ' and 'The Spirit of God,' to be struck with the 
 remarkable way in which Christ and His teaching have 
 influenced modern Hindu thought. Mr. Mazumdar has 
 observed : ' The New Testament is the source of a hundred 
 developments of personal, social, and spiritual reform among 
 thoughtful Hindus.' And, in still more striking words, he 
 wrote: 'Christ is a tremendous reality. The destiny of 
 India hangs upon the solution of His nature and our 
 relation to Him.' 
 
 And, speaking generally, in all recent religious reforms 
 the Vedic idea has been modified by Biblical theism and 
 Christian thought, as was seen in the history of Brahmoism 
 itself as far back as 1854, when it came to the conclusion 
 that it was impossible to frame its advanced creed upon 
 the Vedas and Upanishads. And in other directions, not 
 excepting the revived Vedanta of the present day, those 
 who in India have not studied the Bible for naught are 
 reading Christianity into Hindidsm, and finding there under 
 its light truths that were never found before, instead of say- 
 ing,' as they did twenty years ago, of our religion, ' It is 
 not true,^ they are now saying, ' It is not new.^ Tending 
 more and more to the belief in the underlying unity of all 
 
22 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 religions, they are maintaining that the faiths of the East do 
 not differ materially from Christianity in their essential 
 principles and more important teachings, and so, even in 
 reform speeches and on the National Congress platforms, 
 as well as in Vedantic pamphlets, not to speak of Brahmist 
 services and prayers, there are frequent allusions to the 
 Christian Scriptures, together with a more or less Christian 
 colour pervading the thought. To the assimilative mind of 
 India there is no difficulty in thus placing Christian thought 
 in the midst of Hinduism, and regarding it as a part thereof 
 We may rest assured that the truth thus absorbed will live, 
 and will ultimately displace the thoughts and ideas that 
 have ceased to thrill with life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PERIODS OF HINDU LITERATURE 
 
 Successive Periods of Hindu Literature — Vedism, Brahmanism, 
 Modern Hinduism — Phases of Brahmanism : (a) Ritualistic, 
 (i) Philosophical, (c) Mythological, {d] Nomistic— The Darsanas — 
 Vishnu Worship — Doctrine of ADatilras and of the Trimurtti — 
 Hindu and Christian Incarnation Ideas compared — Puranic and 
 Tantric Literature — Why the World was left to run its Religious 
 Course. 
 
 In passing now to a study of the more ancient forms of 
 Aryan religious thought, as represented in the Vedas and 
 Upanishads — which Hindus are seeking to revive in the 
 present day — we go back to about 1500 b.c, and trace its 
 movements from (i) the Vedism of the Rig-veda — the sacred 
 knowledge — whose Mantras (canticles and prayers), with 
 their non-idolatrous deification of the forces of Nature, and 
 simple sacrificial oiferings, form the first and chief Bible of 
 the Hindu religion ; on through (2) the matured stage of 
 Brahmanism, extending roughly from 800 B.C. to 1200 a.d., 
 with its four phases — (a) the ritualistic, ib) the philosophical, 
 (c) the mythological, {<t) the nomistic (code of Manu) ; till 
 it finally emerges, in a debased form, in (3) modern 
 Hindrdsm. These represent the three main divisions of 
 Hindu thought. 
 
 Leaving the Vedic source, together with the earliest 
 
24 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Brahmanical stage, to be considered more fully hereafter, 
 we shall select only certain aspects of mythological and 
 modern Hinduism, from which the educated classes of 
 India are now beating a retreat. 
 
 The six Darsanas, or systems of philosophy as such — 
 the Nyaya, the Vaiseshika, the Sankhya, the Yoga, the 
 Mimansa, and the Vedanta, delivered in Sutras or 
 aphorisms — need not detain us. Of these, three only 
 properly answer to their name, the Nyaya, the Sankhya, 
 and the Vedanta, and their object is not philosophic search 
 for truth, but the redemption of men from the burden of 
 existence. The Nyaya, however, is strictly a system of 
 logic, its philosophical inquiry resembling the methods of 
 Aristotle. 
 
 The rationalistic and atheistic system of Kapila, the 
 Sankhya, with which the latest German philosophies, that 
 of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann's Philosophy of the 
 Unconscious, have much in common, is regarded as the 
 first recorded system of philosophy, and contains nearly all 
 that India has produced, pure and simple, in that depart- 
 ment.' It has, practically, no theology, for, though its 
 founder admitted the existence of gods, they were only 
 emanations from Prakriti (Nature), into which they are 
 ultimately to be absorbed, as are all forms of material life. 
 The final liberation of the soul from material bondage is 
 only gained by a knowledge of the external world and of 
 the soul's higher nature ; and the soul, in an unconditioned 
 state, together with nature, or substance, exists eternally. 
 The practical side of this system has an important theistical 
 development in the Yoga of Patanjali, which maintains that 
 it is possible, by profound meditation and extreme forms of 
 asceticism, to attain union with the Divine principle. 
 
 ■ For an account of the Sankhya system see ' Hindu Philosophy,' by 
 J. Davies. 
 
MYTHOLOGICAL BRAHMANISM 25 
 
 The Vedanta, based on the Upanishads, which is to 
 form hereafter our main study, is devoted to the support 
 and explanation of the religious doctrines of the Vedas,' 
 and in holding that there is in reality only one existence 
 It teaches the doctrine of a-dvaita, or non-dualism, as 
 decidedly as Schelling or Hegel. 
 
 With the three Darsanas Indian philosophy practically 
 ends, and the principle of soul exhausts itself, and to 
 turn the philosophies into the religion of the great 
 Hindu masses the Brahmans had to give life to the 
 abstract essences of the schools by endowing them with 
 personality and will, which became exempHfied in the 
 popular gods of Hindu mythology, Brahma,^ Vishnu, 
 and Siva. 
 
 This, then, brings us to the mythological phase ot 
 Brahmanism, which is synchronous with the rise and 
 development and decHne of Buddhism, its bible being the 
 legendary epic poems of the Ramayana 3 and the Maha- 
 bharata,4 called an Itihasa, or sacred history, together 
 
 ■ All the Darsanas are based upon the Vedas ; but the Nyaya, 
 being founded on sensations and being an exoteric doctrine, is con- 
 veniently introductory to the Sankhya, which is based on emotions, 
 and reduces external Nature from the category of substance to that 
 of qualities ; while the Sankhya, again, is introductory to the 
 Vedanta, which is essentially esoteric, and asks the simple question, 
 ' What is and what is not ? ' Ilence Ballantyne observes that the 
 categories of the Nyaya and the Sankhya were ' merely scaffolding ' 
 for reaching the pinnacle of the Vedanta ; and it is in this order 
 that in Hindu schools, where all three are taught, the learner usually 
 takes them up. 
 
 '^ Brahma, with the accent, to indicate the masculine — a member 
 of the Hindi! triad — and to distinguish it from the neuter Brahma, 
 the Absolute. 
 
 3 It describes the doings of Rama, the seventh incarnation of 
 Vishnu, and consists of about 24,000 stanzas. 
 
 ■• The longest epic in the world, consisting of some 220,000 lines, 
 and a vast thesaurus of Hindu traditions, legendary history, ethics 
 
26 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 with the popular eclectic poem of the Bhagavad-gita,' to 
 which we shall return hereafter. In their conflict with 
 their great rival Buddhism, which was a revolt against 
 caste and priestcraft, Brahmanical ascendancy and Vedic 
 authority, sacrifices and rituaUsm, the Brahmans had 
 to provide for the wants which Buddhism had created, 
 and to combine their own esoteric doctrine with the 
 prevailing popular belief. The first thing needed for this 
 purpose was a popular conception of deity. None of 
 the abstract gods of the later Vedic hymns, still less the 
 impersonal Brahma — the Absolute — which lay behind 
 them all, had ever become a god of the people ; while the 
 worship of the more personal Brahma (masc.) had never 
 been popular. But the deity wanted was found in Vishnu, 
 a name given in the Rig-veda to the Sun-god (Surya), 
 and in the closing centuries B.C. he becomes elevated 
 to a supreme position in his heaven, Vaikuntha, with 
 his consort Lakhsmi, the goddess of love and fruitfulness, 
 dwelling by his side. In the same way, Rudra, the 
 stern Storm-god of the Rig-veda, became transformed 
 into the Mahadeva (great god) or Siva of later Brah- 
 manism. In ascetic power he is superior to all other 
 beings, though he is also a god of fruitfulness, and as 
 such is worshipped under the emblematic form of the 
 phallic lingam, the symbol of the power of propagation. 
 
 and philosophy — the source of many of the Puranas. Here Krishna 
 becomes the great man-god, the chief incarnation of Vishnu. For 
 a list of editions and translations of these epics up to 1847, see 
 Gildemeister's ' Bibliothec. Sanscr. Specimen,' pp. 29-53. -A. com- 
 plete translation of both has been made by Hipp. Fauche. The 
 Ramayana, together with the Rig-veda, has also been translated by 
 Griffiths and by M. N. Datta (Calcutta). 
 
 ' Translations of the Bhagavad-glta have been made by Em. 
 Burnouf, 1861 ; F. Lorinser, 1869 ; K. T. Telang, Bombay, 1875 ; 
 and more recently by Mrs. Annie Besant. 
 
THE HINDU INCARNATIONS 27 
 
 In like manner, his consort appears in a double character, 
 as Ambica, the ' good mother ' ; and as Kali, the ' black 
 one ' ; or Durga, the ' terrible,' in which last two forms 
 she is worshipped with revolting, bloody sacrifices. In 
 these twofold aspects, as well as in the introduction of 
 various foreign elements, such as the worship of serpents 
 and spirits (bhutas), is to be traced the fusion of Aryan 
 and non-Aryan conceptions of divinity. 
 
 In connection with Vishnu worship, we have the 
 doctrine of avatdras,^ or incarnations, or 'descents,' and 
 it has been this doctrine that has excited so much popular 
 enthusiasm. Just as the Buddha becomes man to redeem 
 the world from misery, so Vishnu descends in human 
 forai in times of great emergency to end the struggle 
 between order and disorder, and to bring deliverance 
 by gaining the victory for the good, though the enemy 
 to be vanquished is not sin in the human heart, but 
 evil under the form of demon, king, or giant. By means 
 of this doctrine, famous mythic heroes, such as Rama- 
 chandra, the hero of the Ramayana, who extended his 
 exploits to Ceylon, and Krishna, both of them ancient 
 gods of the night, become identified with Vishnu, and 
 have always been the most popular objects of worship. 
 In the cultus of Krishna, which ultimately spread over 
 the whole of India, Vishnu worship reaches its climax, 
 
 ' Among the oldest of these is the 'dwarf incarnation, borrowed 
 from Vishnu's sun-myth, and found as early as the Satapatha Brah- 
 mana, and which, as Lassen conjectures, was derived, together with 
 other forms, from non-Aryan mythology. Vishnu appears also as 
 the 'fish,' who saves Manu at the deluge, as the 'tortoise,' who 
 supports the earth in the creation at the churning of the heavenly 
 ocean, as the 'boar,' which restores it to equilibrium when it has 
 sunk into the under world, and as the ' man-lion,' who destroys the 
 way of a demon king. (See ' Outlines of the History of the Ancient 
 Religions,' by G. P. Tiele. ) At the end of the present age {Kaliyugd] 
 a deliverer is to appear, and introduce the Krita age of righteousness. 
 
28 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 though in the oldest versions of the great epic, the 
 Mahabharata, which reiiected the behef of the Kshattriyas, 
 or warrior caste, he had not reached the supreme position 
 that he holds under Brahmanical influence in the latter 
 redactions of the poem. At different times he appears 
 as a man, a wise moralist, counsellor of the Pandavas in 
 the great war with the Kurus, as a mighty hero and 
 demi-god of miraculous power, till at last he becomes 
 the incarnation of Vishnu, and, in the Bhagavad-gita, an 
 episode of the Mahabharata, proclaims himself as Supreme 
 Being and the redeemer. A still later date recounts in the 
 Puranas the legends of his miraculous birth,' his youthful 
 amours and immoral sports. 
 
 The worshippers of the three chief gods, Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Siva, were for the most part hostile to one 
 another, and the exclusive adoration either of Vishnu or 
 Siva, which grew out of the rivalry of the sects, would 
 seem to account for the Indian tendency to monotheism, 
 which some students of religion, such as Weber,^ trace 
 to an acquaintance with Christianity. Various endeavours, 
 however, at reconciliation were made, and the three gods, 
 with equal rights ascribed to each of them, were sometimes 
 placed together, or Vishnu and Siva were united in one, 
 and then with Brahma, and in this way the important 
 doctrine of the Trimurtti, or triple manifestation, arose. 
 The conception had, indeed, been adumbrated in the Veda, 
 where Agni is regarded as having a triple character, 
 and later a triad of principal gods, Agni, Indra, and 
 Surya, is recognised ; while in the philosophic Vedanta, 
 
 ' For a full discussion of the question of the transference ot 
 certain facts of the Christian Gospels to Hinduism and their appli- 
 cation to Krishna, as carried on chiefly between Professors Weber 
 and Lassen, see Muir's ' Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers,' 
 introduction. 
 
 ° In his ' Indische Studien,' i. 423. 
 
THE HINDU TRIMURTTI 29 
 
 though the eternal, impersonal Brahma is absolutely 
 one, yet ' It ' is made up of a triunity of essences — pure 
 unconscious existence (Sai), pure thought {Chit), and 
 pure bliss {Anandd). But the prominent idea of the 
 later doctrine of the Trimurtti, whose first appearance 
 some scholars place in the fourteenth century a.d., is that 
 the three gods represent forms of one Supreme Being 
 in his threefold activity as Creator, Preserver, and 
 Destroyer, though Siva is not only the dissolver, but 
 the reproducer, according to the Hindu conception that 
 all death leads to new life, all destruction to reproduction. 
 This doctrine rudely resembles, nominally rather than 
 ■ in reality, the Christian Trinity. As in other religions 
 and philosophy, especially the Greek, so in Hinduism, 
 human thought has felt after the idea of God, has striven 
 by a metaphysical and elaborative process to formulate 
 that idea, without succeeding in finding the actuality. In 
 each case, when compared with the original and beautiful 
 conception and creation of Christian theology, which 
 is based on Divine love and the social nature of that 
 love, and which changed the abstract processes of 
 philosophy into ' the terms of a concrete relation,' the 
 differences are at once seen to be radical. This has been 
 so forcibly pointed out by a foremost British master of 
 comparative religion. Principal A. M. Fairbairn, that we 
 cannot do better than quote his words : ' 
 
 ' The Hindu Trimurtti only represents the adaptation of a pan- 
 theistic idea to historical conditions. The co-ordination of Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Siva is recent, and may be described as the result of a 
 religious diplomacy, all the more real that it was unconscious and 
 undesigned, and a metaphysical speculation that acted here just as 
 it had acted everywhere. Each of the deities had a prior and very 
 ancient history. They ran back into the Vedic period, and are the 
 
 ' ' Christ in Modern Theology,' p. 395, fifth edition. 
 
30 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 survivals of different mythological schools and tendencies. Brahma 
 (masculine) is the deification of the priestly idea, especially the art 
 and efficacy of prayer; Vishnu is a form of the sun-god, who as 
 Surya or Savitri, moved like a beneficent and radiant spirit - across 
 the face of the sky ; and Siva is the survivor of the ancient storm- 
 gods, who swept from their homes in the Himalayas with destruc- 
 tive force down upon the plains. These do not represent one religion, 
 but distinct religions, or, rather, many different religions, each with 
 its own customs, festivals, modes, and objects of worship, and even 
 geographical distribution. Then, the Brahma (neuter), in whom they 
 are co-ordinated, is the universal substance or soul ; of him or it, 
 all phenomenal being is a manifestation. He is no 'conscious reason, 
 no home of ethical relations and distinctions, but only the ultimate 
 essence or basis of all things. Every god and every man and every 
 creature is in him as much as the sacred triad, and in all he appears 
 or becomes incarnate. In other words, the system is a polytheistic 
 and mythological pantheism. But the Christian idea is the opposite 
 of all this. God is personal, conscious, ethical ; the Godhead 
 expresses this personal, conscious, and ethical being as immanent 
 and essential. Man cannot be absorbed into God, or God in- 
 dividualised and distributed in man. The Persons in the Godhead 
 are incapable of absorption into more abstract forms of being ; 
 they represent God, not as an ever-unfolding and enfolding substance, 
 but as a necessary and eternal communion, the home of life and 
 love.' 
 
 In the Hindu doctrine of avatdras, or descents, which 
 has exercised a far more popular and powerful influence 
 than that of the Trimurtti, we have a closer approach to 
 Christianity. It is this conception of a God incarnate 
 that has really moulded Hindu character and won the 
 devotion of Hindu hearts, though as seen unfolded in all 
 the gross crudities and often obscene drapery of Hindu 
 romance, and as such inconsistent with the Brahmanic 
 idea of Divine perfection, the doctrine has had no moral 
 force to raise the people out of their increasing degrada- 
 tion. Nevertheless, mythology is the region of religious 
 ideas. Myth is not arbitrarily invented, but was man's 
 early way of thinking about God, and God's way of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN INCARNATION 31 
 
 approaching man. A real longing of human nature, and 
 not mere fancy, is represented in the old legends and 
 romances of Hinduism ; for the peculiarity of the system 
 of avatdras consists, as Weber considers, in the fact that 
 it is out of compassion for the suffering that the god 
 becomes man and leads a human life. The doctrine 
 responds to a deep heart-cry of the people for a religion 
 of faith in a personal God, for a God sympathizing with 
 humanity. It expresses the desire for a Divine deliverer 
 amid the evils and miseries of life. The fabulous thus 
 foreshadows the real ; the legendary deliverer prefigures 
 the historical Deliverer to come. Superstition is the 
 flickering shadow cast by a real light, an unregulated faith 
 in what human nature feels to be a reality, but fails to 
 grasp. Both in Hindu and classical mythology we have 
 thus anticipations and forecastings of some of the sublimest 
 facts of the Christian revelation, and faith in the former 
 is in some sense a preparation for faith in the latter. 
 The belief that the gods can and do come down to men in 
 their extremity contains a promise of redemption. 
 
 But when we compare the belief with the crowning truth 
 of Christianity, we perceive at once its crude defects, and 
 how Christ not only fulfils the unconscious prophecy, but 
 sweeps away the conjectures and conceits, reconciles and 
 unites isolated and opposing truths, and proclaims an 
 altogether original message that goes forth with regene- 
 rating power. Both East and West sought to realise the 
 idea of the unity of the Divine and human ; but while the 
 Hindu, in conceiving of God condescending to man, and 
 assuming a human form, so far resembles the Christian, the 
 conception itself is radically different. Not only is one 
 image noble and the other mean — for it is presented in its 
 fullest form in the Krishna legend — the one rich and the 
 other comparatively empty ; not only may the deity assume 
 
32 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 in Hindfiism the form of an animal equally with that of a 
 man, and become equally individualized in every created 
 thing ; not only are the incarnations of Vishnu diverse and 
 numerous, thereby affording no true conception of the 
 essential and complefte unity of God and man ; but portions 
 only of the Divine essence are united to created beings, 
 whereas in Christ the Divine Spirit was united to universal 
 man, a communication, not merely of qualities, but of the 
 essential nature. ' In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily.' In the same way, the whole nature of 
 man is not in Hinduism taken up into Deity, as it is in 
 Christ, redeemed and glorified and made for ever one with 
 the Divine ; but when Vishnu returns to his heaven he lays 
 aside his human nature. Divine manhood is therefore 
 apparent only, not real ; and we arrive at the underlying 
 conception of Hindu thought, the fixed antagonism 
 between body and soul, flesh and spirit, and that man's 
 highest stage is reached only when his individuality is lost 
 in absorption in the Divine. The distinctive and underived 
 declaration of Christianity is the central fact of the Divine 
 Man, ' the Word made flesh,' that God in Christ enters 
 into man, revealing both the Divinity of man and the 
 humanity of God. No previous philosophy or religion 
 possessed the materials for formulating such a truth ; it 
 stands unique in the history of the world. 
 
 The third main division of Hindu thought is modern 
 Hinduism, or the Puranic, dating, approximately, from 
 the eighth to the beginning of the present century, and is 
 Brahmanism run to seed, as practised by the two great 
 sects of Vaishnavas and Saivas. These take as their 
 special Bible the eighteen '^ Puranas ('ancient tradition'), 
 
 ' Col. ii. 9. 
 
 ^ They are divided into three groups of six, according to the number 
 
THE HINDU SECTS 33 
 
 which are erroneously regarded by the sects as of great 
 antiquity, but were evidently composed by the Brahmans 
 to correct the influence of the heterodox literature of the 
 Buddhists, and are, accordingly, closely allied with the 
 epics. They abound in old traditional stories of the gods, 
 in fanciful mythologies, theogonies, and cosmogonies, 
 purporting to give a history of the universe from its origin, 
 and are designed to convey the exoteric doctrines of the 
 Veda to the lower castes and to women, who had begun to 
 possess some privileges under Buddhism, and, indeed, form 
 the Veda proper of popular polytheistic and yet pantheistic 
 Hinduism. This was pre-eminently the sectarian period of 
 the religion of the Hindus, when strifes arose between the 
 followers of Vishnu and Siva for the purpose of exalting 
 one deity or the other to the highest position. Vaish- 
 navism has undoubtedly succeeded in being the dominant 
 faith, aided by such powerful apostles and reformers ' as 
 Ramanuja, a native of Southern India, who lived in the 
 twelfth century, Ramananda at the end of the fourteenth, 
 and Chaitanya, of Bengal, at the beginning of the sixteenth, 
 an ecstatic devotee of Krishna. Faith in personal deities, 
 which is the Bhakti-mdrga ( ' way of faith '), is expressed in 
 the more humane form of Vaishnavism, while belief in the 
 efficacy of works, penances, and austerities, which is the 
 Karma-mdrga ( ' way of works ' ), is expressed in the 
 sterner form of Saivism ; the highest or philosophical way 
 of salvation, the method of the Upanishads, being the 
 fndfia-mdrga, or ' way of knowledge.' Puranic Vaish- 
 
 of the chief gods ; though the six that exult the praises of Brahma are 
 mainly concerned with the worship of the other two, preference being 
 given to Vishnu. 
 
 ' For an account of founders of sects and sectarian differences, see 
 Wilson's ' Religious Sects of the Hindus.' 
 
 4 
 
34 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 navism presents a full development of the Krishna-cull," 
 which portrays the youthful freaks and iilds of the deity in 
 a manner now condemned by the more enlightened minds, 
 who interpret them in an allegoric or esoteric way. 
 
 Connected with the Puranic literature and ritual are the 
 Tantras, which represent a phase of degenerate Saivism, 
 and by means of obscene orgistic rites inculcate the 
 worship of the active, energizing principle {Saktt) of the 
 deity, personified as his consort, and abound in extrava- 
 gant symbolism, mysticism, and magic. Vishnu, Siva, and 
 Sakti worship — i.e., the worship of the two male gods 
 presiding over creation, preservation, and disintegration — 
 and the worship of the corresponding female counterparts, 
 constitute the staple of ordinary Hinduism. In Tantrism 
 or Saktism — though even this is claimed to have an 
 esoteric side — Hinduism arrived at its worst stage of 
 mediaeval and modern development. 
 
 We thus see that the stream of Hinduism in its onward 
 course, while it has gathered volume and force, has drawn 
 in from surrounding tracts many foreign elements and 
 impurities, so that its more thoughtful votaries fail to see 
 reflected in its present surface their ancient truths. With 
 marvellous power of compromise and assimilation and with 
 an ever-underlying pantheism, Hinduism has been able to 
 be all-embracing, and to easily adapt itself by mysticism 
 and symbol to varying minds. Unrestrained by the limits 
 of a historical revelation, natural perversions and fancies 
 have had full play, till the great system has been paralysed 
 by accumulated extravagances and corruptions. With no 
 organic connection of lesser truths with a greater, dis- 
 connected truths become half-truths ; particular truths, 
 being over-insisted on, grow monstrous ; and, all possible 
 
 ' As expounded in the Vishnu, the Bhagavat, and the Brahma- 
 vaivartia Puranas. 
 
HINDU ASSIMILATION AND DECAY 35 
 
 ideas being exhausted, the truths themselves either die of 
 spiritual starvation or change into falsehoods. The circle 
 of failure thus becomes complete. 
 
 Start from God as the Bible does, and all goes right ; 
 start from Nature, and interpret God and man through 
 Nature, and all goes wrong. From whatever side we look, 
 the non-Christian world has the universe for its principle ; 
 and it cannot become free from it, just as in the Sphinx 
 (which mystical figure fitly expresses heathenism) the 
 human countenance rises out of the body of an animal, 
 from which it cannot separate itself. Surely our world 
 presents no aspect more pathetic and profound than this 
 natural history of the human consciousness, this dim 
 groping of man after God. 
 
 If we ask why God allowed the world thus to wander on 
 for ages in its own way ; was it not because He would let 
 men see what they were capable of accomplishing by their 
 own power ? The kingdom of this world must be revealed 
 in full. It must exhaust all its possibilities, must work out 
 and fill its pantheon, must spin out its finely-drawn, 
 philosophical speculations, in order that the revelation of 
 redeeming love might shine forth in all its glory. The 
 world must accomplish its own revelation, ' so as fully to 
 display itself in all its glory and in all its worthlessness, in 
 all its glitter and in all its emptiness.' Men must work 
 first their own methods ; only amid their wrecks will they 
 open their heart to understand the Divine. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 VEDIC LITERATURE 
 
 Vedic Literature — Oral Transmission of Hymns — Animistic Survivals 
 — Vedic Divinities : Indra, Agni, Varuna — Anthropomorphic 
 Conceptions — Struggle after Unity — Henotheism and Pantheism 
 — Notions of Creation — Sacrificial System — Faith — No Divine 
 Promises in the Vedas — Belief in a Future State — The Pons et 
 Origo of Hindu Theology — Contrasted with Revealed Religion. 
 
 In the sacred books of the East, we watch, Professor Max 
 Miiller says,' 'the dawn of the religious consciousness of 
 man — one of the most inspiring and hallowing sights in the 
 whole history of the world,' yet ' not without its dark 
 clouds, its chilling colds, its noxious vapours.' Indeed, 
 these constitute, he adds, 'the real toil and travail of the 
 human heart in its first religious aspirations,' which gave 
 birth to ' the intensity of its triumphs and its joys.' The 
 Vedas form the fountain-source of Hindu religious thought, 
 and reveal to us the living features of a bygone — well-nigh 
 prehistoric — existence, whose centuries seem to belong to 
 another planet. In Vedic times no expression was in 
 current use by which any year but the present was 
 distinguishable from any other year; and any attempt to 
 compute the age and duration of the Veda has been 
 
 ' 'The Upanishads,' vol, i., Preface, p. xi. 
 36 
 
VEDIC CHRONOLOGY 37 
 
 compared to watching the gradual and imperceptible 
 changes that have taken place in the course of centuries in 
 the starry heavens. Pictures of a people's life, of Nature's 
 Hfe, and of soul-life pass before us, but there is no history 
 in the ordinary sense, no succession of events clearly 
 united with one another. The life of those strange Vedic 
 tribes is more Mke an ' incoherent mass of chance occur- 
 rences,' unrelieved by any commanding personalities, 
 undisturbed by any great national struggles, in which no 
 conscious national purpose can be traced, no fixed guid- 
 ance, as in the case of the Israelites. 
 
 Vedic literature, originally contained in texts of remote 
 antiquity, has been preserved to' the world in numerous 
 and comparatively modern manuscripts, the most important 
 of which do not date earlier than 1600 a.d. In the Vedic 
 age, writing — probably introduced into India by the 
 Phoenicians — was unknown. As late as about 400 B.C. 
 — of which time we have some definite information in the 
 Church life of the Buddhists— no manuscripts or writing 
 utensils are found in the dwellings of the monks. Writing 
 was then used simply in business matters, not for making 
 books. The oldest known inscriptions in India are those 
 of Asoka, and may be placed about 250 b.c. The most 
 remarkable feat in the literary history of the world is thus 
 connected with the hymns of the Rig-veda, which number 
 over one thousand, and which were composed, collected, 
 recited, and transmitted without the art of writing, an art 
 which, as applied to the sacred Scripture, was regarded 
 with dread.' Every possible care was taken in transmission, 
 every syllable was pronounced in a prescribed way ; but, 
 
 ' This may call to mind the traditional instruction oi the Jewish 
 ' Torah,' the living word in the mouth of the prophets ; and it is note- 
 worthy that among Eastern nations generally books have never been 
 the basis of sound knowledge. Oral teaching is the ideal of instruction, 
 and the highest truths can be properly enshrined only in a faithful 
 
38 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 through lapses of memory or attempts of remodelling, dis- 
 figurements and changes necessarily crept in, while the 
 substitution, in course of time, of modern for ancient and 
 obsolete terms destroyed many valuable archaic remains, 
 just as a hard, grammatical analysis has since violated 
 much of the real meaning that lay hidden under the old 
 forms. From about 400 B.C. these corruptions ceased,' so 
 that for considerably upwards of 2,000 5'ears the fragments 
 of the Rig-veda have been protected from decay. Its 
 publication was first undertaken in 1845 by Professor Max 
 Miiller, at the suggestion of Burnouf, together with the 
 commentary of its Hindu expounder, Sayana, who lived 
 some 500 years before. 
 
 The religion embodied in the literature of the Veda 
 stands at the head of India's ancient beliefs, and is closely 
 related, not only to that of the other branch of the Aryans 
 proper — the Persians — but to the religion of the Indo- 
 Germans generally ; though the Hindus — who, after their 
 separation from the Iranians, settled at the mouths of the 
 Indus in the land of the five rivers (now the Panjab) — set 
 forth in a path peculiarly their own. The gods common 
 to all were the ' shining ones,' the Devas (fltog, deus), con- 
 ceived as children of the ' heaven-father,' Dyaus-pitar (Ztue 
 Trarrjp, Jupiter), and Prithivl, the earth-goddess. The sun- 
 god was Surya (''HXcoc, Sot) ; another heaven-god was 
 Varuna (Oupavoc) ; and the dawn-goddesses were Uskas 
 ("Hwc, Aurora) ; while Indra, whose might exceeds the 
 heaven and who slays the cloud-serpent with his thunder- 
 
 disciple's memory and heart. But such a system, while having its 
 ultimate ideal and fulfilment in the ' Word of God ' dwelling in the 
 heart, has its inevitable defects. 
 
 ' Through the efforts of a Hindu grammarian, Cannaka, who made 
 a survey of the vocal peculiarities of the Rig-veda text. (See Olden- 
 berg's ' Ancient India,' p. 25.) 
 
HINDU THEOGONIES 39 
 
 bolt, is the same god as Thor, the dragon-fighter and 
 hammer-hurler of the Scandinavian Edda.' 
 
 The guide to the entire theogony of the Hindus lies in 
 the Veda, where we have clearly depicted the primitive 
 views and expressions of man upon the powers and pro- 
 cesses of Nature, especially in the alternations of dawn and 
 darkness, and in the phenomena of storm and thunder, and 
 running back into still earlier and prehistoric stages of 
 religious thought. For alike in the Homeric and the 
 Vedic cult there are survivals of a previous savage period, 
 of an earlier animistic conception, when no distinction 
 between the human and the bestial existed ; when, in the 
 doctrine of spirits and worship of ancestors, and in the 
 childishness of the ideas generally, the elements of the 
 lowest state of religious evolution all the world over were 
 essentially the same. In speaking of sun, moon, and 
 stars, of storms and seasons, the language in which early 
 polytheistic tendencies are clothed is obviously rooted in 
 more primitive modes of thought, and has all the air of a 
 growth rather than a reminiscence, of a development, not 
 a degradation. In the earliest religious literature and 
 popular folklore there are embedded fossil fragments of 
 still earlier and cruder mythological formations, which 
 evidently preceded the purer forms of the great historic 
 religions. On this theory alone is it possible to explain the 
 mass of irrational and contradictory facts embedded in the 
 literature of a civilized and intellectual people such as the 
 Ancient Indian Aryans. 
 
 The Vedic divinities — the personification of natural 
 
 ' ' The earliest theologies have been astronomical. The European 
 and classical names for God go back to the old Sanskrit word for the 
 sunrise. Stonehenge is a temple of the sun, and our leading eccle- 
 siastic festivals of to-day are baptized survivals of customs existing in 
 the dawn of history, which had their origin in observed movements of 
 the heavens.' ('J. B.' in the Christian World, January 26, 1899. 
 
40 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 forces — when exalted to a superhuman magnitude, whose 
 dwelling-place is the atmosphere or the heavens, still retain 
 marks of an earlier animistic form, as when Agni, the fleet 
 god of fire, is represented by a steed, and Indra, the 
 powerful one, by an ox ; and the Hindu Olympus, mostly 
 beneficent, is encircled by an imaginary world of subordinate 
 and sphinx-like deities, animal demons, malicious spirits 
 {rdkshas '), and the souls of the dead, both kindly and 
 inimical ; and where the sorcerer and magicians exercise 
 the spells and powers afterwards held by the priest. The 
 polytheistic, and almost fetish, character of some of the 
 earliest songs is unmistakable. The Rig-veda in some 
 places says that there are 33 deities,^ of which 11 are in 
 heaven, 1 1 on earth, and 11 in the watery sphere ; else- 
 where it states that there are 3,339 deities.3 Indeed, 
 every natural object, and especially every useful thing, 
 would seem to have been adored as a deity, such as 
 pebbles and mortars,'* carriages and their different parts,5 
 all implements of war,^ animals,? plants,* sacrifices,9 food,'° 
 butter," and the intoxicating soma-juice.'^ Special pro- 
 minence was given to the drink of immortality '3 [soma, 
 haoma) at sacrifices, and to the worship of fire, and the 
 ideas and customs, both Persian and Indian connected 
 with them have suggested a non-Aryan origin. 
 
 These old priestly songs were composed at a time when 
 not a single city existed in India, only hamlets and 
 castles, and during a period of conflict between the 'fair- 
 skinned' immigrants, the Indo-Aryans, and the 'dark 
 
 ' Rig-veda, i. 135, 5 ; comp. Atharva, v. i. 16, 3. 
 
 = R.V. i. 34, n ; i. 45, 2 ; viii. 28, l ; ix. 92, 4. 
 
 ^ iii. 9, 9. ■• i. 28. 5 vi. 47 ; iii. 53. ^ ^-^ ^^ 
 
 7 vi. 28 ; iv. 27 ; vii. 103. ^ x. 97. 9 i. 162, 163 ; a. 96. 
 
 '° i. 187. " iv. 58. " i. 91. 
 
 ■3 Almost all the 114 hymns of the ninth book of the Rig-veda are 
 addressed to Soma. 
 
THE VEDIC. DIVINITIES 41 
 
 people,' the aborigines of the country. The hymns, no 
 doubt, led the aggressors on to victory, and with the growth 
 of society, and as the character of peace and war came to 
 be better understood, new ideas arose. Gradually, as man 
 began to feel himself superior to the brute, the animal and 
 the ghostly gave way to the human quality, and the great 
 powers of Nature emerge in figures of divinities that assume 
 human and superhuman dignity, while, in the place of the 
 old sorceries, the gods are approached with gifts, invited to 
 the meal of a primitive worship, and sohcited by sacrifice 
 and prayer. The Devas, originally nothing more than the 
 phenomena and powers of the shining heaven, are no longer 
 simple elemental forces, but become transformed into 
 'immortal masters,' raised above Nature as creators and 
 governors of the world, interested in the affairs of human 
 life, and arbiters of its destinies. 
 
 Anthropomorphic divinities and material sacrifices sum 
 up the Vedic cult, and in both we have the remains of 
 earlier crude conceptions. ' The Vedic divinities, the Vedic 
 sacrifices,' says Oldenberg, 'are not primitive and trans- 
 parent products of the original creative force of religion, 
 but, for the mo.st part, turn out, on close scrutinization, to be 
 ancient, obscure, and complex creations.' ' In the original 
 myth of Indra he appears as the thunderer surrounded by 
 the Maruts, or storm-gods, led by Rudra, or he is united 
 with Vishnu, the god of the solar disc— the two gods 
 destined to supersede him in later Hinduism — and he sets 
 free with his lightning dart the rain-storm from the cloud- 
 cliff. In the Vedic hymns he becomes the dexterous and 
 the victorious hero and the bestower of boundless gifts. 
 
 He is described as the generator of heaven and earth. = ' He propped 
 up the vast sky in empty space.' 3 ' He who fixed the quivering earth, 
 
 ' Ancient India,' p. 59- "" 1<-V. vii. 36, 4. ^ ii. 15, 2. 
 
42 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 and gave stability to the agitated mountains, who meted out the vast 
 atmosphere, he, O men, is Indra.' ' ' Gracious are thy hands, O Indra, 
 beneficent thy palms, bestowers of wealth upon thy worshippers. '° 
 His qualities, however, are very mixed. He controls the destinies of 
 men at his pleasure and acts arbitrarily.^ He abandons his friendships 
 with former favourites and consorts with others in turn. Indra, the 
 soma-drinker, is not the relation or friend or kinsman of the man who 
 offers no oblations ; he is the slayer pf the prostrated, undevout man. 
 And yet he is 'the most fatherly of all fathers.''' Similarly, Agni 
 (ignis), the fire-god, is sometimes spoken of as ' consuming and black- 
 ening the woods with his tongue, or roaring like the waves of the sea, 
 as having clarified butter for his food and smoke for his mark ' ; and, 
 again, he is invoked to be ' easy of approach, even as a father to 
 his son.' He is the special god of the priests, the mediator between 
 men and gods (purohitd), the lord of spells (brakmanaspaii), the 
 lord of prayer (brihaspati), the ' guest of the sacrifice.' 
 
 So also Varuna, originally a lunar divinity, the chief of the 
 Adiiyas, sons of the goddess of the twilight, while still re- 
 garded as the ruler of the night, figures rather as a divine 
 lord, and stands T)ut among the Vedic deities as the pos- 
 sessor of moral qualities, like Ormuzd in the religion of 
 Zoroaster, and especially as the detector and punisher 
 of sin, whose dreadful anger the sinner endeavours to 
 appease by prayers and sacrifices. 
 
 He is spoken of as a universal monarch. 5 He knows the flight of 
 birds in the air, the path of ships on the ocean, the course of the far- 
 travelling wind, and beholds all secrets that have been, or shall be, 
 done.'' Though he is said to be gracious even to him who has com- 
 mitted sin,' and is the wise guardian of immortality,^ he is far from 
 being a benevolent ruler. His ' nooses stand spread out to catch the 
 man who tells a lie ' ; « he pardons only when appeased, and threatens 
 the guilty with death. ' What offering will he deign to accept without 
 showing anger?' is the prevailing feeling of the suppliant. 'What 
 
 -'■ R.V. ii. 12, 2 {cf. Ps. civ.). = iv. 2i, 9. 3 vi. 47, 15 et seq. 
 '> iv. 17, 17 (cf. Ps. ciii. 13). The citations are from translations 
 given in Muir's ' Original Sanskrit Texts.' 
 
 s R.V. i. 25, 10. ^ i. 25, 7, 9, II (cf. Ps. cxxxix.). 
 
 ' vii. 87, 7. ^ vii. 42, 2. 5 iv. 16, 6. 
 
VARUM A THE PUNISH ER OF SIN 43 
 
 great sin was it, Varuna, for which thou seekest to slay thy worshipper 
 and friend ? Tell me, O unassailable and self-dependent God ; and, 
 freed from sin, I shall speedily resort to thee with adoration. Release 
 us from the offences of our fathers, and from those which we have 
 committed in our own persons. ' ' 
 
 The deep sense of sin and the idea of suffering for the 
 sins of others is very marked, also the conception of the 
 transference of guilt. 
 
 ' If, gods, we have committed against you any grievous offence with 
 our tongues, or through thoughtlessness, transfer that sin to the enemy 
 who seeks to wrong us.'° 
 
 And here is one of the most striking prayers for 
 mercy : 
 
 ' Let me not, O King Varuna, go to the home of earth. Be 
 gracious, O mighty God, be gracious. When, O thunderer, I go along, 
 quivering like an inflated skin, be gracious. I have, from lack of 
 understanding, done what is contrary to thy will ; be gracious. 
 Whatever offence this be, O Varuna, that we as men commit against 
 the gods, in whatever way we have infringed thy ordinances through 
 thoughtlessness, do not seek to harm us for that transgression. ' 3 
 
 It will thus be seen that at the point of Vedic evolution 
 the deities lose much of their purely physical character 
 and become rather magnified men, though fortified for 
 heroic exploits by food and wine, rejoicing in slaughtered 
 oxen and in the intoxicating soma. They are remarkable 
 for Titanic power rather than for Grecian beauty, and, 
 what is of more importance, divinity and goodness are not 
 necessarily connected, as in the Old Testament; the 
 worshipper is satisfied if his deity is strong and pliable, 
 open to flattery, and the distributor of earthly good,-* rain 
 
 ■ R.V. vii. 86, 3. " X. 37, 12. 3 vii. 89, I. 
 
 " In i. 29, a hymn addressed to Indra — the ' voracious drinker of the 
 soma-juice '— he is repeatedly asked to enrich the worshippers wii/i 
 thousands of excellent cows and horses ; and this spirit pervades the 
 majority of the hymns. 
 
44 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 and crops, and a long life ; if he can be rich in cattle and 
 happy in children. 
 
 A further idea of deity, which evinces progress in thought, 
 is applied to the chief gods, so that eack in turn is honoured 
 by the worshippers as the highest. The co-existence of a 
 plurality of deities, as recognised in the older portions of the 
 hymns, is altogether inconsistent with any clear apprehen- 
 sion of the unity of the godhead ; but the ascription of 
 universal dominion to several of the gods in turn has been 
 pointed out by Professor Max Miiller, to which he gives the 
 name of ' henotheism,' or the worship of single gods. ' In 
 the Veda one god after another is invoked. For the time 
 being all that can be said of a divine being is ascribed to 
 him. The poet while addressing him seems hardly to know 
 of any other gods.'' The epithets of Visvakarman, the 
 ' maker of the universe,' or ' the all-fashioner,' and 
 Frajdpati, 'lord of all creatures,' are given to different 
 deities. At the same time, there are several pantheistic 
 verses : 
 
 ' Aditi is the sky ; Aditi is the air ; Aditi is mother, and father, and 
 son ; Aditi is all the gods and the five classes of men ; Aditi is whatever 
 has been born ; Aditi is whatever shall be born.' ' 
 
 And, again : 
 
 ' Purusha himself is this whole universe, whatever has been, and 
 whatever shall be. He is also the lord of immortality, which grows 
 by food. All existing things are a quarter of him, and that which is 
 imperishable in the sky is three-quarters of him.' 3 
 
 The belief that God is one, in the theistic sense, the 
 sublime conception of the Hebrew people, grows with the 
 consciousness of a national life, which was very feebly 
 developed in the ancient Aryans. Jehovah, in the Old 
 
 ' ' Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion ' (1882), p. 277. 
 " R.V. i. 89, 10. A-diti = the unbound, the endless expanse beyond 
 the sky, the visible infinite. 3 R.V. x. go. 
 
VEDIC HENOTHEISM 45 
 
 Testament, is the sole leader of His people, fighting their 
 battles, ordering their polity, and controlling their destiny ; 
 and common misfortunes and successes kindle a patriotic 
 passion that finds its rallying-point and centre in a 
 theocracy. The several and separate Vedic bards were 
 strangers to this historical and corporate sentiment, and 
 unconscious of a divine and well-planned leading, while they 
 had not, on the other hand, reached that stage of philoso- 
 phic reflection which conceives more abstract divine figures, 
 and seeks for unity in manifold phenomena, the One in the 
 many. Nevertheless, underlying all the polytheism or 
 henotheism, there would seem to be, here and there, a 
 glimmering perception of monotheism, a struggling after 
 unity ; for it is quite evident that, while certain portions of 
 the Rig-veda read like ordinary idyllic poetry, yet behind 
 the finite phenomena of sense perception there is something 
 supernatural and infinite that filled the old rishis with 
 reverence and awe. Observing, also, that different gods 
 had many attributes in common, they suspected that their 
 underlying essence was the same, and so recognised a 
 certain oneness, though manifested in a multiplicity of 
 forms. 'They call him (the sun) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, 
 Agni, and (he is) the celestial and well-winged Garutmat. 
 Sages name variously that which is but one; they call it 
 Agni, Yama, Matarisvan ' ' — a verse that modern Vedan- 
 tists cite as the origin and basis of their monistic philosophy. 
 Professor Max Miiller ^ and Sir M. Monier Williams 3 see 
 also in the following hymn an instinctive monotheism : 
 
 ' Hiranyagarbha (the ' golden embryo ' ) arose in the beginning ; as 
 soon as born he was the sole lord of things existing. He established 
 the earth and this heaven. To what god shall we offer our oblation ? 
 
 ' R.V. i. 164, 46. = ' Hist. Anc. Sans. Lit.,' p. 568. 
 
 ^ ' Indian Wisdom,' p. 23. 
 
46 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 He who gives breath, who gives strength, whose command all, and the 
 gods, too, reverence, whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is 
 death ; — to what god shall we offer our oblation ? Who by his might 
 became the sole king of the breathing and winking world, v^ho rules 
 over this two-footed and four-footed (creation) ; — to what god, etc. 
 Whose greatness these snowy mountains and the ocean, with the river, 
 declare, of whom these (different) quarters of the sky are the arms ; — to 
 what god, etc. By whom the sky is fiery and the earth firmly fixed, by 
 whom the firmament and the heaven were established, who in the 
 atmosphere is the measurer of the aerial space ; — to what god, etc' ' 
 
 Such hymns tell us something of the Vedic notions of 
 creation, for the cosmogony of the Vedas is not one 
 connected narrative, like that of the Bible, but appears 
 in guesses and speculations, in which, while there is con- 
 siderable elevation of thought, there is yet no harmony, and 
 not a little puerility. According to the above hymn, the 
 primeval waters, referred to later in the hymn, generated a 
 ' golden embryo, from which the creator took bodily form in 
 order to transform chaos into cosmos, but whether the chaos 
 was eternally self-existent or whether it was produced we 
 are not told. Similar speculations, though more mystical 
 and profound, and more nearly approaching the description 
 in the Book of Genesis, appear in the following : 
 
 ' There was then neither nonentity (asad) nor entity {sad) ; there 
 was no atmosphere or sky above. What enveloped (all) ? Where is 
 the receptacle ? Of what (was it contained) ? Was it water, the pro- 
 found abyss ? Death was not then, nor immortality ; there was no 
 distinction of day nor night. That One breathed calmly, self- 
 supported ; there was nothing different from or above it. In the 
 beginning darkness existed, enveloped in darkness. All this was 
 undistinguishable water. That one which lay void and wrapped in 
 nothingness was developed by the power of fervour. Desire first arose 
 in it, which was the primal germ of wind, (and which) sages, searching 
 with their intellect, have discovered in their heart to be the bond which 
 unites entity with nonentity. The ray (or cord) which stretched across 
 these (worlds ?), was it beneath or was it above ? There were there 
 
 ' R.V. ^. 121. 
 
THE VEDAS AND CREATION 47 
 
 impregnating powers and mighty forces, a self-supporting principle 
 beneath and energy above. WAo knows, who here can declare, whence 
 has sprung — whence this creation ? The gods are subsequent to the 
 development of this (universe) ; who, then, knows whence it arose? 
 From what this creation arose, and whether [anyone) made it or not — 
 he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, or (even) he 
 does not know. ' ' 
 
 This hymn, in some respects the most striking and 
 sublime of all, and presenting, perhaps, the nearest approach 
 to monotheism to be found in the Vedas, sounds almost 
 like an echo of the ancient traditions of the creation, but 
 the pathetic doubt as to the ' how ' and ' whence ' and the 
 relation between the creation and the highest ruler, and the 
 possibility that even he may not be able to solve the 
 problem, stand out in clearest contrast to the plain, 
 emphatic statements of revealed truth : ' In the beginning 
 God created the heaven and the earth.' = ' He commanded, 
 and they were created.' 3 ' By faith we understand that the 
 worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what 
 is seen hath not been made out of things which do 
 appear.' ■» ' In Him (Christ) were all things created, in the 
 heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things 
 invisible. . . . All things have been created through Him 
 and unto Him ; and He is before all things, and in Him all 
 things consist.' s 
 
 Passing now from the deities to their worshippers, we 
 observe that the whole of the religious life of Vedic times 
 centres in sacrifice, combined with prayer and praise. ' The 
 gods are propitiated and their vigour enhanced by prayer and 
 praise.' ^ ' The adorable Agni is magnified by the hymns, the 
 prayers, the praises of his worshippers.' ^ Sacrifice {yajna), 
 
 ' R.V. X. 129. ° Gen. i. i. ^ Ps. cxlviii. 5. 
 
 4 Heb. xi. 3. = Col. i. 16, 17. '' R.V. viii. 12, 19, 22. 
 
 ' iii. S. 2. 
 
48 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 simple at first, highly elaborate later on, must have pre- 
 ceded the prayers, since they were composed for its 
 celebration. It is the one expression of mystery and 
 worship, the symbol of the profoundest life, in which even 
 the gods have a part. The world was made for the sake of 
 sacrifice,' and sacrifice was one of the means by which the 
 universe and gods and men were made. Purusha (the 
 primeval male) is mystically sacrificed, and from the four 
 parts of his body the four castes proceed and the several 
 parts of the universe.^ The gods themselves are merely 
 mortals till they gain immortality by sacrifices and austeri- 
 ties. ' Sacrifice is the axle of the world's wheel, and the 
 fecundating power of all things.' 3 
 
 In outward appearance the Vedic sacrificial system is 
 simplicity itself Just as there are no images of the deities, 
 so there are no temples for offerings. The open sward 
 under the spreading heavens, the tender iusa grass, suffice 
 for the altars of wandering shepherd tribes, at which the 
 head of each family officiates, the most primitive sacrifices 
 consisting of meat offerings, animal offerings, and soma 
 offerings, the materials required being of the simplest — ^rice, 
 clarified butter, water, and a log of wood. The character- 
 istic idea was that of a kind of bargain with the gods. 
 ' Man needs things which the god possesses, such as rain, 
 light, warmth, and health, while the god is hungry and 
 seeks oiferings from man ; there is giving and receiving on 
 both sides.' * The feeling of kinship and communion 
 between the gods and their worshippers was thus established. 
 
 Gradually, however, the proper performance of the 
 sacrifices and prayers developed into an elaborate and 
 burdensome ritual, which, with its minute formulse, hidden 
 mysticism, and occult powers, could be mastered only by 
 
 ' R.V. vii. 99, 4. = A. 90. 3 i. 164, 34, 5. 
 
 * Earth's ' Religions of India,' p. 36. 
 
THE VEDIC BRAHMANAS 49 
 
 a trained and hereditary priesthood, and so the poetical 
 nature-worship of the primitive Indo-Aryans stiffened into 
 a dry creed of sacrifices and penances, which is preserved 
 to us in the liturgical treatises known as the Brdhmanas of 
 the Vedas. The Vedic religion gives birth to Brahmanism, 
 as a great religious system ; though the word ' Brahman,' 
 from the neuter of brahma,^ a prayer or hymn, seems to 
 have been in early times a synonym for rishi, and pro- 
 bably meant simply a ' singer of sacred songs.' Later on 
 it came to denote a religious functionary, and the Brahmans 
 became the sole transmitters of the Vedic hymns, the 
 trustees of the religious welfare of the other castes, the 
 exclusive guardians and interpreters of revelation and 
 tradition, and the recognised ofiSciators at the sacrifices. 
 The public performance of these more important and 
 imposing sacrifices, of which there were four — the rdj'asilya, 
 or consecration of a king ; the asvamedha, or horse-sacrifice ; 
 the. J>uruska-medka, or human sacrifice; and the sarvamedha, 
 or general sacrifice — became a vast religious machinery,^ 
 set in motion by material wealth, for the attainment, mainly, 
 of temporal interests, in which the extravagances and black 
 arts of sorcery and fanaticism, the survival of earlier savage 
 customs, still played no little part. And though the 
 sacrificial victim, when consigned to the fire, was said to 
 be the 'annulment of sins,' these were for the most part 
 ceremonial, and there was no necessary connection between 
 the outward act and the inner life, no index of that spiritual 
 devotion which ennobles and purifies the character and 
 
 ■ This word well illustrates the course of Hindu thought from the 
 more concrete to the abstract, signifying originally in the Rig-veda 
 simply the act of devotion, having in the oldest Brahmanas the sense 
 of holiness in general in prayer and sacrifice, while becoming in the 
 Upanishads the holy principle animating Nature. 
 
 = See on this subject Ilaug's 'Aitareya Brahmana,' vol. i., pp. 73, 7 
 
 5 
 
50 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 makes for righteousness. Experimental religion was un- 
 known. Fire burnt up, and water washed away, the 
 obnoxious thing. There is no evidence that the thoughts 
 and aspirations of the worshippers went beyond the figure 
 to any spiritual fact. Their whole religion was a reading 
 of Nature, through which they interpreted themselves, and 
 of which they formed a part. Natural elements, therefore, 
 sufficed for the putting away of ceremonial defilement, 
 whereas to us the fire and water were but primitive material 
 symbols that pointed forward, like Jewish rites, to the great 
 Interpreter of Nature, to the consuming and purifying 
 spirit of the Christian faith. 
 
 It is true that in the Rig-veda, and perhaps still more 
 in the Brahmanas, much importance is attached to the 
 worshipper's state of mind, and that /ai(A in the gods 
 and devotion to their services are represented as the 
 necessary conditions of enjoying their favour and obtain- 
 ing the blessings which they are able to confer. One of ^ 
 the hymns ' is addressed to Sraddhd (Faith), and begins 
 thus : 
 
 ' Through faith the fire is kindled ; through fatth the oblation is 
 well offered ; with our words we proclaim faith (to be) upon the 
 head of good fortune. O faith, make this which I utter acceptable 
 to him who gives, and to him who desires to give, and to liberal 
 worshippers.' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' Men have faith in the fiery Indra when he hurls again and again 
 his destroying thunderbolt.'^ 'Do not, O Indra, destroy our valued 
 enjoyment ; we have put faith in thy great power. I verily believe 
 that faith has been reposed in thee ; do thou, who art vigorous, 
 advance us to great wealth.' 3 'Do ye, O Agni and Soma, regard 
 the acts of the man who worships you with an oblation, with a mind 
 
 R.V. X. 151. ' i- 55. 5- M. 104, 6. 
 
HYMNS TO SRADDHA 51 
 
 directed to the gods, and with butter.' ' ' The self-dependent god 
 provides with opulence that man who loves the gods and does not 
 withhold his wealth." 
 
 It will be observed, however, that the faith and devotion 
 here referred to and exercised, while they are directed to 
 unseen powers, move entirely in a lower sphere. Such 
 acts are pleasing to the gods, and will be rewarded by 
 material good. And though we have in such faith one of 
 the characteristic marks of revealed religion, in that it 
 secures the acceptable approach of the worshipper to his 
 God, there is no sign of any personal religious fellowship 
 and spiritual delight, of any such experiences as those of 
 the ancient Israelite who found Jehovah and rejoiced 
 before Him, and whose eager thirst for participation in 
 the services of His sanctuary is expressed in Psalms like 
 the forty-second : ' My soul thirsteth for God, for the 
 living God ; when shall I come and appear before the 
 face of God ? ' And what is the explanation ? An essential 
 mark of a religion of revelation is that the devotional 
 spirit seeks access to God in acts and services to which 
 He has attached a definite promise. An eminent Biblical 
 scholar has observed : ' The very foundation of revealed 
 religion is the truth that man does not first seek and find 
 God, but that God in His gracious condescension seeks out 
 man, and gives him such an approach to Himself as man 
 could not enjoy without the antecedent act of Divine self- 
 communication.' 3 
 
 Here, then, we have a simple and striking fact, note- 
 worthy in the present day of Hindu revival, when the 
 statement is often heard that all the important truths of 
 the Bible are to be found in the Vedas. There is this 
 
 ' R V. i. 93, 8. " X. 42, 9. 
 
 3 Dr. W. Robertson Smith in ' The Old Testament in the Jewish 
 Church,' p. 238. 
 
52 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 remarkable difference between the two : there are no 
 Divine promises in the Vedas. The two literatures may 
 inculcate similar virtues, they may disclose like needs 
 and aspirations, the same travail of the soul as it bears 
 the burdens of existence ; and the Vedas may contain 
 many beautiful prayers for mercy and help ; but we fail to 
 find a single text that purports to be a Divine answer to 
 prayer, an expression of experienced peace and delight in 
 God, as the result of assured pardon and reconciliation. 
 In a fine hymn addressed to Varuna, the poet offers honey, 
 which the god is sure to like, and then appeals to him as 
 a friend, and says : ' Now I saw the god who is all visible ; 
 now I beheld his chariot above the earth ; he must have 
 accepted my prayers.^ That is the nearest approach to an 
 answered prayer to be found in the Vedas, and it is merely 
 the expression of a hope. 'He must have accepted my 
 prayers,' says the Vedic poet. 'And it shall come to pass 
 that, before they call, I will answer ; and while they are yet 
 speaking, I will hear,' says the Hebrew prophet.' There is 
 the belief in the Vedas that the gods are able to take away 
 the burden of sin, but no attempt to explain how they can 
 do it. Faith does not hear the voice of the god speaking 
 to the soul ; it does not bring him near. The Bible, on 
 the other hand, is the book of Divine promises. They are 
 definite and numberless, and the forgiveness of sins is its 
 express characteristic. In no other religious literature are 
 there to be found words like these : ' Come now, and let 
 us reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as 
 scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be 
 red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' ^ ' I, even I, am 
 He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, 
 and will not remember thy sins.' 3 
 
 A careful comparison of religions thus brings out this 
 ■ Isa. Ixv. 24. » Isa. i. 18. 3 isa. xliii. 25. 
 
ABSENCE OF DIVINE PROMISES 53 
 
 striking contrast between the Bible and all other sacred 
 scriptures. It establishes its satisfying character in dis- 
 tinction from the seeking spirit of other faiths. The Bible, 
 as the depository of revealed religion, shows God in quest 
 of man rather than man in quest of God. In place of the 
 fear of those whose energies are paralysed by fruitless acts 
 and ceremonies to obtain forgiveness, we have its explicit 
 promise to forgive the sin and to remove the burden. It 
 thus satisfies the spiritual hunger and thirst to which other 
 religions only give expression ; it meets, as we shall further 
 see, the questions raised in the philosophies of the East, 
 and supplies their only true solution. All human specula- 
 tions and conceptions, so far as they are true, find place 
 under its shadow, and yet there is room. 
 
 This is the case with the belief in immortality, which 
 appears in the earliest Vedic hymns, and becomes more 
 elaborated in the Brahmanas, a belief which, according 
 to Burnouf, ' was never interrupted for a moment in 
 India.' ' It is found in close connection with the memory 
 of the Pitris, or ancestral fathers of the worshippers, who 
 are recognised as still existing, and are invoked for 
 succour.^ Yama, the Indian Pluto, was 
 
 ' the first that found out for us a way. This home is not to be taken 
 from us — (the place) whither our ancient fathers have departed along 
 their own paths, knowing (the way) thither.' 3 
 
 The following words were addressed to the departed at 
 the time of their obsequies : 
 
 ' Depart thou, depart by the ancient paths to the place whither our 
 ancient fathers have departed : (there) shalt thou see the two kings, 
 Yama and the god Varuna, exhilarated by the oblation. Meet in the 
 
 ' It manifests itself still in the Sraddha ceremony, or oflering to a 
 father's spirit, a duty incumbent on ev.ery Hindu son. 
 = R.V. X. 3 X. 14, 2. 
 
S+ ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 highest heaven with the fathers, meet with Varna, meet with (the 
 recompense of) thy sacrificial and pious acts. Throwing off all im- 
 perfection, again go to thy home. Radiant, become united to a 
 body. ' ' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' In heaven, where our virtuous friends enjoy blessedness, having left 
 behind them the infirmities of their bodies, free from lameness or 
 distortion of their limbs, may we behold our parents and our 
 children.' ° 
 
 The gods are regarded as immortal and capable of 
 conferring immortality on their worshippers : 
 
 ' May I attain to that beloved abode of his (of Vishnu), where men 
 devoted to the gods rejoice.' 3 ' The liberal man abides placed on the 
 summit of the sky ; he goes to the gods.' '' ' Place me, O purified 
 Soma, in that imperishable and undecaying world where perpetual light 
 (exists) and the sun is placed. Make me immortal (in the realm) where 
 King Yama dwells, where is the sanctuary of the sky, and those 
 rushing waters flow. Make me immortal in the third heaven, where 
 action is unrestrained and the regions are luminous. Make me im- 
 mortal in the world of the sun, where there are pleasures and enjoy- 
 ments, where ambrosia and satisfaction are found.' s 
 
 Such simple and beautiful aspirations, mixed with sense 
 perception as they are, and uttered when the world was 
 young, find an easy place in the Christian temple, where 
 the instinctive longing for immortality is justified and 
 satisfied, while its true spiritual nature is revealed. 
 
 There is no trace to be found in these ancient hymns 
 beyond a stray reference in the tenth and last book, and 
 of a much later date than the others, of the dogma of 
 transmigration (which will be considered later), and which 
 with the growth of priestism, soon became a fundamental 
 conception of Hindu thought. Life wears a cheerful 
 
 ' R.V. X. 14. 7 ei sei/. " A.V. vi. 120, 3. 3 R.y. i. 154, 5. 
 •* i. 125, 5. s ix. 113, T et seq. 
 
YAM A AND HEAVEN 55 
 
 aspect, and there is an eager desire for its continuance in 
 another state. The idea, indeed, of the future life is that 
 of a simple, pastoral people, and the pleasures in store are 
 sensual rather than spiritual. The celestial region is no 
 place of disembodied spirits and Homeric shades, but the 
 bright abode of bodies purified by fire, though it often 
 becomes a merry banqueting hall, where eating honey, 
 quaffing the soma, and other festivities and revelries, are 
 enjoyed. There was also a place of punishment for the 
 wicked, a pit into which the irreligious are hurled, and 
 where Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices. ' 
 
 ' Knowing, he beholds all creatures ; he hurls the hated and 
 irreligious into the abyss.' " ' Like brotherless females, unchaste, 
 like evil women who hate their husbands, wicked, unrighteous, and 
 liars, they are destined for that deep abyss.' ^ 
 
 Such, then, is the strange and living picture of religious 
 life and thought in those far-back, measureless ages, where 
 emerging from a prehistoric and animistic past, we have 
 depicted man's primitive conceptions of the powers and 
 processes of Nature, in the midst of the survivals of an 
 imaginary realm of semi-deities and demons, evil spirits 
 and departed souls, all set forth in a literature at once 
 childish and irrational, and yet elevated and profound. 
 And back to this obscure and complex source we surely 
 trace all subsequent development in the theogony of the 
 Hindus. The great popular gods of medijeval and modern 
 Hinduism, "Vishnu and Siva, which, with their marvellous 
 mythologies and doctrine of ' descents,' we have seen, 
 created rival sects, moulded national character, and excited 
 popular enthusiasm, melt away into physical powers of 
 Nature, and are clearly traced up to the ancient sun and 
 storm myths of the Vedic Surya and Rudra, both, again, 
 
 ■ R.V. i. 121, ij. = ix. 73, 8. •' iv. 5, 5. 
 
56 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 being connected with the original myth of Indra, the 
 Indian Thor, the hurler of the thunderbolt ; while Varuna, 
 the most moral of the deities, was first of all a lunar 
 divinity, a son of the goddess of the twilight. The fans et 
 origo of Hindu theology was thus the shining Devas, who 
 were originally nothing more than the phenomena and powers 
 of air and sky, and gradually became transformed into 
 anthropomorphic deities, who are fortified in their festive 
 heavens for heroic deeds by food and wine liberally offered 
 to them by their worshippers on earth. The beginnings of 
 a pantheistic conception of the universe, which afterwards 
 filled Indian thought, can also be traced. Some of the 
 surnames of the ancient gods, especially of Agni, the god 
 of fire, and regarded as the soul of all things, become 
 endowed with a separate existence, or such a deity is 
 exalted to be lord of the world ; and as the Brahmans 
 acquired power, and placed themselves on a level with the 
 Devas, their speculations ascended from such generalizations 
 to Brahma, the magic power hidden in the Veda and in 
 prayer, who in the Brahmanas is regarded as the impersonal 
 cause of the universe, and later on becomes personified in 
 the masculine Brahma, the first god of the Hindu Trimurtti, 
 an embodiment of the priestly idea, a deification of the 
 Brahman's art of sacrifice and prayer. 
 
 It is thus possible to trace the evolution of the Vedic 
 and Brahmanic deities, who appear, according to the 
 exigencies of the time, as creations of the imagination. 
 No supreme, commanding, personal, and moral God, such 
 as is seen in the first verse of the Hebrew Bible, rises on 
 the childhood of the Indian world, as One, above all, 
 creating all, controlling all, and from the first revealing 
 Himself to His creatures, in symbol, sacrifice, covenant, 
 and law, as the sole Moral Ruler of the universe and 
 Director of its destiny ; continual Divine guidance taking 
 
THE DEVAS AND NATURE WORSHIP 57 
 
 the place of divination. The Vedic rishis saw oftly Nature, 
 of which they were a part, and through which they inter- 
 preted both themselves and the Divine. And so we have 
 in their ' hymns before sunrise ' crude and pathetic guesses 
 at the origin and method of creation, fanciful cosmogonies, 
 a sensual paradise, and, at the same time, inevitable 
 drifting into pantheistic thought. 
 
 The religious practice of Vedic times is centred and 
 summed up, as we have seen, in material sacrifices. At 
 first a childlike and honest bargaining with the gods, which 
 establishes a social comradeship between the two, though 
 nothing approaching to spiritual communion ; but later a 
 vast, elaborate machinery of the priest, set in motion and 
 maintained by wealth, for the securing of earthly good and 
 the generation of occult and superhuman powers, which 
 largely took the place of the spells and black arts of the 
 sorceries and savageries of a still earlier time. Hymns, 
 some of them of great beauty, were chanted, devout and 
 tender prayers were offered ; but there was no conscious 
 response, no Divine answer and promise to assure and 
 sustain the soul. Altars smoked, and victims were slain, 
 and these were conceived as the all-essential elements of 
 worship, a prodigality and slaughter that had no significance 
 beyond the acts themselves, no explanation, fulfilment, and 
 abolition, as with the Jewish system, in one great Antitype. 
 Jehovah, unlike the gods of the nations, does not require 
 material sacrifice, but only ' to do justly, and love mercy, 
 and walk humbly with God.' ' And the radical distinction 
 of revealed religion lies in the Deity being such an one as 
 to make Himself personally known to His people, and to 
 demand of them a life conformed to His spiritual character 
 as a righteous and forgiving God. The true basis of the for- 
 giveness of the Bible lies not in man's offering, but in a 
 ' Mic. vi. 8. 
 
S8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 work of sovereign love ; and while the Jewish ritual ever 
 kept in view the necessary connection of love with justice, 
 and pointed forward to the true atonement, it is God who, 
 for His own sake, blots out transgression and does not 
 remember sins ' — a conception that never entered the 
 minds of Vedic seers and priests, any more than did the 
 correlative conception of a holy God, a holy priesthood, 
 and a holy people, the fundamental ideas and purposes of 
 true religion. 
 
 ' Ps. XXV. II ; Isa. xliii. 25. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 VEDISM AND HINDUISM 
 
 Division of Vedic Literature — Mantras — Brahmanas — Upanishads — 
 Idea of Revelation — Modern Hinduism based upon Vedism — 
 Vedic Hinduism dead — Departments of Works and Knowledge 
 — Recoil from Sacrificial Ritual — Refuge found in Philosophy — 
 The Upanishads and the Veda proper mutually exclusive — What 
 has become of the Ancient Rites? — Christ the Fulfiller of 
 Sacrifices. 
 
 The old Vedic religion is known to us, as we have seen, 
 through the hymns of the Rig-veda — the Veda " par excel- 
 lence. Besides this, there are three other sacrificial works : 
 the Sdma or Chant Veda ; the Yajur, or sacrificial-formula 
 Veda, divided, after two rival schools, into the White and 
 the Black ; and the Atharva-y&iis., not recognised till later. 
 Each of these Vedas had its Sanhitd, or collection of 
 hymns, said to have been arranged by Vedavyasa, their 
 mythical compiler, and its different Brahmanas — prose 
 liturgical treatises for the guidance of the officiating priests 
 — though a considerable period must have elapsed between 
 the composition of the two ; while still later, certain works 
 called Sutras (' threads '), which were strings of short, 
 concise, sacrificial and legal guides, also formed an 
 appendix to the Vedas. Further, appended to the 
 
 ■ Derived from the Sanskrit vidh, to know, and allied to cWi.j and 
 video. 
 
 39 
 
6o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Brahmanas, but compositions of a far more interesting and 
 elevated character, are the Upanishads — philosophical and 
 theological mystical treatises — that form the most highly- 
 prized religious literature in India in the present day._ 
 Mantras, Brahmanas, Upanishads — these constitute the 
 three great divisions of the Veda, the utterances succes- 
 sively of poet, priest, and philosopher; and, as Dr. 
 Fairbairn has said, priests cannot be philosophers, and no 
 philosopher was ever a priest. All these were handed 
 down orally, and different schools had their own text, both 
 of hymns and Brahmanas. 
 
 To the whole of this literature the term Sruti, or reve- 
 lation, is applied, while all post-Vedic writings — scientific 
 treatises, philosophical systems, law-books, epic poems, 
 and Puranas — are regarded as Smritt, or tradition. 
 Hinduism has here another important idea in common 
 with the Bible, and one universally entertained — that of 
 a Divine revelation, a Word of God, supposed to have 
 been communicated directly to inspired sages — pre- 
 eminently in the hymns — and according to a theory of 
 inspiration ^ more extreme than that of any other religion 
 in the world. Though there is little in the hymns them- 
 selves to warrant this belief, the authors occasionally speak 
 of their productions as 'generated by the gods.'^ The 
 wish is expressed that a certain ' divine hymn may reach 
 Indra, the King of the god-made prayer.' 3 
 
 With this reverence for their ancient ' sacred knowledge,' 
 it is not surprising that the Hindus of to-day maintain that 
 their religion is based upon Vedism. And devout 
 Brahmans still recite every morning the celebrated 
 
 ' They are variously described as ' eternal,' the ' breath of Brahma,' 
 the product of the elements, or derived from the mystical victim 
 sacrificed at the creation. 
 
 ' R.V. .^. 6i, 7 ; S8, 8. 3 vii. 97, 3. 
 
KARMA-KANDA AND yNANA-KANDA 6i 
 
 Gayatri prayer of the Rig-veda, the most sacred of all 
 utterances : ' Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the 
 divine vivifier' (Savatri, or Sun); 'may he illumine our 
 understanding.' ' The ten sacramental observances 
 {Samskdras) of the higher castes — eight of which are 
 concerned with birth and childhood — are still those of the 
 Vedic system, and the ancient Mantras, or prayers, are 
 used ; while the leading tenets of the Upanishads, or the 
 Vedanta, are said to be ' discernible in almost every phase 
 of modern Hinduism.' = On the other hand, what we 
 understand by Vedic Hinduism — the religion of the hymns 
 —with the institutions with which it was incorporated, is 
 practically dead. Ancient Brahmanism, in its original 
 sacrificial sense, has little religious significance, though it 
 still furnishes the ideals of what is dimly apprehended and 
 really held by all orthodox Hindus in the present day. 
 The old Vedic deities — Indra, Agni, Varuna, Soma, the 
 Ushas, and the Maruts — are never heard of; the old 
 Nature-worship and elaborate sacrificial rites are unknown ; 
 whereas temples, images, and pilgrimages, the fundamental 
 doctrines of Karma and transmigration, together with 
 pernicious social customs, such as the seclusion of women, 
 infant marriages, enforced widowhood, and the gigantic 
 system of caste, to say nothing of self-torture, infanticide, 
 and sail — all unknown in Vedic times — have formed the 
 staple of modern Hinduism. 
 
 There are two great departments of the Veda. The 
 first is called Karma-Kdnda, the department of works, 
 which embraces both Mantras and Brahmanas, and is 
 followed by the vast majority of persons whose notion of 
 religion is a laying up of merit by means of ceremonial 
 prayers and sacrificial rites. The second is called Jndna- 
 
 ' R.V. iii. 62, 10. 
 
 " P. A. Bose in ' Hindu Civilization,' etc., p. 5. 
 
62 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Kdnda, the department of knowledge, the theosophic 
 portion of the Vedic revelation ; and this is embraced by 
 the Upanishads, and is intended for the select few who 
 are alone capable of attaining the true doctrine. During 
 the whole of the Brahmana period — from about 800 B.C. 
 to 500 B.c.^ — the need of propitiatory offerings remained a 
 central doctrine of Brahmanism. As the sense of cere- 
 monial guilt deepened, the idea of expiation, based on 
 substituted suffering, was developed ; the victim, mystically 
 identified with the sacrifice, becomes the ransom for sin. 
 Sacrifice acquires a superhuman power with the gods, 
 while the gods themselves becoriie immortal by repeated 
 sacrifices. Altars and priests abounded, and the land was 
 drenched with blood. A recoil from such an overdone 
 ritual, mechanical rather than moral and emotional, was 
 inevitable. Various Brahman and Kshatriya sages 
 appeared, and subsequently the great reformer and free- 
 thinker Buddha, and a refuge from ritual was found in 
 philosophy. The elaborate sacrificial rites had formed the 
 basis of Brahmanic influence, and the development of a 
 rationalistic Brahmanism struck at the root of priestly 
 ascendancy by shaking men's faith in the efficacy of the 
 sacrifices, and by opening up in their stead the 'way of 
 knowledge.' 
 
 The Brahmanas ' only satisfied the requirements of a 
 time when a trifling theology ruled ; and while being 
 interesting for their archaic style and guesses at truth, 
 their host of abstract deities and childish mysticism and 
 magic ^ have led Professor Max Miiller to observe : 
 
 ' The more important are the Aitareya and Kaushitaki-brahmana for 
 the Rig-veda, the Taittiriya and Satapatha for the two Yajur-vedas, 
 the Tandya for the Sama, and the Gopatha for the Atharva. 
 
 " The blood of the sacrificial horse was offered to the rakshas, evil 
 spirits (Ait. Br., ii. 7), and basket-makers to the /zVafa, devils (Tail. 
 Br.,iii. 4, I, 5). 
 
THE UPANISHADS 63 
 
 ' The general character of these works is marked by shallow and 
 insipid grandiloquence, by priestly conceits, and antiquarian pedantry. 
 . . . These works deserve to be studied as the physician studies the 
 twaddle of idiots and the ravings of madmen. They will disclose to a 
 thoughtful eye the ruins of faded grandeur, the memories of noble 
 aspirations. But let us only try to translate these works into our own 
 language, and we shall feel astonished that human language and human 
 thought should ever have been used for such purposes.' ' 
 
 The most important of the Upanishads belong to what 
 are called Aranyakas, or forest-books, which form an 
 appendix to the Brahmanas, and, treating as they do of 
 the release of the soul from metempsychosis, by means 
 of a recognition of the oneness of its real nature with the 
 great impersonal Self or Absolute, are so profound that 
 they were required to be read in the solitude of forests by 
 persons who, having performed all the duties of a student 
 and a householder, retired from the world to end their 
 days in abstract spiritual contemplation. The Upani- 
 shads are as far removed from the ancient poetry of the 
 Veda as the Talmud is from the Old Testament and 
 Sufiism is from the Quran. They represent the results 
 of the first plunge of the human mind into the depths of 
 metaphysical speculation, and investigate such abstruse 
 problems as the origin of the universe, the nature of 
 Deity and of the human soul, and the relation of spirit 
 and matter. 
 
 The etymology of the word is doubtful. It probably 
 signifies sitting down near some one in order to listen or 
 meditate and worship {iipa-ni-shad) ; so that it would 
 express the idea of a session or assembly of pupils sitting 
 down at a respectful distance round their teacher. Com- 
 monly, however, it has the meaning of secret doctrine — a 
 digest of the principles and mysteries contained in the 
 Vedas, the Vedanta meaning the Veda-end ; and some 
 ■ ' Hist. Anc. Sans. Lit.,' p. 389. 
 
64 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Indian philosophers derive the word from the root sMd, in 
 the sense of destruction ; meaning thereby that the secret 
 doctrine, fully apprehended, would destroy all passion and 
 ignorance, and all knowledge derived from the senses 
 merely — all knowledge save that of the universal Self. 
 
 Before passing to a study of this teaching, and leaving 
 behind the simpler form of the earlier Vedism, an im- 
 portant question presents itself. The two departments 
 — Karma-Kanda and Jnana-Kanda — of works and know- 
 ledge, instead of being both simultaneously developed 
 and refined, become, as it were, mutually exclusive; and 
 while works, and even sacrifices, may still have a pre- 
 paratory part to play, they are regarded rather as the 
 business of the uninitiated ; while theosophic knowledge 
 becomes the chief concern of the Upanishads and the 
 monopoly of the select few. 
 
 Now, in this the doctrine of the Upanishads is scarcely 
 consistent with its claim to be based on the authority of 
 the Veda. Their Vedantic teaching purports' to be the 
 end of the Veda; and so nothing essential to the Veda 
 should be allowed to drop. A professed believer, in the 
 Veda should certainly find a place in his theology for the 
 idea of expiatory sacrifice, just as a believer in the 
 Pentateuch should ; for sacrifice forms the very core as 
 well as the shell of the Vedic religion. And why ? 
 Because sin had a very real place — much more real than . 
 it has in the Upanishads. Sin is felt as a burdensome 
 fetter ; it does not escape, as we have seen, the gaze of the 
 highest Divinity, against whom it is conceived of as an 
 offence, and is an obstacle in the way of a friendly 
 approach ; and penitent confessions of sin, united with 
 prayer for forgiveness, find expression in the speech of 
 simple faith. 
 
 It is no answer to say that the Vedas are devoted to 
 
DECLINE OF VEDIC SACRIFICES 65 
 
 rites, and the Upanishads to contemplation, unless it can 
 be shown how the contemplation can supply the place of the 
 rites, and prove equally efBcacious for the purposes of 
 religion. ' It is true that the idea of- sacrifice became 
 degraded, and lost its original significance in the glorifica- 
 tion of the Brahmans, in the potent mantras that took the 
 place of the sacrifices, and in which only the Brahmans 
 were skilled ; but if the Vedanta accepts this as the true 
 account of its connection with the religion of Vedic times, 
 it condemns itself by tracing its origin either to a perver- 
 sion or to the abandonment of an important religious 
 observance. Though whole sections of the Upanishads are 
 occupied with speculations on the Vedic rites, what they 
 teach upon this point may be summed up in these words 
 of the Mundaka Upanishad ^ : ' Know the Atman only, 
 and away with everything else ; it alone is the bridge to 
 immortality.' In the Vedas sacrifice was the bridge. 
 But the Veda itself and the whole circle of its sacred 
 science are quite as sweepingly consigned to the second 
 place. 3 
 
 The question therefore presses, What has become of 
 the ancient sacrificial rites? 'King Asoka,' says Colonel 
 G. A. Jacob,* ' gave the death-blow to animal sacrifices in 
 the third century before Christ, as various rock and pillar 
 inscriptions bear witness ; but the demolition of the rest 
 of the fabric was effected by the orthodox philosophers, 
 who regarded it as "inferior science."' Yet no Hindu 
 need be ashamed of them, since the authorship of sacrifice 
 is attributed in the Vedas to ' Creation's Lord ' Himself, 
 and its date is reckoned as coeval with the creation. The 
 
 • See an article in the Indian Evangelical Review, July, 1874, °ri 
 ' The Logic of the Vedanta.' 
 = ii. 2, 5. 3 See Earth's ' Religions of India,' p. ^. 
 
 ■I ' Manual of Hindu Pantheism,' p. 15. 
 
 6 
 
66 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 idea exists that Prajapati, begotten before the world, 
 becoming half immortal and half mortal, offered himself 
 mystically in a body fit for sacrifice, thereby making all 
 subsequent sacrifice a reflection or figure of himself. And 
 there was profound truth in the belief that sacrifice was ' a 
 good ferrying-boat for getting over the ocean of sins.' It 
 gave men a prospect of the future without the dismal 
 intervening cycles of transmigration, and a comfort which 
 only those who understand how sin and death have been 
 vanquished by Christ can fully enjoy. Witness the lan- 
 guage of the believer in sacrifices addressed to a dying 
 father : 
 
 ' Depart thou, depart by the ancient paths whither our ancient 
 fathers have departed : . . . throwing off all imperfection, again go 
 to thy home. Radiant, become united to a body.' ' 
 
 — a conception more allied to Christian thought than to 
 the re-incarnation and final absorption of the Upanishads. 
 Unhappily, as we have seen, a declension in the doctrine 
 of sacrifice set in ; the self-offering of Prajapati was for- 
 gotten, and the significance of sacrifice was lost, the cere- 
 monies degenerating into empty acts of slaughter, which led 
 in time to the iconoclastic assault of Buddhism. But the 
 abuse of a thing is no proof against its true and proper 
 use. The idea of sacrifice is inherent in human nature, 
 and ought to have been retained, cherished, purified, and 
 realized ; though when the conception of Deity becomes 
 impersonal, as it does in the Upanishads, there is no 
 Supreme Being to whom sacrifices, even of the heart and 
 life, can be offered. That the idea was true and necessary 
 is shown by the fact that the sacrificial system, suppressed 
 .during the period of the Upanishads, broke out again 
 afterwards in the popular sectarian cults of Vaishnavites 
 
 ' Rig-veda, x. 14, 7 et seq. 
 
SACRIFICES AND THE SACRIFICE 67 
 
 and Saivites ; and material sacrifices — bloodless except in 
 the non-Aryan cults — offered to manifold deities have 
 continued, in one form and another, down to the present 
 day, and must continue in India and other non-Christian 
 lands till Christ, the great Fulfiller of sacrifices, is under- 
 stood and accepted. 
 
 For how has it been with the Christian ? Christianity 
 occupies much the same position with regard to the ancient 
 sacrificial system of Judaism as Brahmanism does to 
 Vedism. What became of the old Jewish sacrificial rites ? 
 They were abolished after Christ came, the true spiritual 
 ideas underlying them having been fulfilled and realized in 
 Him. The religious instinct expressed in material sacri- 
 fices has everywhere been satisfied in the Cross. Christ is 
 both sacrifice and altar, high-priest and mediator, not 
 because He is any one of these, but because He has 
 superseded and fulfilled them all, taking up and trans- 
 forming into a higher level the elements that existed 
 previously in a lower form. The whole of the Mosaic 
 ritual has passed away like a shadow, because the substance 
 which it symboHzed has taken its place. 
 
 Mere sacrificial rites and ceremonies — all animal or 
 material offerings — must always occupy a very low and 
 elementary level in the religious life ; but sacrifice itself, 
 under a process of spiritual evolution, becomes the very 
 flower and crown of Christianity. We no longer bring 
 bulls and goats or fruits and foods to the altar ; but we 
 still approach God by one sublime Sacrifice for sins. 
 
 The ideal of the Vedic Prajapati, mortal and yet Divine, 
 himself both priest and victim, who by death overcame 
 death, has long since been lost in India. Among the 
 many gods of the Hindu pantheon, none has ever come 
 forward to claim the vacant throne once reverenced by 
 Indian rishis. No other than the Jesus of the Gospels — 
 
68 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 ' the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ' has 
 ever appeared to fulfil this primitive idea of redemption by 
 the efficacy of sacrifice ; and when this Christian truth is 
 preached, it ought not to sound strange or unreasonable 
 to Indian ears. 
 
 But one of the most disastrous facts of the India of 
 to-day is that modern Brahmanism, like modern Parsiism, 
 has been fast losing its old ideas, relaxing its hold on the 
 more spiritual portions — if properly interpreted — of the 
 ancient faith. Vedic Hinduism, as such, has disappeared, 
 and chiefly because its idea of sacrifice has remained 
 unfulfilled in the highest religious thought, and can be 
 spiritually reached only in Christ, who unifies the frag- 
 ments of truth scattered about in the ancient faiths and 
 reveals their real meaning. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE UPANISHADS AND VEDANTISM 
 
 The Place and Importance of the Upanishads — Ancient and Modern — 
 The Materials of Hindu Philosophy and Germs of Buddhism — 
 Max Miiller's Judgment — Profundities and Trivialities — Their 
 Main Idea and Object— Their Highest Philosophy — The Vedanta 
 — Its European Appreciators — Hindu Philosophy and Religion one 
 — Contrasted with Western — The Vedanta: how modernized — Its 
 Revival through the medium of English. 
 
 Owing to the absence of historical records in India, any 
 attempt to fix the relative age of the Upanishads is hope- 
 less. Professor Max Miiller gives a list of about 150; 
 while Dr. Burnell says that in Southern India they are 
 reckoned at 108, and he gives the total number extant in 
 the whole of India as 170.' They are written for the 
 most part in prose, with occasional variations in verse, and 
 belong evidently to very different periods of Indian thought. 
 The most ancien t and important — who se autho rs' names 
 are unknown, the genuin e or c lassical Upanishads to which 
 Sankaracharya appeals in his great commentary on t he 
 Vedanta Sutras — are eleve r i in number,' and the se are the 
 fundamental Upan i shads of the Vedanta philo so phy . They 
 
 ' ' Indian Antiquity,' vol. ii., p. 267. 
 
 ^ The Brihadaranyaka, Chhandogya, Taittirlya, Aitareya, Kausitaki, 
 
 Kena, ICatha, Isa, Mundaka, Prasna, and Mandiikya Upanishads. 
 
 69 
 
yo ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 are probably as old as the sixth century B.C., or anterior to 
 the rise of Buddhism ; while others are comparatively 
 modern, and many of them purely sectarian, put forth by 
 followers of Rama, Krishna, Siva, Ganapati, and other 
 deities. The earlier Upanishads would appear to contain 
 the germs of Buddhism, while Buddhism is in many 
 respects the doctrine of the Upanishads carried out to its 
 last consequent, and employed as the foundation of a new 
 social system. The highest goal of the Vedanta — the 
 knowledge of the true Self — is the Buddhist ' completely 
 enlightened one ' ; while the sannydsi, or devotee, is the 
 Buddhist emancipated friar, whose spiritual freedom 
 becomes the common property of the sangha, or fraternity,' 
 which is open alike to all. 
 
 The Upanishads were the means of making known for 
 the first time the ancient Vedic literature beyond the 
 boundaries of India. They have been translated from the 
 original Sanskrit into Persian, and into a few of the 
 vernaculars of India, such as Bengali and Hindi ; also into 
 Latin, French, German, and English. Professor Max 
 Miiller has translated twelve of the most important in his 
 ' Sacred Books of the East ' series, and it is this translation 
 that has been chiefly followed. 
 
 These old books, while giving rise to the six Darsanas, 
 or schools of Hindu philosophy in general, whose original 
 text-books consist of Sutras, have contributed the most 
 i mportant materials to what may be c alled the orthodox 
 ^ ^!-^ p hilosophy of India — the Vedanta — of which so much is 
 heard in the present day, and which literally means the 
 Veda-end, the end of the Veda— t he Upanishads being 
 t erminating sections of the different V edas — but also the 
 goal and scope, the highest object of the Veda. And this 
 is the religion or philosophy that has lived on fro m about 
 5 00 B.C. to the present time ; ' is breathed by every Hinda 
 
THE SCHOOLS OF THE .VEDANTA 71 
 
 from his earliest youth, and pervades in various forms the 
 prayers even of the idolater, the speculations of the philo- 
 sopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.' ' ' If the people 
 of India,' says Colonel G. A. Jacob, in his ' Vedanta Sara,' 
 ' can be said to have now any system of religion at all, 
 apart from mere caste observances, it is to be found in the 
 Vedanta philosophy, the leading tenets of which are 
 known to some extent in every village.' ^ 
 
 The Vedanta doctrine, while based on the Upanishads, 
 is likewise systematized and supported in .the Veddnta- 
 Sittras, or Brahma-Sutras, attributed to Badarayana, 
 supposed to be the same as Veda-Vyasa, the oldest and 
 most celebrated commentary of which is that of Sankara- 
 charya, and called the Sankara-bhashya, selected by 
 Thibaut for translation. A popular compendium of 
 orthodox Vedantism is further found in the Vedanta-Sara, 
 the work of Sadananda, of which there are three English 
 translations by Dr. Roer, Dr. J. R. Ballantyne, and, more 
 recently (1891), by Colonel G. A. Jacob, who has also 
 published it in Sanskrit. 
 
 The Vedanta has different schools of interpretation, 
 represented by the three great Acharyas — Sankara, 
 Ramanuja, and Madhva, that of Sankara being the oldest 
 and most orthodox. The Upanishads undoubtedly admit 
 of different interpretations. Their authors belong to 
 different sections of society, some of the most important 
 being Kshatriyas or Rajput Kings ; 3 and these generations 
 
 ■ ' India : What can it teach us ? ' p. 249. 
 
 = ' Manual of Hindu Pantheism,' Preface. 
 
 3 It is maintained by Charles Johnston, M.R.A.S., a retired Bengal 
 civilian, who has made ancient Indian studies his speciality, that the 
 name Brahmanism cannot be fitly given to the Upanishads, in which 
 all that is most characteristic of the Brahmanas, viz., the system of 
 priestcraft and ceremonial bartering with the gods, is unsparingly 
 denounced, and that the race of Ked Rajputs were the real spiritual 
 
72 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 of Vedic theologians had their own favourite sacred texts 
 which they studied and speculated upon, these speculations 
 coming in course of time to be looked upon as sacred, too. 
 There is unquestionably a certain uniformity running 
 throughout the Upanishads, though with considerable 
 divergence in detail. They were, however, never meant 
 to form a philosophical system coherent in all their parts 
 and free from contradictions. Their authors belonged to 
 different periods of time, and do not claim any Divine 
 inspiration that would preserve a continuous revelation of 
 truth. The views of one sage do not agree in several 
 important points with those of another as to the nature of 
 the highest Brahman or Supreme, whether he possesses 
 qualities (sagunam) or is destitute of qualities (nirgunam), 
 personal or impersonal, though the latter represents the 
 prevailing thought. They differ also as to the reality or 
 unreality of the external world, and as to the nature of the 
 soul, whether it is of minute size, and an agent, and there- 
 fore finite ; or whether it is identical with the Supreme, 
 and therefore infinite. All this invests these ancient 
 tr eatises with not a little difficulty to those who study 
 them, though their interest and value are not thereby 
 d iminished . 
 
 While Professor Cowell remarks that there runs through 
 them an unmistakable spirit of pantheism, often in its 
 most offensive form," the famous Raja Rammohan Ray, on 
 
 masters of India. In certain Upanishads (Brihad-Aran, chap, vi., 
 Khand, chap, v.) the chief actors in the drama are Rajput Kings, and 
 Brahmans come to them as pupils. Though fully initiated in the 
 mysteries of the Brahmanical caste and learned in the Rig-veda, the 
 Yajas-veda, and the Sama-veda, they confess their entire ignorance of 
 five questions put to them by the Rajput Kings — questions that implied 
 the whole doctrine of re-incarnation and the complementary doctrine 
 of liberation and final oneness with the Eternal. 
 ' Elphinstone's ' History of India,' p. 282. 
 
PROFUNDITIES AND TRIVIALITIES 73 
 
 the other hand, saw in them Httle besides monotlieism, 
 and founded his revival of religion some sixty years ago on 
 the Upanishads and Vedanta. 
 
 P rofessor Max Miiller, while being a most generous 
 appreciator of India's best, speaks with great discrimination 
 of the Upanishads and of the sacred books of the East 
 generally. After referring in his Preface to the difficulty 
 of securing faithful translations, of construing and under- 
 standing ancient books, that, while ' modern words are round, 
 ancient words are square,' and that we may as well hope to 
 solve the quadrature of the circle as to ' express adequately 
 t he ancient thoughts of the "Veda in mod ern English ' — 
 a difficulty inseparable from al l investig ations into the 
 ancient thought of any country — he says that it has been a 
 problem to him for ye ars how these books ' should, side by 
 side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, 
 and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, 
 a rtificial, and silly, but e ven hideous and repellent.' ' 
 Certain passages have been found Foo indelicate to be 
 translated, as is the case also with the Mahabharata and 
 other Indian writings, and of these he gives the original in 
 footnotes. 
 
 Elsewhere he speaks of t he 'precious grains of gold ' that are ' hidden 
 u nder heaps of rubbi sh,' and of the real difficulties of the Upanishads 
 consisting in ' the extraordinary number of passages which seem to us 
 utterly meaningless and irrational, or so far-fetched that we can hardly 
 believe that the same author who can express the deepest thoughts on 
 religion and philosophy with clearness and with a kind of poetical 
 eloquence, could have uttered in the same breath such utter rubbish.' ° 
 ' Yes,' he says a friend of his wrote to him, ' you are right ; how 
 tremendously ahead of other sacred books is the Bible ! the differences 
 strike one as almost unfairly great.' And he remarks : ' We must try to 
 imagine what the Old Testament would have been if it had not been 
 
 ' 'The Upanishads,' vol. i., Introduction. 
 ' Ibid., vol. ii., p. 19. 
 
74 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 kept distinct from the Talmud ' — those commentaries on the Scriptures 
 by the Jewish rabbis which consist of a mass of incredible trivialities 
 and moral hair-splitting — ' or the New Testament if it had been mixed 
 up with the spurious gospels or with the records of the wranglings of 
 the early Church Councils, if we wish to understand the wild confiision 
 of sublime truth with vulgar stupidity that meets us in the pages of the 
 sacred books.' Folly is mixed with wisdom ; and ' we must learn to 
 look up to their highest points and down into their stony tracts, in 
 order to comprehend both the height and the depth of the human mind 
 in its searchings after the Infinite.' ' i 
 
 This is precisely what others must feel in studying the 
 Upanishads. There is a strange medley of the sublime 
 and the co mmonplace, of profundities and trivialities, of 
 philosophy and superstition. We find there the Nature- 
 worship of the Vedas, especially of the sun, and mention 
 made of 33 and even 3,306 deities.^ We find sexual 
 relations in the Supreme — that the Self divided into two, 
 and so produced husband and wife, and from these were 
 ' created everything that exists in pairs down to the ants.' 3 
 We find details of Vedic sacrifices, of oblations of curds 
 and honey, and many puerile rites and superstitious 
 ceremonies. We find human greatness associated with 
 children and cattle and fame and long life. We find 
 astrology and strange astronomy, such as the soul leaving 
 the body and passing through the air, coming first to the 
 sun, and then, at a greater distance, ascending to the 
 moon ; and the Hindu belief about eclipses — the moon 
 escaping from the mouth of Rahu* and strange anatomy 
 — the arteries and branch arteries numbering 727,200,000.5 
 We find interesting evidence of the knowledge and prac- 
 tice of certain arts and sciences, such as smelting of iron, 
 
 ■ ' The Upanishads,' vol. i , pp. 15, 20. 
 
 = Brihad.-Upan. iii., Adh. 9, Br. 2. 
 
 3 /In'd., Br. 4. ■• Khand-Upan., Sth Prap., 13th Khand 
 
 s Prasna-Upan., 3rd question, 6. 
 
MYSTERIES AND FALSE ANALOGIES 75 
 
 pottery, wheel-making, and the chemistry of metals ; but 
 also that a Divine origin is claimed for caste,' and such 
 bewildering morality as that a man who knows a certain 
 thing, ' even if he commits what seems much evil, con- 
 sumes it all and becomes pure and clean.' " We find a 
 full-blown and elaborate doctrine of transmigration, and 
 that those whose conduct has been evil are born again 
 as dog or hog,3 worm, insect, fish, bird, Hon, boar and 
 serpent,'* rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and 
 beans.5 
 
 We find also much importance attached to protracted 
 bodily stillness and fixity of look, to certain modes of 
 breathing and to suppression of breath, to the mental 
 repetition of strange sets of formulae, and to meditations on 
 the unfathomable mysteries contained in certain monosyll- 
 ables, such as the famous aum, the symbol of the Absolute 
 under its threefold personalization. We find great subtleties 
 of thought expressed in such pregnant brevity that in every 
 sentence we seem to read a page ; a labyrinth of mystic 
 language, tedious repetitions, and puerile conceits ; the use 
 of fanciful metaphors and unconnected images, of defective 
 analogies in place of proof, such as arguing from a rope 
 being mistaken for a serpent to the unreality of the visible 
 universe ; or from the man with diseased eyes who sees 
 two moons where there is in reality only one, to show that 
 it is only ignorance {avidya) that takes the world as real ; or 
 from the fact that all earthen pots are in truth only earth, 
 that the whole world is nothing but Brahma. We find 
 a want of system and of common-sense, a tendency to 
 speculate xather than investigate, and, therefore, contro- 
 
 ■ Brihad.-Upan. i., Adh. 4, Br. II. = Ibid., Adh. 5, Br. 14. 
 
 3 Khand-Upan., 5th Prap., loth Khand, 7, 8. 
 
 ■• Kaushitaki-Upan. i., Adh. ^. 
 
 5 Aitareya-Aran. ii. , Adh. 1, Khand. z. 
 
76 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 versies always beginning afresh, the solving of insolvable 
 enigmas, the attaining unattainable frames of mind. 
 
 But all these we pass over, unaccounted for and unex- 
 plained, and desire to remain rather on the uplands of 
 Indian imagination, and t o notice the best features of th e 
 Upanishad s — those that lift the human heart from the 
 earthly to a higher level, the elevated thoughts and deep 
 spirituality, the pathetic guesses at truth in relation to the 
 greatest questions that the mind of man can propose to 
 itself; for in th£g^ro£ing^after^som^hing^feltJo^^ 
 in the yearning of hearts dissatisfied and empty, lies the 
 v alue of the Up anishads. They do not claim, as does the 
 Bible , to have a Divine message for the world, neither do 
 they contain, as do the Vedic hymns, any fervid and 
 beautiful prayers to heaven ; they are rather psychologica l 
 e xcursions about the Highest, the Absolute . The Bible, 
 as we have said, shows God in quest of man rather than 
 man in quest of God, and when thoughtfully studied and 
 experienced will be found to meet the questions raised by 
 this ancient philosophy, and to supply its only true solution. 
 
 What now is the fundamental idea and the hig hest 
 object^ of the^ Upanishads as interpreted by the first great 
 commentator, Sankaracharya, and in part also by Rama- 
 nujacharya ? It is this : that behind all the phenomena and 
 mythology of Nature, behind the Vedic deities, behind all 
 ' names and forms ' (ndma-rupa), there is the Supreme Soul, 
 or cosraical principle, of the universe — Brahma, the 
 Highest Self, the Faramdtman,^ the Absolute; offering 
 certain parallels to the to ov or the ii\?) of Greek philosophy, 
 to the idealism of Plato, to the infinite being or substantia of 
 Spinoza, or to the transcendentalism of Jacobi or Schelling. 
 And, further, that behind the veil of the body and the 
 
 ' In the Rig-veda, atman is simply ' breath ' : in the Brahmanas it 
 signifies ' soul ' or ' self,' from which the prdnas, or ' vital airs,' proceed. 
 
THE MAIN IDEA OF THE UP AN I SHADS 77 
 
 senses, behind our reason and all mental manifestation, 
 beyond the ego with its accidents and limitations, there is 
 another Atman, or subjective self, the psychical principle 
 — the unchanging Ego as the unifying principle of 
 consciousness. This self can only be discovered by a 
 severe moral and intellectual discipline, such as is practised 
 by the sannydsin, or mendicant ascetic, or yogi — a person 
 having his senses and passions under complete control. If 
 we would get at the truths which lie beyond and behind 
 this phenomenal world, we must cultivate self-restraint and 
 tranquillity, suppress our actions, or, at any rate, renounce 
 the desire for the fruit of one's actions, since it is this fruit, 
 or Karma, that chains one to this world by repeated births 
 and deaths. The various systems of Yoga philoso phy 
 current among Hindus — as these self-restraining exercises 
 are termed — have for their foundation the national belief in 
 the necessity for human souls to seek liberation from the 
 bondage of the flesh by realizing, as the Advaitin (non- 
 duaUst) does, that the Eternal Principle of all being — the 
 Power that evolves, supports, and again withdraws into 
 itself all worlds — is identical with the Atman, the self or 
 soul in us. The highest ' self ' is enthroned on our inner 
 self, and those who wish to know, not themselves, but their 
 self, have, according to the Vedanta, to penetrate behind the 
 mind and the personality before they can find ' the self of 
 selves, the old man, the looker-on.' The highest knowledge 
 possible to man begins to dawn when the %€\.l ^\'Cam finds 
 and knows its true self in the Highest Self, the individual 
 being a mere transitory reflection of the Eternal ; and the 
 highest aim of all thought and study, through this know- 
 l edge ( fndna-Kdndd), is to return to the ivorld-soul, the 
 Highest Self, and regain identity with it. 
 
 ' The jar is broken, and the ether that was in it is one with the one 
 and undivided ether, from which the jar once seemed to sever it.' 
 
78 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 ' Here to know is to be ; to know the Atman is to be the Atman ; and 
 the reward of this highest knowledge after death is freedom from new 
 births, or immortality.' ' As one of the Upanishads profoundly and 
 beautifully says : ' There is one Eternal Thinker, thinking non-eternal 
 thoughts ; He, though One, fulfils the desires of many. The wise who 
 perceive Him within their self, to them belongs eternal life, eternal 
 peace.' = 
 
 The highest wisdom of Qj^^.9S.^!SSSjj2J^i}S^S-ZfJ^iJ'JJ 
 the highest wisdom of India is ' to know our Se//.' 
 
 Such was the dream of ancient India — with which 
 modern psychical research has much in common — and the 
 loftiest peak of its philosophic thought, the first atte mpt at 
 the science of the Absolute, instinct with the spirit of 
 speculative daring, one of the most imposing and subtle 
 systems of ontology yet known ; and the Vedanta, styled 
 by Sankaracharya ' the string upon which the gems of the 
 Upanishads are strung,' is regarded as the finest flower and 
 ripest fruit of Indian spirituality. Indeed, the Upanishad s 
 may be said to represent the highest water-mark of religious 
 t hought to be found outside the Bible revelation ; they con- 
 tain the highest authority on which the various systems of 
 Indian philosophy rest, and are practically the only portion 
 of Vedic literature which is extensively studied by orthodox, 
 educated Hindus in the present day. ' This Vedanta, the 
 philosophy of the Upanishads, I would make bold to state,' 
 says Swami Vivekananda, ' has been the first as well as the 
 final thought, which on the spiritual plane has been vouch- 
 safed to man.' 3 
 
 It has also i ts appreciators in Europ e. Not to speak 
 of its similarity in some respects to Berkeley's ' Idealism ,' 
 though essentially different both as regards the Divine 
 
 ' See ' The Upanishads,' vol. i., p. 30 ; also the Hibbert Lectures for 
 1878, p. 317- 
 - Katha-Upan. v., 12, 13. 
 "< ' From Colombo to Almora,' p. 241. 
 
THE VEDANTA AND MONISM 79 
 
 Being and the reality of the phenomenal universe, Pro- 
 fessor Max Miille r has represented it in an attractive 
 light, and other German philosophers, such as Schop en- 
 hauer and his ardent disciple, Profes sor Deussen, of Kie l, 
 confess to much enthusiasm for this particular wisdom of 
 the East. These two speak of the study of the Upanishads 
 as elevating and consoling. Professor Deussen, in his 
 ' Essay on the Philosophy of the Vedanta in its Relation to 
 the Occidental Metaphysics,' says that it is equal in rank to 
 Plato and Kant, and is one of the most valuable products 
 of the genius of mankind in its search for the eternal 
 truth. And it is urged by modern Hindu Vedantists 
 that the school of German thought first expressed by Kant, 
 completed by Schopenhauer, and further elaborated by 
 Deussen, brings the Western world nearer and nearer to the 
 Advaita, or monistic position, and the Vedanta is claimed 
 to be ' the key to all religions, the lamp by which all can 
 be studied.' 
 
 It is not surprising that the subjectiv e and spe culative 
 mind of the typical G erman should be in sympathy with 
 Oriental systems , and that between the pessimistic thought 
 of Germany — a s darkly reflected in the gloomy mind of 
 a Schopenhauer, ' the founder of modern pessimism,' who 
 d efined himself as a ' despiser of men ' generally — and the 
 Indian philosophy, which views existence as an unmixed 
 evil, there should be much affinity. While, however, 
 the German philosopher gives it as his opinion that ' there 
 is no study so elevating and consoling as that of the 
 Upanishads,' a gifted Hindu ascetic observed not long 
 since : ' There is no ideal of life so pure and lofty as 
 that which is found in your New Testament , and no 
 example so holy and sweet as is given in the character 
 of your Christ. I find my greatest comfort and inspiration 
 when I turn to that book and read of Him.' 
 
8o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 In this simple and beautiful testimony we have the 
 utterance of the heart when man turns from philosophy 
 to religion ; for the first thing to be observed about the 
 Vedanta is that religion l^re becomes^ an^jbs_olute ^Mo- 
 sophy, the evils of existence being due to ignorance, and 
 not to sin as witnessed by the conscience, and rectified, 
 not by a renovated will, but by an intellectual illumination. 
 It is, indeed, t he boast in India that religion and phil o- 
 s ophy cannot be separated, and that the one cannot b e 
 understood apart from the oth er, thus resembling the 
 system of Spinoza, where a purely intellectual philosophy 
 is identified with religion. As with the Alexandrian 
 Gnostics, so with the Hindus : their minds are so con- 
 stituted that a religion without a metaphysical basis is 
 unthinkable. The highest Indian philosophy — the 
 Vedanta — is the highest Indian religion, and affirms the 
 ' one without a second.' Similarly, Plato and Aristotle 
 saw in God the apex of true philosophy ; but while fully 
 recognising the religious bearings of the great Greek writers, 
 from Homer down to Lucian, still, no one ever associates 
 the philosophy with the religion of ancient Greece, save by 
 way of contrast, since the Greeks knew^ of no organized 
 religion except the worship of the popular gods, and not 
 one of the Greek schools of philosophy gave a god to 
 Greek worship, whereas Hindu philosophy has always 
 stood in formal connection with revelation. 
 
 And the question is often asked in India, ' Has Chris- 
 tianity ever overcome a religion which, like the Hindu, had 
 a sound philosophy as its basis ? ' More might perhaps be 
 said in its favour if it realized the dictum of Bacon — that 
 ' depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to 
 religion ' ; but it is just here where it is lacking, since 
 the awakened religious consciousness turns, as did the 
 ascetic's, instinctively to Christ. Religion differs from 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 8i 
 
 philosophy in that it deals with wills and personalities, and 
 not with abstract essences; and philosophy, i f it is to 
 s atisfy the needs of man, must pass into religion . For the 
 God of religion is the object of worship, while the god 
 of philosophy is a product of speculation, and philosophy 
 has never given a god to religion, though religion has often 
 given the idea of God to philosophy. Thus, there may 
 be a philosophy of religion ; but, as Principal Fairbairn 
 points out,' religion may exist without philosophy, and has 
 always existed before it; and while the two may thus 
 become allies, they can never be identical, except, as is 
 the case in India, in the minds of certain transcen- 
 dentalists. 
 
 Moreover, Indian philosophy is not philosophy in the 
 European sense ; it is not a search for truth for truth's sake. 
 This explains the growth of philosophy in Europe during 
 even the last two hundred years, as connected with the 
 names of Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, whereas nothing has 
 been added to the Vedanta philosophy for centuries. It 
 knows no development. The Hindus are philosophizers 
 rather than philosophers — lovers of and seekers after truth. 
 For their thought takes the form of mystical, religious 
 speculation, the prime object of all the philosophical 
 systems being the redemption or deliverance of man, 
 though not man in his universal relations, but only man as 
 known to Hinduism ; and this deliverance is reached, not 
 by salvation from sin, but by the complete separation of 
 soul from body. We may thus have a religious philosophy, 
 but not a philosophy of religion. The burden of Western 
 philosophy is what is mentally unintelligible, and that of 
 Eastern philosophy what is practically unbearable; and 
 liberation from birth and death, deliverance from the 
 
 ■ In his ' Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History.' 
 7 
 
82 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 bonds of individual and separate existence — an existence 
 separate from the soul of the universe — is the one goal. 
 
 We have said that nothing has been added to the 
 Vedanta for centuries. Now, however, a change is ob- 
 servable. The pure Vedantism of the past, which, in its 
 most orthodox form, is essentially pantheistic, is a pure 
 product of Indian soil, but far too speculative and trans- 
 cendental to be a practical guide to life. The effort is 
 t herefore being made by those who have received a 
 Western educatio n — who are now its chief exponents — 
 t o link the past to th e present, and so enlarge the outlook 
 by trying to ha rmonize the older Hinduism with the 
 p rogressive scientific spirit of the pr esent century. A 
 Vedantic terminology is freely used, but its exposition by 
 the new school would not be accepted by pandits of the 
 older type. It is altogether too modern. Meanings and 
 senses are read back into the old Sanskrit which probably 
 ha d no existence in the author's mind. It is very notice- 
 able in the present day, when Western thought and 
 influence are everywhere in the ascendant, how a new kind 
 of style and expression has found an entrance into the 
 writings of those Hindus who think largely in English — • 
 those, e.g., of Swami Vivekananda and his master, Rama- 
 krishna Parama-hansa — quite different from that of purely 
 native thinkers who think in Sanskrit, such as the Indian 
 pandits and gurus. There is an applicat ion of the languag e 
 of the Vedanta to new a nd even opposite conceptions and 
 t houghts . It is further significant that the publications 
 and discourses advocating the revival of the Vedanta are 
 almost entirely in English . The sacred language so long 
 used for religious purposes — t he classic Sanskrit — is dis- 
 carded, and the English tongue is considered good enough 
 for the discussion of the mysteries of the faith. The mere 
 fact that the language of religious discussion has been 
 
MODERN VEDANTISM 83 
 
 changed shows how great the new departure is. But 
 the point of chief interest to Christians is this : that while 
 this neo-Hindiiism is set forth as a proud rival to Chris- 
 tianity, it is yet saturated with its spirit, and there is an 
 evident desire to harmonize the ideals of Hindflism wit h 
 those of Christianity. In the expositions of the Vedanta, 
 Christian scholars and poets — Martineau, Balfour, Words- 
 worth, and others — are largely drawn upon, and frequent 
 quotations are given from the Bible, Christian conceptions 
 are read into them, and a distinctly Christian colouring 
 is traceable in the Brahmavadin ' and in many present-day 
 pamphlets. No follower of the new cult would recognise 
 the claims of Christ to Divinity, though allowing Him 
 to have been a sage or rishi of the highest rank, exercising 
 the greatest moral influence ; but while popular Hinduism 
 would give Christ Himself a place in its pantheon, modern 
 Vedantism would absorb and assimilate the best of 
 Christian thought, and proclaim it in terms of its philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 Now, however, we have to revert to the original 
 Vedanta, in order to examine its fundamental teaching 
 and erroneous conclusions, and then to outline its 
 practical results in the life and thought and worship of 
 the people. 
 
 ' A monthly periodical published in Madras, and started in 1895, 
 for the exposition of the Vedanta. 
 
CHAP-rER VII 
 
 ANCIENT VEDANTISM 
 
 India's Sense of the Infinite — In the Midst of the Transient — Its 
 Mystic Pantheism — Vedantic Doctrine of Brahma — Expounded 
 in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-gita, the Vedantasara — 
 Sachchidananda — ' Impartite ' — ' Substrate ' — Material Cause 
 of the World — Isvara — Personal Souls — Swami Vivekananda's 
 Teaching — Doctrine of God and the World in the Light of 
 Christian Philosophy — Personality, Human and Divine. 
 
 It has been said that the latent capacity of man for 
 transcending the finite, and his affinity to what is 
 universal and infinite, is the key to the evolution of 
 religion, and ancient India supplies us with its earliest 
 form.' 
 
 At first sight, the personification of the objects and 
 forces of Nature, the sun, dawn, firmanaent, winds, and 
 storms, such as we find in the Vedic hymns, presents a 
 polytheistic Nature-worship. A closer study, however, 
 shows that the various divinities have not that distinct 
 individuality which marks the mythologies of Greece and 
 Rome, and gradually, as the Indian mind became more 
 reflective and philosophical, these separate Nature divini- 
 ties fade away, and Nature is regarded as a whole — a 
 
 ■ See 'The Faiths of the World,' lecture i. (Blackwood and 
 Sons). 
 
 «4 
 
NATURE AS A WHOLE 85 
 
 unity in which they blend, and for which they are only 
 varied expressions. As a passage as early even as the 
 Rig-veda states : ' ' That which exists is one. Sages call it 
 variously. ' 
 
 It has been said that in all ancient faiths the priestly 
 deity was one, and the deity of spirit and thought another. 
 As long as we have to do with the sacerdotalism of the 
 Vedas, we have to do with a materialistic religion — a 
 religion of forms and ordinances and sacrifices, and it is 
 the same to-day. Emancipation from the priest brings 
 with it an ampler air and an enlarged spiritual world. 
 
 If we ask what it was that led the mind first of all to 
 deify certain natural objects, and then to find beneath 
 them all an enduring substance, passing from the worship of 
 the elements personified to the worship of the unseen force 
 behind them, we reply that it was the sense of the vanity 
 and unreality and fleeting character of all finite possessions 
 and satisfactions. Thus, India's reverence has never been 
 for the material form, but for pure spirit ; and its central 
 thought, which binds together all its conflicting elements, 
 has been the progress of the pilgrim soul, through all 
 finite existences, to reunion with the infinite. India is the 
 land of the infinite. Its skies are so deep and blue, its 
 mountains so lofty and inaccessible, its forests so dense and 
 boundless, its rivers so broad and long, that it is natural for 
 the Indian to conceive the infinite. And to such a mind 
 the all-embracing sky, the majestic sun, the silent stars, the 
 everlasting hills, the noble rivers, early became types of per- 
 manence and power in the midst of a feeble and fleeting 
 life, and these were forthwith deified. 
 
 Then, later on, when reflection and speculation came to 
 be exercised on the contents of the early hymns, the 
 religious consciousness, in the Upanishads, attempts to 
 ' R.V. i. 146, 46. 
 
86 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 pass beyond Nature, beyond everything, beyond ' where 
 words cannot go, nor mind,' and, content with no ' penulti- 
 mate ideas,' to grasp an invisible essence, which is neither 
 the heavens nor the earth, but something infinitely greater 
 and more abiding than all — ^Ae innermost substratum both 
 of Nature and man. Thus, unlike European pantheism, 
 which has commonly identified the world with God, so that 
 the finite is the infinite, Indian mystic pantheism affirms, not 
 the deification of the finite world, but its nothingness.^ 
 The formula that expresses it is, not the world is (iod, but 
 the world is nothing, and there is ' One only without a 
 second ' {ekam eva advitiyam).'' It is the answer that the 
 human mind at an early stage gives to the problem of the 
 one in many — an attempt to give unity to its ideas by the 
 aid of the logical category of substance. For, just as 
 behind the various qualities and changes of a flower there 
 is something we regard as constant and permanent, so 
 beneath all the surface appearance of things there is one 
 and only one Reality that never changes, which the 
 Upanishads call the Self, the Brahman, or the Absolute. 
 It is a later stage of thought that argues from the existence of 
 the world to the notion of a First Cause — an all-wise and 
 omnipotent Creator. And at the earlier stage, when the 
 mind was groping and guessing after truth, metaphors 
 rather than formal reasoning governed thought, and the 
 deepest reflections of philosophy were embodied in sensuous 
 images. The Supreme is represented as saying : 3 ' I am 
 the light in the sun, the brilliancy in flame, the fragrance in 
 the earth, the goodness of the good, the beginning, middle, 
 and end of all ' ; but what was meant was that Brahma is 
 
 • See on Ihis point Ballantyne's ' Christianity contrasted with Hindu 
 Phil.,' p. 48. 
 '' Chhandogya-Upan. vi. i. 
 3 Cf. Bhagavad-glta, vii. 8-1 1 ; ix. 16, 17; x. 20-42. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF BRAHMA 87 
 
 the only being that really is. And so we find the Brahma- 
 vddin saying : ' This common unity, this underlying essence, 
 is God, timeless, spaceless, causeless, and the world from 
 this standpoint is nothing but God manifesting Himself 
 in different names and forms. . . .We must remember that 
 the Veddnta does not say that the tree we see before us 
 is God. So long, of course, as we look upon the tree as tree, 
 it is nothing but a tree ; but when we dive deep, leaving 
 name and form behind, and try to realize the inner 
 essence of the tree, we see nothing but God. And that 
 is what the Veddnta means when it asks us to see God 
 in everything. The difference between the Veddnta and 
 pantheism may be thus summed up ; According to pan- 
 theism God is the sum or totality of phenomena, while 
 according to the Veddnta, God is the one underlying 
 essence of phenomena, which are but the results of name 
 and form superimposed upon the essence.' ' 
 
 This distinction invites us to a brief examination of the 
 Vedanta doctrine on these points. 
 
 The introductory stanza of the Veddntasdra runs thus : 
 ' To the Self, existent, intelligence, bliss, impartite, beyond 
 the range of speech and thought, the substrate of all, I resort 
 for the attainment of the desired thing ' — i.e., final beatitude. 
 The ' Self {parama Atman) here referred to is Absolute, 
 or Brahman or Brahma (nom. neuter) of the Vedanta, 
 derived from the Sanskrit word £rih (to grow or increase), 
 the expansive force of nature, an unseen, spiritual power 
 everywhere present and manifested in all forms of life. 
 This power, called by the modern exponents of the Vedanta 
 God, as evolved from the inner consciousness of the 
 ancient rishis, was thus the universal substance or under- 
 lying essence, of which the visible world and gods and men 
 were merely manifestations. In one of the Upanishads, 
 
 ' The Brahi/iavddin, vol. iii., p. 189. 
 
88 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the question is asked : ' Which is the one deity ? ' (when 
 called by another name) ; and the answer is : - ' The Prdna 
 (breath). It is considered as that Brahma.' ' Again, it is 
 said : ' Verily, the wind {pdyii) is the individuality (i.e., the 
 substance of growth of each individual thing or person, 
 {vyashii), and the wind is the totality ' = [i.e., the substance 
 of growth of the universe, samashti). According to 
 this, the whole universe is regarded as having grown 
 from one substance called Brahma, which appears as the 
 ' wind ' in the macrocosm, or universe, and as the prdna, 
 or breath, in man, the microcosm. In other passages the 
 Brahma is called th«; Atman, both words prdna and Atman 
 being derived from the root an, to breathe, and originally 
 meaning breath, wind, so that the Atman of the Hindu 
 pantheist is an altogether different idea from the ' soul ' 
 of the Christian. ' This Atman,' it is said, ' which is the 
 Brahma, is all mind {tnanas), all airs of the body, all eye, 
 all ear, all earth, all water, all wind, all sky, all light, all 
 darkness, all lust, all passivity, all anger, all composedness, 
 all virtue, all vice, all everything.' 3 Similarly, in the 
 Bhagavad-gita, Krishna, as the Suprerne, is represented as 
 declaring, among other appellations : ' Of weapons I am 
 the thunderbolt ; of wild beasts the imperial beast ; of 
 purifications I am the wind ; of creations the beginning 
 and the ending, and also the middle am I ; I also in- 
 exhaustible time ; I the supporter whose face turns every- 
 where. And all-devouring death am I, and the origin of 
 all to come. I am the gambling of the rogue, and the 
 splendour of splendid things ; I am victory ; I am strenuous 
 exertion ; and the truth of the truthful I. Of subjugating 
 
 ' Brihad.-Aran.-Upan. iiL g, 1-9. Cf. Chhand.-Up. vii. 1-15 
 Katha-Up. vi. 2; Mait-Up. vi. 11. 
 ' Br.-Ar.-Up. iii. 3, 2. 
 ' Br.-Ar.-Up. iv. 4, 5. Chhand.-Up. vii 26, i. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF BRAHMA 89 
 
 things I am the sceptre ; of conquerors I am statesman- 
 ship and of secrecy I am also science ; the knowledge 
 of knowers am I. And whatever is the seed of all beings, 
 that am I, O Arjuna ! nor is there aught, moving or 
 unmoving, that may exist bereft of me.' ' 
 
 It is thus not easy to grasp this ancient conception and 
 do it justice. At one time the conception of Brahma 
 seems to be grossly materialistic — a sort of latent elec- 
 tricity pervading the universe as a body. At another time 
 it becomes the most illusive transcendentalism. In part 
 this may perhaps be explained by the fact that the peculiar 
 feature, and, indeed, beauty, of the Sanskrit language lies 
 in its condensation of thought in words, and in its power 
 of suggesting various meanings and ideas by association, 
 which cannot be done justice to in a word-for-w^ord transla- 
 tion. But beyond this, we have the deeper fact that the 
 old Indian rishis were undoubtedly ' feeling after ' the one 
 true God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, ' if haply 
 they might find Him ' ; but having started in their quest 
 from Nature rather than from Revelation, and reading the 
 Infinite and the finite through Nature, they vainly struggled 
 after the truth in the mazes of pantheism. Brahma is the 
 exhaustive equivalent of the sum of things, the Source and 
 Substance, the Life and Soul of all that is — inexpressible, 
 immeasurable, incomprehensible. 
 
 While the doctrine of agnosticism or nescience — that 
 God is inaccessible to human thoughts and words — is 
 accepted by the Vedanta, and is ' in entire accord with the 
 general view of its theology,' ^ yet the ancient thinkers did 
 not hesitate to predicate certain things about the nature of 
 Brahma. Though Hindu philosophy could find no one 
 word for the high Abstraction — -the ' That '—without form 
 
 ' Bhagavad-gita, x. 20-39. 
 
 ' See Brahmavadin, vol. ii., p. 65. 
 
go ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 and limit, which is ' not to be seen with the eye nor heard 
 with the ear, from which the mind falls back abashed,' and 
 which can only be described by negatives, ' not this, not 
 that,' it nevertheless describes Brahma as Sat-chit-dnanda, 
 which is the nearest approach to a name for It. Sat signi- 
 fies existent ; Chit, intelligence ; Ananda, bliss, and these 
 three, being one only — the existent ' joy-thought ' — form 
 the first and final limit which the limited mind gives to the 
 unlimited. They are not, however, to be considered as 
 qualities of Brahma, for he has none. He does not even 
 exist, he is existence, the only real existence, all other 
 apparent existences or phenomena being only imagined by 
 ignorance, or seen as in a dream. The Brahma of the 
 Vedanta, according to Swdmi Vivekdnanda, is ' the last 
 generalization to which we can come,' under whose all- 
 embracing concept all our ideas of existence are included. 
 But this generalization is not reached by inductive reason, 
 by any careful study of particulars, since the Infinite of the 
 Vedanta is out of all relation to the finite ; and this being 
 the case, Brahma's existence, devoid as he is of qualities, 
 cannot be established. He is, moreover, unconscious, and 
 only as we are conscious, and have ideas, can we be said to 
 exist. 
 
 Brahma is held to be ' Intelligence ' {Chit), ' Cognition,' 
 or ' Knowledge ' (Jndna). But this is to be understood as 
 knowledge in the abstract, not the knowing subject, for it 
 would then be limited by its cognitions, There is no 
 object ; the one real Being is absolutely simple. Brahma 
 is intelligence, not intelligent. It is ' neither conscious nor 
 unconscious.' ' If it were conscious, there would be objects 
 of consciousness, and this would involve relation and 
 dualism, and Brahma, being brought under will, activity, 
 happiness, and misery, would become a ' doer of good and 
 ' Mandfikya Upan. v. 7. 
 
SACHCHIDANANDA 91 
 
 evil works, and so an heir of Elysium or of hell' ' Thibaut 
 says, ' Brahma is not a thinking being, but thought itself.' ^ 
 He or It, therefore, apprehends no person or thing, nor is 
 apprehended by any. Gough's description is : ' The pure 
 light of characterless knowledge.' 3 It has been further 
 pointed out by Colonel Jacob that the only ground for 
 supposing Brahma to be intelligence is that man's internal 
 organ (aTitahkarana), which cognizes objects, but yet is 
 unintelligent, receives illumination from the ' self-luminous- 
 ness ' of Brahma ; but the internal organ being a portion of 
 the illusory phenomena, that which illuminates it must also 
 be illusory, and Brahma, again, is not established.* 
 
 So with regard to Brahma's ' Bliss ' [ananda). It is bliss 
 in which there is nothing that rejoices, and nothing rejoiced 
 at, and therefore no ' fruition of happiness.' It is simply, 
 as Deussen says, a negative quality — absence of pain and 
 misery — and this ' alone befits Brahma ' : a very different 
 thing from positive joy. Absorption into Brahma is thus 
 no entrance into a state of conscious felicity, but into a 
 condition of insensibility resembhng that of deep sleep ; so 
 that the deeper a person is in unconscious, dreamless sleep, 
 the more nearly he resembles Brahma ; while the wider 
 awake and the more fully possessed of all his faculties, the 
 further removed he is from Brahma. 
 
 Brahma is also said to be ' Impartite,' without parts 
 {akhanda), otherwise it would not be eternal ; that is to say, 
 it is devoid of any internal variety, being ' absolute and 
 unchangeable unity.' It follows logically from this that 
 each individual soul is the complete indivisible Brahma., and 
 that its apparent division into a multiplicity of souls is a 
 
 ' See Nehemiah Goreh's ' Rational Refutation,' etc., p. 154. 
 ^ Introduction to Vedanta-Sutras, p. xxv. 
 3 ' Philosophy of the Upanishads,' pp. 41, 42. 
 -t ' Hindu Pantheism,' pp. 4, 5. 
 
92 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 mere fiction of ignorance, just as the moon may appear 
 double to a person of defective vision. 
 
 Further, Brahma is declared to be ' Substrate of all ' 
 (akhiladhdra), though ' only in the way that nacre is of 
 apparent silver, or that a rope is of the snake imagined in 
 it ; and, like the silver and the snake, the world is but a 
 vivartta, or illusory effect.' ' Brahma is therefore only its 
 t7/?/sory-ma.tena.\ cause, and ignorance its material cause; 
 for, as Ballantyne observes,^ ' the existence of aught else 
 being subsequently denied, it remains ultimately the sub- 
 stratum of nothing, or no sui-strSLtuui at all.' Thus 
 advaitism or auto-monism is based on illusory analogies 
 or deductions from false premises ; and the radical defect 
 of Hindu reasoning is to regard illustration as proof. It is, 
 to say the least, a curious incongruity that in a system 
 which includes Illusion or Maya as a constituent element, 
 the symbols of sense, under a false analogy, should be 
 continually used in proof of the most abstract principles. 
 
 In the earlier Upanishads and in the Vedanta Sutras 
 Brahma is regarded as the material cause [updddna kdrana) 
 of the world in a grosser sense — tha-t from which it was 
 evolved {vikdrd) or developed as foam is produced from 
 water or curd from milk ; or, as a great text in the Upani- 
 shads says, ' As a spider throws out and retracts (its web), 
 as herbs spring up in the ground, and as hair is produced 
 on the living person, so is the universe derived from the 
 undecaying One.' 3 And again : ' All this (the world of 
 perception) is indeed Brahma, being produced from, 
 resolved unto, and existing in It.' ■* The doctrine of Maya, 
 or the world's unreality — one of the baseless pillars of the 
 Vedanta — would appear to have been, as Colonel Jacob 
 
 ■ ' Hindu Pantheism,' p. 6. 
 
 ■^ ' Christianity contrasted,' etc., p. xxxi. 
 
 3 Mundaka Upan. i. i, 7. < Chhand.-Upan. iii. 14, i. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA 
 
 93 
 
 says, 'a graft of a later growth,' probably adopted from the 
 Buddhists, the great supporters of Idealism. ' The Svetas- 
 vatara is said to be the oldest Upanishad in which the 
 illusory nature of phenomena is plainly taught, and that 
 trait is evidently post-Buddhistic. In the preface to his 
 translation of it, Dr. Roer says that it " does not belong to 
 the series of the more ancient Upanishads, or of those 
 which preceded the foundation of the philosophical 
 systems." ' ' 
 
 The doctrine of Maya, however, the Vedantin's view of 
 cosmogony, was a natural and logical growth of Hindu 
 thought. Soul is the one reality that abides {vastu), and, 
 according to the fixed axiom that ex nihilo nihil fit, the 
 world, composed of an aggregate of souls and of objects 
 external to them, must be in some way formed out of Soul 
 or Brahma itself. But there is, a priori, no room for 
 limited intelligences with Divine omniscience everywhere ; 
 and so the Vedantin, unable to deny the affirmations of 
 consciousness as to his own existence and that of other 
 things, takes refuge in his own ignorance, and confesses 
 that he does not know himself to be Brahma because his 
 soul is enveloped in and obstructed by ignorance (ajndna). 
 It is ignorance, then, that makes the world, and, thus 
 becoming an ' entity,' should have an appropriate name. 
 So in the Sankhya philosophy it is called Prakriti, or 
 energy, the unconscious maker of the worlds ; while in the 
 Vedanta, where the apparent reality of the world is only an 
 illusion, it becomes Maya, or ' deceit, illusion, jugglery ' ; 
 or, viewed in relation to the Divine independence, Brahma's 
 power or sakti. 
 
 Thus the real (vastu) is Brahma, existent, intelligence, 
 and joy, without a second ; and all else — the whole mass 
 of things, ' from Brahma (masc.) down to a tuft of grass ' 
 
 ' ' Hindu Pantheism,' p. 46. 
 
94 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 — is 'unreal' [avasiu), imagined by ignorance and begin- 
 ning with ignorance. The evidence of the senses being 
 quietly ignored, the whole phenomenal universe is destroyed 
 by a stroke. Starting with the false assumption that 
 nothing exists but Brahma, the Vedantist is forced to 
 devise another to account for that which our senses and 
 minds declare to exist. And ' this creative nescience, once 
 granted,' as Professor Max Muller says, 'everything else 
 proceeds smoothly enough. But,' he adds, ' here lies what 
 strikes a Western mind as the vulnerable point of Sankara's 
 Vedanta-philosophy. We should feel inclined to say that 
 even this Avidya, which causes the phenomenal world to 
 appear, must itself have some cause and reality.'' This 
 advaitic, or non-duality, doctrine is purely imaginary, and 
 we have another writer saying : ' Even appearances or 
 illusions are phenomena which require to be explained, 
 and they cannot be explained on the hypothesis of absolute 
 unity. They imply that besides the absolute being there 
 are minds which can be haunted by appearances, and 
 which can be deluded into believing that these appearances 
 are realities.' ^ 
 
 The Upanishads, as expounded by Sankaracharya, 
 regarded Brahma as existing in two conditions — nirguna, 
 unbound, and transcending all attributes ; and saguna, 
 bound, and possessed of qualities, sometimes called the 
 higher and the lower Brahman. The former is the 
 unassociated, pure, unchangeable Brahma (neuter) ; the 
 latter is Brahma (masc), or Brahma associated with 
 Ignorance or Maya, as its ' causal body,' being the cause 
 of all things, and who thus becomes an illusory creator, 
 Jsvara, or lord, so called because he presides as a witness 
 over individual souls, and rewards them according to their 
 ' ' Ramakrishna,' p. 72. 
 ^ Professor Flint's ' Anti-Theistic Theories,' p. 419. 
 
ISVARA THE PERSONAL GOD 95 
 
 works. He is thus treated as a personal God, as the 
 ' cause of the world ' ; and being associated with the whole 
 of that portion of Brahma {upddhi) which is united with 
 ignorance, possesses qualities of goodness and intelligence, 
 is the ' controller ' or impeller of souls, the ' illuminator ' 
 and ' internal ruler,' dwelling in the heart of each. But all 
 this, while undoubtedly struggHng to express a great truth, 
 is most misleading, when we remember that this Isvara, 
 after all, is only an illusory creator, concerned with the 
 evolution of a dream-world, and that this highest manifes- 
 tation in the world of unreality is ' the collective aggregate 
 of all animated things,' just as a forest is a collection of 
 trees, so that we have this aggregate presiding over itself ! ' 
 Such are the labyrinths that invite the human mind when 
 searching for a theory of the world apart from revelation. 
 The thought of a Divine Being whose nature is science 
 becoming allied to an entity whose nature is nescience, 
 finding no better means of self-knowledge than self-decep- 
 tion, is wildly preposterous. 
 
 Brahma, eternally associated with ignorance, strangely 
 viewed as a creative power, or sakti, is enabled to project 
 the appearance of the world, and to become specialized in 
 the aggregate as Isvara, and distributively into a multitude 
 of personal souls {prdjnd), as one and the same sun is 
 mirrored in countless sheets of water, which have no real 
 existence, and, instead of recognising themselves as Brahma, 
 blindly identify themselves with their bodily and mental 
 organisms, and so become involved in all the consequences 
 of rebirths. ' Ignorance, according to the Vedanta,' says 
 Ballantyne, 'has two powers — that by which it envelopes 
 soul (avarand), giving rise to the conceit of personality, or 
 conscious individuality ; and that by which it projects 
 {vikshapa) the phantasmagoria of a world which the indi- 
 ' See ' Hindu Pantheism,' pp. 58, 59. 
 
96 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 vidual regards as external to himself.' ' And so long as a 
 man imagines himself to be something different from 
 Brahma, he is in a state of avidyd or mdya ; and when he 
 can say ' Brahmdsmi ' (I am Brahma), then he possesses 
 vtdya and becomes the j'ndm, or knowing man. 
 
 Swami Vivekananda, desiring to be on the lines of 
 modern science, reaches the doctrine of Maya through the 
 principle of causation. Recognising, with the earlier 
 Vedantists, Brahma to be the material cause of the 
 universe, and forced to admit that ' all the potentialities 
 of the effect are present in the cause,' he sees that Brahma, 
 the immutable Absolute, must share in those conditions 
 of diversity and change of which the universe is full. But, 
 he asks, ' How is it possible for the unchangeable to 
 change ? . . . A changeable God would be no God. To 
 avoid this difficulty, which is generally known by the name 
 of Pantheism, there is a very bold theory of the Vedanta, 
 and the theory is that this universe, as we know it and 
 think it, does not exist.''' That is to say, in order to support 
 a false theory, our whole mental constitution has to be 
 sacrificed. There is no change in the Absolute ; it is our 
 senses that are ' painting upon him ' the imaginary world,3 
 and obscuring the self-luminousness of the Supreme. The 
 phenomenal results of ' name and form ' are superimposed 
 upon the underlying Essence. 
 
 But it is Brahma, after all, who is the conjurer and 
 magician. As far back as Sankaracharya the act of 
 creation was likened to the sport of a raja: and Swami 
 Vivekananda, the latest exponent of the Vedanta, can write 
 as follows : ' The stories about God creating this world for 
 some end or other, that we imagine, are good as stories, 
 
 ■ ' Christianity contrasted,' etc., p. xxxvi. 
 " Brahmavadin, vol. ii., p. 225. 
 3 Ibid., p. 275. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA 97 
 
 but not otherwise. It is all really in sport ; the universe 
 is His play going on. . . . He plays in every atom ; He is 
 playing when He is building up earths and suns and 
 moons ; He is playing with the human heart, with animals, 
 with plants.' ' An enthusiastic Western admirer of this 
 philosophy — Professor Deussen, of Kiel — also admits it: 
 ' The whole world is illusion {mayo) which Brahman, as a 
 magician {mdyavin), draws out of himself, and by which, 
 as magician, he is in no way affected ; or by another turn 
 of the picture Brahman becomes through Ignorance 
 {avidyd), as the magician by his magic, indistinctly seen. 
 He is the cause of the world as the magician of his magic, 
 and the cause of the withdrawal of the world into his own 
 self, like as the earth draws into itself all living beings.' ' 
 Well may Dr. K. M. Banerjea say of this sportive act of 
 deception : ' You say the world is a mdyd, an illusion, and 
 that God is the mdyd, the Conjurer who tRus deceives you. 
 Is it not grossly revolting to our moral feelings to say that 
 God has deliberately projected a false appearance with a 
 view to beguile rational minds of His own creation ? ' 3 
 
 An eminent Sanskrit scholar, a Christian Hindu, has 
 thus summed up that part of the Vedantist creed which we 
 have been considering, and which has been held for a 
 thousand years, since the time of Sankaracharya : ' Brahma, 
 alone — a spirit ; essentially existent, intelligence, and joy ; 
 vx)id of all qualities and of all acts ; in whom there is no 
 consciousness such as is denoted by " I," " thou," and 
 " it " ; who apprehends no person or thing, nor is appre- 
 hended of any ; who is neither parviscient nor omniscient ; 
 neither parvipotent nor omnipotent ; who has neither 
 beginning nor end ; immutable and indefectible — is the 
 
 ' Brahmavddin, vol. i., p. 251. 
 
 ' ' Short Account of Vedanta Philosophy,' p. 13. 
 
 3 ' Dialogues,' p. 398. 
 
 8 
 
98 ASPECTS OF HIWDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 true entity. All besides himself, the entire universe, is 
 false — that is to say, is nothing whatsoever. Neither has 
 it ever existed, nor does it now exist, nor will it exist at any 
 future time.' ' 
 
 The Vedantic doctrine, then, of God and the world — 
 the antinomy of the Christian — cannot be accepted unless 
 we deny all validity to human reason and our natural 
 convictions and to the evidence of our senses, and all 
 authority to human conscience and the dictates of morality. 
 It is a mere assumption, based on false analogies, and 
 unsupported by any proof. It starts with a Neuter 
 Abstract — an impersonal Brahma — and from that purely 
 mental postulate follows all the irrationality and unreality 
 of the system that grows out of it. The radical difference 
 between the ultimate principles of Vedantism and 
 Christianity centres in the idea of personality. 'The 
 difference of view upon this one question,' it has been 
 well said, ' causes the two systems to diverge from each 
 other through their whole course. It affects the doctrine 
 of the nature and existence of God, of the nature of man, 
 of the state after death, and the entire treatment of 
 morality.' = An undifferentiated Infinite cannot possess 
 personality. ' Whether such a being can be called " he " 
 is very doubtful,' says Professor Max Miiller ; 'for he is 
 neither he nor she ; he is It in the very highest sense of 
 that undifferentiated pronoun.' 3 And this, let it be clearly 
 understood, is the boast and glory of the extreme monistic 
 Vedantist. Professor Deussen says that we should not 
 'think so low of God as to impute to him personahty.' 4 
 
 ' Nehemiah Goreh's ' Rational Refutation,' p. 176. 
 ' 'The Teaching of Swami Vivekananda.'by Rev. E. W. Thompson, 
 M.A., p. vi. (Madras). 
 3 ' Ramakrishna,' p. go. 
 * 'Short Account,' etc., p. 13. 
 
DIVINE IMPERSONALITY REFUTED 99 
 
 And Swami Vivekananda declares : ' To the Impersonal 
 we must go at last for the explanation of the personal, for 
 the Impersonal is a much higher generalization than the 
 personal. The Infinite can only be Impersonal, the 
 personal is only limited. . . . We cannot prove the indi- 
 vidual by any other means than by referring to the universal, 
 by proving that this individual is a part of the universal. 
 . . . To understand the personal we have to refer always 
 to the Impersonal.' ' 
 
 But this reasoning will scarcely comrnend itself to the 
 Western mind, since it traverses the highest conclusions of 
 the best philosophic thought. This has to be admitted by 
 even Professor Max Miiller, for he says : ' This Vedanta- 
 philosophy seems to solve all difficulties but one ; and that 
 is to find a natural approach to it from the position which 
 we occupy in looking at philosophical and religious 
 problems.' ^ And no such ' natural ' approach is to be 
 found. The Cause of all things is ' One without a Second ' ; 
 and ' in order to explain what cannot be doubted, namely, 
 the constant changes in the world by which we are 
 surrounded, Avidya or Nescience is called in to explain 
 what cannot be denied — the variety of our sensations.' 3 
 ' As I said before, the Vedanta-philosophy is a philosophy 
 of negation ; it says, No, no, it says all that the Self is not, 
 but what the Self is defies all words and all thoughts.' + 
 
 The Impersonal, we are told, is 'a much higher 
 generalization ' than the personal ; but we are not told 
 how the generalization is arrived at. It is not reached, as 
 we have seen, by any process of inductive reasoning, since 
 the Infinite of the Vedanta is not measured in terms of the 
 finite ; and yet the ' one ' cannot exist apart from the 
 'many.' The impersonal can only be higher than the 
 
 ■ Brahmavddin, vol. iii., p. 152. ' ' Ramakrishna,' p. 78. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 79. ■• Ibid; p- 88. 
 
loo ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 personal to minds that have committed themselves to this 
 theory of the universe, because the personal is of necessity 
 regarded as unreal. The Ego (the ahain), which makes 
 the personality, belongs to the world of illusion. But no 
 phenomena can be explained on the hypothesis of absolute 
 unity; there must be thinking minds to which the 
 appearances are real. We cannot pass from the transcen- 
 dental to the phenomenal ; concrete experiences cannot be 
 evolved from the abstract, nor the individual from the 
 universal ; for the Unconditional or the Absolute, or 
 whatever else we may call the ultimate Abstraction, are 
 simply the results of mental processes, that admit of no 
 relations, and do not represent any creative movement by 
 which individual existences arise. There must always be 
 insuperable initial perplexities and contradictions in con- 
 nection with creation in a pantheistic or even purely 
 monotheistic conception of Deity ; and only the Christian 
 idea of the Godhead with its active and ethical related 
 states and distinctions can adequately solve the problem 
 of Divine creative, not to speak of redemptive, acts. 
 
 Personality is the very highest conception of the 
 human mind ; and that universal tendency of life towards 
 personality which we see everywhere around us, together 
 with that crowning achievement of life — persons in relation 
 to each other forming a society — cannot possibly be 
 explained if there is at the heart of things an impersonal 
 principle. That would surely give us an unintelligible 
 world. And so European thought and religion, ever since 
 the time of Socrates, have believed a Self-Conscious Intelli- 
 gence and Will to be the Supreme Cause of all things, 
 because it is drawn from what is highest in the human 
 mind ; whereas the Vedantic conception of Soul — the vital 
 principle of Nature, a purely negative and featureless 
 principle, and which forms its starting-point — is drawn, not 
 
THE STARTING POINT OF THOUGHT loi 
 
 like Intelligence and Will, from what is highest in ourselves, 
 but from that mere vitality common to all the works of 
 Nature alike. For personality — the constituent elements 
 of which are self-consciousness or reason, the power of 
 self-determination or will, and desires that impel us into 
 communion with other persons, or love, the whole of which 
 forms a 'living energy' — is 'the inevitable and necessary 
 starting-point of all human thought.' ' 
 
 ' The sense of Ego ' — i.e., a conscious person revealed to 
 himself in the ideas of which he is conscious — the ieie noire 
 of the Hindu and the Buddhist, is the primary reality of 
 life, far more real than the existence of Brahma. We are 
 more absolutely certain of the reality of ourselves than of 
 anything else whatsoever. Indeed, we can only form an 
 idea of existence from this, as a first principle of thought. 
 The ideas of time and space, of matter and force, cause 
 and effect, law and freedom, are only really known to us 
 through the categories of our own personality. Brahma is 
 regarded as Existent, Intelligence, Bliss ; that is to say 
 these attributes have been transferred to him in the first 
 instance from the human mind, for we only know them in 
 and through ourselves ; and apart from ourselves they can 
 only have an ideal or imaginary existence. In the process 
 of transfer, we have made abstractions of particular aspects 
 of ourselves ; and such abstractions must be ' less real than 
 the totality from which they are taken, and cannot thus be 
 made levers for displacing their own fulcrum.' ^ Unless 
 Brahma be as self-conscious as we are, he is a mere 
 abstraction, and can have no real existence. 
 
 And yet our very nature, as rational and spiritual beings, 
 makes it impossible for us to rest in the finite, and leads 
 us, as it has led men in all ages — and none more so than 
 
 ' See lUingworth's ' Personality, Human and Divine,' pp. 40, 41. 
 " See lUingworth's ' Personality, Human and Divine,' p. 43. 
 
I02 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the mystic dwellers in India — to appeal from the instability 
 and transiency of earth to an Infinite and Absolute Mind, 
 a centre in which everything rests. We must not, indeed, 
 fail to do justice to the best and spiritual side of this 
 ancient philosophy, which, in its teaching of renunciation, 
 is so at one with the Christian. If we claim reality for 
 ourselves, we must remember that it consists, after all, in 
 surrendering what is merely phenomenal, what relates itself 
 only with the perishing, and in cultivating that side of our 
 being which belongs to the Eternal. For, in Hegel's 
 words, ' Nature and time do not master us, who are spirits, 
 but we them, which are but forms and pass.' Nevertheless, 
 it is true that the Infinite must have its counterpart in the 
 region of our own personality, and can only be interpreted 
 in terms of a person. Self-consciousness, the irresistible 
 conviction of one's own existence as a conscious person — 
 the cogiio ergo sum of Descartes, unrecognised in the 
 ancient world — is the foundation of philosophy ; and 
 personality being the highest phenomenon known to expe- 
 rience, and belonging to us as spiritual and not material 
 beings, has, as such, to be related with whatever is above 
 it. And since the finite implies an infinite, and a depen- 
 dent effect an independent and undetermined Cause, the 
 God above- us and around us must be no unconscious 
 being, but something infinitely more comprehensive than 
 ourselves ; an infinite reahty and fulness — that is to say, an 
 Infinite Person. It is a necessity of thought that the 
 Supreme Brahma must be the ' I AM ' — personality — a 
 living energy — Reason, Will, and Love. 
 
 One who has been called an English Kantian of the 
 older school has said : ' It is from the intense conscious- 
 ness of our own real existence as persons that the concep- 
 tion of reality takes its rise in our minds : it is through 
 that consciousness alone that we can raise ourselves to the 
 
READING NATURE THROUGH MAN 103 
 
 faintest image of the supreme reality of God. What is 
 reality, and what is appearance ? is the riddle which philo- 
 sophy has put forth, from the birthday of human thought ; 
 and the only approach to an answer has been a voice from 
 the depths of the personal consciousness : " I think, therefore 
 I am." In the antithesis between the thinker and the object 
 of his thought — between myself and that which is related to 
 me — we find the type and the source of the universal con- 
 trast between the one and the many, the permanent and 
 the changeable, the real and the apparent. That which I 
 see, that which I hear, that which 1 think, that which I 
 feel, changes and passes away with each moment of my 
 varied existence. I, who see and hear and think and feel, 
 am the one continuous self, whose existence gives unity 
 and connection to the whole. Personality comprises all 
 that we know of that which exists ; relation to personality 
 comprises all that we know of that which seems to exist. 
 And when from the httle world of man's consciousness and 
 its objects we would lift up our eyes to the inexhaustible 
 universe beyond, and ask to whom all this is related, 
 the highest existence is still the highest personality; and 
 the source of all being reveals Himself by His name 
 I AM.'' 
 
 Now, the essential difference between Vedantism and 
 Christianity is this, that the first reads man through Nature, 
 while the second reads Nature through man. We have 
 seen that in Hindu philosophy it is Ignorance, or Maya, 
 that makes the world, whereas the deepest thinker of the 
 West, Emmanuel Kant, says that ' man makes, but he does 
 not create Nature.' Man makes Nature because he is 
 made in the image of that Divine Intelligence which is 
 ' the causal explanation of both man and Nature.' Man is 
 the interpreter of Nature, and if man were not, Nature 
 ■ Mansel's Bampton Lectures, lect. iii. 
 
I04 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 would not be. If man were to cease to be conscious and 
 to have no ideas, Nature would cease to exist so far as he 
 is concerned ; and if there is no conscious life at the heart 
 and head of the universe, if Deity itself is unconscious 
 the universe remains dead, and as good as non-existent. 
 And so we find in Hinduism that the universe is a play — a 
 sport of the Absolute — in which man is ensnared and 
 enslaved. According to the Bible, the universe is a crea- 
 tion for the service of mind. Mind — conscious mind — is 
 everywhere. We live in a reasonable and scientific world. 
 At the uttermost verge of space we find the presence of 
 mind, and the same mind. 'The laws of light and heat 
 and gravitation which obtain in London obtain in the 
 Pleiades.' The universe is intelligible to the mind of man 
 because the same Divine Intelligence created both man 
 and it. ' Nature is God's thought explicit ; man is God's 
 thought personified.' 
 
 The ancients of India, interpreting man through Nature, 
 attributed to him the qualities of matter, and the fateful 
 forces that govern Nature govern him. His reason and 
 his freedom, instead of being his noblest possessions, his 
 greatest realities, are illusive shams. And so with Brahma, 
 the Source of all; instead of being living and active, in 
 the Christian sense, it is impersonal and passive, an 
 unconscious Substance : Existence, but does not exist ; 
 Intelligence, but does not think and reason ; Bliss, but 
 cannot enjoy. But read Nature through man, and the 
 qualities found in him will be found in it — intellectual and 
 moral — and in Nature's God ; and we have a real universe, 
 full of thought and moral activity, and at its head a living, 
 personal, holy, and loving God. That which explains 
 personal experience explains the universal. Nature cannot 
 be explained by the abstract, but only through the per- 
 sonal ; and we must have a personal _God before Nature 
 
READING NATURE THROUGH MAN 105 
 
 can be. No ' Neuter Abstract ' can explain a rational 
 universe ; but behind it must be the rational mind. In the 
 words of one who has recently expounded Christian philo- 
 sophy to India's sons : ' Face to face Man and Nature 
 stand, and above both, uniting both, the Unity that har- 
 monizes the two, is that Ever- Living Person, that Breathing 
 Spirit, that Thinking Thought, that Conscious Will, that 
 Eternal Life, which we call by many a name — He that 
 lives, moves, breathes everywhere. Personal and Un- 
 spent.' ' 
 
 ■ Principal Fairbairn in Madras {Afadras Mail, February I, 1899). 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PRACTICAL RESULTS OF VEDANTISM 
 
 The Three Schools of Vedantins — Semitic and Aryan Conceptions 
 of God — Reconciled in Christian Theism — Vedantism ignores 
 Materialism — Problem of Mind and Matter solved in the In- 
 carnation — Practical Results of a. Pantheistic Creed — Ascetic 
 Morality — Gross Sensual Excesses — Caste System — Blind 
 Causation — Atheistic Buddhism — Polytheism — Christ, the only 
 Remedy for Idolatry. 
 
 That a pantheistic conception of God, such as we have 
 been considering, represents the prevailing rehgious 
 thought of India from very early times, and is the 
 oldest and most orthodox theology of the Upanishads, 
 was understood by the first great commentator, Sankara- 
 charya, the authority most generally deferred to in India, 
 and who makes no concessions whatever to realism or 
 dualism. In the most recent works of note, too, such as 
 Cough's * Philosophy of the Upanishads ' and Professor 
 Deussen's ' System of the Vedanta,' the view is maintained 
 that there existed in the beginning only one Vedanta 
 doctrine, handed down by an unbroken series of teachers, 
 and agreeing in all essential points with that contained in 
 Sankara's Bhashya, This is the rigidly idealistic, monistic, 
 or non-dualistic school of Vedantins, called in Sanskrit the 
 Advaita, or ' no-second ' ; but in the present day the more 
 practical and accommodating tenets of Ramanujacharya, 
 
VISISHTADVAITA AND DVAITA 107 
 
 the famous Vaishnava theologian and philosopher of the 
 twelfth century, and the founder of the Visishtddvaita 
 school, or non-duality with a difference — a qualified 
 monism — are also claimed to belong to the Vedanta ; and 
 his Sri-bhashya is the oldest and most important commen- 
 tary of the Vedanta Sutras next to Sankara's, and claims to 
 follow the authority of an ancient reputed scholiast, 
 Baudhayana. Even the out-and-out dualism of Madhva- 
 charya, of the fourteenth century, claims to be in possession 
 of some right understanding of the Vedanta, notwithstand- 
 ing the fact that these three schools differ most radically on 
 points which form the very essence of any philosophy or 
 religion. Of their relative hold on the people of India, 
 Dr. Deussen, in his ' Essay on the Philosophy of the 
 Vedanta,' observes : ' The Vedanta is now, as in ancient 
 time, living in the mind and heart of every thoughtful 
 Hindu. It is true that even here in the sanctuary of 
 Vedantic metaphysics, the realistic tendencies, natural to 
 man, have penetrated, producing the misinterpreting 
 variations of Sankara's Advaita, known under the names 
 of Visishtadvaita, Dvaita, Shuddhadvaita, of Ramanuja, 
 Madhva, .Vallabha; but India till now has not been 
 seduced by their voices ; and of a hundred Vedantins (I 
 have it from- a well-informed man, who is himself a zealous 
 adversary of Sankara, and follower of Ramanuja) fifteen 
 perhaps adhere to Ramanuja, five to Madhva, five to 
 Vallabha, and seventy-five to Sankaracharya.' 
 
 The second school — the Visishtadvaita — no doubt 
 became a necessity for those who could, not deny some 
 reality to the phenomenal world and some individuality 
 to their own souls, the soul and the material world both 
 being regarded as real, and not merely phenomenal 
 modifications of Brahman; that which was potential in 
 Brahman — who possesses within himself good quahties 
 
io8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 and the seeds of plurality — becoming real, objective, and 
 independent in the universe and in souls, and con- 
 stituting, as it were, his body, in which capacity he is 
 spoken of as Isvara, or a personal Lord ; though it held, 
 in common with the Advaita, the one totality of Being, 
 and the ultimate union, though not identity, of all with 
 the One.' 
 
 The Dvaita, or strictly dualistic school, of Madhva- 
 charya, on the other hand, regards God as supreme and 
 essentially different from the human soul and from the 
 material world, both of which have a real and eternally 
 distinct existence ; and it is difficult to see how this last has 
 any right to the name of Vedanta. The non-recognition, 
 however, of these three scholastic sects, and of their several 
 points of divergence, gives rise to much misunderstanding 
 and confusion of thought in discussing with a Hindu, and 
 it is important to know, in any general dealing with the 
 Vedanta, to which sect he belongs. = 
 
 The second and third schools are for the most part con- 
 fined to the South of India, where they had their birth, and 
 they date from about the twelfth and fourteenth centuries 
 of our era — a comparatively modern period when there 
 were outside influences existing, such as the ancient Syrian 
 Church and the Roman Catholic community, which may 
 possibly have affected Indian thought. In the North, 
 and throughout the greater part of the country,, the 
 monistic school has hitherto held undisputed sway. In the 
 great citadels of Hindu philosophy and religion, as 
 
 ■ See Thibaut's ' Vedanla-Siitras,' Sacred Books of the East Series, 
 vol. xxxiv., introd., pp. 27-31. 
 
 ' A concise summary of these Vedantic schools is given by Dr. R. 
 G. Bhandarkar in his report on the search for Sanskrit MSS. in 
 the Bombay Presidency during 1883-84, and a fuller account in 
 Wilson's 'Essays on the Religion of the Hindus.' 
 
THE UPANISHADS AND MONISM 109 
 
 Benares, the Dvaita school would be regarded as an 
 heterodox sect, though the Vaishnavites, in their popular 
 worship, are equally strong in the North ; and it is un- 
 questionable that Advaita, or pantheistic thought, pure 
 and simple, has been the orthodox and prevailing creed 
 of India, being, as Swami Vivekananda characterizes it, the 
 real Vedanta, 'the fairest flower of philosophy and religion.' 
 
 Though there are scattered passages in the Upanishads 
 that may yield a theistic meaning, there would seem to 
 be but one noted treatise that is regarded as specially 
 sectarian — the Svetasvatara-Upanishad — supposed by some 
 to advocate the Sankhya, or dualistic, philosophy rather 
 than the Vedanta. But it states distinctly that Nature 
 is not an independent power, but a power forming the very 
 self of the Deity ; and Professor Max Miiller maintains ' 
 that there is not one passage in it which, if rightly 
 interpreted in connection with the whole text, could 
 be quoted in support of a strictly dualistic theology. And 
 in the present day the monistic and the dualistic schools of 
 thought stand, side by side, opposed and irreconcilable in 
 Hindfiism. 
 
 It has been stated by the eminent French Professor 
 M. Burnouf, in his ' Science of Religions ' — a scholar who 
 gave to Vedic and Buddhist literature, and to the Sanskrit 
 studies of the last forty years, their first impulse — that the 
 original tendency of the Aryan peoples is pantheistic, while 
 monotheism proper is the constant doctrine of the leading 
 Semitic races. These are the two beds in which flow the 
 sacred streams of humanity. The Jews and the Arabs, the 
 descendants of Abraham, observes M. Burnouf, represent 
 the only races that ever conceived God as totally separate 
 from the world, with a personal unity of His own ; and 
 
 " ' The Upanishads,' vol. ii., p. xxxvi. 
 
no ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Christian metaphysics sprang from the contact with, and 
 the mingling of, the two great religious currents on which 
 humanity is rafted— the Jewish and the Aryan. 
 
 The Semitic and to a large extent the Old Testament 
 conception of God is realistic, anthropomorphic, and 
 monotheistic, and removes Him from the world and man. 
 The Aryan conception of God is philosophical and 
 pantheistic, and thinks of Him as immanent in the world 
 and man, and one with them. And it is worthy of the con- 
 sideration of all thoughtful students of history and religion 
 that Christian philosophy, rightly understood — ^chiefly 
 through its realization of the idea of Incarnation — presents 
 a new and consistent system of religious thought and life, in 
 the mingling of these two great religious streams of the 
 world — the Jewish and the Aryan. 
 
 In the pre-Christian religions we see the germs of those 
 conceptions of God and of His relation to the world which 
 find their unity and explanation in the Christian faith. 
 Those conceptions were one-sided, limited, and frag- 
 mentary ; and so what the monotheistic and the pantheistic 
 faiths of the ancient world were feeling after they failed to 
 reach. Monotheistic systems are imperfect because they 
 exclude the pantheistic element ; pantheistic systems are 
 imperfect because they exclude the monotheistic element. 
 A religion that conceives of God as a great and powerful 
 Ruler, exalted far above the world, may be morally sublime 
 in its transcendence; but it lacks the element of complete- 
 ness if it does not combine everything that is Divine, and if 
 it fails to find God immanent in the world, pervading it 
 with His thought and life and love. That is the in- 
 completeness, in part, of the Old Testament conception, 
 and the great defect of Islam, its great offshoot. So, 
 again, a religion that sees God in all things — the Reality 
 beliind all appearances — but has no place for the equally 
 
THE IMMANENCE OF GOD iii 
 
 essential idea of His transcendence above the world, will 
 of necessity disclose its weakness, in the loss of finite 
 individuality and freedom, and in the consequent eflface- 
 ment of moral distinctions. 
 
 The Christian faith at once comprehends and transcends 
 these earlier religions, by embracing what is true in each, 
 supplementing what is imperfect, and correcting what is 
 false. In the Providence of God, which guides the evolu- 
 tionary history of the world, it waited till both these con- 
 ceptions had fully developed themselves, and shown their 
 separate inadequacy; and then, correcting and adding, it 
 fulfilled them both in a perfect synthesis. 
 
 It believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator 
 of the heavens and the earth, who rules men according to a 
 moral law : there is the truth in monotheism. But it also 
 teaches that this Infinite Being is ' not far from each one of 
 us ; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being ' 
 (Acts xvii. 27, 28) : there is the truth in pantheism. It 
 teaches that ' God is Love ; and he that abideth in love 
 abideth in God, and God abideth in him ' (i John iv. 16) : 
 there, again, is the truth in pantheism, but expressed, 
 not metaphysically, but in the highest ethical and spiritual 
 manner. 
 
 The Christian, like the Brahman, sees God in all things. 
 To Christian thought the world is full of Deity ; it is 
 His shrine. Nature is the visible garment of God, through 
 which the Divine glory gleams. In God it exists. In 
 every shining star, in the music of the waves, in the falling 
 shower, in the crystallization of every snowflake, in the 
 glories of sunset, in the wing of the meanest insect, in 
 the flushing petal of the lowliest flower ; every object and 
 aspect of Nature is the revelation of a Divine presence, 
 and is instinct with a Divine meaning. Every storm 
 sweeps with the energy of God; every sky is bathed in 
 
112 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the splendour of God ; and every human being lives in the 
 life and love of God. As said by the late Dr. R. W. Dale, 
 every one of God's wondrous works is ' as truly the ex- 
 pression of His thought as the painting on the canvas is the 
 expression of the thought of the artist who painted it, and as 
 the musical and majestic verse is the expression of the 
 poet who wrote it' And, with the deepest insight, 
 Christian thought can discern a soul of goodness and a 
 Divine purpose beneath all the discord and strife, the 
 sorrow and sin, of the world. The Christian sees God 
 in all things — in Nature, and in the history of individuals 
 and of nations ; but he does not, as the pantheist, see 
 Him in all things a/ike. He sees a richer revelation of 
 the Divine mind in organized life than in brute matter; 
 a Diviner image in human thought and love than in 
 animal appetite and passion ; and he sees Him most fully 
 manifested in the best and highest life the world has seen — 
 in that of Christ. 
 
 The Christian holds more firmly the -truth of the in- 
 dwelling God — of the immanence of Deity — immanent 
 in the world, and still more in the spirits He has made 
 in His own image — a truth clearly understood by the 
 Greek Fathers of the Church, but sadly obscured by the 
 Latin; and Tennyson has beautifully expressed it in "the 
 lines : 
 
 ' Speak to Him then, for He hears, and Spirit witli spirit can 
 meet ; 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.' 
 
 But he does not identify Nature with God, nor the human 
 soul with God ; he is neither pantheist nor monotheist, 
 but the Christian theist, who is also the highest philo- 
 sopher, combining the truth of both. Christian theism 
 does not contradict anything in pantheism, but adds to 
 
SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL 113 
 
 it. Pantheism ministers only to the feeling of reverence ; 
 theism, while equally exciting this feeling, ministers also 
 directly to the complete moral nature. As Dr. A. C. 
 Fraser maintains in his ' Philosophy of Theism,' it is the 
 deepest and truest interpretation of the actualities of the 
 universe, and, besides being a philosophy, has a practical 
 bearing on human thought and life. 
 
 God is exalted far above all finite comprehension, and 
 yet He is here and now; and the spirit of man, in 
 reverent search, may find within the veil of sense 'the 
 vision of Him who reigns.' But Nature's outraying 
 splendour is not the glory of impersonal life but of a 
 great Intelligence and an eternal Will. In one of his 
 poems, ' The Human Cry,' England's great poet has given 
 wonderful expression to what God is, in the truest and 
 most comprehensive concept of man : 
 
 ' Infinite Ideality ! 
 Immeasurable Reality ! 
 Infinite Personality ! ' 
 
 And in ' In Memoriam,' when he cherishes the idea of 
 reunion in another life with the friend he had lost, care- 
 fully guarding his thought from ddvaitic monism, and 
 distinctly confessing dualism, he declares : 
 
 ' Eternal form shall still divide 
 The Eternal Soul from all beside, 
 And I shall know him when we meet.' 
 
 There is one other aspect of our subject, akin to the one 
 we have just considered, and it is this : The thought of 
 the Vedanta being, as we have seen, transcendental and 
 spiritualistic, is as such radically opposed to materialism ; 
 and herein lies its peculiar strength. It contrasts pheno- 
 mena with noumenal realities. But, true as this conception 
 is. Materialism is a school of thought equally with 
 
 9 
 
114 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Transcendentalism, and cannot be ignored. The material 
 is the a/ter ego of the spiritual, and any scheme that forgets 
 this is doomed. Every error has its uses, and even 
 Materialism has done good service as a corrective of 
 extreme Idealism. Each school emphasizes a truth of 
 the utmost importance ; and here, again, a system that 
 would include the truth and exclude the error of each 
 would be of necessity a higher and more comprehensive 
 system than either. A Christian philosophy alone supplies 
 the possibility of such a system. 
 
 Materialism fails because it magnifies the physical at the 
 expense of the psychical ; Transcendentalism fails because 
 it magnifies the soul at the expense of the body, and all 
 that is akin to it in material form. Any attempt to found 
 an ultimate explanation of the universe on the one exclu- 
 sively or on the other exclusively is doomed to failure. 
 Man is not pure spirit. A philosophy that is contemp- 
 tuous of the sensory and of the whole field of activity of the 
 sensory can never be universally accepted. The abstract 
 separation of spiritual and material, with the consequent 
 contempt of the material, was the rock on which Greek 
 philosophy split. 
 
 Now, Christianity, properly understood, reconciles these 
 opposing truths, by treating both soul and body as equally 
 real and equally essential to the whole and perfect man, the 
 spirit being the life-giving principle, and the body the form 
 in which it finds expression. As Goethe said, ' Matter can 
 never exist or act apart from spirit, neither can spirit apart 
 from matter.' Abundant honour is paid in the New 
 Testament to the body, and to all with which the body is 
 akin. It speaks of Christ being ' magnified in our body ' 
 (Phil. i. 20) ; of our bodies being ' members of Christ ' 
 (i Cor. vi. 15) ; of ' sinning against one's own body,' because 
 the body is the ' temple of the Holy Spirit ' (i Cor. vi. 
 
GLORIFIED HUMANITY 115 
 
 18, 19) ; of ' glorifying God in our bodies ' (i Cor. vi. 20) ; 
 and of ' presenting our bodies a living sacrifice to God ' 
 (Rom. xii. i) ; and the blessedness of life beyond the grave 
 does not consist in emancipation ji9(?»2 the body, but in the 
 redemption of the body — in the possession of a glorified 
 body (Rom. viii. 23). 
 
 The Christian revelation is the Divine solution of the 
 problem of the relationship between spirit and matter. 
 Regard matter as essentially evil, as Eastern systems in- 
 variably do, and the material body as only a drag upon the 
 spiritual faculties, which it deadens and deceives — the 
 enemy of man's true life — then it becomes man's highest 
 wisdom and duty, as taught in the Upanishads, to free him- 
 self from its trammels and to disregard its necessities. But 
 regard the body as the Divine form under which the spirit 
 appears, then all honour and care and training sho.uld be 
 bestowed upon it. And the Christian Incarnation is the 
 theoretical justification of this teaching. It responds to 
 the requirements of the whole man, and witnesses to the 
 sacredness of soul and body. God can show Himself as 
 man because He is thus expressing Himself in His own 
 image, and, therefore, not only are God and man akin to 
 one another, but the body as well as the spirit is akin to 
 the Divine. 
 
 And, further, the Incarnation explains why the Supreme 
 Spirit expresses itself in a material and not an illusory 
 universe. It is part of the Divine order, this manifestation 
 of Himself to the human spirits which He has brought into 
 existence. The Supreme Life does not consist in move- 
 ments of pure thought — the prevailing idea of the Vedanta 
 — but in an activity that finds expression in a physical 
 agency ; and one of the most profound and beautiful teach- 
 ings of the New Testament is that there is 'one divine 
 event to which the whole creation moves ' ; that the time is 
 
ii6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 coming when all Nature will be empowered adequately to 
 render the bpiritual meaning which at present it is only able 
 to convey by scattered hints and in broken fragments." 
 Man and the universe as such are real, and not illusory ; 
 and if the ancient sages of the Upanishads had understood 
 the mystery of the Christian Incarnation, they might have 
 escaped their philosophic fallacies. 
 
 Thus the immortality that Christians are led to look 
 forward to is not that of the soul simply, but of the whole 
 man — soul and spiritual body alike ; for Christ has taken a 
 glorified humanity to heaven. Intellect perfected, affections 
 perfected, will perfected, and all gloriously embodied, can 
 we conceive a higher future state of existence than that ? 
 The idea of a total loss of them can only proceed, as we 
 shall see hereafter, from a mistaken view of life. 
 
 Th^ solution of the 'eternal problem' of mind and 
 matter is thus given in the Christian revelation, which 
 shows us that both enter into the essential nature of the 
 universe. If God, who is Spirit, revealed Himself, not 
 only through a human mind, but also through a human 
 form, then both have received the Divine impress. And 
 since God has chosen to establish a physical medium of 
 communication between spirit and spirit, it must be as 
 indestructible as the spiritual life itself ; and we can set no 
 limit to what either may become. In both are Divine 
 possibilities. Science is teaching with increasing clearness 
 that there is an indissoluble union between the psychical 
 and the physical — that body and soul form a unity ; and 
 that is the true monism. And the Christian revelation tells 
 us that both form part of the essential constitution of the 
 universe, and that the reason of this union lies in the 
 Divine nature, as disclosed to us in the Incarnation. 
 
 " See an article on this subject in the Contemporary Review for July, 
 i8g6, by E. M. Caillard. 
 
RESULTS OF ASCETIC MORALITY 117 
 
 If, now, we return to what we have seen to be the pre- 
 vailing rehgious thought of India from the earliest times, we 
 shall find that the defects of such a creed could not fail to 
 be followed by some very marked results in the character 
 and life and popular worship of the people. 
 
 One practical result would be an ascetic morality, and the 
 Sannydsin, or mendicant friar — the lineal descendant of the 
 forest hermit of the Upanishads — the concentrating Yogi, 
 would be the highest type of man, whose one aim would be 
 repression and destruction of the individuality, and union 
 with Deity by abstraction from the world, where a transcen- 
 dental insight becomes accompanied ■ by outward uncon- 
 sciousness — an ' ecstatic vacuity of mind ' — a state in which, 
 if it were possible, every thought would cease. To this we 
 shall return hereafter. 
 
 Again, it is difficult at first sight to see anything but a 
 contradiction between this asceticism and a social life in 
 which the grossest sensual excesses are perpetrated under the 
 sanction of religion. But in a pantheistic system, where 
 God is alike related to all, and where the loftiest virtue and 
 the lowest appetites are alike consecrated by a Divine and 
 universal presence, moral distinctions necessarily disappear, 
 and natural passions carry with them their own sanctions. 
 We cannot be held responsible for affections and actions 
 that are only states and operations of the Divine nature ; 
 and so, according to Swami Vivekananda, ' our evil is of no 
 more value than our good, and our good of no more value 
 than our evil.' ' 
 
 And, further, seeing that whatever is, according to 
 pantheism, is, by the very fact that it is, right and Divine, 
 Professor Caird is surely correct when he maintains " that 
 such a system accounts for all that is so reprehensible in 
 
 ' Brahmavadin, January 19, 1897. 
 ' ' The Faiths of the World,' lect. i. 
 
ii8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 caste;whose root is pride and whose branches are selfishness. 
 Instead of being, as we should at first suppose, an equalizing 
 faith, pantheism has 'a tendency to consecrate existing 
 facts, to harden accidental differences and inequalities into 
 permanent and inviolable divisions.' Social distinctions of 
 rank and occupation, which are common to all countries, 
 but whose defects are in the West corrected by religion — a 
 religion of equality and brotherhood in the sight of God — 
 have in India been consecrated by religion ; and the dark 
 and hopeless lot of millions of low-caste men has been itself 
 regarded as 'an unchangeable ordinance of God.' 
 
 What binds Hinduism to India in its caste system denies 
 it to humanity. And yet what should be the logical effect 
 of a monistic creed which holds that the individual Self and 
 the Supreme are one ? Surely the greatest reverence shown 
 to a// men, without distinction. If men are things, let 
 them go the way of things ; but if they are spirits, temples 
 of the Eternal, let us bow before one another — let us try to 
 serve one another. If men and women are Divine, accord- 
 ing to the Vedanta, how can we treat any fellow-creature 
 with contempt ? To the Christian human nature, in its 
 most degraded forms, is something wonderful and sacred, 
 because in Christ it has been taken up into eternal union 
 with the nature of God. How has it been in India ? How 
 can we harmonize this exalted truth of the identity of man 
 and God with the treatment that the lower and oppressed 
 classes have for ages received at the hands of the higher ? 
 Why does the high-caste Brahman avoid, as he would a 
 leper, contact with a non-caste pariah ? The Hindu philo- 
 sopher's lofty ideal has never been his realization. Where 
 there is only one Self of the universe, love, it is said, 
 becomes a natural expression of such a philosophy; for 
 how can any man hate his own Self? ' I must love my 
 ' Brahtnavaciin, vol. iii., 190. 
 
PANTHEISM AND CASTE 119 
 
 brother because I am my brother — because the Soul within 
 all men is the same. But it is not as separate personalities 
 that we are all one, for the idea of separateness is illusory 
 and has to be destroyed. 'The so-called separate Souls 
 are simply the Atman under phenomenal limitations, and 
 therefore it is superfluous to postulate the existence of many 
 souls.' ' So that the expression, the ' brotherhood of man ' 
 — a purely Christian conception arising out of the Divine 
 Fatherhood — is altogether misleading on the lips of a 
 Vedantist, since it implies distinction of persons, and, if 
 applied to man, is equally applicable to the whole animate 
 and inanimate creation, because the one Soul underlies 
 all. It is not brotherhood, but identity. One of the best 
 signs of a new life in India to-day is the healthy desire to 
 abolish, among other crying evils, the great caste system ; 
 and this can hardly be brought about by a revival of that 
 philosophy which for centuries has sanctioned and nourished 
 caste. True brotherhood, on the other hand, is an essential 
 doctrine of Christianity, and is practically exemplified in 
 numberless measures to improve the lot of man, and, in 
 a very marked manner, in the unity and fellowship of 
 believers in the Christian Church. 
 
 Again, an impersonal Deity, such as we have in the 
 pantheistic Vedanta, means an impersonal order of things 
 in the universe, in which blind causation and natural law 
 or mechanism rule over a necessitated man ; and we have 
 the fundamental belief of Hinduism, which underlies all 
 Hindu thought, and furnishes the raison d'etre of the 
 systems of philosophy — the doctrine of Karma and trans- 
 migration ; and these will be fully considered at a later 
 stage of our inquiry. 
 
 The same reflection applies to the system of Buddhism, 
 which was the grand logical outcome of pantheism. Re- 
 ' Brahinavadin, vol. iii. , 190. 
 
120 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 jecting the Brahmanical Deity, who brought a curse rather 
 than a blessing into human existence, Buddha boldly 
 rejected God altogether. ' Deny the personality of God,' 
 Principal Fairbairn has said, 'and the best thing for the 
 race is to deny God ; the best thing for the person, escape 
 from personal to those impersonal modes of being which 
 are the dreariest everlasting death.'" History has never 
 exhibited a more signal instance of the failure of pantheism, 
 with its cold, abstract, impersonal force, to satisfy man's 
 deepest needs. Break away from the thought of a Divine 
 Being, who can do something to relieve the pain and misery 
 of the world, and atheism is the best alternative, and the 
 highest beatitude for man loss of conscious being. 
 
 And, once more, it is difficult at first sight to see anything 
 but a contradiction between the doctrine that God is the 
 oply one Reality and the monstrous mythology — the vast 
 system oi polytheism — which in India has grown up by the 
 side of it. 
 
 A belief in the unity of God, as the Bible understands it, 
 does, indeed, utterly forbid anything approaching to a 
 plurality of gods : ' no relic of polytheism and idolatry 
 could possibly live in the Hebrew fiery furnace of mono- 
 theism, any more than dry chaff could exist in lambent 
 tongues of fire.' And that is simply because the Divine 
 unity in the Bible is not a pantheistic unity. But the unity 
 of pantheism is not hostile to polytheism ; on the contrary, 
 it inevitably induces it, and is supplemented by it, and has 
 in India gradually swelled the thirty-three gods of the 
 Vedas to 330,000,000, quite in accordance with the name 
 given to God — Brahma — that 'which expands through all 
 space, and ' grows ' into everything. A Being who is 
 thought of as the Substance underlying all finite things 
 stands, as we have seen, in the same relation to all, to the 
 ■ 'City of God,' p. 266. 
 
PANTHEISM AND POLYTHEISM 121 
 
 meanest as well as to the highest, to the most repulsive and 
 impure as well as to the noblest and the holiest. Pan- 
 theistic thought can take no account of distinctions in the 
 finite. And so while the philosophic sage might, by a 
 process of abstraction, penetrate to the essence behind, and 
 see the One in the many, the popular mind, incapable of 
 such exercises, would take of necessity the opposite direc- 
 tion, and instead of deifying nothing would deify all. Since 
 all is equally related to God, He is manifested alike in the 
 highest and most beautiful, and in the lowest and the vilest ; 
 and so even loathsome forms of organic life — the lowest 
 fetich — become objects of religious reverence. This is, 
 as we have seen, the philosophy of polytheism and 
 idolatry. 
 
 If pantheism has sometimes been the creed of the philo- 
 sopher, it has never been the faith of a nation ; polytheism 
 and image-worship have ever been the religion of the 
 people. The abstractions of pantheism, which has no 
 object of worship, and whose subject of contemplation is 
 incomprehensible, devoid of all affections, and indifferent 
 to all actions, whose Absolute Being has no personal attri- 
 butes, can have no attractions for the common people, and 
 nothing to elicit and sustain a real religious life. From 
 Job to Herbert Spencer, who sees Power infinite and inex- 
 haustible, but uncharacterized by any element on which 
 the human heart can repose, God has been the undiscovered 
 One. So far from knowing the way to God, the philoso- 
 phers have not been even sure of His name. The Un- 
 knowable, Absolute, Brahma, 'Stream of tendency,' are 
 poor substitutes for the Living God and Father. ' The 
 Vedantic God,' says the Madras Hindu, ' is a cold, dreary, 
 philosophic conception, which the Hindu masses have 
 never cared for, which the vast majority of mankind can 
 never be brought to reverence and which is quite incapable 
 
122 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 of influencing them in the formation of character and life.' ' 
 What is the consequence ? Pantheism has to crave the 
 help of polytheism, and to allow the masses to regard as 
 real what it declares to be illusory, and to personify what it 
 holds to be impersonal, in order that the instinctive feelings 
 of the heart — love, gratitude, and trust — may be expressed 
 in worship. ' Whoever, hearing that the Vedantins believe 
 in Brahma without qualities, infers that they reject Vishnu, 
 Siva, and the rest of the pantheon, and that they discoun- 
 tenance idolatry and such things, and that they count the 
 Puranas and similar writings false, labours under gross 
 error.' = ' It is the personal gods of Hindu polytheism, 
 and not the impersonal principle of Hindu pantheism, that 
 the Hindu people worship. No people can worship what 
 they believe to be entirely impersonal' 3 
 
 It is sometimes represented as an excellence of Vedantism 
 that it thus incorporates these lower phases of religion, and 
 that the pantheistic idea tends to purify the mind, and 
 helps it to rise from a lower to a higher level — from the 
 worship of the saguna Deity under his many forms to the 
 knowledge of the nirguna Brahma. But it can only do 
 this, as Professor Flint shows,-* at the cost of its own 
 rationality, and by being consciously allied with falsehood, 
 since the popular deities are, according to the Vedanta, 
 mere fictions of the popular mind. Pantheism, instead of 
 correcting Hindu polytheism, has had the effect of stimu- 
 lating its extravagances ; it has increased the number and 
 absurdity of its superstitions. Pantheism and an impersonal 
 Deity can never be superior to theism and faith in a per- 
 sonal God, when it is thus found to stand at the head of 
 a history of irretrievable idolatry^. And vast systems of 
 
 ' Brakinavaditi, vol. ii., 141. = 'Rational Refutation,' p. 195. 
 
 .3 ' Anti-Theistic Theories,' p. 389. * Ibid., p. 390. 
 
CHRIST THE DIVINE IMAGE 123 
 
 mythology and superstition inevitably accompany pan- 
 theistic thought. It was so in ancient Greece and Rome, 
 and it has been so in India ; and it must be so in every 
 . land that is not Christian. Only where the Bible is 
 known is idolatry, in one form or another, unknown ; 
 and when Christ is accepted by a people idolatry passes 
 away. 
 
 What is the explanation of this ? Idolatry, as opposed 
 to pantheism, foolish and degraded as it is, lays supreme 
 stress on a vital truth — a truth which the human heart will 
 never surrender — the Personality of God. It witnesses to 
 man's natural craving to have before him some manifesta- 
 tion of the Unseen — the Unknowable — to see, in fact, a 
 humanized God. It seeks to realize to the senses what 
 otherwise is only an idea. And nothing but a religion that 
 offers a visible and Divine Object for adoring reverence — a 
 true and worthy Image of the Divine — as does Christianity, 
 that presents to us God realized in human history, can 
 save, and has ever saved, a people from idolatry. It is at 
 best in Hinduism a necessary evil ; hence the system with 
 which it is allied must be regarded as unsound. In Chris- 
 tianity, it is not only condemned as an evil, but is found 
 to be altogether unnecessary, its place being taken by 
 the perfect, elevating, all-lovely, and Divine Image — 
 Christ. 
 
 In Christianity it is the Incarnation, as we have seen, 
 that is the centre of its thought and action, and this affords 
 the same religious test to philosopher and peasant, to the 
 high and to the low. There is a philosophy of the pro- 
 foundest kind surrounding Christian doctrine, available for 
 the mystic or the metaphysician ; but there is one Object of 
 worship and devotion — God in Christ — for all ; one uni- 
 versal Book, the Bible, understood by all; and but one 
 way of salvation, revealed in that Book, alike for all — 
 
124 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 perfect trust in, and absolute surrender to, Christ, as the 
 Revelation of Deity and the atonement for human sin, in 
 whom and by whom we are brought into union and har- 
 mony with the Divine. It is this that gives to Christianity 
 its simplicity, its adaptability, its universality. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE BHAGAVAD-GITA 
 
 The Bhagavad-glta— Its Eclectic, Conciliatory, though Sectarian, 
 Character — Its Place in the Mahabharata — Development of 
 Krishna Cult — Question of Christian Influence considered — Chief 
 Incident of the Poem — Its Main Doctrines, Compromises, and 
 Inconsistencies — Its Treatment of the Veda — Krishna as an Incar- 
 nation — Transmigration and Methods of Salvation — Bhakti-yoga — 
 Hindu and Christian — Gita no Safe Guide. 
 
 The insufficiency of a pantheistic creed, and the need of 
 some Object ofwo7-ship and devotion in which the heart may 
 rest, are shown very clearly in the Bhagavad-gita, the most 
 popular devotional book of the thoughtful classes of India. 
 Its main teaching is that men's devotion {bhakti) must be 
 directed to a person — to Krishna, the Ishta Devata — as a 
 representative of the Supreme, with the additional quality 
 of a Redeemer. It arose from a fusion of the transcen- 
 dental and popular elements, both of which had existed all 
 along in Hinduism. It seeks to combine the mystic pan- 
 theism of the Vedanta with an attractive mythology, and 
 hence its popularity. The doctrine of Krishna regarding 
 his own nature is the pantheistic doctrine of the early 
 Upanishads, but differing materially in his embodiment ; 
 for in the Upanishads the Supreme Spirit is not represented 
 as incarnate in a human person, nor made the object of 
 
126 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 passionate devotion, but rather the subject of calm contem- 
 plation, in which the absence of all emotion is essential to 
 the final deliverance of the perfected soul. 
 
 The ' Divine Lay,' or ' Lord's Song,' as it is called, is a 
 poem of much grace and sweetness, with many noble sen- 
 timents beautifully expressed, besides being a work of great 
 metaphysical acumen. Schlegel has described it as 'the 
 finest philosophical poem in the world.' Still, it contains 
 nothing new that can be formulated into a complete and 
 consistent system of its own. It is rather all-comprehen- 
 sive, and therefore of necessity contradictory. It is pan- 
 theistic in that it represents Krishna as the one real 
 Existence, and theistic in representing him as a personal 
 Being, the Creator and Upholder of all that is. Further, 
 by teaching that whatever is worshipped, Krishna is wor- 
 shipped; that 'They also who worship other gods with 
 devotion and faith, they also worship me,' ' it justifies the 
 existence of the Hindu pantheon and the grossest forms of 
 animism. It is, thus, an eclectic poem, the author being a 
 master of compromise. 
 
 Besides the concession already indicated, its aim was to 
 harmonize the doctrines of the chief systems of philosophy, 
 the scientific principles of the Sankhya, the asceticism of 
 the Yoga — though discouraging its extravagances — and the 
 idealism of the Vedanta. It also sought to conciliate the 
 different religious sects by uniting them in the common 
 worship of Krishna, though showing itself to be, at the 
 same time, distinctly sectarian by exalting Vaishnavism, 
 whose adherents regard it as one of their most sacred text- 
 books. Its subject-matter shows that it was composed 
 when Buddhism was on the wane, and when the hostile 
 rivalry between Vaishnavites and Saivites, restrained so 
 long as their common foe, Buddhism, was supreme, had 
 ' Gita, ix. 23. 
 
THE DATE OF THE GIT A 127 
 
 commenced, and which brought about the production of 
 the sectarian Puranas in later centuries of our era. The 
 author manifests his sectarian bias by ignoring the god 
 Siva altogether, declaring that he is the ' Rudra of the 
 Rudras ' — the most terrible of the terrible — and by identify- 
 ing Krishna with Vishnu as the Supreme Deity. Beyond 
 the element of personal devotion {bhakti) to a manifested 
 Deity, it contains no teaching that is not found in the 
 Upanishads and the philosophical systems ; so that our 
 examination of the doctrines of the Vedanta generally is 
 equally an examination of the teaching of the Bhagavad- 
 gita. , No very prolonged study of it, therefore, is required. 
 
 It lies embedded as an important episode in the Bhishma 
 Parva of the Mahabharata — the great epic of the Hindus — 
 a book of ' widely distant periods,' some portions of it 
 being said to have existed in the second or third century 
 B.C., while its present redaction, which includes many inter- 
 polations, was probably not completed until 'some cen- 
 turies after the commencement of our era.' ' The Gita 
 itself, which is proved by its style and eclectic philosophy 
 to be the most modern portion, is placed by Professor 
 Wilson as low as 800 a.d. ; by Professor M. Monier 
 Williams, in his ' Indian Epic Poetry,' to a date long sub- 
 sequent to the Christian era ; while Thomson, a modern 
 editor and translator of the poem,= thinks it may have been 
 written before 300 a.d. 
 
 The Mahabharata is the earliest poem in which Krishna's 
 life is narrated, and the ' great war • of the descendants of 
 Bharata — the Pandava and Kaurava cousins — which forms 
 the nucleus of the epic, is generally agreed by scholars to 
 
 ' See Weber's History of Indian Literature,' p. 188, and Muir's 
 ' Sanskrit Texts,' iv. 169. 
 
 ' Charles Wilkins English translation, made at Benares in 1784, 
 first made the Gita known to European scholars. 
 
128 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 have taken place about 800 B.C. The composition of the 
 epic, however, in which the events are recorded, having 
 taken place some 400 or 500 years later — for Buddhism is 
 spoken of as a powerful system — the narrative of Krishna's 
 life as contained in the Gita cannot be regarded as afford- 
 ing any reliable historical evidence of the life itself. The 
 author was no eye-witness to the events he relates. The 
 several stages in the development of the Krishna cult, as 
 traceable in the Mahabharata, are very marked ; but owing 
 to the redactions, of which the poem possesses abundant 
 internal evidence, it presents many inconsistencies and con- 
 tradictions about the character of the hero. In the briefest 
 and, therefore, probably the earliest series of stories, 
 Krishna is represented simply as an heroic man, remark- 
 able for superhuman strength. In every moral quality he 
 is much inferior to Arjuna, the real hero of the story, the 
 prince of the Pandavas, and who is married to Krishna's 
 sister. In the more elaborate narrative he appears as a 
 demigod, and later on as an incarnation of Vishnu ; while 
 in the Bhagavad-gita he is represented as the Supreme 
 Being, the Soul of the world, the primeval Spirit whose 
 material form is the universe. 
 
 Thus, a great gulf separates the Krishna of the earlier 
 from the Krishna of the later date, and, again, the more 
 theosophic Krishna of the Gita from the purely mytholo- 
 gical Krishna of the Puranas. But it must be borne in mind 
 that it is the same Krishna, who, in the Dronaparva, advises 
 the Pandavas to try to kill Drona by foul means, as it would 
 be impossible to kill him by fair,' and elsewhere urges 
 Bhima, one of the Pandavas, to tell Drona a falsehood, that 
 his son was dead, with the object that, being overcome by 
 grief, he would cease to fight, who in various other places 
 is declared to be a Divine incarnation ! Well may Professor 
 
 ' Mahabharata, ix. 3445 et seq. 
 
THE GIT A AND THE BIBLE 129 
 
 A. Holtzmann remark : ' What fatality impelled the Indians 
 to elevate such a man into an incarnation of the Supreme 
 Deity is an, as yet, unsolved enigma. There must have 
 been powerful political as well as religious revolutions 
 which brought about this result.' ' Further, the legends of 
 Krishna's birth, the celebration of his birthday, in the 
 honour of which his mother Devaki participates, his boyish 
 freaks and amours, and his life as a herdsman, as described 
 in the Vaishnava Puranas, chiefly the Bhagavata, ascribed 
 by Colebrooke to the twelfth century,"" are the furthest 
 removed from the original representations of the epic. 
 
 All this has led some eminent Sanskrit scholars to the 
 belief that the Krishna cult is indebted to Christian legends, 
 which found their way to India, and were there modified to 
 suit Indian modes of thought, since the gulf between the 
 earlier and later stages cannot well be bridged except by 
 the supposition of some external influence. This opinion 
 has been strengthened by certain resemblances in the 
 Bhagavad-gita to some of the ideas and expressions of 
 the New Testament, and especially by the appearance and 
 strong enforcement of the novel doctrine of bhakti, as dis- 
 tinguished from the jndnd-kdnda of the Upanishads, and 
 the older shraddhd of the Rig-veda. Some of the more 
 striking texts of the Indian poem that readily recall parallel 
 orjes of the Bible are the following : ' They who devoutly 
 worship me are in me, and I in them ' (ix. 29). ' Repose 
 thy mind upon me, fix thine understanding on me : then 
 doubtless thou shalt abide in me on high hereafter ' (xii. 8). 
 ' Renouncing all dharmas, come unto me alone for shelter ; 
 sorrow not, I will Hberate thee from all sins ' (xviii. 66). 
 
 ■ ' Arjuna, Ein Beitrag Qur Reconstruction des Mahabharata,' von 
 Adolf Holtzmann. (Strassburg, Karl J. Triibner ; London, Triibner 
 and Co., 1879. 
 
 " ' Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 94. 
 
 10 
 
130 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Dr. Lorinser, in 1869, in his appendix to his German trans- 
 lation of the Gita, expressed the opinion that Christian 
 ideas had been borrowed by the Brahmans, and that the 
 poem was indebted to the Bible. Professor Weber, while 
 regarding Dr. Lorinser's attempt to establish such a con- 
 nection as ' overdone,' has yet stated that ' the reciprocal 
 action and mutual influence of Gnostic and Indian concep- 
 tions in the first centuries of the Christian era are evident, 
 however difficult it may be at present to say what in each is 
 peculiar to it or borrowed from the other.' ' On the other 
 hand, this position has been stoutly disputed by Dr. Lassen 
 and Professor Windisch, of Heidelberg, as well as by Mr. 
 Justice K. T. Telang, of Bombay, in a lengthy introductory 
 essay prefixed to his English metrical translation of the Gita, 
 published in 1875, and where the question of the originality 
 or otherwise of the poem is fully and fairly treated. Dr. J. 
 Muir, who ably discusses the whole subject in his ' Metrical 
 Translation from Sanskrit Writers,' " considers Dr. Lorinser's 
 contention as ' not proven,' or ' ad/iuc sub judice ' ; and 
 Professor M. Monier Williams would seem to be of the same 
 opinion. However the case may be, there can be no 
 doubt that the Gita is a thoroughly Oriental book, cast in 
 an Indian mould, and Indian throughout — that there is 
 nothing essentially common between it and the New Testa- 
 ment, but, on the contrary, that the ideas of the former are 
 quite foreign to those of the latter, while no such conception 
 as Krishna suffering for the sins of mankind is anywhere to 
 be found. Further, that though the resemblance between 
 certain passages may be striking, it is, after all, superficial ; 
 and a little reflection will show that the one has marked 
 traits which the other has not, while a different translation 
 of certain words, of which Sanskrit is peculiarly susceptible, 
 will often give an entirely different meaning. 
 
 ' 'Indian Antiquary,' iv. 79. ^ See Introduction. 
 
THE GIT A AND DEATH 131 
 
 Returning now to the body of the work, we must 
 glance at the supreme incident that gave rise to Sri 
 Krishna's deliverances. The leaders of the two great 
 families, who had long been at feud, are about to engage in 
 a decisive battle. The Supreme Being, who had become 
 incarnate in the family of the Pandavas, in the person of 
 Krishna, acts as Arjuna's charioteer, and drives him to the 
 battlefield. The compassionate heart of Arjuna melts at the 
 sight before him. 
 
 ' Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, mothers' 
 brothers, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and 
 other relatives. These I do not wish to kill, though (myself) 
 slain, even for the sake of the kingship of the three worlds ; 
 how then for earth ! ... It is not proper to kill the sons of 
 Dhritarashtra, our relatives, for how, killing our kinsmen, 
 may we be happy, O Madhava ? ' " 
 
 And then, for the rest of the poem, the battle is sus- 
 pended, and in that unlikely situation the two hold 
 prolonged converse on the most recondite doctrines of 
 philosophy and religion. The generous sentiments of 
 Arjuna are repudiated by Krishna in verses that are in a 
 way sublime and beautiful, and that, from a pantheistic 
 view of the world, point out the folly of all dread of 
 death, and the duty of energy and resignation, but 
 which, judged by the moral sense of mankind, are 
 more than sufficient to deprive the Gita of any claim to 
 be regarded as a Divine revelation. 
 
 ' Know THAT to be indestructible by whom all this is pervaded. 
 Nor can any work the destruction of that imperishable One. These 
 bodies of the embodied One, which is eternal, indestructible, and 
 boundless, are known as finite. Therefore fight, O Bharata. He who 
 regardeth the dweller in the body as a slayer, and he who thinketh 
 it is slain, both of them are ignorant. It slayeth not, nor is it slain. 
 
 ■ Gita, i. 34, 35, 37. 
 
132 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 It is not born, nor doth it die : nor having been, ceaseth it any more to 
 be : unborn, perpetual, eternal and ancient, it is not slain when 
 the body is slaughtered. . . . Further, looking upon thine own 
 dharma, thou shouldest not tremble ; for there is nothing more welcome 
 to a Kshatriya than righteous war. . . . But if thou wilt not carry on 
 this righteous warfare, then, casting away thine own dharma and thine 
 honour, thou wilt incur sin. . . . Slain, thou wilt obtain Svarga 
 (heaven) ; victorious, thou wilt enjoy the earth ; therefore stand up, 
 O son of Kunti, resolute to fight. ' ' 
 
 It will be observed that Krishna's arguments are not 
 based on the justice of the war, but on transcendental 
 doctrines regarding the impassive and immortal constitution 
 of the soul — teaching which would be equally applicable 
 to the most unrighteous warfare, and, indeed, to murder 
 generally; and teaching which, in recent years, has gone 
 dangerously near to inciting and justifying seditious acts in 
 India. Then Krishna urges the slaughter on another 
 ground. It is the duty of a soldier of the Kshatriya or 
 warrior caste to fight. The institution of caste is everywhere 
 upheld in the Gita, and the necessity of performing its 
 duties is one of the chief aims of the author. ' The four 
 castes emanated from Me, by the different distribution of 
 energies and actions ; know Me to be the author of them, 
 though the actionless and inexhaustible.'^ The Creator 
 of all is thus the ' Author ' of a system that has done more 
 to alienate one class from another and to stifle the feelings 
 of human brotherhood than any other, and which is now 
 acknowledged by Hindus themselves to be the root of the 
 worst evils of the land. 
 
 Buddhism, while it had encouraged atheism and denied 
 the existence of the soul, had brought deliverance to the 
 priest-ridden and caste-ridden communities of India. In 
 relaxing the duties of caste, it had done much to destroy 
 the profession of the Kshatriyas, and had further disin- 
 
 ■ Gita, ii. 17-ZO, 31, 33, 37. = Ibid., iv. 13. 
 
THE GITA AND CASTE 133 
 
 tegrated society by allowing all persons who desired it 
 to become ascetics. The author of the Gita, himself a 
 Brahman, rallied the warriors to their calling by teaching 
 that caste was a Divine institution, and that the fulfilment 
 of its duties would provide an ' open door to heaven ' ; and 
 this counterblast to the Buddhist heresy not only fixes 
 the comparatively modern date of the poem— the persecution 
 of Buddhism being in active operation during the fifth and 
 sixth centuries of our era — but helps us to see something 
 of the political motive that led the author to make use 
 of the supernatural medium of the Mahabharata for the 
 exposition of his philosophy. But if caste be a Divine and 
 stereotyped institution, there is no limit to its obligations, 
 and descendants of hereditary robbers and murderers, such 
 as the Indian Thugs, would be justified in following the 
 profession of their fathers. Further, if fighting and slaying 
 are lawful because they are caste duties, there is an end to 
 all moral constraint. Bishop Caldwell has well said : 
 ' Krishna's teaching on these heads elevates the con- 
 ventional duties of the institutions of a dark age above the 
 essential distinction between right and wrong ; and we may 
 freely assert that Arjuna's hu7nan — it may well be styled 
 humane — compassion and generosity is far preferable to the 
 strong-hearted philosophy which Krishna professes to be 
 Divine. It is poison administered in honey.' ' And it 
 may be safely said that nothing but party and political bias 
 could ever suggest such teaching. 
 
 The Gita doctrine of God would seem to be that of the 
 older Upanishads rather than the strictly Advaita doctrine 
 of the Vedanta. He is the Soul of the world, its material 
 as well as its efificient Cause, the universe being an evolution 
 of Himself; and at the end of a Kalpa, or age, dissolving 
 into His all-containing self. ' Know Th.\t (the neuter 
 ' 'Krishna and the Bhagavad-gita,' Madras (C. L. S.). 
 
134 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Abstract) to be indestructible by whom all this is pervaded.' 
 ' I am the going forth of the whole universe, and likewise 
 its dissolving.' ' All this is woven in me as multitudes of 
 jewels on a string.' ' Know me as the eternal seed of all 
 beings.' ' According to this pantheistic teaching, as we 
 have seen, the basest forms of creation are Divine, and the 
 most immoral actions, not only permitted, but perpetrated 
 by Deity itself. Unlike the Upanishads, however, the 
 Divine Being has a dual nature, revealing himself to Arjuna 
 in his supreme form, and, again, in an extravagant passage, 
 the pupil beholding him in a lower nature, answering to 
 the Prakriti of Kapila, and as possessed, moreover, of count- 
 less faces, ipouths, and eyes, and arms, all blazing like a 
 thousand suns,^ thereby resembling the Puranic description 
 of the Deity as a great mundane animal. But this attempted 
 blending of pantheistn and polytheism lands the author in 
 fatal contradiction. ' Those without buddhi (intellect) 
 think of me, the unmanifest, as having manifestation ; they 
 know not my supreme nature, imperishable, most excellent.' 3 
 And yet the unmanifested becomes manifest in the most 
 striking manner. 
 
 The same inconsistency appears in the attempt to har- 
 monize the different schools of philosophy, especially the 
 Sankhya and the Vedanta. The metaphysics of the 
 Sankhya as regards Purusha and Prakriti are adopted. 
 ' Know that Prakriti (matter in its widest sense) and 
 Purusha (soul) are both without beginning ; and know thou 
 also that modifications and qualities are all Prakriti-born.' ■* 
 That is to say, the different qualities of men, higher or 
 lower, refined or base, are the result of the three gunas — 
 goodness (sattva), passion {rajas), and darkness {tamas) — 
 the ingredients or constituent elements of which Prakriti or 
 
 ' Gita, vii. 6, 7, 10. « Ibid. xi. 16, 17. 
 
 3 Ibid. vii. 24. 4 Ibid. xiii. 19. 
 
THE GITA AND INCARNATIONS , 135 
 
 Nature is constituted.' But there are said to be itvo kinds 
 of Prakriti, which is an essential change. ' Earth, water, 
 fire, air, ether,' etc. 'This the inferior. Know my other 
 Prakriti, the higher, the hfe-element, by which the universe 
 is upheld.' ^ And in order to further reconcile the Sankhya 
 and the Vedanta, the doctrine of a Supreme Being presiding 
 over Prakriti and Purusha is added, which is a fundamental 
 alteration. 'Spectator and permitter, supporter, enjoyer, 
 the great Isvara, thus is styled the supreme Self — in this 
 body the supreme Purusha.' 3 Moreover, by declaring that 
 all qualities, whether good or bad, proceed from Krishna, the 
 distinctions of virtue and vice are again obscured, and 
 moral responsibility paralyzed. ' The natures that are 
 Sattvic, Rajasic, Tamasic, these know as from me ; not 
 I in them, but they in me.' ^ 
 
 Further, the all-comprehensive Gita teaches the purely 
 Vedantic doctrine of Maya, which has been already con- 
 sidered. 'Though unborn, the imperishable Self, and also 
 the Lord of all beings, ruling over Nature, which is mine 
 own, yet I am born through my own Maya.' ' This Divine 
 Maya of mine, Guna-made, is hard to pierce ; they who 
 come to me, they cross over this Maya.' ' Nor am I of all 
 discovered, enveloped in my Yoga-Maya. This deluded 
 world knoweth me not, the unborn, the imperishable.' = 
 
 One is inclined to ask if the Gita's distinctive doctrine 
 of avatdras, or incarnations, is also Maya, or illusion. If 
 real, no more unsuitable character could have been chosen 
 to represent the Supreme, and to become the great destroyer 
 of sin and the deliverer of the world. Krishna is repre- 
 sented as saying : ' As often as there is a decline of virtue 
 
 ' This subject is further treated in the chapters on Karma and 
 Transmigration. 
 
 = Gita, vii. 4, 5. ■' Ibid,, xiii. 22. ■• Ibid., vii. 12. 
 
 s Ibid., iv. 6 ; vii. 14, 25. 
 
136 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 or an increase of vice in the world, I create myself anew ; 
 and thus I appear from age to age for the preservation of 
 the just, the destruction of the wicked, and establishment 
 of virtue.' ' And, again, in words that seem to be almost 
 an echo of the Gospel : ' Renouncing all dharmas, come 
 unto me alone for shelter ; sorrow not, I will liberate thee 
 from all sins.' ^ There could not be a more complete 
 contrast between these signs of a true incarnation and what 
 we learn elsewhere to have been the whole tone and course 
 of Krishna's life. The Bhagavata Purana is said to have 
 been related by a sage to a king, who, after listening to the 
 account of Krishna's debaucheries, inquired how it was that 
 he who became incarnate for the ' establishment of virtue ' 
 and the repression of vice could have been guilty of such 
 corrupt practices. The reply was : ' The transgression of 
 virtue and the daring acts which are witnessed in superior 
 beings must not be charged as faults to these glorious 
 persons. . . . Let no other than a superior being ever even 
 in thought practise the same.' 3 In spite of this excellent 
 advice, there cannot be a doubt that people have followed 
 Krishna's steps, and that the same character which in the 
 Gita is set forth as the Divine one, has fouled the imagina- 
 tion and stained the purity of many minds and households. 
 It has been aptly said that 'the Krishna of the Bhagavad- 
 gita was bound to appear for the destruction of such 
 characters as the Krishna of the Bhagavata.' But, at the 
 best, nowhere is the amazing superiority of Christianity 
 over Hinduism more manifest than in the character of 
 their respective incarnations, the fair Figure of the Gospels 
 being not only historically real, but the perfection of reason 
 and the summit of all religious truth, and rising in moral 
 purity and self-devotion, not simply above the level of 
 
 ■ Gita, iv. 7, 8. " Ibid., xviii. 66. 
 
 '^ ' Bhagavata Purana,' X. xxxiii. 27-40. 
 
THE GIT A AND THE VEDAS 137 
 
 ordinary human nature, but far above the highest and best 
 in ourselves, till we find that we can form no worthier 
 conception of God Himself than we have in the face and 
 character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The fundamental defect of the Gita, therefore, from the 
 Christian standpoint is that it nowhere exhibits any sense 
 of the real evil of sin as a violation of moral government, 
 and makes no provision whereby sin may be justly forgiven, 
 and its thraldom and guilt removed. No Divine grace and 
 truth are revealed which have any power to renew and 
 sanctify the soul. 
 
 Though accounted orthodox, its attitude towards the 
 previous Vedic revelation and its doctrine of sacrifice, with 
 which it might be supposed to claim some continuity, is 
 surprising ; for, though originally imparted by the breath 
 Divine, it is set aside as quite inferior science. But one 
 revelation cannot thus lightly degrade another. ' A flowery 
 doctrine, promising the reward of works performed in this 
 embodied state, presenting numerous ceremonies, with a 
 view to future gratification and glory, is prescribed by 
 unlearned men, devoted to the injunctions of the Veda, 
 assertors of its exclusive importance, lovers of enjoyment, 
 and seekers after paradise. The restless minds of the men 
 who, through this flowery doctrine, have become bereft of 
 wisdom and are ardent in the pursuit of future gratification 
 and glory are not applied to contemplation. The Vedas 
 have for their objects the three qualities (or gunas) ; but be 
 thou, Arjuna, free from them. ... As great as is the use 
 of a well which is surrounded on all sides by overflowing 
 waters, so great (and no greater) is the use of the Veda 
 to a Brahman endowed with true knowledge.' ' 
 
 The salvation the Gita teaches is not a salvation from 
 sin, but from the bondage of repeated births — the complete 
 ' Translation in Muir's Sanskrit Texts of ii. 42-46. 
 
138 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 separation of spirit from matter. The grand dogma of the 
 Gita, as it is of the Upanishads and of all the schools of 
 Hindu philosophy, ancient and more modern, is that of 
 Karma and transmigration, or the inevitable fruit of action in 
 this life and in countless others. Governed as man is in all 
 his actions by the three gunas — properties inherent in his 
 nature — such actions, good or bad, give of necessity fresh 
 birth to the soul ; and desire and passion, which give rise 
 to action, must be suppressed and glestroyed before the 
 soul can obtain final deliverance. With such fatalism 
 underlying the whole system of things, it is difficult to see 
 any place for a redeemer such as Krishna offers himself 
 to be, or any room for interference with inexorable law. 
 Law and mercy find no consistent reconciliation ; reason 
 points one way, and the heart another ; pantheism can 
 know no mediator. 
 
 A few verses will be quoted descriptive of this doctrine 
 of Karma and transmigration, which Professor Wilson says 
 is ' the main principle of all Hindu metaphysics, the 
 foundation of all Hindu philosophy ' ; while the full con- 
 sideration of the subject will occupy later chapters. ' As a 
 man casting off worn-out garments taketh new ones, so the 
 dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth 
 into others that are new.' ' Many births have been left 
 behind by me and by thee, O Arjuna. I know them all, 
 but thou knowest not l:hine.' ' Having attained to the 
 worlds of the pure-goirig, and having dwelt there for 
 eternal years, he who fell from Yoga is reborn in a pure 
 and blessed house : or else he is born into a family of 
 intelligent Yogis; but such a birth as that is hard to 
 obtain in this world.' 'At the close of many births the 
 man full of wisdom cometh unto me.' ' They who strive 
 for liberation from birth and death, refuged in me, they 
 know Brahman, that whole, Adhyatma, and all Karma.' 
 
DISINTERESTED ACTION 139 
 
 ' The expansion that causes the birth of beings is named 
 Karma.' ' He whose buddhi (intellect) is everywhere 
 unattached, the self subdued, dead to desires, he goeth 
 to the supreme perfection of freedom from Karma by 
 renunciation.' » 
 
 Various methods are thus prescribed by which the soul 
 may obtain salvation, and oneness with Krishna be 
 attained. Energetic action is enjoined in one place, 
 extreme quietism in another ; elsewhere the method of 
 knowledge or wisdom is advocated ; and crowning all is 
 the bhakti doctrine, or personal devotion and faith. While 
 admitting, as a Brahman would, the supreme place held by 
 knowledge in the Sankhya and Vedanta systems, and the 
 place of mortification in the Yoga of Patanjali, the author 
 yet frequently insists on the superiority of the Karma- 
 Yoga, or salvation by works. It is evident that the 
 reason for this was, as we have seen, to recall the 
 Kshatriyas to their necessary duties — one of the chief 
 objects of the poem ; but, in order to harmonize it with 
 the other doctrines, it is carefully guarded by further 
 teaching, in which there is much truth beautifully ex- 
 pressed, and quite in accordance with Christianity. 
 Actions are to be disinterested, and not performed for 
 the sake of reward. 'Therefore, without attachment, 
 constantly perform action which is duty ; for, performing 
 action without attachment, man verily reacheth the 
 Supreme.' ' The harmonized man, having abandoned 
 the fruit of action, attaineth to everlasting peace ; the 
 non-harmonized, impelled by desire, attached to fruit, 
 are bound.' = And yet we read : ' Having abandoned all 
 attachment to the fruit of action, always content, seeking 
 refuge in none, although doing actions, he is not doing 
 
 ' Gita, ii. 22 ; iv. 5 ; vi. 41, 42 ; vii. 19, 29 ; viii. 3 ; xviii. 49. 
 ' Ibid., iii. 19 ; iv. 12. 
 
I40 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 anything' — where action in itself is depreciated, and re- 
 nunciation of action would seem, after all, to be the 
 higher way. And, again: 'Far lower than Buddhi-Yoga 
 is action.' ' ' With these perplexing words thou only 
 confusest my understanding,' pleaded the pupil ; and so 
 Krishna said : ' In this world there is a twofold path . . . 
 that of Yoga by knowledge — of the Sankhyas ; and that 
 of Yoga (union) by action — of the Yogis.' ^ And, after 
 declaring, ' Even if thou art among all evil men the most 
 evil-doing, yet shalt thou escape from all sin by the raft of 
 wisdom,' the palm goes in the end to the Yogi. 'The 
 Yogi is greater than the ascetics; he is thought to be 
 greater than even the wise ; the Yogi is greater than the 
 men of action ; therefore become thou a Yogi, O Arjuna.' 3 
 But we are not told how Arjuna was to practise Yoga on 
 the battlefield, and slay his kinsmen at the same time, so 
 difficult is it to harmonize conflicting methods of piety. 
 
 The Yoga of Patanjali expressed the act of concentrating 
 the mind in abstract meditation, and this was to be effected 
 by ' the suppression of the transformations or modifications 
 of the thinking principle.' It was the means by which the 
 most extraordinary occult and magical powers were to be 
 attained, through processes of extreme asceticism, which 
 have reached their legitimate development in the inflictions 
 and aberrations of the Bhairagis and Saktas of Bengal. In 
 the Gita, however, the Yoga philosophy is stripped of its 
 distinctive features for the sake of compromise and in order 
 to secure the semblance of unity with other theories, and 
 appears in a more refined and rational form, as a contempla- 
 tive quietism not unknown in the classical philosophies of 
 Europe, though not without a grotesque phase of its own. 
 ' In a pure place, established on a fixed seat, neither very 
 much raised nor very low, made of a cloth, a black antelope 
 ■ Gita, iv. 20; ii. 49. " Ibid., iii. 2, 3. 3 Ibid., iv. 36; vi. 46. 
 
THE .GITA AND YOGA 141 
 
 skin and kusha grass ; there, having made Manas (mind) 
 one-pointed, with thought and the functions of the senses 
 subdued, steady on his seat, he should practise Yoga for the 
 purification of the self. Body, head, and neck balanced, 
 immovably steady, looking fixedly at the point of the nose, 
 with unwandering gaze, the self serene, fearless, firm in the 
 vow of the Brahmachari, Manas controlled, thinking on 
 me, harmonized, let him sit concentrated on me.' ' 
 
 The defects as well as the elements of truth in the 
 methods of ' knowledge ' and ' Yoga ' will be further con- 
 sidered as we proceed with our examination of the general 
 doctrines of the Vedanta ; and we pass to a brief notice 
 of the Gita's special doctrine of bhakti, or personal devotion 
 and faith, where we find ourselves in the region of distinctly 
 Christian sentiment and truth. ' Among all Yogis, he . 
 who with the inner self abideth in me, who, full of faith, 
 adoreth me, he is considered by me to be the most com- 
 pletely harmonized.' ' To the gods go the worshippers of 
 the gods, but my devotees come unto me.' ' They verily 
 who worship me with devotion, they are in me, and I also 
 in them.' ' Know thou certainly that my devotee is never 
 destroyed.' ' Thinking on me, thou shalt conquer all 
 obstacles by my grace.' ^ 
 
 In these words, which certainly call to mind parallel 
 expressions in the Gospels, we have indicated a high level 
 of religious experience — trustful and ardent attachment to 
 an object represented as Divine. And this sentiment has 
 swayed the minds of India's millions in a way that no philo- 
 sophy has ever done, clearly showing what the hearts of the 
 people need. For the author of the Gita took a leaf out of 
 the book of Buddha, who proclaimed a salvation free to all, 
 and his enthusiasm for humanity was the secret of his 
 success. The author of the Gita makes Krishna — though 
 
 ■ Gita, vi II-I4. " Ibid., vi. 47 ; vii. 23 ; ix. 29, 31 ; xviii. 58. 
 
142 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the very opposite of Buddha in moral character — the centre 
 of his system, and the rallying-point for rival sects, and, by 
 laying stress on the natural traits of devotion and love, 
 also proclaims a salvation within the reach of even Sudras 
 and women — classes of small account in orthodox Brah- 
 manism. 
 
 All this, as we have seen, is quite opposed to strict 
 Vedantic teaching, where the unmanifested knows no 
 manifestation, and where our sole business is to realize 
 our identity with an impersonal and unqualified Brahma, 
 not by devotion to any person, but solely by devotion to 
 knowledge. In such a system there can be no God outside 
 ourselves^ and no such virtue as dependence on the grace 
 of a personal Being, and it is difficult to see how two such 
 diametrically opposite habits of thought can both reach the 
 same end. It is true that Sankaracharya, with the consis- 
 tency of his system, disallows any substituting of bhakti for 
 knowledge, only granting the mere method of devotion as a 
 concession to lower minds, and as a preparatory stage to a 
 higher level of piety ; while it has to be further remembered 
 that any personal or ' lower Brahman,' such as Isvara, is, in 
 the Advaita school, only an illusion, to whom no whole- 
 hearted devotion can possibly be given. In the Visishtad- 
 vaita, or qualified system of Ramanuja, however, where 
 there is no such distinction between a higher and a lower 
 Brahman, and where personal and gracious qualities are 
 predicated of the Supreme Deity, the bhakti doctrine holds 
 a true place ; but the one philosophy cannot help the 
 other. 
 
 That the severely monistic doctrine fails to satisfy the 
 heart is seen in the case of the most remarkable Indian 
 ascetic and devotee of the last century, the late Rama- 
 krishna of Bengal, albeit the Vedanta forms the background 
 of all his devotional meditation. These are some of his 
 
THE EMOTIONAL PATH 143 
 
 words : ' God is the Absolute and Eternal Brahman, as 
 well as the Father of the universe. The indivisible 
 Brahman is like a vast shoreless ocean, without bounds 
 and limits, in which I can only struggle and sink. But 
 when I approach the always sportive (active) Deity (Hari), 
 I get peace, like the sinking man who nears the shore.' 
 In the depths of the impersonal we are like to perish ; the 
 personal is the haven of peace. This Indian saint was an 
 ardent bhakta ; and, indeed, the familiar language he some- 
 times uses of the Deity borders on the irreverent, as he 
 himself seems to admit. ' A true devotee who has drunk 
 deep of Divine Love is like a veritable drunkard, and, as 
 such, cannot always observe the rules of propriety.' ' What 
 is the strength of a devotee ? He is a child of God, and 
 tears are his greatest strength.' ' 
 
 But here, again, there is no clear perception of what 
 real religion is ; the tears are to take the place of prayer. 
 ' Devotional practices are necessary only so long as tears of 
 ecstasy do not flow at hearing the name of Hari. He needs 
 no devotional practices whose heart is moved to tears at the 
 mere mention of the name of Hari.' ^ 
 
 If Divine love is such a lofty and inspiring quality, which 
 will be freely admitted by the Christian, to whom ' God is 
 love,' and if, according to Swami Vivekananda, to the man 
 who loves God, the bhakta, ' to him God exists entirely as 
 love,' we may well ask : Must not this passionate love, of 
 which the devotee is so conscious, and which, if love means 
 anything, calls for some response from the Being who is 
 loved, exist also in the Highest : and if not, does not the 
 bhakti doctrine cast a reflection on the imperfect nature of 
 the Supreme ? so much so that Krishna or Hari cannot be 
 
 ■ Max Miiller's ' Ramakrishna.' 'Sayings,' 31, 104, 92. (Long- 
 mans, Green and Co. ; London, 1898.) 
 •■ Ibid., 357. 
 
144 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 regarded as correct manifestations of the unmanifested, and 
 the worshippers themselves, by possessing a virtue not 
 possessed by their chief Deity, must be really greater than 
 he. Swami Vivekananda goes so far as to say that : ' When 
 this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown 
 away';' but if the bhakta has reached a stage beyond 
 which there is no need to proceed further, what becomes 
 of the final moksha to which all souls should aspire, and to 
 which the bhakti-yoga is only a way ? 
 
 It is evident that both Vivekananda and his master, 
 Ramakrishna, regard the emotional path as a convenient 
 route for those who cannot undergo the strain of hard 
 intellectual exercises ; for, as the Gita says : ' The difficulty 
 of those whose minds are set on the unmanifested is 
 greater ; for the path of the unmanifested is hard for the 
 embodied to reach.' ^ And yet it is doubtful if the bhakti- 
 yoga is so much easier than the jnana-yoga. It requires a 
 rare emotional equipment, and also the very difficult power 
 of controlling the passions ; and as this power has to be 
 j-«^created — for the disciple has to be ' balanced in pleasure 
 and pain, self-reliant, to whom a lump of earth, a rock and 
 gold are alike ' 3 — since everything depends upon ourselves, 
 many impassioned and phlegmatic souls have, after all, to 
 fall back on the karma-yoga — the way of works. Moreover, 
 it appears that philosophy is not to be ' thrown away ' so 
 lightly, for the notion of the Supreme Brahman has still to 
 be kept in mind ; otherwise ' the worshipper gets entirely 
 misled.' Swami Vivekananda tells us : ' If, as it may 
 happen in some cases, the highly philosophical ideal, the 
 Supreme Brahman, is himself dragged down by Pratlka 
 worship to the level of the Pratika, and the Prattka itself 
 is taken to be the Atman of the worshipper or his Antar- 
 
 3 Brahmavadin, vol. i., p. 253. 
 
 ' Gita, xii. 5. '^ Ibid., xiv. 24. 
 
THE OBJECT OF BHAKTI YOGA 145 
 
 yamin, the worshipper gets entirely misled, as no Pratika 
 can really be the Atman of the worshipper.' ' So it comes 
 to this, that the worship and devotion are, after all, unreal, 
 and that the object loved is not the same as the object 
 known : and if some right understanding of the Supreme is 
 still possible, where is the necessity for the lower illusory 
 worship ? 
 
 This confusion and contradiction arises from separating 
 two things that must ever be united in true religion — know- 
 ledge and love. They are two reciprocal powers of the 
 religious life, standing in intimate connection, and ever 
 acting and re-acting on each other. ' We love God because 
 He first loved us' (i John iv. 19) : that is a fact of know- 
 ledge revealed to us in human history. We must have 
 some knowledge of a person before we can love at all; 
 and then further knowledge comes through devotion, and 
 we must love, to know. And Christ, the revealer of God, 
 is the revealer of Love ; and the Object loved is the Object 
 known. 
 
 The bhakti-yoga, beautiful and true as a form of piety, 
 is in Hinduism defective and unreliable ; since, on the one 
 hand, the devotee must keep in impossible touch with the 
 impersonal — the highest Brahman — in which case the lower 
 exercise is superfluous ; or, on the other hand, be attached 
 to an incarnation, such as Krishna, when the doctrine of 
 love is sure to be carried to excess, and the devotee is in 
 danger of being worked up to a pitch of madness, until the 
 whole thing assumes degrading forms, as in the corrupt 
 literature of Puranic Vaishnavism, from which the moral 
 sense recoils. In bhakti worship everything depends on a 
 worthy object ; and, however elevated may be the doctrines 
 preached, as they are in the Gita, the method itself only 
 drags the devotee down to the lowest depths, if the central 
 
 ' Brahmavadin, vol. i., p. 192. 
 II 
 
146 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 attraction is at fault. In what striking contrast stands out 
 the spiritual relation of Christ to His Church — His holy 
 Bride. ' Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for 
 it ' (Eph. V. 25) ; and in that sublime act of self-sacrifice is 
 kindled all the pure and passionate devotion of His disciples. 
 The bhakti of the Gita has at least its parallel in the bhakti 
 of the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages, who, in fer- 
 vent longing and complete self-surrender, seemed to take 
 possession of Christ for their very own, and whose souls, in 
 calm detachment from the world, held personal intercourse 
 with the Divine Lover and Sanctifier of men. Here the 
 Hindu doctrine of bhakti, which feels after the very highest 
 truth, and yet, in common with so many other parts of the 
 great system of Hinduism, is so imperfectly comprehended, 
 finds for the first time a worthy Object ; while the hidden 
 mystery of its incarnations and sacrifices and austerities is 
 clearly revealed. The bhakti -yoga finds no legitimate place 
 in the highest philosophy of India; but in the way in which 
 it has captivated the heart of the people it bears witness to 
 a vital truth, and declares that there must be a soil some- 
 where where it may safely grow, and a home where it may 
 be fitly naturalized. That soil and home are found in the 
 religion of Christ ; and Hindus will yet learn to transfer 
 their allegiance from Krishna to Christ, and to find in Him 
 a new creative centre on which mystic, sannyasin, and 
 bhakta may fix their profoundest thought and lavish their 
 most ardent devotion. 
 
 The Bhagavad-gita, then, while possessing a gentle charm 
 and real beauty of its own, and being more Christian in 
 sentiment than any other Indian literature ; which can 
 inculcate such virtues as 'fearlessness, purity of heart, 
 steadfastness, self-restraint, harmlessness, truth, absence of 
 wrath, renunciation, peacefulness, absence of calumny, 
 compassion to living beings, uncovetousness, mildness. 
 
KRISHNA THE MANSLAYER 147 
 
 modesty, absence of fickleness, boldness, forgiveness, for- 
 titude, uprightness, amity, absence of pride,' ' as Divine 
 and human properties — while being all this, and therefore 
 affording devotional help to Eastern minds, the poem con- 
 tains nothing good that is not found in Christianity, and 
 there realized in a perfect form, and centring in a sinless 
 Personality and Pattern. Its claim to be a Divine revela- 
 tion is destroyed at the outset by the immoral doctrine that 
 justifies in a transcendental manner the taking of human 
 life. ' Time am I,' says Sri Krishna, ' laying desolate the 
 world, made manifest on earth to slay mankind ! Not one 
 of all~ these warriors ranged for strife escapeth death ; thou 
 shalt alone survive. Therefore stand up ! win for thyself 
 renown. Conquer thy foes, enjoy the spacious realm. By 
 me they are already overcome ; be thou the outward cause, 
 left-handed one. Drona and Bhishma and Jayadratha, 
 Kama, and all the other warriors here, are slain by me. 
 Destroy them fearlessly, fight ! thou shalt crush thy rivals 
 in the field.' =' Such teaching, dangerous and inhuman, 
 coupled with the stubborn fact that the Supreme Being is 
 throughout the Krishna who figures elsewhere in Indian 
 books as anything but Divine, deprive the Gita of any claim 
 to constitute a safe and sufficient guide — moral, political, or 
 religious — for the coming generations of India. 
 
 ■ Gita, xvi. 1-3. " Ibid., xi. 32-34. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE VEDANTA AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Best Points oi the Upanishads — Other-worldliness — Purity of Mind — 
 The Self in All — Abides in the Heart — In touch with Christian 
 Mysticism — Knowledge of the Divine, and Immortality — These 
 Truths realized in the Bible — Examination of Vedanta Knowledge 
 of the Absolute — Its Destructive and Agnostic Character — Revela- 
 tion rejected — Thoughts instead of Things — Knowledge and Faith 
 — Man's Chief Need — Christ's Knowledge of and Revelation of 
 God — Through Life to Knowledge — Trustworthiness of Christ. 
 
 We have seen in our study of the Bhagavad-gita that the 
 chief requisite in the reh'gious life of India, in the search 
 for the Divine, is detachment from outward things, and 
 purification of the senses and passions — the special equip- 
 ment of the ascetic. And there are many beautiful utter- 
 ances scattered throughout the Upanishads, relating to the 
 vanity and fleeting character of all earthly things, which 
 is the prevailing sentiment of the ancient Indian mind, 
 leading it on to the conception of the one Eternal Reality. 
 ' Those who imagine,' says the sage, ' that oblations and 
 pious gifts are the highest object of man are fools; they 
 do not know what is good ; but those who with subdued 
 senses, with knowledge, and the practices of the duties of a 
 mendicant in the forest follow austerity and faith, go freed 
 
 148 
 
OTHER WORLDLINESS 149 
 
 from sin, to the abode of the immortal Spirit.' " ' I know 
 that what is called a treasure is transient, for that Eternal 
 is not obtained by things which are not eternal.' " ' The 
 hereafter never rises before the eyes of the careless child, 
 deluded by the delusion of wealth.' 3 ' When all the ties 
 of the heart are severed here on earth, then the mortal 
 becomes immortal.' '^ 
 
 This ' other-worldliness ' — India's truest and most 
 beautiful trait, which should never be lost — is distinctly 
 Christian ; for we are told ' not to lay up treasures upon 
 the earth, but in heaven' (Matt. vi. 19, 20); to 'love not 
 the world, neither the things that are in the world' (i John 
 ii. 15) ; to 'look not at the things which are seen, but at 
 the things which are not seen' (2 Cor. iv. 18). Numerous, 
 too, are the passages in the Upanishads that dwell on 
 purity and tranquillity as essentials for seeing the Supreme. 
 ' A man who is free from desires and free from grief sees 
 the majesty of the Self by the grace of the Creator, s ' He 
 who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who 
 is not tranquil and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, 
 he can never obtain the Self by knowledge.' ^ ' When a 
 man's nature has become purified by the serene light of 
 knowledge, then He sees him.' ^ The many precepts of the 
 Bible bearing upon the spiritual condition required for a 
 vision of God may be summed up in the words of Christ : 
 ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ' 
 (Matt. v. 8) ; while the quahties of passion and darkness 
 (rajas and tavias) that cling to the ' elemental self of the 
 Upanishads are very similar to those of the ' natural man ' 
 of the Apostle Paul (Gal. v. 19-21). 
 
 But these old books reach their highest level of spiritual 
 
 ' Mundaka Upanishad, I. ii. 10, 11. 
 
 " Katha.-Upan., ii. 11. ^ Ibid., ii. 6. ■• Ibid., vi. 15. 
 
 = Ibid., ii. 20. ^ Ibid., ii. 24. ' Mund.-Upan., III. i. 8. 
 
ISO ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 thought in the expression they give to the sense of the 
 Infinite— the Self within all things. ' What is that, know- 
 ing which, all is known ?' ' If in this world a person knows 
 the Self, then the true end of all human aspirations is 
 gained ; if a person does not know the Self, there will be a 
 great calamity. The wise who discern in all beings the 
 Brahman become immortal after departing from the 
 world.' ' ' He, the highest Person, who is awake in us 
 while we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after another, 
 that indeed is the Bright, that is Brahman, that alone is 
 called the Immortal.'' 'The Infinite is bliss. There is 
 no bliss in anything finite.' 3 ' Lord of the universe, glory 
 to thee. Thou art the Self of all, thou art the Maker of 
 all, the enjoyer of all ; thou art all life, and the lord of all 
 pleasure and joy. Glory to thee, the tranquil, the immea- 
 surable, without beginning and without end.' 't ' His form 
 cannot be seen ; no one perceives him with the eye. s 
 
 It is the distinctive teaching of the Upanishads that the 
 Supreme — the Brahman — abides in the. heart, and is to be 
 found in the heart ; and this, perhaps, constitutes the most 
 important contribution which these ancient writings make 
 to religious thought : the immanence of Deity in the soul 
 of man, and the Divine nature of the Soul itself; that 
 God's witness is within — -in the spiritual part of us ; that 
 man's heart is the dwelling-place he seeks. ' More subtle 
 than an atom, greater than the greatest of existences, It 
 makes its dwelling in the cavity of the heart of every man.' 
 ' He who understands all and knows all, he to whom all 
 this glory in the world belongs, the Self, is placed in the 
 ether, in the heavenly city of Brahman, the heart.' ^ It is 
 true that a materialistic aspect seems often given to this 
 
 ' Talav.-Upan., ii. 5. ^ Katha.-Upan., v. 8. 
 
 3 Chhand-Upan., VII. xxiii. * Mait.-Brah.-Upan., v. i. 
 
 ^ Svet.-Upan., iv. 20. <■ Mund.-Upan., II ii. 7. 
 
DIVINE INDWELLING 151 
 
 thought, and the attempt is made to locate the Deity, as 
 well as to establish his presence by the evidence of the 
 senses. ' ' He moves about, becoming manifold within the 
 heart, where the arteries meet, like spokes fastened to the 
 nave.' = But again : ' He is the one God, hidden in all 
 beings, all-pervading, the Self within all beings, watching 
 over all works, the witness, the perceiver, the only One, free 
 from qualities.'3 ' Now that light which shines above this 
 heaven, in the highest worlds, beyond which there are no 
 other worlds, that is the same light which is within man'i— 
 calling to mind the words of the Apostle John : ' That was 
 the true light, which lighteth every man coming into the 
 world ' (John i. 9). 
 
 For this Divine indwelling is one of the most precious 
 truths taught in the Bible also — the presence and power of 
 the Living God in the soul — though realized in an alto- 
 gether different way, and free from any extreme pantheistic 
 conception. ' Thus saith the high and lofty One that 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy : I dwell in the 
 high and holy place, tvith him also that is of a contrite and 
 humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to 
 revive the heart of the contrite ones ' (Isa. Ivii. 15) — of which 
 contrition, however, we hear little in the Upanishads. It 
 is the absorbing thought of the Christian mystic, who 
 delights to think of God as dwelhng in the heart, in the 
 inmost recesses of the soul, as one of them pleads : 
 
 ' Within ! within ! oh turn 
 Thy spirit's eyes, and learn 
 Thy wandering senses gently to control ; 
 Thy dearest Friend dwells deep within thy soul, 
 And asks thyself of thee, 
 
 That heart, and mind, and sense, He may make whole 
 In perfect harmony.' 
 
 ' Chhand.-Upan., III. xiii. 7, 8. = Mund.-Upan., II. ii. 6. 
 
 ' Svet.-Upan., vi. 11. ■• Chhand.-Upan., III. xiii. 7. 
 
152 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Turning to the New Testament, we find these truths, 
 which the ancient sages were feeling after in so remarkable 
 a manner, shining luminously in the full light of a noonday 
 sun. If we want further light on the Upanishads, if we 
 want to see their best and highest truths amplified, illumi- 
 nated, realized, we must study the Bible. A devout mind 
 that delights in the most spiritual parts of the Upani- 
 shads cannot but appreciate the Bible. Here this great 
 truth is expressed in a different language. It is Christ, as 
 the Divine Revealer, or the Divine Spirit, as the Regene- 
 rator, who dwells in the heart ; and stress is laid upon the 
 fact that the heart, sinful and impure by nature, is renewed 
 and made fit for the abode of the Holy One, an idea, 
 again, foreign to the Upanishads. ' The Spirit of truth,' 
 says Christ, ' whom the world cannot receive ; for it be- 
 holdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him : ye know Him ; 
 for He abideth with you, and shall h&inyou' (John xiv. 17). 
 ' Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that 
 the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ; (Rom. viii. 9). ' He 
 that keepeth God's commandments abideth in Him, 
 and He in him' (i John iii. 24). ' God is love ; and he 
 that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in 
 him" (i John iv. 12); where we observe the condition of 
 the abiding — 'keeping God's commandments' — and the 
 high place that love occupies in the Christian life. 
 
 Another characteristic thought of the Upanishads is the 
 knowledge possible to the soul of the great Self, and that 
 such knowledge leads to immortality. Indeed, in spite of 
 all their errors and trivialities, the burden of these old 
 books is their ceaseless search after the Infinite ; the eager- 
 ness of the soul to know ; and that it is only the spiritual 
 man who can know Divine realities. ' That God, the 
 Maker of all things, the great Self, always dwelling in the 
 heart of man, is perceived by the heart, the soul, the mind 
 
SEARCH AFTER IMMORTALITY 153 
 
 they who know it become immortal.'' 'The wise who 
 have thought on all things, and recognised the Self in 
 them, become immortal when they have departed from this 
 world.' ' And Indra is represented as saying : ' He who 
 meditates on me as life and immortality gains his full life 
 in this world, and obtains in the svarga (heavenly) world 
 immortality and indestructibility. 3 In these beautiful 
 words, though they give us no revelation of what God is, 
 there is a distinctly Christian truth affirmed : that the 
 knowledge of God is the one essential thing, and that a 
 true knowledge gains immortality. And if we substitute 
 Christ for Indra, the words might be His, for He says : 
 ' This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, Jesus Christ ' 
 (John xvii. 3). ' No man hath seen God at any time ; the 
 only begotten Son (or Word) which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, He hath declared Him ' (John i. 18). And so the 
 Christian Apostle can say : ' And the witness is this, that 
 God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is ht His Son ' 
 (i John V. 11). And Christ Himself can say, in majestic 
 words that no mere human lips could ever utter : ' f am the 
 resurrection and the life : he that believeth on Me, though 
 he die, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth 
 on Me shall never die ' (John xi. 25, 26). 
 
 Christ has 'brought life and immortality to light' 
 (2 Tim. i. i) through His revelation of God, and through 
 His own resurrection from the dead, in which He carried 
 our nature over death in victory. There we have real, 
 objective knowledge. The Divine life is in the Divine 
 Son, and He reveals it and imparts it to all who are united 
 to Him by faith and love. The immortality which before 
 was a Divine instinct and intuition in the soul, and 
 
 ' Svet.-Upan., iv. 17. " Tala.-Upan., ii. 5. 
 
 3 Kaush.-Upan., ii. 2. 
 
IS4 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 developed at one time into a philosophic speculation, 
 and at another time into a saintly hope— and nowhere 
 more strikingly than in ancient India — has become in 
 Christ a glorious reality. In all Christ said, He spoke not 
 with the faltering words of the philosopher, but with the 
 calm authority of one who /tad in Himself the. life of which 
 He spoke. What He brought to light was not a mere 
 dogma of the soul's immortality, but the assurance of full, 
 perfect, and eternal life ; not a mere existence in the 
 future, but the perfection of being for man, begun here 
 and consummated hereafter; for the God whqm Christ 
 reveals is a Living Person, entering into relations of grace 
 with living men, and in whom, therefore, their personal 
 continuance and eternal perfection are secured. 
 
 According to the Upanishads and the Vedanta, then, 
 God can be known, though not, as we shall now see, in the 
 sense understood by them. For what is it ' to know ' ? 
 It is to perceive, or cognize, that which is true or actual, 
 and is always constructive or interpretative of the real 
 world. Knowledge is judgment, in that it affirms some- 
 thing to be real — an act in which we are obliged to think ; 
 and such affirmations are necessary and universal, and 
 consistent with the judgments of other people. Know- 
 ledge — and the same knowledge — is possible to all, because 
 the world outside us is itself a revelation of reason and 
 spirit, with which our reason and spiritual being are in 
 essence one. And on the direct knowledge afforded by our 
 mental and spiritual consciousness, we build up our know- 
 ledge and belief respecting the Divine Being and the 
 spiritual world. But this is not the sober line of the 
 Upanishads, or of the most recent expounders of the 
 Vedanta; they take a bolder step than that. Their 
 speculations are not regulated by either reason or re- 
 velation, but depend solely on subjective theories of their 
 
RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE 155 
 
 own ; and by the understanding of certain Vedic texts, 
 and then going beyond them to a point that transcends the 
 limits of thought and reason, they profess to know or 
 realize exhaustively the highest Brahman, the Absolute 
 Himself — with the one pantheistic aim of identifying 
 subject and object, man and God.' 
 
 This, indeed, is one of the strong and startling positions 
 of the Vedanta, maintained at any rate, by Sankaracharya, 
 but one that cannot be rationally held. For no doctrine of 
 philosophy is more universally accepted than the relativity 
 of human knowledge, as taught especially — in Britain — by 
 Hamilton and Spencer : that we cannot possibly know 
 anything of any kind of ' Substance,' whether mental or 
 rjiaterial, except as the ground of attributes. The ' under- 
 lying substance ' of the Schools — the ' thing in itself ' 
 of Kant — is a mere name, and cannot be known by itself; 
 it is in the sphere of being, not in the sphere of thought. 
 And this is true of the impersonal Essence, the Vedanta 
 Brahma. Ultimate religious ideas, like ultimate scientific 
 ideas, turn out to be ' merely symbols of the actual, not 
 cognitions of it.' ^ Science teaches that no object can be 
 known that cannot be classified ; and since the First Cause, 
 the Absolute, belongs to no class or order as such. He 
 cannot be comprehended in His essential nature — though 
 He may be known relatively to us, and may, therefore, 
 be worshipped and communed with. We are unable to 
 conceive such things as infinite space, or an infinite line, or 
 infinite curves, such as the parabola and hyperbola ; yet we 
 may know something concerning these infinite things. We 
 may not know our nearest friend in his totality ; still, we 
 know him by his manifested relations to us and by his 
 
 ' See 'Vedanta Sutras,' S. B. of E. Series, vol. xxxiv., introd., 
 p. 27. 
 " Spencer's ' First Principles,' p. 68. 
 
iS6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 revealed character. Human knowledge cannot compass 
 the Infinite, though it can conceive the Perfect. 
 
 But the relative nature of this knowledge is exactly what 
 the Vedantist denies, while he yet affirms its absolute 
 nature. Nothing can be predicated of the Impersonal One, 
 except Mtt neti — 'not this, not this.' Scripture, even, 
 can afford us no knowledge ; and since dtman cannot 
 be treated as object, all further inquiry of the cause of 
 knowledge, as Dr. Deussen says, is futile. Nevertheless, 
 the out-and-out Vedantist, like the Hegelian, though not 
 on parallel lines, claims as attainable philosophy a complete 
 knowledge or realization of the Infinite. This, if really 
 attained, would convert philosophy or religion into absolute 
 science. But how is it said to be attained ? The advaitin 
 teaches the existence of God, or the Higher Brahman, but 
 adds as an explanation, which is a mere assumption, that 
 He is possessed of no qualities {nirguna),^ no form 
 (nirdkdra), no difference {nirvisesha), no Umitations 
 (nirupddhika) ; is, indeed, pure Being or Thought itself ; 
 and is to be known, therefore, only by a withdrawal of 
 the senses from every external object, of the mental 
 faculties from their truest cognitions, and by complete 
 suppression of the passions. 
 
 But this is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the 
 term ; and its peculiar nature, and the methods by which it 
 is gained, cannot be brought under scientific or philosophic 
 treatment at all. Since it transcends the ordinary modes 
 of cognition, which are regarded as inapplicable to the 
 Highest Being, there are no rational tests by which it can 
 be judged. Vedantists hold that the soul, being un- 
 conscious, does not cognize anything, for if it did, volition, 
 activity, and consequently happiness and misery, would 
 follow : hence cognition is ascribed to the antahkarana, 
 ' ' Vedanta Sutras, introd.,p. 25. 
 
SUPERCONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE 157 
 
 the ' internal organ,' which consists of mind (manas), 
 intellect (buddhi), egoism (ahamkdra), and thinking {chitfa), 
 and yet is unintelligent, a portion of the phenomenal, and 
 therefore illusory. Swami Vivekananda, who we must 
 always remember was the latest exponent of Vedantism, 
 tells us that all questions relating to the existence of God 
 are ' beyond the field of human reason ' ; but ' man has in 
 himself the faculty of transcending his intellect ' ; ' and 
 in these seasons of ' superconscious experience ' — the 
 experience /ar excellence of the rishis — the mind is brought, 
 by some ecstatic vision, of which we can form no idea, 
 face to face with spiritual truths and facts which could 
 never have been reasoned out. There is, thus, no corre- 
 spondence of thought and truth, no connection between 
 human knowledge as such — though the term 'mind' 
 is still used — and the Supreme. We can afifirm nothing 
 about Him, for He comes into no possible relation to us ; 
 and He is to be realized in this exalted way only when the 
 entire mental and moral constitution — i.e.^ the whole man 
 — which turns out, according to the doctrine of Maya, to be 
 a delusion and a snare, has been dissolved. And we have 
 only to recall the doctrine of Maya — the mainstay of the 
 Vedanta — though itself darkness, to get some light upon the 
 whole subject. For through a belief in Maya, the whole of 
 human knowledge is necessarily discredited, it being simply 
 the generalizations of Illusion, and therefore unrelated to 
 the real and the true. The human mind itself can form 
 no conception of Brahma, the Existent, because the universal 
 forms of thought — time, space, causation— together with 
 Self, are Maya, or unreal ; and it is not till we get behind 
 these, by destroying them, that the vision dawns upon 
 us. And yet, as has been pointed out before, by a strange 
 theoretical inconsistency though a practical necessity, sense 
 ' Raja Yoga, i. 49. 
 
iS8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 symbols are continually being used to illustrate that which 
 is above the sensible, and even conscious plane, and to 
 establish abstract principles : the waves and the sea, the 
 clay and the pot, the million images of the sun in the 
 rain-drops, being specially employed to illustrate the 
 Vedantic conception of the universe — the One in the 
 many. 
 
 Into the refined air of this lofty region, where the 
 common forms of time, space, and causality are superseded, 
 ordinary minds may be excused if they cannot rise ; and 
 they must be content to remain ignorant of the discoveries 
 themselves, since no reliable information has ever been 
 vouchsafed of the results of these sublimated states of the 
 soul. And seeing we are told that, until we have become 
 rishis and realized these exalted experiences, ' religious life 
 has not begun for us,'' the prospects of ultimate freedom, 
 or mukti, for the vast majority of mortals, must be very 
 poor. We must all be philosophers or nothing ! But 
 though Vedantism, like Hegelianism, is a philosophy 
 which professes to be the absolute and final explanation 
 of the universe, the loss is not so severe when we 
 remember that it can become such an explanation only 
 after it has left out of account that which is the centre and 
 crown of the universe around us — the Mind of man. By 
 thus discrediting human reason, which is a Divine faculty, 
 and therefore a veritable organon in the discovery of truth, 
 Vedantism, instead of representing faith, ultimately repre- 
 sents scepticism, and becomes allied with the extremes! 
 form of agnosticism. It has been well remarked by a keen 
 critic of the Vedanta, that ' man can never know what 
 it is to be God until,' according to this philosophy, ' he 
 has ceased to be man.' ^ But since it is only as we are 
 
 ' Vivekananda's ' Calcutta to Almora,' p. 169. 
 
 ' Thompson's 'Teaching of Swami Vivekananda,' p. 13. 
 
VEDANTIC SCEPTICISM 159 
 
 conscious, that we know that we ourselves exist, the 
 moment we get out of the conscious into any 'super- 
 conscious state,' we can have no knowledge even of our 
 own existence, much less of that of any other. The world 
 with all that is in it, ' becomes ' precisely as we become ; 
 and there is for us no possible God except the One our 
 consciousness can hold. God is involved in the structure 
 of man's being ; for the feeling of God within us is the 
 evidence of the corresponding Reality. ' God,' says Plato, 
 ' holds the soul attached to Him by its root ; and it is not 
 till we get down to this root of the soul, the "I," which is 
 more fundamental than all its faculties or functions, that 
 we feel the need of that communion with Him which is 
 in reality an evidence that He is already in communion 
 with us.' ' 
 
 Had the ancient rishis possessed this sense of com- 
 munion with a Living God, instead of being lost in 
 abstract contemplation, they would have had no need to 
 soar into superconscious regions in order to attain, as 
 they imagined, demonstrative knowledge or a perfect 
 vision of the Absolute. And in taking this course, the 
 Vedanta virtually implies fke rejection of the authority 0/ 
 revelation, which does not impart complete or absolute 
 knowledge, but appeals, primarily, to faith. The 
 Vedanta professes to be based on the Veda ; but though 
 the orthodox doctrines of the Vedas may be still set forth 
 in the Upanishads, these are rather as deductions from 
 an intellectual abstraction than as revealed truths. A 
 revelation worth the name must supply theology not 
 only with a few categories, but with realities external to 
 the mind itself, which may regulate and correct the 
 inferences of pure reason, with a life above its own, 
 which may save the mind from endlessly revolving on 
 
 ■ lUingworth's 'Personality, Human and Divine,' p. 134. 
 
i6o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT' 
 
 itself. This was precisely the position of the minds we 
 meet with in the Upanishads ; they were endlessly re- 
 volving on themselves ; and so they identified the method 
 of thought with the method of knowledge, and put 
 thoughts for things. Unacquainted with any language save 
 their own, their conclusions about words seemed to 
 them as real as conclusions about things. If a theology 
 professes to be based on a revelation, it cannot construct 
 a system in which the methods of thought are put on the 
 same level with revealed truth or objective knowledge. 
 The revelation must determine not only specific truths, 
 but also the method of their exposition. It is altogether 
 inconsistent to try to combine a regard for the authority 
 of revelation with the advocacy of speculation, in which 
 the intellect follows no guidance beyond its own. But, 
 after all, it is part of the teaching of Vedantism that, ' as 
 soon as the knowledge of the truth is obtained, the 
 sacred writings themselves, as a portion of the unreal 
 dualism, are to be abandoned, just as a torch is ex- 
 tinguished when one has no further need of it, or as the 
 husk is thrown away by one who merely wants the 
 grain.' ' And Swami Vivekananda reminds us that the 
 Vedas themselves encourage their readers to go beyond 
 them. 'The Vedas say that they were given out for the 
 child-mind, and when you have grown you must go 
 beyond them.'^ 
 
 Intermediate between the agnostic — the man who does 
 not know — and the gnostic, who offers a key to the 
 knowledge of the Infinite, there have been those in all 
 times who, taking into account the whole spiritual nature 
 of man — rational, volitional, and moral — and with faith 
 
 ' ' Panchadasi,' iv. 43-46. Quoted by Jacob in ' Hindu Pantheism,' 
 p. 25. 
 ' Brahmavadin, vol. ii. 36. 
 
INSOLVABLE PROBLEMS AND FAITH i6i 
 
 or trust in the absolute reasonableness of the universe, 
 have not faith in the possibiUty of either ordinary or 
 philosophic men being able to reach the transcendental 
 or Divine thought, in which this reasonableness consists. 
 ' Man,' says Goethe, ' is not born to solve the problem of 
 the universe, but to find out where the problem begins ' ; 
 and the true solution is more likely to come to those who 
 seek to do right, rather than to those who desire to knoiu 
 all. Relief from insolvable problems comes as the result 
 of a surrender to the faith or trust of mankind — a faith 
 not made by philosophy, but without which philosophy 
 cannot be filled in. A philosophy grounded on such 
 faith was the highest lesson of what is known as the 
 Scottish school — Hamilton and Reid — and, more covertly, 
 of Kant in Germany, in his ' Practical Reason.' It does 
 not offer an intellectual system of the actual universe — a 
 comprehension of it in the Infinite ; it offers faith or trust 
 as the basis and constitution of all philosophic know- 
 ledge. All practical knowledge rests ultimately on some 
 instinctive belief. It is because we believe in the trust- 
 worthiness of our five senses that we have our know- 
 ledge of the external world. It is because we believe in 
 personal identity that we hold our fellow-man responsible 
 for his actions, and punish him for his wrong-doing. On 
 these instinctive, primary beliefs, the whole fabric of 
 human life is built ; and religious belief — belief in God — 
 is one of these spontaneous growths of human nature. 
 The ideal state of wisdom is not to be attained by man 
 in or through pure thought, but in the irresistible impulse 
 to believe, from which a human being, in a normal, 
 healthy state, cannot escape. In this present world of 
 education and discipline we ' walk by faith, not by sight ' ; 
 and yet such faith, though it does not yield demonstrative 
 knowledge, is real knowledge and certainty of the 
 
i62 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 highest kind, for it is soul-seeing — the insight of the 
 spirit within into the Divine heart of things without us. 
 As Professor Seth has said of the HegeUan philosophy, 
 let us be ' shy of demonstration which proves too much ; 
 we are men, and not gods ; the ultimate synthesis is not 
 ours.' Faith is rather the element for time, complete 
 knowledge and perfect vision the element for eternity. 
 
 We have thus seen that God cannot be known or 
 realized in His infinitude, or as the underlying Substance 
 of the universe — the thing itself. And turning to the 
 Christian Scriptures, we find that they also are agnostic 
 here ! ' Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst 
 thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? ' asks the 
 Book of Job (xi. 7, 8). 'Behold, God is great, and we 
 know Him not'(xxxvi. 26). 'Touching the Almighty, 
 we cannot find Him out ' (xxxvii. 23). His greatness sur- 
 passes our highest knowledge. The marvels of wisdom 
 and power by which man is surrounded are but transient 
 and partial manifestations of God's eternal might; and 
 when we have reached the farthest limit of our present 
 knowledge, the horizon perpetually recedes. God is still 
 beyond us. The knowledge of God is accessible to us; 
 but His greatness transcends all that we can know of Him. 
 To know of God only that He is the Absolute is but 
 cold comfort to our poor humanity. And it is a blessed 
 thought that in those respects in which we have no power 
 to know God — His immensity, infinity, eternity, the 
 words most used in the Upanishads —we have no need to 
 know Him; whereas, just in those respects in which a 
 knowledge of Him is of no value to us — His grace and 
 mercy. His pity and His love ; how he feels towards us ; 
 whether He cares in the least for our little lives in the 
 midst of the vast forces of Nature ; what He is prepared 
 to do for us ; how He regards our sin ; whether He will 
 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 163 
 
 forgive, and help us to realize our destiny as spiritual 
 beings, and to stand at last on the heights of life — in 
 these respects, which go to form His character, and of 
 which we hear little in the Upanishads, we have in the 
 Gospel abundant means of acquiring that knowledge. 
 And that is the one thing we most need to know. The 
 secret things are not ours ; the revealed things are. ' O 
 righteous Father,' says Christ, ' the world knew Thee 
 not, \iw\. I knew Thee' (John xvii. 25). The Bible is the 
 only book which tells us that ' the world through its 
 wisdom knew not God' (i Cor. i. 21). 
 
 And what did Christ know ? What has He told us ? 
 He drew the veil aside that had concealed the inscrutable 
 Mystery, and revealed what the Vedantist never guessed — a 
 Father. How could he gaess it ? Who could tell man 
 that secret? Only God Himself. Equally with the 
 certainty that man knows God he needs the certainty that 
 God knows him. The Upanishads represent man seeking- 
 God, trying to know Him and lay hold of Him. They do 
 not ask the question. What has He revealed ? But the 
 Bible is full of the conviction that God seeks man, lays 
 hold of man, reveals Himself to man ; and the hope of the 
 world lies, not in the ability of man to know God, but in 
 the activity of God in man's behalf; and that activity we 
 have in the Christian Gospel. The Upanishads are psycho- 
 logical excursions about God; the Bible has a message 
 from God for the spirits in search of Him. It is that 
 which constitutes a Divine revelation. In it God speaks to 
 man. A dumb God is no God ; a God who does not 
 manifest Himself to the men made in His image cannot be 
 God ; and self-communication is of the essence of person- 
 ality. Not to know God so much as first to be known of 
 God is man's great need. As George MacDonald says : 
 
 ' Not on the clasp of consciousness ; on Thee my life depends : 
 Not what / think, but what Thou art, makes sure.' 
 
i64 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 And through Christ, who is God Revealed, man arrives at 
 his highest knowledge of God. For in Him God speaks to 
 us. Throughout the Bible He speaks to man. The 
 ancient Hebrews were as sure of God as of the Eternal 
 hills. He is God, and their God. No book shows such a 
 grip of the living God as the Psalms. No men so stand as 
 in His very presence as the prophets. But in Christ He 
 comes nearer. In Christ, the Incarnate Logos — the Word 
 — God speaks clearly and authoritatively to men. Christ 
 is the Divine utterance — God's self-revelation to His 
 creatures. The Upanishads seem to have had some con- 
 ception of this thought, foi: one of them says : ' Two 
 Brahmas have to be meditated on : the word and the 
 non-word. By the word alone is the non-word re- 
 vealed.' ' 
 
 In Christ, then, we can be sure of God — of His real 
 Being. We are not left to derive our idea of Him from 
 the dreams of a disordered fancy or from 'anJnfinitely 
 extended photograph of ourselves, begotten of an insatiable 
 vanity '; but we know Him, feel Him as our Father. God's 
 way of shining on this earth of ours has been, above all, 
 through life, through history. 'The life,' manifested in 
 Christ, was 'the light of men ' (John i. 4). Through life to 
 knowledge is the Christian way. The staple of human 
 nature is in its sensitive Hfe ; and life is known by living. 
 And in all Christ was and did He showed us God. Who 
 and what is God ? God is like Christ. If we conceive of 
 God as an ' infinite Christ,' we can have no worthier con- 
 ception, no Diviner knowledge. Whatever coming ages 
 may yet learn from the speculations of philosophers or the 
 discoveries of science, this truth will remain changeless and 
 eternal — God is, and God is Father. That is the last, the 
 holiest, the sweetest word that can be spoken of God. We 
 
 ■ Mait.-Upan., vi. 22. 
 
CHRIST REVEALS THE FATHER 165 
 
 need no other. It is the summit idea of God. Christ has 
 fixed for evermore the world's conception of Deity. 
 
 And it is the best working conception of God that the 
 world can have — the conception that best meets its sorrows 
 and its sins, its difficulties and duties, its aspirations and its 
 hopes. With such a God, prayer, which is instinctive in 
 the human heart, finds its highest place ; whereas in the 
 Vedanta there is no place for prayer. The Advaita con- 
 ception of the Supreme is an infinite abstraction, possible 
 only to philosophic thought — a subject for meditation, not 
 an object for communion. Let the energy of these two 
 truths once enter into a man's heart — that in everything we 
 have to do with a living God, and that our God is the 
 Christ-\(k& One — and they are enough to revolutionize a 
 man's entire life. 
 
 But it may be asked. How can we tell that Christ's view 
 was the true one ? We have seen that the most direct 
 knowledge of spiritual realities is afforded by our own 
 consciousness, and can we refuse the witness of the con- 
 sciousness of the most perfect character the world has seen 
 — the consciousness of Christ ? Who would dare to say 
 that He was under an illusion ? When ' the clearest eyes 
 that ever looked on this world and into the heavens, and 
 the keenest judgment that ever weighed human life, and 
 the purest heart that ever throbbed with human sympathy,' 
 declares, ' I know the Father,' I repose on His declaration 
 with perfect trust. The pure in heart see God ; and He, 
 the purest, had the clearest vision of a Divine Father, with 
 whom He was in habitual communion. Can we refuse 
 such evidence, or the evidence of Christ's first disciples, 
 who, when He had lived His life and uttered His words, 
 knew that the Divine Life had been incarnated before 
 them ; knew, for the first time in the history of the world, 
 what was meant by the will and holiness and love of God ? 
 
i66 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 It is ' not reason that isolates itself from the wisest and best, 
 and says, I will solve my problems alone. It is reason to 
 see with the wise and to feel with the good.' God is known 
 only to the spirit — that is the last and most true word of 
 the Upanishads ; and He is known best, known completely, 
 by the best and keenest spirit of the race. The poet 
 Browning is as faultlessly true as he is clear when he says : 
 
 ' I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
 Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it. 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise.' 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 IDENTITY AND ABSORPTION 
 
 Doctrine of Identity and Absorption — Higher and Lower Brahma — 
 Passages quoted, Ancient and Modern — True Monism — Fallacy in 
 ' That art Thou ' — A Pantheism founded on Revelation — The Two 
 mutually exclusive — Conventional Opinions and Necessary Beliefs 
 — Moral and Theological Aspects of Advaita System — A Distorted 
 Truth — An Ancient Conceit — Subjective Religion and True 
 Theology — Moral Evil not reckoned with — Conscience and 
 Christian Sense of Sin — Pessimism and Buddhism — Mukti and 
 Nirvana — Assumption of Transmigration, and Destruction of 
 Psychic Body — The Higher Christian Consciousness. 
 
 We pass now to the crowning assumption of the Vedanta — 
 the fundamental and final identity of tfie individual soul 
 {Jivdtma with the highest Brahma {paramdtma) — the doc- 
 trine on which the whole system of Sankaracharya hinges. 
 
 Not only does the enlightened soul know Brahma in his 
 essential Being, but he comes to know that he himself is 
 Brahma. By rightly understanding such oracular utterances 
 of the Veda as, ' It is Brahma ' ; ' I am Brahma 'j' ' This 
 soul is Brahma ' ; = ' That art Thou,' 3 {tat tvam ««)— the 
 greatest of all the texts of the Upanishads, the supreme 
 announcement — which are supposed to teach that there 
 
 ■ Brihad.-Upan. I., iv. 10. ' Ibid. II., v. 19. 
 
 3 Chhandogya-Upan., vi. 4. 
 
 1O7 
 
i68 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 is no essential difference between the man's true Self 
 and the highest Self — the purified intelligence rises to a 
 condition of spiritual intuition {samyogdarsana), or ecstatic 
 vision, in which the highest knowledge possible is reached. 
 Man obtains at the moment of death his final release from 
 further transmigration, and asserts himself in his own true 
 nature, which is nothing else but the absolute Brahma' — 
 the Brahma, i.e., as understood by Sankaracharya — the 
 nirguna Brahma. 
 
 For this teacher distinguishes, as we have seen, between 
 the nirguna Brahma — the impersonal One, transcending all 
 attributes — and the saguna Brahma — the One with qualities, 
 or a personal God. He makes room in his system for a 
 higher and a lower Brahma, though the lower, owing to 
 the working of Maya, is illusory and fictitious. And so, 
 while a knowledge of the lower Brahma — the only know- 
 ledge within the reach of the vast majority of men — enables 
 the soul to proceed on the road to the fathers or the gods, 
 to a perishable reward in a transient heaven, only he 
 who truly knows the highest Brahma, and can say, 'I 
 am Brahma' {Brahmasmi), becomes one with Him in 
 final deliverance (mukti). Says the Bhagavad-gita : ' The 
 knowers of the three (Vedas), the Soma-drinkers, the puri- 
 fied from sin, the sacrificers, pray of the way to Svarga ; 
 they reach the holy world of the god Indra, and eat in 
 heaven the divine feasts of the gods. They, having 
 enjoyed the spacious Svarga-world, their holiness withered, 
 came back to this mortal world. Following the virtues 
 enjoined by the three, desiring virtues, they obtain the 
 transitory.' ^ This is the distinctive teaching of the Vedanta, 
 and it forms an instructive passage. It teaches that the 
 knowledge of the Vedas is a very inferior science'; that 
 purification from sin and the practice of virtues merits only 
 ■ Vedanta-Siitras, introd., p. xxvii. = Bhagavad-gita, ix. 20, 21. 
 
A TRANSIENT HEAVEN 169 
 
 a transitory reward ; that this reward is enjoyed in a festive, 
 sensuous paradise ; that the heavenly cUmate having had 
 the effect of sapping and withering the little holiness they 
 had, the worn-out possessors come back to this mortal, 
 sinful world, to begin the round again ; though it is doubt- 
 ful whether even this transitory stay in ' the spacious Svarga- 
 world ' would not offer stronger attractions to the lovers of 
 life than a total loss of conscious existence in the ocean of 
 Brahma. In Ramanuja's system, it will be remembered, 
 there is no such distinction as a lower and a higher Brahma ; 
 his Deity is essentially personal, the Ruler of a real though 
 dependent world, animated by His Spirit. 
 
 The following are a few of the numerous passages that 
 affirm this identity, undoubtedly taught in the Upanishads. 
 Says the sage to the King : ' The heart, indeed, O King, is 
 the highest Brahma.' ' ' The man who, freed from desires 
 . . . desires the Self only . . . Mng Brahma, he goes to 
 Brahma.' ^ ' For when there is, as it were, duality, then 
 one sees the other, smells the other, tastes the other, salutes 
 the other, etc. ; but when the Self only is all this, how 
 should he see another, smell another, salute another, touch 
 another,' and so on .? 3 ' The wise having reached Him 
 who is omnipresent, devoted to the Self, enter into Him 
 wholly.' 't ' If a man knows himself, that he is this universal 
 Spirit, what can he want, what can he crave, that he should 
 pine after the body ? ' ' Whoever has found and understood 
 the Self ... he indeed is the Creator, for he is the maker 
 of everything, his is the world, for he is the world itself.' 5 
 That is to say, the whole universe is God : there is no 
 division, no separation ; for He is Infinite ; and it is this 
 false idea of a division between God and man that is the 
 
 ■ Brihad.-Upan. IV., ii. 7. ' Ibid. IV., iv. 6. 
 
 3 Ibid. IV., vi. 15. ■• Mund.-Upan. III., ii. . 
 
 5 Brihad.-Upan., iv. 4, 12, 13. 
 
170 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 source of all unhappiness. There are no ' two ' in anything, 
 no ' I ' and ' thou,' no ' mine ' or ' thine ' : there is but One 
 — the 'Secondless Reality.' The friend is not loved as 
 being ' mine,' but only as a manifestation of the Self, the 
 one Spirit in which all the little selves lose their indivi- 
 duality. The Indian saint and Sannyasin, Ramakrishna, 
 already quoted, enunciates this truth in plain, if homely, 
 language : 
 
 ' Know thyself, and thou shalt then know the non-self and the Lord 
 of all. What is my ego ? Is it my hand, or foot, or flesh, or blood, or 
 muscle, or tendon ? Ponder deep, and thou shalt know that there is no 
 such thing as I. As by continually peeling off the skin of the onion, so 
 by analyzing the ego, it will be found that there is not any real entity 
 corresponding to the ego. The ultimate result of all such analysis is 
 God. When egoism drops away, Divinity manifests itself.' ' 
 
 It is true that along with man's self there has always 
 been that other Self, of which the Upanishads often beauti- 
 fully and correctly speak, and that we can no more get 
 away from It than from our own shadow ; that, if we are 
 ' to find God,' we must do as Plato said, ' look within ' ; 
 that there is a mystical and a moral sense in which we are 
 to ' lose ourselves ' in the Divine ; that until ' egoism ' dies 
 there can be no true salvation for us ; but this is altogether 
 different from the assertion that ' he who knows that highest 
 Brahma becomes even Brahma' ; = just as on the removal of 
 a mirror the face reflected in it lapses into the face itself. 
 
 Dr. J. Muir has given the following metrical version of a 
 passage in one of the Upanishads which well expresses the 
 doctrine taught. It was delivered by an ancient Indian lord 
 to his wife : 
 
 ' Whate'er we round us see, the whole 
 Terrestrial system — gods, priests, kings — 
 
 ' Max Miiller's 'Ramakrishna,' pp. 179, 180. 
 
 ' Brihad.-Upan. IV., iv. 9, and Mundaka-Upan. III., ii. 9. 
 
THAT THOU ART 171 
 
 The vast totality of things — 
 
 Is nothing else than that one Soul. 
 
 A lump of salt, as soon as cast 
 
 Into its primal source, the sea, 
 
 Dissolves, and ne'er can cease to be 
 
 A part of that salt ocean vast. 
 
 So, sprung from that great Spirit, men, 
 
 When once their earthly term is spent. 
 
 To him return, and with him blent. 
 
 The sense of life no more retain.' ' 
 
 ' Modern expositors of the Vedanta leave no doubt as to 
 the correct interpretation of such passages. Swami Vive- 
 kananda says : ' It comes to nothing short of this, that the 
 Impersonal Being, our highest generalization, is in ourselves, 
 and we are in it. " O Svetaketu [quoting from the Chhan- 
 dogya Upanishad], thou art that ; thou art that Impersonal 
 Being; that God whom thou hast been searching for over 
 the universe is all the time yourself " — yourself, not in the 
 personal sense, but in the impersonal.' = Dr. Deussen 
 reasons in the following manner : ' (i) The soul cannot be 
 different from Brahman, because besides Brahman there is 
 no being ; (2) it cannot be regarded as a transformation of 
 Brahman, because Brahman is unchangeable ; (3) and still 
 less is it a part of Brahman, because Brahman has no parts. 
 Nothing remains, then, but to conclude that the soul is 
 identical with Brahman — that eac/i one of us is the all- 
 unchangeable Brahman, without parts and comprehending in 
 itself all being.' 3 And, once more: 'The crowning glory 
 or the Vedanta is that it teaches the divinity of man, his 
 essential oneness with God, and his power to realize his 
 true nature. It lifts him from a "worm of the dust" — a 
 mere helpless puppet in the hands of some supernatural 
 
 ■ Brihad.-Upan. II., iv. I ; IV., v. i, in Muir's ' Metrical Transla- 
 tions,' p. 53. 
 
 = Brahmavadin, vol. iii. 153. ^ ' Short Account,' etc., p. 14. 
 
172 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 power — and tells him he is eternally pui-e and perfect in 
 his real Self; that he is free and immortal, that he need not 
 suffer, need not despair, but can purify himself, can shake 
 off the bonds of ignorance, which alone enslave him, and 
 realize the words of Jesus when He said : " I and My 
 Father are one." ' ' 
 
 We will not comment on this attempt to justify Vedantic 
 teaching from the Gospels — a favourite resort in the present 
 day — but would observe that Indian dualists, in common 
 with theists generally, of course, reject this subtle and 
 stupendous doctrine, in its extreme and unqualified state- 
 ment; and severe and continuous have been the contro- 
 versies between the two schools of thought in India, and 
 irreconcilable the strife. Truth generally lies, however, 
 between two extremes. Absolute unity is the basal rock 
 on which Vedantic teaching stands, and m.onism, or a 
 unitary system of thought, is undoubtedly the universal 
 ideal of philosophy, and means, primarily, consistency. 
 Two contradictory ideas cannot at the same time be 
 accepted as true. There is a oneness about truth which 
 admits of no doubt. A thinker cannot help searching for 
 unity of thought, and science itself is simply the endeavour 
 to unify knowledge. That being so. Christians are, pre- 
 sumably, monists, and hold the world to be a unity, and 
 would deduce all the varied phenomena of the physical and 
 psychical worlds, ultimately, from a single principle; for, 
 according to the Bible, ' In the beginning God ' — who 
 alone existed — ' created the heaven and the earth ' — all 
 that is. But such a position does not deny the real exist- 
 ence of the world and the real existence of ourselves, as 
 related to one great whole. It rather involves what in 
 Berkeley's system are the three connected objects of all 
 ultimate and metaphysical inquiry and speculation — ^Self, 
 ' Bra/imavddin, vol. iii. 193. 
 
DUALISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 173 
 
 the world, and God; the two opposed and dependent 
 substances, and the one Supreme Substance and Power 
 of all. 
 
 This view, however, which approaches that of the Visish- 
 tadvaita school, is quite different from the Advaita, or 
 auto-monistic, which identifies subject and object, thinking 
 and being, thought and thing. The fundamental fallacy of 
 the Vedanta, as interpreted by Sankaracharya, lies in the 
 denial of the 'primitive dualism of consciousness,' the 
 antithesis of subject and object, from which all the explana- 
 tions of philosophy must take their start, since the relation 
 between these two is the primary basis of the laws of 
 thought, as well as the form which every thought must 
 take. In every act of thought there is this unity in 
 difference, and the absolute unity or identity of Vedant- 
 ism is, therefore, unthinkable. As already seen, as long as 
 we are in a body which has a mind, and that mind is 
 exercised, the Absolute, or Brahma — according to Vedant- 
 ism — cannot possibly be known. If such knowledge is 
 possible, dualism, or the relation between subject and 
 object, is at once established. A state in which the 
 knowing and the known are one, in which subject and 
 object are identified, implies, as Hamilton, Mansel, and 
 Spencer have alike shown, the annihilation of both ; and 
 hence our very personality, the existence of which is to 
 each person a fact beyond all others the most certain, is 
 yet a thing which cannot truly be known at all, for the 
 object perceived is itself the perceiving subject. 
 
 The supreme announcement of the Vedanta — Tat ivam 
 asi, ' That art Thou ' — besides being what is called in logic 
 a peiitio principii, cannot even be made without falsifying 
 the philosophy itself, for the assertion is in the form of a 
 logical expression, which declares a difference at the very 
 moment the identity is afifirmed. The terms 'That' and 
 
174 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 ' Thou ' can be shown to mean the same thing only by 
 maintaining that the difference between their senses is 
 simply an apparent difference, such as exists between a 
 ' collective aggregate ' and a ' distributive aggregate,' as 
 between a forest and its trees. An individual tree, however, 
 is not the same as all the trees taken together ; and to 
 assert, moreover, a connection as subject and predicate 
 between a term distinguished by ' invisibility,' as denoted by 
 ' That ' — the Infinite — and one distinguished by ' visibility,' 
 as denoted by ' Thou '—the finite — is against the 
 evidence of our senses, and can be justified only by 
 supposing that the distinctions are but the modifications of 
 ' Ignorance,' which we are told is no reality. The connec- 
 tion implying identity can be constituted only by the 
 exclusion of this mutual difference and characteristic, as 
 well as by the omission of all difference of time and place, 
 which cannot but be present in thought. Since each term 
 is qualified by the other, they cannot be regarded as 
 identical ; and if they cannot be shown to mean the same 
 thing, the great sentence fails to enunciate a truth.' 
 
 And here we note again the radical original inconsistency 
 of founding a system of pantheism on the authority of 
 revelation. Pantheism and revelation mutually exclude 
 each other. If revelation is true, pantheism is false; if 
 pantheism is true, revelation is out of the . question. 
 According to the teaching of the Vedanta, the Veda 
 cannot be the revealer of the mind and will of God, for 
 we should then have a duality, whereas there is no dis- 
 tinction between the Veda and Brahma. And an im- 
 personal Being, who cannot think, but is Thought itself, 
 cannot communicate itself, can reveal nothing. The Vedic 
 revelation preceded a formulated pantheism, and ought 
 to have corrected the vagaries of the authors of the 
 ' See Jacob's ' Manual of Pantheism,' pp. 88-95. 
 
GOD IN THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS 175 
 
 Upanishads, instead of the latter superseding it by the 
 inferences of their own reasoning. But the Upanishads 
 claim to be founded on philosophic thinking, more than 
 on revelation. So unlike, indeed, is the theology of the 
 Upanishads and the Vedas, that it is distinctly said that a 
 knowledge of Brahma is impossible by the Veda,' and that 
 ' the Self is seen by subtle seers through their sharp and 
 subtle intellect.' = Pantheism is in its essence the idolatry 
 of intellect, a system well suited to the imperious and subtle 
 Brahman mind ; and Advaitism is the issue reached by a 
 process of philosophic speculation, starting with improper 
 assumption, and conducted in a fallacious method, confound- 
 ing, as we have seen, the method of thought with the 
 method of knowledge. The phenomena that pass through 
 our consciousness do not necessarily form knowledge. By 
 knowledge is meant some fact of consciousness which 
 corresponds with some reality in Nature, which becomes 
 equally certain to other minds, and can stand the test of 
 the common reason of humanity. The two general Vedan- 
 tic ideas of Brahma and Maya, and the supreme announce- 
 ment 'That art Thou,' are not universal convictions; they 
 are not the ideas of any other country on the globe; and so 
 the religion that contains them can never aspire to be the 
 absolute and universal religion of mankind. They are the 
 conventions and assumptions of a certain class of minds 
 that are obliged to impose one theory on another, in 
 order to build up an imaginary system of things. The 
 Vedantist of the Advaita school first reduces all things to 
 these two principles, or, as he regards it, to one general truth, 
 and then from this single source, knowledge, as such, 
 emerges, regarding all things human and Divine, and the 
 most important doctrines relating to God, and Nature, and 
 the human soul become logical deductions from such 
 ' ICatha.-Upan., i. 2, 23. ^ Ibid., i. 3, 12. 
 
176 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 generalizations. But a system, however logical, condemns 
 itself when it contradicts any of these natural convictions 
 which are intended to save us from the folly of our 
 own ratiocinations.' In intellectual activity we must 
 always be ready to correct our logic by our intuitive beliefs 
 and by actual experience, such as the universal conviction 
 in the human mind of separate personalities. The sphere 
 of demonstration is to be limited and corrected by truths 
 obtained from other sources of knowledge. Logic itself 
 teaches that, instead of identifying subject and object, 
 recognised distinctions are also entitled to be called 
 knowledge. An object cannot be known by an agent unless 
 it be distinguished from the agent ; and to be so dis- 
 tinguished is to be apprehended in the relation of diversity, 
 as in the great senteoce ' That art Thou.' 
 
 If we turn now to the moral and religious aspect of 
 the subject, we shall find this crowning assumption of the 
 Vedanta — the essential identity and absorption of the 
 individual soul with the Supreme Soul — attended by still 
 more disastrous consequences. 
 
 The idea of the Advaita system, or 'One without a 
 second ' — ekam eva advitlyam — is not without a certain 
 grandeur; but it is a metaphysical elevation purchased 
 at the expense of a moral. It is the distortion of a vital 
 truth — a truth essential to Christianity and all true religion, 
 viz., that self or self-will is to be lost in the Supreme Self, 
 in order that God in our life may be all in all. God is 
 God, and man is creature; and having the Divine life 
 breathed into us, and being made, morally, in the image 
 of God, the human and the Divine are in essence one, just 
 as a son is one in nature with his father, though not the 
 same. Thus, the glory of man is to be morally one with 
 
 ' See an article in the Indian Evangelical Review, July, 1874, on 
 ' The Logic of the Vedanta.' 
 
SEf.F WILL AND DIVINE WILL 177 
 
 God, in thought and desire and will. The identity is to 
 consist in the perfect oneness of man's will with God's ; 
 and when this harmony is secured, through complete self- 
 surrender, as it was pre-eminently in Christ, the will is for 
 the first time free and strong, emancipated from self-will, 
 and the height of true manhood and Divine bliss is attained. 
 We are not to lose our consciousness in the Divine con- 
 sciousness, but our self-will in the Divine Will, so as to be 
 able to say, in the spirit, though not in the same sense, of 
 the words of Christ, ' I and the Father are one.' In our 
 times of moral struggle, conscience is to respond to the 
 Divine Law ; in our passionate hours, we are to subside 
 into God's calm grace ; in our days of sorrow, we are to 
 lose ourselves in God's more exceeding joy. 
 
 If the Indian ideal taught that the power within that 
 ' makes for righteousness,' while being in a most true sense 
 ourselves, is still ' not ourselves ' ; that the voice of con- 
 science is the voice of a Higher Self in every man; that 
 according to the oracle of the Attic sage, it is the ' God-like 
 voice opposing me even in little things if I am about to do 
 anything not rightly ' — that is to say, if it were the voice of 
 a more Divine and enduring Self that stands above and 
 behind the habitual Self — then we might regard it as one 
 of the happiest expressions of this particular truth ever 
 reached. Butler's supremacy of conscience ' and Kant's 
 ' moral imperative ' — the sense of ' ought ' — within us, are 
 the index of a Higher Personality, whence they emanate, 
 and of whose character they are the expression. The 
 moral law carries in its centre the evidence of a Moral 
 Lawgiver, and reveals the presence of another Self within 
 and yet above our own. 
 
 ' A voice within forbids, and summons us to refrain ; 
 And if we bid it to be silent, it yet is not still ; it is not in our 
 control ; 
 
 13 
 
178 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 it acts without our control, without our asking', against our will : 
 It is in us, it belongs to us, but it is not of us ; it is adove us. 
 It is moral, it is intelligent ; it is not we, nor at our bidding ; 
 It pervades mankind as one life pervades the trees.' 
 
 But to affirm, as does the auto-monist Vedantist, that 
 everything is Brahma, and that the human soul is ifse/f 
 Brahma, and that all differences are explained by the 
 aid of the doctrine of Maya, is to rob religion* and morality 
 of all meaning, to cut away the very basis of moral life. 
 No amount of ' extraneous theistic or ethical decoration ' 
 can make such a system other than a non-theological and 
 non-ethical system. It is to starve the moral sense and 
 stifle the religious nature of man, which means hothing if 
 it does not live by prayer. For there is nothing higher 
 in such a system than the wisdom of the human soul. 
 There is no theology or theosophy, but an arrogant 
 psychosophy. There is no higher moral appeal than the 
 man's own judgment. There is no loftier and inspiring 
 worship than that of Self. The ' light within the ether of 
 the heart ' is the light that lightens all the world ! 
 
 If it were not the height of paradox, it would be, if 
 taken literally, the depth of profanity ; for what would it 
 amount to ? The Bible, e.g., the Book that has done 
 more for the race in its sorrow and sin and moral degra- 
 dation than all other books put together, would have to 
 be rewritten from cover to cover, and where the word God 
 occurs the word Man would have to be substituted, as, 
 indeed, has been actually done in one of the issues of the 
 Brahinavddin,'^ where, in the light of the new-found 
 potentiality of man, which the writer claims to be 'the 
 grand promise of the Upanishads,' the verse in the eighth 
 Psalm is no longer to be read, ' O Lord, our Lord, how 
 excellent is Thy name in all the earth ! who hast set Thy 
 ' November 9, 1S95. 
 
MAN THE MEASURE OF THINGS 179 
 
 glory above the heavens ' ; but, ' O man ! O man ! how 
 excellent is thy name in all the earth ! who hast set thy 
 glory above the heavens — who art thyself the heavens, the 
 sun, the moon, and the stars, and the. God that made them 
 all.' If that is the Vedanta it is most certainly doomed. 
 Such a thought would be counted blasphemy by the 
 Western world. But, happily, this extraordinary aberration 
 of mind has as yet gone no further than paper, and there, 
 perhaps, it can do little harm beyond administering a dose 
 of opium to the soul that absorbs it. 
 
 It is an extravagant enlargement of an ancient conceit. 
 A favourite theory of the great Christian visionary Sweden- 
 borg was that ' man is a kind of very minute God,' and 
 ' God is the grand man.' This doctrine was as old as 
 Plato's Macrocosm and Microcosm. Ancient philosophy 
 counted the human soul, known by and to itself, to be a 
 microcosm or epitome of the great universe. It is natural 
 to man to make himself the measure of the universe — ie., 
 to take the little universe of being, which he knows so 
 directly and well, to be the analogon or image of the greater 
 universe.' The Protagorean thesis, ^ Homo Mensura' — 
 man the measure of things — that things are to us only what 
 we can discern of them, may be a useful guide within 
 certain limits, but when pushed too far it becomes self- 
 destructive. Science becomes impossible, when the 
 individual soul is made to be the final and only measure 
 of being. And there is a similar collapse of the moral 
 nature when no relationship other than identity, which is 
 not a relation, subsists between our soul and another, and 
 all souls with God. 
 
 The great value of Christianity is that it delivers us from 
 such a religion of self-introspection ; that it reveals from a 
 source higher than ourselves the terrible dangers into which 
 ■ See Noah Porter's ' Human Intellect,' pp. 99-101. 
 
i8o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 we run when we take to an overmuch studying of ourselves, 
 in the hope of rising above ourselves. When man has no 
 elevating force outside him, as his attraction upwards, he 
 sinks inevitably downwards, as seen in the lowest super- 
 stition and formalism of the practical Buddhism of Thibet, 
 China, and Japan, the founder having had no place for 
 God in his system. Christianity having, in direct commu- 
 nication with its centre, a lofty and lovely Christ, the 
 attractive force of a Divine love from above must be 
 ever drawing upwards, and thus developing by a spiritual 
 evolution all persons in the direct ratio of their living 
 belief. To hold, as does the Vedantist and theosophist, 
 and, in a different way, the modern Positivist, that the 
 highest human soul is the highest spiritual pinnacle in the 
 whofe universe, is as unreasonable as it is ineffective for 
 the moral progress of man. Humility is the very last virtue 
 which is becoming to a being whose nature is unsurpassed 
 by any other in the universe : and what becomes of 
 aspiration ? The difference between a subjective religious 
 system and true theology is that the latter supplies a real 
 force, in the Divine mind and will, by which the believer is 
 kept to his duty, in spite of his own willingness to relieve 
 himself from it. In Hindu philosophy duty or dharma is 
 defined' as 'a meaning deduced from injunction,' whose 
 authority is seated in usage and tradition ; but in such a 
 force there is none of the progress that comes from a 
 man's fidelity to his own sense of right, ever stimulated 
 by reference to the will of God. 
 
 The fundamental objection to this all-comprehensive 
 system, which would formulate a psychological solution of 
 the mystery of existence in a science of the Infinite, is that 
 it does not tally with the experience which it is bound to 
 reckon with; nor does it solve the difficulty as to the 
 
 ■ Purva Mimansa. 
 
VEDANTISM AND EXPERIENCE i8i 
 
 existence within the universe of immoral agents and moral 
 evil. This distinction between phenomenal things and 
 acting persons, between Nature and individual moral agency, 
 is well touched in Wordsworth's noonday hymn : 
 
 ' I-ook up to heaven ! the industrious Sun 
 Already half his race hath run : 
 He cannot halt nor go astray, 
 But our immortal spirits may.' 
 
 And if they do they may regret their failure, but who is 
 there to judge them for it; and why should they judge 
 themselves ? If we possess an ideal and do not reach it, 
 there is no more to be said than when a musician fails in 
 executing a piece of music as well as he can imagine him- 
 self to have executed it. The belief that God commands 
 us is a far greater power than the belief that only our 
 own nature suggests and enjoins a particular course of 
 action. The belief that we grieve One who loves us and 
 hates sin is a far greater power than the conviction that 
 we are falling below the level of our own aspirations. 
 It is all very flattering to be told, as we are in the Brahma- 
 vddin, that man is ' eternally pure and perfect in his real 
 self; but it is, nevertheless, the rooted conviction that 
 some one else of far greater truth and holiness than ourselves 
 is concerned with us, and indignant with us, and pricking 
 our conscience, and inflicting on us the anguish of remorse, 
 thereby enabling men to do what otherwise they could 
 never do. The subjective systems do not apply any sharp 
 spur to the conscience and the will ; and hence their weak- 
 ness, and hence men approve them.' 
 
 A true and complete system of philosophy must be in 
 harmony with all the complex facts of man's intellectual, 
 moral and spiritual experience. It cannot be reckoned 
 
 ■ See an article in the Spectator, July 17, l886. 
 
i82 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 sound and trustworthy if it leaves out of account the most 
 authoritative element in the universal experience of man- 
 kind, the moral sense, and disregards its phenomena. The 
 phenomena of mental consciousness have received in 
 Hinduism full attention, because ignorance is regarded as 
 the origin of human wretchedness, and knowledge the 
 sovereign remedy ; whereas in Christianity, where sin is the 
 source of the world's misery, and moral perfection comes 
 through Christ, conscience is assigned that true supremacy 
 which belongs to it in the constitution of our nature. A 
 system, therefore, deserves acceptance in proportion as it 
 agrees with itself, and also satisfies the essential wants of 
 our whole being, and no philosophy is complete or 
 moral that does not take into account the existence of moral 
 evil in our world. There is little reference to sin in the 
 Vedanta, because sin is known and felt only where God is 
 known and felt as a Personal Being, as the Supreme 
 Holiness. The Upanishads are confessedly, as we have 
 seen, a search after God — a lofty and intensely earnest 
 quest, it is true, but still only a search. We do not stand in 
 His very presence ; but He is identified with the sum of 
 things, and therefore we must attribute to Him, without 
 distinction, all the qualities we find in the universe ; and. 
 sin and crime are as much justified, in the nature of 
 things, as goodness, righteousness, and truth. The supreme 
 Brahma is essentially unmoral ; and therefore moral dis- 
 tinctions are not eternal. Says the Brahmavddin : ' The 
 distinctions of right and wrong are mere appearances, 
 which will vanish as soon as the dream state of life is dis- 
 pelled." The frightful havoc which such a conception 
 works in the idea of sanctity, we hardly dare to dwell upon. 
 It overturns the moral foundations of the universe. The 
 worst evil found in man becomes an attribute of Deity. 
 ' June 19, 1897. 
 
VEDANTISM AND HOLINESS 183 
 
 How can sanctity be predicated of the Self which becomes 
 the real agent of the worst crimes committed by all 
 selves ? God is reduced to a non-moral existence, exhibiting 
 itself alike in good and evil. 
 
 People say they find the doctrine of identity satisfying and 
 consoling. In a sense no doubt it is, when we are no 
 longer required to regard ourselves as sinners ; and 
 ' narcotics do satisfy in a way, though not in the same way 
 as food. The house may be burning, the flood may be 
 rising, but the dreamer is in his paradise.' A pang of 
 conscience may at times arouse the illusionist ;. but sin and 
 discord, self-accusation and shame, are to be smothered in 
 the sense of unreality. Into this world of somnambulism 
 comes the religion of Christ, calling men to awake ; telling 
 them that their thought that they are a dream is the 
 dream of their own dreaming; that God is the Living 
 God of unutterable sanctity — Light with no darkness 
 at all. ' It is because the Bible so rigidly keeps to the dis- 
 tinction between light and darkness, holiness and sin, that 
 its pages are so piercingly illuminative in the moral sphere. 
 It is just because Hindu thinkers have confused the two, 
 merging them in something they thought deeper, that their 
 works have proved so comparatively powerless in the 
 domain of the moral Hfe.' ' The God who made us made us 
 rea/ ; and real we must remain for all eternity. God is real, 
 the world is real, self is real, sin is real, and judgment 
 real enough to make men tremble. There is no Maya but 
 what man cheats himself to imagine. 
 
 The nearer we get to God, the clearer is our vision of 
 sin. Where there is no deep sense of sin, certain it is that 
 God has not yet been found. In the light of His spotless 
 holiness, as He reveals it to us in the life and work of Christ, 
 we see the blackness and enormity of sin. That was what 
 ' See TAe Epiplia)iy (Calcutta), August 24, 1893. 
 
i84 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the Apostle Peter felt when the moral power of Christ 
 dawned upon him ; he exclaimed : ' Depart from me ; for I 
 am a sinful man, O Lord ' (Luke v. 8). Honest dealing with 
 personal sin, by searching it out with the searchlight of 
 God, lies at the foundation of all real religion and practical 
 hoHness. And one of the most disappointing and confusing 
 facts connected with the modern advocacy of the Vedanta 
 is the glib and easy manner in which its lofty teachings are 
 lightly discussed by minds and lips that are known to be 
 impure. For a man of sinful heart and life to talk about 
 identity with the Infinite and Holy God, as though it were 
 a trivial commonplace, or only the logical conclusion of a 
 syllogism, is the height of profanity. Spiritual things can 
 be only spiritually discerned. It is impossible to rise in 
 spirituality except on the basis and along the line of true 
 brokenness and contrition of heart. Growth in the know- 
 ledge and love of God means growth, first of all, in penitence ; 
 and all knowledge of God is fruitless if it does not lead us in 
 penitent adoration to our knees. The Christian begins his 
 religious life and his path of spirituality ai the Cross, where 
 he sees sin confessed, condemned, forgiven. That is the 
 only road to real saintliness. 
 
 ■ Eternal Light ! Eternal Light ! 
 
 How pure the soul must be, 
 When, placed within Thy searching sight. 
 It shrinks not, but, with calm delight, 
 
 Can live, and look on Thee ! 
 
 ' Oh, how shall I, whose native sphere 
 Is dark, whose mind is dim, 
 Before the Ineffable appear, 
 And on my naked spirit bear 
 That uncreated beam ? 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 185 
 
 ' There is a way for man to rise 
 To that subHme abode : — 
 An offering and a sacrifice, 
 A Holy Spirit's energies, 
 An Advocate with God : — 
 
 ' These, these prepare us for the sight 
 
 Of Holiness above : 
 The sons of ignorance and night 
 May dwell in the Eternal Light, 
 
 Through the Eternal Lave.' 
 
 It now remains to show how this Vedanta doctrine of 
 identity and absorption — Sdyujya — is strictly consistent 
 with kindred Hindu thought from very early times. What 
 led to it ? Another imposing assumption based on an 
 imaginary and pessimistic view of life. 
 
 We must try to put ourselves in the position of those 
 ancient thinkers in order to discover the difficulties they 
 were labouring under, and the psychological puzzles they 
 pursued with such plodding perseverance, and that drove 
 them to such extreme conclusions. And with them life 
 was not a blessing as we regard it now, living in peaceful 
 times, but a constant peril and a curse. It was so with 
 Solomon ; it was so with Buddha : existence meant suffer- 
 ing, and all was ' vanity and vexation of spirit.' The first 
 of the ' four noble truths ' which Buddha professed to have 
 discovered was not the knowledge of his own depravity of 
 heart, or of the origin of sin, or of the holiness and love of 
 God — on these points he was an out-and-out agnostic ; all 
 that he claimed to have discovered, and which was to 
 enlighten the world, was that ' Existence means suffering ' ; 
 and as a devout Buddhist counts his beads, he mutters, 
 Anitya, dukha, anatta, ' Transcience, sorrow, unreality.' 
 
 A very different picture is presented in the Vedic hymns. 
 In Vedic times a healthful, cheerful view was taken of life ; 
 
i86 ASPECTS OF HIKDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 there was a genial naturalness about it ; but, first of all, in 
 the Upanishads, a heavy gloom seems to have settled on 
 men's spirits, a dull, sombre autumn day, and life becomes, 
 not only a mystery, but a burden and a terror. How was 
 this? The strange, weird dogma of metempsychosis, 
 emerging about this time — how and whence, it is difficult 
 to say — cast a pall of gloom and sadness over all existence. 
 That belief, which, as shown by Tylor in his ' Primitive 
 Culture,' ' was widely spread among the lower races of men, 
 and, in the view of Gough, was adopted by the Brahmans 
 from the aborigines of the country, or, as others think, from 
 the Egyptians, and was at length systematized by Buddha, 
 is the great nightmare of Indian philosophy, and underlies 
 the teaching of the Upanishads. These old books express 
 the desire of the individual soul [jiva) for deliverance from 
 prolonged separate existence (samsdra), and from the liability 
 to pass through an infinite variety of bodies, terrestrial and 
 celestial, each step being determined by the deeds (the 
 Karma) of the life that went before. 
 
 Between the age of the Vedic bard and priest, who sang 
 and sacrificed at the primitive altars, and that of the serious 
 thinkers of Buddhist monasteries, who penetrated to the 
 centre of things, and advanced to the mountain heights of 
 vision, great historical changes must have taken place. To 
 the former, this terrestrial life and the phenomena of the 
 outer world bounded their horizon ; to the latter, the human 
 soul and the migration of the ego become the special object 
 of study, and its surmounting all finite rewards and punish- 
 ments in a final release {nirvana), the chief good. The 
 Vedic sacrificer, bent on the possession of worldly goods, 
 seeks to obtain the favour of the gods. The Buddhist sage 
 sees in the chances and changes of life the play of great 
 cosmic forces, and his aim is so to master them through 
 
 ' Vol. ii. p. 6. 
 
METEMPSYCHOSIS AND NIRVANA 187 
 
 philosophic knowledge as to escape from them into a 
 higher condition. It is true that the idea of mukti, or 
 emancipation, is pre-Buddhistic, for the final release of the 
 soul from transmigration is one of the chief burdens of the 
 Upanishads ; but Sakya Muni, who flourished in the latter 
 half of the sixth century B.C.,' systematized it when he 
 insisted on the comparative worthlessness of rites, and 
 ceremonies, and sacrifices, and that in nirvana alone could 
 man find full relief from the temptations and miseries of 
 life. In the subsequent systems of philosophy, a clear dis- 
 tinction is drawn between the active delights of heaven 
 {svarga) and the unbroken calm that follows the final 
 release^ (apavargd). 
 
 It is interesting to note that very similar religious philo- 
 sophical speculations were current about the same time in 
 Greece, in the mysteries of the Orphean cult, and among 
 the Pythagorean sects, and, later on, in the closely related 
 conceptions of Plato, who was born some fifty years after 
 the death of Buddha. Societies of devotees, separated 
 from the world, and seeking a salvation by means of sacred 
 study — the contemplation of pure wisdom in ' the sanc- 
 tuaries of silence ' — and of difficult ceremonies of purifica- 
 tion and consecration, sprang up both in Greece and India. 3 
 The austere type of Buddha's self-renunciation, however — 
 that of a homeless beggar, a mendicant friar — finds no 
 counterpart in the more cheerful West ; while the per- 
 sonality of the great Buddha himself, with the nimbus of 
 miracles surrounding his life,* is altogether different from 
 
 ' See Hardy's ' Manual of Buddhism,' p. 366. 
 
 ' Wilson's ' Essays,' iii. 113. 
 
 3 See Lewes' ' History of Philosophy,' i. 22. 
 
 ■• According to the ' Lalita Vistara,' at the supreme moment ot 
 Buddha's enlightenment, actual flames of light issued from the crown 
 of his head. 
 
i88 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 that of the Grecian sage.' But both classes of thinkers 
 were alike involved in a hopeless pessimism. This present 
 world is a gloomy prison of suffering and of death, a con- 
 tinuous flux of becoming and passing away, of ' immaterial 
 seeming ' ; and no peace is to be found short of complete 
 release from the limitations of such a life. And the inexor- 
 able law which subjects all to a common fate can be 
 explained only by postulating the doctrines of transmigration 
 — birth followed by death in an infinite chain of lives, alter- 
 nated by periods of reward or retribution in heavenly worlds 
 or in infernal regions. 
 
 Now, such a doctrine, inaccurately called in Buddhism 
 the transmigration of the soul — since its founder denied its 
 existence — and appearing in' India as a subject of specula- 
 tion long before the time of Buddha, proved a burden too 
 great to bear, and some relief had to be found. The 
 absorbing question was. How may the misery of existence 
 be averted ? The answer was. By avoiding births. How 
 were they to be avoided ? By avoiding actions, good and 
 bad. To avoid actions, desires must be eradicated ; and 
 desires could become extinct only when individual con- 
 sciousness was lost; and that was possible only when the 
 individual soul was absorbed into the Supreme, according to 
 Hinduism, or when, according to Buddhism, the Arhat 
 enters Nirvana, and ceases to exist. Absorption, and 
 consequently identity, were thus the haven of rest found 
 in the Upanishads and the Vedanta for the soul tossed 
 and wearied by transmigration. Such was the Hindu 
 philosopher's answer to the question, 'What must I do 
 to be saved ? ' and which was put in the form, ' How may 
 I be released from the misery of Samsdra,' or earthly 
 existence ? 
 
 Not knowing the Christian view of life and suffering, in 
 
 ' See Oldenberg's ' Ancient India,' p. 78 et seq. 
 
SALIVATION FROM TRANSMIGRATION 189 
 
 which both are regarded as educational steps to a higher, 
 fuller life beyond, the problem was, how to shake off all 
 personality and break the iron chain of repeated births — cut 
 short the eighty-four lakhs through which a person might 
 have to pass. The solution was mukti — liberation, absorp- 
 tion. And, according to the Upanishads, Divine know- 
 ledge is the instrument, and meditation the means by 
 which the spirit is to be freed. To avoid all contact with 
 the world, to avoid distracting works and profitless rituals, 
 and to meditate on the identity of the internal with the 
 external Spirit, till their oneness is realized — this has been 
 the essential teaching of the Upanishads as understood by 
 expounders of them from the most ancient times. The 
 early Vedic faith of an immortality with the gods dis- 
 appears ; and for the mass of men the future is one weary 
 round of births, a hopeless struggle with the Karmic forces 
 of demerit and retribution, and for the select few the 
 absorption and extinction of the individual soul in the 
 Universal Soul. Such was the highest conclusion of Indian 
 thought — based on what is now seen to have been a mis- 
 taken and pessimistic view of life, and on a formulated 
 dogma unsupported, as we shall see, by any evidence, and 
 untaught in the hymns of the Rig- Veda. These two 
 assumptions afforded the first motive to Indian speculation, 
 and were at the root of Indian philosophy and religion. 
 'These great ideas,' says the Brahmavddin, 'form the woof 
 and the warp of Indian thought, permeating its whole out- 
 look, its attitude towards life, its most sacred aspirations, 
 and its most cherished wishes and hopes.' ' 
 
 What if the whole should be an elaborate and subtle 
 process of false reasoning? And if the dogma of trans- 
 migration cannot be established, then the entire framework 
 and raison d'etre of the Upanishads and the Vedanta would 
 
 ' May 22, 1897. 
 
iQo ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 be removed, though all that is true and beautiful in them 
 would still remain. 
 
 To this subject, then, we must now turn ; and seeing 
 that there is no Hindu belief more universally held than 
 that of Karma and transmigration — two distinct doctrines, 
 but united in Hinduism, whatever differences on other 
 points may characterize the sects ; that it is the underlying 
 thought of all Hindu philosophy and religion, and the one 
 that clashes most with the essentials of Christianity — atone- 
 ment, free forgiveness, and salvation through faith in Christ 
 — thereby offering the greatest resistance to the acceptance 
 of the Gospel, the subject will have to be considered at 
 some length, and the counter-presentation of the Christian 
 truth be clearly given. 
 
 Before passing to this, however, there is one other assump- 
 tion which we must just notice, without which the doctrine 
 of identity and absorption could not be established. The 
 Vedanta teaches that Brahma is illusorily associated with 
 three kinds of bodies, and that these form the actual 
 covering of individual souls. The ' casual body ' {kdrana- 
 sarlrd) comes first, but, being identified with Maya, is no 
 real body ; and this union is likened to a state of dreamless 
 sleep. The second is the ' subtle ' or psychic body 
 {siikshma-sarira), corresponding to the antah-karana, or 
 ' internal organ ' — composed of sense, volition, and cog- 
 nition, and constituting a person, a living, individual spirit 
 {jlvdtma). This subtle covering — reminding us of the 
 (Twyua Ti-vEvjxariKov of the Apostle Paul — accompanies the 
 soul through all its migrations ; and the union is likened to 
 a state of dream. Lastly, there is the ' gross corporeal 
 body ' {sthula-sarlra), enveloping the subtle covering, and 
 partaking of the various forms of embodied existence — 
 organic and inorganic, animate and inanimate ; and this is 
 Hkened to the waking state. A man is thus most fully 
 
THE THREE KINDS OF BODIES 191 
 
 awake and alive when he is leading the ordinary earthly 
 life ; and he is in a state of profound slumber, unconscious 
 of his own existence, when he reaches the highest point of 
 spiritual development, and mosi resetnbles Brahma. 
 
 But it is the second state that we have now to do with. 
 And it is taught, especially in the Bhagavad-gita, that the 
 form a man thinks of when dying will be the form to which 
 he will go ; and that form is the one on which he will have 
 meditated most during life. Arjuna is, therefore warned by 
 Krishna to be careful how he thinks, for by his thoughts, 
 day by day, he is building a form which in the death-hour 
 will present itself before him, and will carry him to his own 
 place.' This form corresponds with the subtle or psychic 
 body, and the teaching is profound and suggestive. It is, 
 however, marred by the fact that, Vedantic happiness con- 
 sisting as it does in the loss of individual consciousness, the 
 psychic body, which serves as the organ of the spirit and 
 of the principle 'of consciousness, and which remains after 
 the physical body dies, will also finally perish. But this 
 assumption, again, is unwarranted, and unsupported by any 
 evidence. It is simply a theory advanced for the support 
 of another theory. The only reason why its destruction is 
 assumed is to maintain consistently the fundamental posi- 
 tion of the philosophy that the highest happiness consists in 
 the loss of individual consciousness. But does it ? It is 
 begging the whole question. It may do so in the absence 
 of any knowledge of the future life as known to Christians. 
 But the Christian philosopher stands on higher ground. 
 He knows that the psychic or 'spiritual body,' with -its 
 individual consciousness, lives on and lives for ever ; since 
 his incarnate Lord is now in heaven, in a glorified and 
 conscious humanity, the pledge and promise of the future 
 condition of the saints, with whom the day of resurrection 
 
 ■ Bhagavad-gita, viii. I-IO. 
 
192 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 from death is the moment of the birth of the celestial body. 
 And here, again, we see ancient problems solved, and 
 erroneous views of life corrected in the Christian revelation. 
 
 The Nirvana of unconsciousness — whether formulated 
 in Hinduism or in Buddhism, for the final condition is 
 practically the same — was thus, after all, a makeshift, a 
 desperate conclusion forced by a pessimistic view of life 
 and by belief in transmigration ; the desire for non-exist- 
 ence, so utterly contradicted by human nature at its best, is 
 to be looked at as the outcome of despair. Where there 
 was no personal life realized at the basis of things, and no 
 self-consciousness in the Maker of the universe, India could 
 find no place or ground for the permanence of self-con- 
 sciousness in finite persons. Nirvana was welcomed as a 
 relief. But where God is believed to be a Person, the 
 sorrow and evil that belong to life are known to be not life, 
 and in Christian faith are seen to be transfigured and sur- 
 mounted ; and with such a thought existence becomes a 
 blessing and not a curse, and belief in immortality rational 
 and desirable. An empty, lifeless universe is a miserable 
 substitute for one of infinite potentialities and endless 
 progress. One of the most striking features of Christian 
 experience, one of the greatest gifts that Christ has im- 
 parted, is the vivid sense of possessing a personal and 
 continuous life ; and wherever the Christian Gospel is 
 received, this distinct type of character is created, the 
 opposite of that developed in the East. 'What shall I 
 do to inherit eternal life ? ' asks the Christian. ' What 
 shall I do to inherit eternal extinction of life ? ' asks the 
 Brahman and the Buddhist. 
 
 We thus see that the value of the results obtained by 
 reasoning depends entirely on the accuracy of the obser- 
 vation that supplies the premises on which the reasoning 
 proceeds. And if the ancient observation and philosophy 
 
ETERNAL LIFE AND ETERNAL EXTINCTION 193 
 
 of life and death were wrong, and so supplied false premises 
 in the dogma of transmigration, and in the supposition of 
 the destruction of the psychic body — the organ of con- 
 sciousness — then the startling conclusion arrived at in the 
 affirmation of identity and absorption is, to say the least, 
 fallacious. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF KARMA AND REDEMPTION 
 
 Hindu View of Sin — Doctrine of Karma — Its Truth and Defects — 
 Fully developed in the Sankhya Philosophy and in Buddhism — 
 Blind Causation takes the Place of God — No forgiveness of Sins in 
 Nature — A Necessitated Man — ^Justice and Mercy irreconcilable in 
 Hinduism — Forgiveness and Penalty in Christianity — Revealed 
 Truth necessary — Redemptive Agencies^Application of Two 
 Physical Laws — Intimations of the heart. 
 
 On the subject of sin, Hinduism exhibits one of those 
 strange contradictions that so bewilder the practical mind. 
 It proceeds, indeed, from the prior question — whether we 
 are to regard ourselves as God or not God. And on this, 
 the most important of all questions, Hinduism lets us take 
 our choice, and tolerates discordant sects. But a system 
 that includes both non-Duality and Duality, both Advaitic 
 and Dvaitic thought, that declares with one voice that the 
 human and the Divine Soul are identical, and with another 
 that they are distinct, is surely a contradiction in something 
 more than terms, and can scarcely be considered a safe 
 guide. 
 
 The view we take of sin follows, of necessity, from the 
 view we take of God. If we declare, with the pantheistic 
 
 Vedantist, that we are God (Brahma), sin becomes an 
 
 194 
 
HINDUISM AND SIN 195 
 
 absurdity, not to say a profanity. And so we find the 
 Swami Vivekananda saying, in his Chicago speech : ' Ye, 
 divinities on earth, sinners ? It is a sin to call a man a 
 sinner. It is a standing libel on human nature.' Of course 
 it is, if the human is only another name for the Divine — if 
 we regard man as a divinity. If, on the other hand, we 
 hold that man is a creature and God the Creator — the two, 
 the finite and the Infinite, for ever remaining distinct — then 
 sin finds a real place, since it arises from the conflict of the 
 human will with the Divine. 
 
 But, according to what is claimed to be the highest phi- 
 losophy of Hinduism, sin is a complete delusion ; there 
 really no such thing at all. Creation is mdya, the outcome 
 oi pradhdna — the cosmical illusion — the result of deceptive 
 dualism ; and the true object of yoga is to overcome the 
 illusion, and realize Advaitism — Ekam eva advitiyam — ' One 
 only without a second.' Individualism thus springs from 
 mdyd ; individual existence is a dream ; and it follows that 
 the offences and sins for which the illusory individual 
 conscience blames itself are equally unreal ; and the great 
 object of life, according to this same philosophy, is a purely 
 intellectual one, not a moral one : it is not to get rid of sin, 
 but to rid ourselves of the false idea that we are sinners ; 
 for Vedantism tells us we are God under the bondage of 
 delusion. 
 
 And yet, if this is the philosophy of Hinduism, what do 
 we find in practice? We find, first of all, in the Vedas, 
 and before the primitive mind was obscured by philosophic 
 speculation, that sin holds a very real place. In several of 
 the hymns of the Rig-veda, as we have seen, sin is felt to 
 be a great calamity. It is a ' rope ' or ' bond,' from which 
 the sinner prays to be released. It is a heavy ' burden ' 
 which the gods alone can take away. It is that which 
 incurs the wrath of Varuna, and separates from him. 
 
196 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGH! 
 
 Nevertheless, it was certain sinful actions, such as false- 
 hood, theft, gambling, sorcery, adultery, disobedience to 
 parents, non-performance of religious rites, rather than a 
 sinful nature, that were deplored ; and so we do not meet, 
 in the Vedas, with that mortal 'hatred of wrong and that 
 anguish of penitence which are so characteristic of the 
 Bible. Still, that Vedic man admitted that he was a sinner 
 rather than a divinity, and felt the need of sacrifice, there 
 can be no doubt at all. No language, not even the Jewish, 
 contains so many words relating to sacrifice as Sanskrit. 
 
 And coming down to the present day, what do we find ? 
 If sin is unreal, its penalties certainly are not, if we may 
 judge from the hold that the doctrine of Karma has upon 
 the mind of all Hindus. There are few beliefs so vitally 
 held in India as that of Karma, which teaches that sins 
 bring terrible punishments ; that as men sow, so must they 
 reap, in this life and in future lives. The Hindu sacred 
 books, especially the Laws of Manu, contain elaborate 
 detailed lists of the fearful penalties attaching in the next 
 life to the chief sins against Hindu morality, along with 
 equally elaborate prescriptions for the various expiations, 
 penances, self-inflicted tortures, by which these sins are to 
 be atoned for in the present life. 
 
 Thus we see that the Hindu evidently acts upon a belief 
 of the reality of sin ; he accepts the verdict of his conscience, 
 while yet holding, according to the orthodox philosophy of 
 Hinduism, both sin and conscience to be of the nature of 
 illusion. How theory and practice are reconcilable must 
 be left for others to explain. But the theory has not suc- 
 ceeded in blinding the eyes of millions of Hindus to the ' 
 fact that they are sinners, that they have been sinners, and 
 that they are suffering and will yet suffer the real and terrible 
 penalties of their sins. This is implied in the doctrine of 
 Karma. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA 197 
 
 The word ' Karma,' fast becoming naturalized in the 
 English language, is a Sanskrit word meaning action. In 
 the Upanishads and the Bhagavad gita it has three mean- 
 ings : work in general ; sacrificial ritual ; and the pre- 
 determining influence of action.' The last is the sense 
 in which it is now generally used, meaning action as cause, 
 action as effect ; so that it becomes the general expression 
 for a sequence in Nature. It stands for the unbroken 
 chain of cause and effect, in which every link depends 
 on the link that precedes it ; out of which no link can 
 drop, for law is inviolable, subject neither to breach nor 
 change.'' Where the will has operated, the action is 
 inevitable. The will is the energizing force ; the action 
 is the mere crystallization of the will. We have been 
 making for ourselves, by the creative force of our will, 
 certain causes, that go forth from the realm of mind into 
 the realm of matter — the sphere of our actions ; so that 
 day by day we are living in the results which we have 
 ourselves created. Hence we are born into the world, time 
 after time, with the general mould of our life, cast in the 
 preceding incarnations. Thus, the physical environment 
 that limits our energy, and all the inequalities of our present 
 life, are said to be the result of certain habits and actions 
 belonging to a previous state of existence. It is our 
 previous Karma which rules our p^gs6n^ lot. 
 
 Now, that there is a true law underlying the doctrine 
 of Karma is, of course, admitted. Christianity recognises 
 it quite as much as Hinduism. But in Hinduism it has 
 become complicated by being combined with the dogma 
 of transmigration, which will be discussed in a separate 
 chapter; and its value has been thereby lessened and 
 
 ' See Gita, xviii. 
 
 " See ' Karma,' a lecture by Mrs. Besant at Chicago. 
 
1 98 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 obscured. The two are by no means necessarily con- 
 nected. Karma is a law that runs through Nature, whether 
 the soul migrates or not. But Hinduism, knowing only 
 the law, the law of natural consequence — all the disposi- 
 tions and actions of men flowing, naturally and necessarily, 
 from the original gunas or qualities of Nature, namely : 
 sattva, goodness ; rajas, passion ; tamas, darkness — and 
 not understanding the Christian explanation of life and 
 suffering, nor the doctrine of Divine grace, which confronts 
 and counteracts the law, as we shall see hereafter, has to 
 postulate an unbroken chain of cause and effect, an infinite 
 series of causes, which is unthinkable. 
 
 All physical things, according to this doctrine, are effects 
 — effects of previous causes ; and these we must trace back 
 and still back, for there can be no stopping in the process 
 of reasoning. The inequalities of the present life are said 
 to be the result of works in a previous life ; but this only 
 removes the difficulty one single step, since the question 
 recurs : Whence those works and the inequalities in thai 
 life? And so Hinduism is compelled to fly from stage to 
 stage, until it is forced to declare that the world never had 
 a beginning ; and the idea of an intelligent First Cause, the 
 Maker and Moulder of all things, becomes unnecessary. 
 But this assumption traverses the dicta of modern science, 
 and involves difificulties far greater than those it is intended 
 to remove. An endless succession of beginningless effects 
 ^an infinite series of antecedents — is as unthinkable as 
 ' a stream without a source ' ; for it violates the very 
 nature of thought, which is to demand a cause that shall 
 have no antecedent. ' If each link of the chain hangs on 
 another, the whole will hang, and only hang even in eternity, 
 unsupported, like some stark serpent — unless you find a 
 hook for it.' ' How can we conceive of an endless 
 
 ' Hutchinson Stirling's ' Philosophy and Theology,' p. 262. 
 
THE INEQUALITIES OF THIS LIFE 199 
 
 succession of conscious acts or states— an endless succession, 
 i.e., of changes — under the condition of duration ; how can 
 an eternal duration be now actually past? There must, 
 therefore, have been a first action in some body, which 
 determined the next body the soul would take. Before 
 there could be merit or demerit, beings must have existed 
 and acted ; and we are led back to a first man, such as we 
 find described in the Book of Genesis. It is the old 
 question : ' Which was the first, the hen or the egg ? ' 
 Human souls, whose reason for existence is action and the 
 fruit of action, cannot be eternal ; while the assumption of 
 the existence of a First Cause of all, in the sense of ' a self- 
 moved mover,' has been recognised by philosophers from 
 Plato to Hegel, and on to Herbert Spencer, as a positive 
 notion, ' a necessity of thought' 
 
 And the difficulties are moral as well as metaphysical. 
 The inequalities of life doubtless present a sore problem 
 for all rehgions ; but the Hindu law of Karma only enlarges 
 and prolongs the mystery by making it eternal, backwards 
 and forwards ; and we have a merciless world of births and 
 deaths, without beginning, and, for all practical purposes, 
 without end, with a ruthless law of necessity imposed upon 
 it. Who or what is responsible for all this — for these 
 eternally existing souls suffering from a strange and hope- 
 less injustice ? It is of little use to say it is all mdyd — 
 a dream of the absolute ; for a bad dream is quite bad 
 enough while it lasts. The Christian idea that the in- 
 equalities of this life constitute a probation — a discipline — 
 specially adapted to the nature of each human being, in 
 order to test, and try, and perfect the character, seems both 
 a more hopeful and a more merciful view. 
 
 That there is such a law as Karma — that the deed 
 cannot be separated from its consequence — no one can 
 deny ; and the practical value of such a truth, if brought to 
 
2O0 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 bear on the conduct of life, ought to be immense. As the 
 Indian proverb has it, 
 
 ' Who plants mangoes, mangoes shall he eat ; 
 Who plants thorn-bushes, thorns shall wound his feet ' ; 
 
 or, in the striking words of an old Sanskrit sage in one of 
 the Indian epics : ' 
 
 ' Yes, all the deeds that men have done. 
 In light of day, before the sun, 
 Or veiled beneath the gloom of night, 
 The good, the bad, the wrong, the right — 
 These, though forgotten, reappear, 
 And travel, silent, in their rear.' 
 
 So, also, the English poet, Sir Edwin Arnold : 
 
 ' For will makes deeds, 
 And deeds make Karma, and the Karma makes 
 The outcoming. As when ye press the clay 
 This way and that, and see it harden, so 
 Men for themselves shape Fate. Shadow and Light 
 Are not more surely tied unto each. 
 Than man to Karma, and to Karma, man.' 
 
 It is the great moral law enunciated by the Apostle Paul : 
 ' Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever 
 a man soweth, that shall he also reap ' (Gal. vi. 7). That 
 truth pervades the teaching of the Bible. In the Book of 
 Psalms we read : ' Unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, 
 for Thou renderest to every man according to his work ' 
 (Ps. Ixii. 1 2). Again, we read in the Old Testament : ' I 
 the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give 
 every man according to his ways, according to the fruit 
 of his doings ' (Jer. xvii. 10). And in the New Testament: 
 ' Each man shall bear his own burden ' (Gal. vi. 5). ' For 
 we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of 
 
 ' Mahabharata, xii. 
 
THE BIBLE LAW OF KARMA 201 
 
 Christ ; that each one may receive the things done in the 
 body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good 
 or bad' (2 Cor. v. 10). 
 
 Thus we see that Hinduism has no monopoly of the 
 doctrine of Karma. It is clearly taught in the Bible, too. 
 And why do they both teach it ? Because it is true — true 
 in the nature of things, and true to the voice of conscience. 
 It is a true conception that all deeds, be they good or evil, 
 will inevitably bear fruit according to their nature. In the 
 natural world we expect it. Sow for a certain thing, and 
 you will get it. The pea contains the pod ; the flower 
 contains the vine in embryo. And the laws of the human 
 soul are as certain as the laws of nature. There can be no 
 accident in morals. As a man makes himself, so he must 
 be. There is an exact answer to every deed of dis- 
 obedience, just as an echo answers to the sound. If we 
 transgress the laws of our nature, the punishment must 
 come. The penalties of a broken law are as sure as the 
 existence of the law itself. There can be no caprice here. 
 There is One who rules men according to their merit or 
 demerit ; and by the true law of Karma, as taught in the 
 Bible, He condemns to punishment those who condemn 
 themselves to sin. In the words of the poet VVhittier : 
 
 ' We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
 
 Of which the coming life is made, 
 And fill our future atmosphere 
 With sunshine or with shade. 
 
 ' The tissues of the life to be 
 
 We weave with colours all our own. 
 And in the field of destiny 
 We reap as we have sown. 
 
 ' Still shall the soul around it call 
 
 The shadows which it gathered here, 
 And, painted on the eternal wall. 
 The past shall reappear.' 
 
202 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Full and exact retribution for sin there is not in this 
 world ; and this fact, that the wicked often go, to the eye 
 of man, unpunished, and the good unrewarded, is an 
 irresistible argument, to all reflective and righteous minds, 
 for a future state of rewards and punishments. The present 
 life, according to the Christian view, is not the sequel to 
 a former life, or we ought to remember it, and ought 
 to enter life much more mature than the infants that we 
 are ; but it is our first state of discipline — a school in 
 w^hich we are intended to learn to be wise, to take kindly 
 warning from the checks and restraints, and often sore 
 calamities, which God, in His wisdom and mercy, sets 
 about us here. And when our present life is over we shall 
 be carried on, not in this same material world, but in a 
 more advanced spiritual world, with our bad ways un- 
 corrected, or with our good ways established, each man 
 receiving 'according to his works.' 
 
 And why does God attach sufiering and penalty to sin ? 
 That we may learn to hate it — not simply that Karma may 
 do its work. He makes sin bitter that we may avoid it and 
 forsake it. It all has a moral end. Punishment, as taught 
 by Christ, is an aspect of love. It is love unveiling to 
 us the hidden, intrinsic quality of evil ; so as to bring the 
 sinner, as shown in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, lo 
 a better mind.' 
 
 But to effect this there must be purpose. The blending 
 of justice and mercy in the act of retribution implies a 
 loving Will, an intelligent and benevolent Being, not a 
 mere name — Karma — supposed to be endowed with most 
 wonderful qualities, though destitute of mercy. 
 
 Karma, to the Hindu, stands, as we have seen, for 
 the unbroken chain of cause and effect — impersonal and 
 unalterable law — in which existence is woven into a 
 " See St. Luke xv. 
 
KARMA AND ADRISHTA 203 
 
 corded series of necessitated acts and results. Even the 
 gods have no power to avert the effects of Karma; they 
 are themselves subject to Adrishta — that irresistible some- 
 thing which is felt and ' not seen.' The consequences of 
 acts — merit or demerit — must be completely worked out 
 by an inexorable retribution, which binds act and issue so 
 indissolubly together that every moment of desire or sin 
 must exact its consequent moment of pain. There is 
 no place found for mercy ; for mercy can exist only in a 
 world governed by a living, loving, personal God. Even 
 with an English novelist such as George Eliot, when 
 escaping from distinctly Christian thought, there is no 
 divine force so clear as the awful, unrelenting goddess. 
 Nemesis ; she can allow no way of escape for the sinner 
 because there is no forgiveness of sins in Nature ; and she 
 often speaks as though men and women were merely the 
 puppets of irresistible tendencies. And so they must be 
 in a purely natural system. In Hinduism, the soul is 
 tossed hither and thither by a force set in motion by 
 itself alone, which can never be set aside, because its 
 operation depends on past actions wholly beyond control, 
 and even unremembered. 
 
 Thus, Karma or Adrishta becomes the one and only law 
 of the universe ; and that which in Christianity is simply 
 a method of God's moral government is raised to a 
 supremacy over even God Himself. Blind causation takes 
 the place of God. And if matter with the law of Frakriti, 
 and souls with the law of Karma, can all keep going of 
 themselves, it is hard to see what need there is for a 
 Creator or a Judge, still less for an illusory Isvara, who 
 is said to be a witness of men's actions, and to reward 
 them according to their works. If there be such a Being, 
 he is painfully limited by a despotism more powerful than 
 he, and cannot be called a Deity at all. 
 
204 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 And here it is significant to note that the doctrine of 
 Karma finds its truest place and its most elaborate explana- 
 tion in the atheistical (nirlsvara) system of Kapila, and 
 in that which was the natural result or logical issue of 
 the Sankhya philosophy — the equally godless system of 
 Buddha. In the Sankhya, everything is due to produc- 
 ing Nature, or Prakriti, whose constituent elements — the 
 gunas — act like chords, and bind the spirit with their triple 
 bonds. There is no presiding and interposing Deity. 
 The soul itself is passive; and it is Nature that, with 
 a strange consistency and inconsistency combined, is 
 endowed with the qualities of a thinking mind. The 
 final state of the soul, after it has become wholly separate 
 from matter, through knowledge of the Sankhya doctrines, 
 is a passionless, unconscious state — the nearest approach 
 to the Buddhistic idea of Nirvana. The present life is an 
 unmixed evil, full of pain, a cruel bondage, as it must ever 
 be in a godless world ; and the great aim is to free the soul 
 from every connection with matter. 
 
 In Buddhism, both God and the soul have practically 
 no existence. The Brahmanical God had become an 
 object of terror ; and feeling life to be altogether miserable 
 under the world conditions as constituted by Brahmanism, 
 and seeing no escape from the eternal circle of being 
 while the Brahmanical Deity was allowed to live, that ' at 
 no point was the circle blessed,' Buddha boldly declared 
 that God was not. As for the soul, he discovered that 
 in his own experience, in spite of all his asceticism, he 
 could not rid himself of pride and self-love j and since 
 belief in the existence of soul was the motive power that 
 kept up the existence of desire, he was finally led to 
 repudiate the doctrine of soul altogether, and to explain 
 the problem of the world by his doctrine of Karma — the 
 survival, not of the soul, but of the effects of actions, or 
 
BUDDHISM AND KARMA 205 
 
 character. The basis of this theory he found in the 
 previous systems of philosophy, in those different kinds of 
 atoms that had existed from all eternity, and that were 
 indestructible. Among these original atoms were those of 
 mind ; and as their combinations of thought, and feeling, 
 and desire, which go to make up character, cannot be 
 dissolved by death, they must, unless killed in life, wander 
 about the world like disembodied spirits, until they become 
 re-incarnated in some other body. Thus he arrived at his 
 great doctrine of Karma, which, denying the existence of 
 the soul, maintains that the fruit of actions or character 
 cannot die, but must ever reappear. And since evil is 
 necessary to existence ; since 'to be ' is to suffer — sorrow 
 being of the very essence of life — existence itself is to be 
 abhorred and renounced. To become entirely free from 
 self-interest, the lower nature must be gradually destroyed ; 
 cravings and desires must be starved out, by cutting off 
 the motives for them at their root, and by keeping the 
 unselfish motives — love for others — uppermost. This 
 Buddha sought to effect, not by Divine help, for he knew 
 no merciful Deity, but by his ' noble eightfold path ' ; 
 and when the thirst for existence was thus quenched, 
 the disciple could enter the blissful state of Nirvana. 
 Buddhism is thus the most determined attempt ever 
 made to solve the problem of the world without God or 
 the soul ; and this explains how it is that the doctrine of 
 Karma holds such a prominent place in the Buddhist 
 system. Both in that system and in the atheistic Sankhya 
 it finds a natural home, and the most fitting soil for its 
 development. 
 
 And thus it must ever be in a philosophy educed from 
 Nature; for Nature preaches the most crushing fatalism, 
 the most inflexible determinism. When man is regarded 
 as a part of Nature, subject like other parts to merely 
 
2o6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 cosmical laws, it must be so; he is simply a product 
 of antecedents and circumstances, just like a mango on a 
 tree. Action once begun, there is a ceaseless revolving 
 in the wheel of being, in the dread bonds of fate, from 
 which even death allows of no release. But regard man, 
 as the Bible does, as having a place in Nature, but adove 
 it, and lord of it, and made in the image of his Creator; 
 then his history and destiny are altogether different. A 
 system rooted in Nature will create a relentless Karma ; a 
 revelation of Love proclaims justice and the spiritual law 
 of retribution, but, a/ong with that, redemptive forces to 
 counteract the fatal consequences of man's folly and sin. 
 
 Or, looking at the subject from a slightly different 
 standpoint, and taking man rather than Nature as the 
 centre, start from the speculative reason only, and it is easy 
 to accept an impersonal Deity, as in pantheism, and 
 therefore an impersonal order of things, in which there 
 is no power of moral initiative, no power to create new 
 sources and conditions of good. 'Law can simply act 
 upon what is, not create what ought to be.' An impersonal 
 Deity, or, what is the same thing, blind causation, means a 
 necessitated man, ruled by inexorable fate — a necessitated 
 mechanism — Karma. And necessity can mend nothing, 
 redeem no one. The doctrine of Karma might perhaps be 
 all right for a good world where the results would be always 
 happy, but it is empty of all hope and comfort for a 
 mingled state of good and evil.' ' Faith in it may create 
 Stoics, but will not renew or redeem humanity.' 
 
 But start from the religious consciousness and the moral 
 nature, and then a Personal God, with consciousness and 
 will and love, is a necessity ; a Being with a loving pur- 
 pose, and ruling the world in love, through righteousness, 
 towards righteous ends. And this was the great message 
 
 ■ See Principal Fairbairn's ' City of God,' p. 200. 
 
HINDUISM AND DIVINE MERCY 207 
 
 of Christ to man. Evil is unquestionably a fearful thing, 
 and it must have continued its fierce ravages for ever, and 
 Karma its perpetual revolutions, had not Divine mercy 
 interposed. In God alone is peace and restoration. 
 
 And Hinduism itself, when the heart of the people, 
 rather than the heads of its sages, has spoken, has had 
 glimpses of this saving truth. While one section of 
 Hinduism, in Saivaism, has insisted on the stern law of 
 retribution, another section, in Vaishnavaism, has hoped 
 in the Divine mercy, and believed in Divine assistance to 
 remedy man's evil case. Indeed, just as some have lost 
 sight of God's mercy altogether in the doctrine of Karma, 
 so popular superstition has blinded others to the law of 
 retributive justice ; and the mere mention of Vishnu's name, 
 or bathing in a sacred stream, has sufficed to claim Divine 
 mercy and forgiveness ; as though one could get off, by 
 mere favour or luck, from the action of righteous law, and 
 escape from fulfilling one's personal responsibilities. So 
 impossible is it, apart from Divine Revelation to reconcile 
 mercy and justice. 
 
 We see these two conflicting sentiments at work in the 
 Bhagavad-gita, where Hindu and Christian ideas often 
 appear side by side. In strict consistency, and in accord- 
 ance with the law of Karma, it should teach no forgiveness. 
 But here and there the instinct of the heart, yearning for a 
 kindly pardon, breaks through the restraints of philosophy; 
 and Krishna is made to say : ' Renouncing all Dharmas, 
 come unto me as your sole refuge. Sorrow not ; / will 
 release you from all sins ' ' — almost echoing the words of 
 the Bible. 
 
 These two schools of thought — conscience, in the 
 philosophic doctrine of Karma, insisting on justice and 
 the working out of natural consequences, and the heart, 
 ' Gita, xviii. 66. 
 
2o8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 in the intervention of its avatdras, hoping for mercy — • 
 have never been reconciled in Hinduism. There has been 
 no common meeting-ground for these two truths. In 
 Christianity they meet in the revelation of Divine Grace 
 and in the doctrine of Atonement. This revelation alone 
 reconciles the stern mysterious influence of Karma with 
 the Gospel of Forgiveness. And herein lies the glad 
 tidings of the Gospel and the true solution of the difificulty. 
 
 We must start, of course, in our inquiry, not with blind 
 causation — impersonal law — but with a Divine Lawgiver, 
 whom Christ represents as a just and loving Father. From 
 Him the law proceeds. In considering the dealings of 
 God with men, the Christian, taught by Christ, follows 
 the analogies of parental affection and discipline, rather 
 than the analogies of mere Nature or the hard and heartless 
 law-court. 
 
 Now, in every violation of law there are two aspects 
 to be regarded. The one is the disturbance of personal 
 relations between two parties ; the other is the liability 
 to the natural consequences of disobedience, established as 
 a necessary connection of causes with effects. Karma 
 recognises the second, but not the first. Why ? Because 
 there is no recognition of a personal, moral Ruler of the 
 universe. It sees the law of justice in the ripening of acts, 
 but not the disturbed personal relations. It takes count of 
 the cosmos, but loses sight of God. It systematizes the 
 secrets of Nature, but knows not the face of the Divine 
 Father behind. Mere law and creation have nothing to 
 do with forgiving trespasses and saving from temptation ; 
 but the moment we realize God as ' Our Father,' we know 
 that He can forgive us as we need to be forgiven, and that 
 He can shield us from temptation. The Hindu form of 
 the doctrine of Karma plainly shows that the conception 
 of the Fatherhood of God is not entertained, and those 
 
RECONCILIATION WITH GOD 209 
 
 who in the present day profess to hold it are bound to 
 modify their ideas of Karma. 
 
 We cannot, then, ignore these two aspects of violated 
 law. And looking at the disturbed relations between the 
 offending and the offended party, we presume that these 
 may be set right by a process of reconciliation, and that is 
 what is commonly meant by the forgiveness of sins. Will 
 not God, our Father, like an earthly father, freely forgive 
 all that is strictly personal in the sin — if, indeed, any 
 personal element can be supposed in the case of God — as 
 soon as there is the real and deep repentance of the sinner ? 
 Assuredly. He is not vindictive, He cherishes no feeling 
 of resentment ; but He longs for reconciliation and for the 
 return of the wayward prodigal to the Divine heart and 
 home. 
 
 But if we regard forgiveness as involving the remission 
 of penalty, the question is not so simple, for here we are 
 brought face to face with the natural and inseparable 
 consequence of sin — the link that has been wrought into the 
 chain of cause and effect — and which still remains, and 
 that is Karma. We cannot annihilate the past ; and how 
 can any penitence of ours set aside inevitable law ? If 
 God be the Author of a system of natural laws or the 
 Ruler of a righteous social order, and if sin be regarded as 
 the transgression of such laws, how can He, by any act of 
 His, show compassion and forgiveness to a penitent sinner, 
 and avert those penal consequences that are part of the 
 moral and social order ? Must not these laws be as fixed 
 and inexorable as the laws of a purely physical world ? 
 Where in such a system is there any room for the efficacy 
 of repentance and for the remission of sins ? If Nature or 
 human society reveal anything, they reveal an unforgiving 
 Ruler ; so that arguing on the ground of natural reason 
 only, and apart from Revelation, we must see how un- 
 
 15 
 
2IO ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 availing penitence must be to remove the consequences of 
 transgression. 
 
 We thus find ourselves in the midst of a system of righteous 
 order, in which all events are linked together by inevitable 
 law, and where no place can be found for forgiveness and 
 remission of sins. It is plain, therefore, that, if they are 
 ever to be granted, it can only be by some Divine inter- 
 position that shall make them possible, and that shall in 
 some way remove us from the necessary operation of these 
 Karmic laws. And as we realize that the laws we have 
 transgressed are God's laws — the laws of an infinitely good 
 and gracious Being — a ray of hope comes to us. Surely 
 He must have compassion for our weakness, and be merci- 
 fully inclined towards us, and ready to forgive. 
 
 And this is exactly what the Gospel tells us. Never- 
 theless, in the New Testament the forgiveness of sips is 
 not regarded as something natural and easy of belief, 
 but something exceptional and wonderful — something so 
 contrary to analogy and to all our expectations that it 
 needed a Divine Revelation to assure us of it, and it is in 
 that Revelation proclaimed as 'good news' or 'the Gospel' 
 for the human race. It is not a truth of natural, but of 
 revealed, religion, and it needs an effort of faith to accept 
 it. It is something so impossible in the existing order of 
 things where the law of Karma reigns that it required 
 a miracle of wisdom and grace to accomplish it, even the 
 Incarnation, life, sufferings, death, and resurrection of the 
 Son of God. This was needed in order that the remission 
 of sins, which in the natural order seems impossible, might 
 be secured.' 
 
 It is spoken of in the New Testament as a unique super- 
 natural act in the spiritual world, effecting some profound 
 
 ' The reader is referred to a little booli on ' The Atonement,' by 
 Dr. Magee, late Archbishop of York. (Cassell and Co., London.) 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE NEW BIRTH 211 
 
 change in the relations existing between God and man 
 (Rom. iii. 24-26; 2 Cor. v. 19), freeing us from the 
 dominion of sin and of the law, and bringing us under 
 the reign of grace (Rom. vi. 14, vii. 6). And this new 
 state into which we are brought is so wonderful that it is 
 described as a new life — a new birth — in which we are 
 actually united to Christ by an act of faith, sharers of 
 His life, partakers of His Divine nature, and so becoming 
 new creatures (2 Cor. v. 17). 
 
 Now, such an event and such an experience are un- 
 known in any other religion. And strange as it may seem, 
 true as it is, it goes sorely against the grain of human 
 nature to renounce the boast of inherent virtue, the claim 
 to personal merit, and to acknowledge that all our painful 
 and protracted efforts to build up character by ourselves 
 alone have been in vain. ' Eastern religions,' once said the 
 late Sir M. Monier-Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit 
 in the University of Oxford, ' are occupied with a salvation 
 to be wrought by man. Christianity presents a salvation 
 designed and offered by God. The Bible ever says to 
 men : " Put off the robe of self-righteousness " ; the sacred 
 books of the East tell him to put it on, even when about 
 to appear in the presence of God.' And yet, with all the 
 cycles and aeons of existence, have Hindus succeeded in 
 wearing off the fetters by which they are still bound to the 
 misery of births and deaths ? What is once done cannot 
 be undone, they say. No, it cannot, if we are left simply 
 to ourselves and Karma; though Mrs. Besant, aware of 
 the objection brought against the doctrine that it teaches 
 a fatalism destructive of human effort, affirms (in her tract 
 on Karma) that by bravely and patiently bearing our 
 Karma ' we can break one by one the fetters we have 
 forged, and step out again free men into the world.' '^ But 
 ' See also Bhagavad-gita, vi. 35, 36. 
 
212 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 can we? How many men and women have done it in 
 their own unaided strength? The practice of yoga 
 demands a set of external circumstances which can 
 never be those of ordinary men, to say nothing of 
 women and children. Philosophic teaching and mere 
 knowledge are all very well, but their impotence as a 
 moral power has in all ages been made manifest. The 
 fetters of our sin are too strong for the generality of men ; 
 and the Hindu wi7l is proverbially weak. We need a 
 moral dynamic — a motive powersnch as is given us in 
 the attractive vision and converting force of Divine For- 
 giveness, and which we have in Christ. Then we come 
 to ' love God, because He first loved us ' ; and love is a 
 transforming energy. What is once done cannot be un- 
 done, if we are left alone with Karma ; but it is equally 
 true that what is once done can be undone, so far as the 
 most fatal consequences of our sin are concerned, if there 
 be a loving Father in the Divine Ruler of the universe. 
 The first holds true when a man thinks of himself alone, 
 and the second holds true when he loses himself in the 
 Divine Saviour of the world. For Christ loosens the grip 
 of sin on the heart and reinforces the will. Hinduism and 
 Buddhism throw men on their own resources ; the Gospel 
 of Christ throws them on the strength of another. The 
 one message breathes despondency and pessimism ; the 
 other breathes hope and optimism. 
 
 The glad tidings of the Gospel to be proclaimed to non- 
 Christian lands — and preaching would never exist if there 
 were not good news to proclaim : did one ever hear of a 
 pessimist preaching ? — the glad tidings is just this : that 
 Christ is incarnated into the natural order and discipline 
 we are under, and becomes the quickening life and central 
 factor of it. So that it is not what we do that is the 
 ground of our justification before God, but what Christ 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND GRACE 213 
 
 does /or us and in us in His atoning Death, and in the 
 perfect righteousness which He works out in our character 
 — the morar power of His life passing into our lives, as the 
 sap of the tree flows into the branches. 
 
 This is the change of state that we celebrate as Chris- 
 tianity; and it must, of course, be experienced to be 
 proved — a change, that is, just as great as must needs 
 take place when the impersonal and dry machine com- 
 posed of law and world has God's gracious influence and 
 sanctifying life poured in. Acting with the universality 
 and permanence of natural law, there is a Higher Power 
 which makes for righteousness in the universe and in the 
 heart of man. Righteousness is the deepest word of 
 Grace. 
 
 Divine grace, however, does not annihilate the past, 
 does not annul the consequences of wrong-doing ; but it 
 does this, it brings the soul into right relations with God, 
 and hence gives it a new start and direction for the future. 
 The conception of Divine laws as acting by way of natural 
 consequence in the direction oj rebuke and recovery is en- 
 grained in all the language of promise and of blessing 
 of which the New Testament is full. And this is an 
 all-important part of the subject, which needs to be 
 clearly apprehended ; since it is just here where the chief 
 difficulty comes in. If it can be shown that this concep- 
 tion of Divine law acting in the direction of rebuke and 
 recovery has scientific aspect, then the objection raised 
 by the advocates of Karma against the Christian doctrine 
 of Forgiveness is met rationally. 
 
 There are two laws of physics with which students of 
 science are familiar. One is, that 'action and reaction 
 are equal, and in opposite directions.' In this analogy 
 we have the ethical truth of retribution suggested, that 
 men are judged according to their works. But there is 
 
214 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 another physical law equally true, and that is, 'the per- 
 sistence of energy with its convertibility into different forms,' 
 as illustrated in the conversion of the energy of motion, by 
 friction, into fhe energy of heat or of electricity. May not 
 the application of this law in the ethical sphere be this ? — 
 The energy of past sin is persistent ; as a cause it generates 
 its appropriate consequence — its Karma. But Divine For- 
 giveness, proclaimed in the Gospel, converts the destructive 
 power of sin into the constructive power of sincere repen- 
 tance, just as the energy of motion is converted by friction 
 into the energy of heat or electricity.^ 
 
 The very remembrance of the sins that burden the 
 conscience acts as a powerful stimulus in the struggle for 
 amendment and reparation. Of course, where there is 
 no remembrance of past sin, as in the re-birth theory, 
 there can be no repentance ; and so we do not find in 
 Hinduism that deep sorrow for sin and anguish of spirit 
 that are so characteristic of true Christian experience. 
 The sight of a man bowed in contrition with a sense of 
 sin, and on his knees in prayer, struggling to gain the 
 victory over besetting evil, is foreign to Hindu ideas, but 
 essentially Christian ; it is the noble sorrow of the great 
 saints. 
 
 There is in this expiation of a guilty conscience a 
 process of mortification going on — which the Apostle Paul 
 calls ' the crucifixion of the old man,' or corrupt character 
 — and at the same time a work of renewal by the Spirit 
 of God. And the suggested analogy is this : in this 
 struggle for amendment we see the causative energy of 
 past sin persisting in the converted form of a power to 
 overcome evil with good — corresponding to the physical 
 law seen in the conversion, by friction, of the energy of 
 motion into the energy of heat or of electricity. 
 
 ' See 'The Divine Satisfaction,' by J. M. Whiton, D.D., p. 63 
 et seq. (James Clarke and Co., London.) 
 
POWER TO OVERCOME EVIL 215 
 
 This new power to overcome evil is developed in us by 
 the Divine grace of Forgiveness ; and we see the all- 
 important place that Forgiveness holds in the Christian 
 system. In the presence of the Cross of Christ — the 
 symbol of God's forgiving love — and revealing as nothing 
 else could wkai sin really is to God — is generated by a 
 genuine repentance for our sin, a godly energy that spurs 
 us on to do all we can to amend the wrong, and to 
 discharge the debt of evil consequences — the Karma — 
 which our sin entails. The objective work of Christ must 
 be subjectively realized by the soul. Forgiveness produces 
 personal righteousness, through our moral fellowship with 
 Christ, and among other results creates in us a forgiving 
 spirit towards our fellow-men. 
 
 We have an illustrious example of this transformed 
 energy in the Apostle Paul. The remembrance of his 
 having been a blasphemer and a persecutor was ever 
 urging him on with a holy energy in the service of Christ. 
 The spring of this energy was itj the melting thought 
 that he had been forgiven. There we have what this 
 same Apostle calls ' a new creation ' — another man. In 
 his view, however ill the man who sins deserves of God, 
 the man who has forsaken his sins is no longer that ill- 
 deserving man. Why should such a one go on suffering 
 for separate acts of sin when the sin itself is forsaken and 
 forgiven. What moral end can possibly be served by that ? 
 Even the Hindu who has attained jnana ceases to suffer 
 the penalty of past wrong-doing ; why, then, should he 
 object to the remission of evil deeds in the case of the 
 Christian jnani — the man who knows God in the divinest 
 way it is possible to know Him, as one who pardoneth 
 iniquity, transgression and sin ? 
 
 God regards us at any moment as what we are, not 
 as what we were. The present hour is the central and 
 
2i6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 all-important point of every life ; the past and the future 
 are in the circumference. Human or natural justice, as in 
 the doctrine of Karma, knowing only the outward man, 
 takes hold of deeds, whenever done, and after however long 
 a lapse of time. The Divine righteousness, with truer, 
 deeper eyes that penetrate the heart, deals with character — 
 with deeds, no doubt, but with deeds so far as they pass 
 into character ; and character is ever a thing of the 
 present ; and whatever our present principle of action is, 
 that is essentially our character. 
 
 The Christian religion, therefore, while fully admitting 
 the truth of Karma — the persistence of the past — has 
 something more, and something priceless to offer, which 
 Hinduism has not — even that Gospel truth of God's 
 Atoning and Forgiving Grace by which the sinner, sub- 
 dued and penitent, and filled with a sacred affection, is 
 clothed aneiv with moral power, through the inspirations 
 of the Father's love. 
 
 The Forgiveness of Sins is thus by no means the 
 immoral act it is sometimes supposed by Hindus to be, 
 when it secures the highest end of moral government — a 
 penitent thoroughly changed in heart, and reformed in 
 life. It is not in conflict, but in keeping, with the law 
 of judgment according to works. Forgiveness effects no 
 cancelling of the spiritual law, that the sinful deed cannot 
 be annulled ; that the past act lives on as a persistent 
 cause producing its effect. There is in the Christian 
 Gospel no cut-off between causes and effects ; but though 
 the causative energy — the Karma — put in motion by a 
 sinful deed persists, its force now appears, through 
 forgiveness, in a converted form — transmuted from a 
 deteriorating to an ameliorating force, from a fatal to a 
 vital issue. The Divine way of the Gospel is to respect 
 the facts — that past deeds are indestructible — but with 
 
FORGIVING GRACE 217 
 
 these facts to combine a new element of its own, whereby 
 the evil that cannot be annihilated is buried by forgiveness, 
 and becomes, in a genuine repentance, a source of fertiliza- 
 tion to the new-born seeds of better resolution. This is 
 that ' covering ' of sin which the Bible speaks of as effected 
 by Forgiveness. 
 
 And this truth, while having, as we have seen, a 
 scientific aspect, in harmony with physical law, and 
 therefore commendable to reason, is the sweetest, gladdest, 
 and divinest truth, because hope-inspiring, that human 
 ears can ever hear. It is a truth to which our conscience 
 must respond with an embrace that grows the stronger 
 as our vision of it becomes more clear. To be sure of 
 a pardoned past, a peaceful present, and a triumphant 
 future, to cut the cable that holds us to this limited 
 earthly life, is surely better than to be bound by the 
 fetters of a chain of repeated births and deaths. And 
 every century is making it more and more obvious, as Mr. 
 Balfour has shown in his great work, ' The Foundations 
 of Belief,' that the deepest evidence of all Divine teaching is 
 in the intimations and cravings of the ordinary human 
 heart. These imitations and cravings are to be found in 
 Hinduism ; in that hoping in the Divine mercy as ex- 
 hibited in Vishnavaism ; and in those remarkable words of 
 the Bhagavad-gita, already quoted : ' Come to me as your 
 sole refuge. I will release you from all sins.' Whatever a 
 philosophical system may say to the contrary, those words 
 express the longing of the heart, and foreshadow that truth 
 of Divine Forgiveness and Restoration which appears in all 
 its fulness in the Christian Gospel. 
 
 The Hindu doctrine of Karma is just such as reflective 
 and philosophical minds, perplexed with the problems of 
 existence, would reach, apart from the Gospel ; and so 
 true is it that the Christian religion, while recognising all 
 
2i8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the truth that other systems hold in common with itself, 
 has something more to give — something more that the 
 Divine Father has revealed, as man has been able to 
 receive it. In other departments of life we gladly welcome 
 ' something more ' if it will add to our resources and 
 happiness. Much more should we welcome it in the 
 highest and most important sphere of all, that of religion. 
 
 The doctrine of Karma, as was pointed out, has in 
 Hinduism been complicated and obscured by being com- 
 bined with the doctrine of transmigration, and a further 
 consideration of its specific teaching must now occupy us. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMIGRATION 
 
 Doctrine of Transmigration — Widespread Belief — Not taught in 
 the Vedas — Western and Hindu Conceptions of Soul — Teaching 
 of Manu — Underlying Truths — Future Life — Future Punish- 
 ment — In a Body — Instinct of Justice — Main Arguments for 
 Doctrine discussed — Heredity and Christian View of Suffering 
 — Positive Objections against the Belief — At Variance with other 
 Hindil Doctrines — Is Unscientific, Unphilosophical, Unjust, 
 Unremediable — Practical Effects of Fatalism — the Christian Cure 
 of Sin. 
 
 Transmigration, or metempsychosis, according as we 
 use a Latin or a Greek word, signifies the passing of the 
 soul of man after death into some other earthly body. It 
 is a very ancient and widespread belief, and has been held, 
 though in very different forms, by some of the greatest 
 thinkers of the world. Modern theosophists make a 
 special point of transmigration, and have brought it into 
 notice in the West; while in India they endeavour to 
 prove its superiority over the Christian belief 
 
 The time and place of the birth of the doctrine are 
 unknown. The ancient Egyptians held it, but whether 
 it was introduced from without or evolved from within 
 cannot be determined. The embalming of their dead, 
 and their careful preservation in the catacombs, were 
 
220 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 connected with this belief. The worship of beasts by the 
 Egyptians originated in the idea that even the souls of 
 the gods migrated into them. In Greece and Rome the 
 doctrine does not seem to have impressed itself upon the 
 popular mind, and was, indeed, alien to the Greek spirit. 
 The belief was confined to philosophers, and was first 
 plainly taught by Pythagoras, some 500 or 600 years B.C., 
 though whether he derived it from India, as some think, 
 or whether he ever visited India, is very doubtful. He 
 was followed by Plato, who in his earlier dialogues held 
 that men at their next birth were changed into women, 
 or birds, or beasts, or fishes, according as they had 
 lived unrighteously, or frivolously, or without philo- 
 sophy, or in extreme ignorance ; and that between 
 these successive incarnations they had to descend to the 
 lower regions for a thousand years of expiation and puri- 
 fication — thus approaching very closely to the Oriental 
 form of belief. With Plato, however, it was simply a 
 fanciful speculation, and not, as in India, the foundation of 
 a religious system. 
 
 The great Alexandrine Father, Origen, believed in re- 
 incarnation ; but he held that with the appearance of Christ 
 the process was suddenly arrested, and fallen angels and 
 fallen men were alike lifted by His spirit from their 
 degradation to their homes in heaven. 
 
 The belief has been met with all over the world : 
 among the wild tribes of North America ; in Mexico and 
 Peru ; among Finns and Lapps ; among the Australian 
 savages ; and in the religion of the southern tribes of 
 Africa. It still prevails in India, Ceylon, Burmah, Thibet, 
 Tartary, China, that is, in all lands where Hinduism or 
 Buddhism is professed, and is therefore accepted by a 
 large proportion of the human race. 
 
 It is interesting to note, however, that the belief was 
 
TRANSMIGRATION POST-VEDIC 221 
 
 unknown to the ancient Aryans, who early settled in India ; 
 nor has any branch of the Aryan family in the West held it. 
 There is a total absence of the idea of re-birth in the hymns 
 of the Rig-veda/ beyond a stray reference in the tenth and 
 last book, and of a much later date than the others, to the 
 soul of a dead man going to the waters or plants. The 
 conception is, indeed, foreign to Vedic modes of thought. 
 In those early times it was believed that the souls of the 
 good went after death to the heaven of light, where they 
 joined the company of the fathers. The prevailing use, 
 too, of animals in sacrifice and for human food in those 
 early times is a presumption against the Vedic belief in 
 transmigration ; and in the view of Gough and other writers 
 the idea was adopted by the Aryan settlers from the abori- 
 gines of the country. 
 
 The weird belief in transmigration begins to appear, 
 though not as yet clearly defined, in the Brahmanas,^ or 
 sacrificial rituals, and in connection with the growth of 
 sacerdotalism. At this period the gods are made to 
 declare that all who omit to sacrifice should be born again 
 and present their bodies to Yama, the god of departed 
 spirits — -the Indian Pluto — in innumerable successive 
 births. 
 
 The belief is fully developed in the Upanishads, which 
 tell us that those whose conduct has been evil are born 
 again as dog, or hog,3 worm, insect, fish, bird, lion, boar, 
 serpent,* or as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum 
 and beans.s It underlies the systems of Hindu philosophy, 
 
 " The only verse ever quoted in support of the doctrine is Rig-veda 
 i. 164, 32. But the word bahuprajah, which is rendered by Professor 
 Wilson ' is subject to many births,' may, according to commentators, 
 also mean ' has many offsprings ' ; and the latter is held to be the usual 
 and more literal use of the word, the former being artificial. 
 
 = Seethe Satapatha Brahmana. ^ Chhandogya-Upan., V. x. 7, 8. 
 
 * Kaushitaki-Upan., i. 2. 5 Aitareya-Aranyaka, II. i. 2. 
 
222 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 especially the Sankhya and Vedanta ; while in the Laws 
 of Manu the doctrine is elaborately expounded, and ' what 
 particular bodies the vital spirits enter in this world,' in 
 consequence of sins committed, are described at large, 
 with detailed lists of fearful penalties.' It is assumed, 
 and argued on, in the Bhagavad-glta,= and is taught in 
 the Puranas. For many hundred years before Christ, 
 down to the present day, it has dominated the thought of 
 the people. All the gurus, pandits, Brahmans, and other 
 castes, believe it to be true. It enters, indeed, so vitally 
 into the whole genius of Hindu philosophy, and is so 
 interwoven with the incitements to an ascetic and holy 
 life, giving rise to all the self-tortures of the devotee, that 
 were this doctrine removed the religious structure of, 
 Hindflism would be hard to recognise, and would have to 
 be rebuilt. 
 
 A belief is not necessarily true because it is ancient. 
 Many old beliefs, such as that the earth was the centre of 
 the solar system, have been shown to be false by modern 
 science. The ancients, with their limited knowledge of 
 the laws that govern Nature and life, postulated certain 
 theories to account for certain facts which they could not 
 otherwise explain ; they tried to settle everything in God's 
 great universe by subtle speculations. Transmigration may 
 be most improbable — may be, as it is, impossible to prove ; 
 but Hindus, because they have heard of it from their 
 childhood, naturally believe it. It has, indeed, entered so 
 deeply into the mental consciousness of the people that 
 they assume it without a doubt in all their arguments, and 
 cannot imagine a state of things in which it should not be 
 true. Professor Macdonnell, in his recent ' History of 
 Sanskrit Literature ' (p. 387) observes ; 'There is, perhaps, 
 
 ' Institutes, xii. 503 (B. L. Dass's Popular Edition, Calcutta). 
 
 = See Bhagavad-gita, ii. 13, 22 ; vi. 41, 42; vii. 19 ; ix. 21 ; xvi. 20. 
 
TRANSMIGRATION WIDELY ASSUMED 223 
 
 no more remarkable fact in the history of the human 
 mind than that this strange doctrine, never philosophically 
 demonstrated, should have been regarded as self-evident 
 for 2,500 years by every philosophical school or religious 
 sect in India, excepting only the Materialists,' i.e., the 
 heretical and sceptical school of the Charvakas. There 
 may be momentous differences on every other matter con- 
 cerning God and man and the universe ; but transmigration 
 is the one belief that possesses cardinal value, on which 
 Hindus of every sect and every shade of opinion are 
 agreed. 
 
 From a physiological point of view this Indian idea of 
 successive lives — so foreign to our modes of thought — is a 
 form of the more general primitive belief — based on the 
 resemblances between ancestors and their descendants and 
 between the faculties and instincts of men and of beasts — 
 that the souls of ancestors passed into children and of men 
 into beasts. The question is, Can it be substantiated ? Is 
 it reasonable? Or can the facts which it professes to 
 account for be otherwise and better explained ? 
 
 The philosophy of the doctrine of transmigration as it 
 was received by Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks, and others, 
 appears to have been essentially the same — namely, the 
 unity of all being ; that all souls are portions or emanations 
 of the Universal Spirit, and as such must eventually return 
 to their source, as rivers run into the sea. 
 
 Transmigration in India thus has its roots in the 
 Brahmanical, theosophic, or /a«^/^«V/2V conception of God. 
 When a single, universal, and indestructible principle of 
 the life manifested in Nature and man is grasped, then 
 a pantheistic theory as to God, and a theory of trans- 
 migration and absorption as to man, will emerge. If, on 
 the other hand, a supreme will and authority are sought, 
 then the result will be a personal God and the personal 
 
224 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 continuance of man. The basis of the first is metaphysical, 
 of the second moral.' 
 
 Now, the idea of soul is fundamentally different in the 
 East and in the West. The religious philosophies of 
 Europe are all founded on the principle of a self-conscious 
 intelligence and will as their final cause and as their 
 conception of soul, and hence it is that in all European 
 systems of thought or religion re-incarnation and trans- 
 migration are unknown ; for a self-conscious intelligence 
 can no more be transferred at pleasure from one type of 
 creature to another after death, so as to unite harmoniously 
 with it, 'than a lion's head can be made to unite har- 
 moniously with an ass's body." But in Hindu philosophy, 
 where soul is the vital principle of Nature — a purely 
 negative principle, without thought or emotion of any 
 kind — a vague, diffused essence which can unite with 
 the minds or bodies of each and every species of man, 
 animal, or plant indifferently, a scheme of transmigration 
 is quite compatible, and is, indeed, required for logical 
 completeness, where the great object is the union of the 
 individual soul with the universal soul. 
 
 And here it may be observed that, when once philosophy 
 has reached a self-conscious intelligence as the final cause 
 of things — a principle drawn from what is highest in the 
 human mind — it is not likely to be affected by any system 
 founded on the negative and far less efficient principle of 
 soul, which is drawn, not from what is highest in man, but 
 from that mere vitality common alike to all the works of 
 Nature. The conviction of Personality, both human and 
 Divine, is the dividing line between the Christian and the 
 Hindu belief; it is at the root of all the most vital 
 
 • See Dr. A. M. Fairbairn's ' Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 
 and History,' p. Il8. 
 
 = SeeJ. B. Crozier' ' History of Intellectual Development,' p. 87. 
 
TRANSMIGRATION AND FAMINE 225 
 
 differences between the two faiths ; and as a theistic belief 
 preads in India, belief in transmigration will die out. 
 
 According to Hindflism, the universe is made up of 
 innumerable souls and innumerable bodies. The souls 
 have existed from all eternity,' either as separate entities 
 or as emanations from the Supreme ; they are not created. 
 Bodies are of all kinds — divine, human, demoniac, animal, 
 vegetable, mineral — and they are all possessed by souls. 
 This accounts for the great regard that Hindus cherish for 
 all animal life : animals are tenanted by human souls. 
 The famine in Gujerat in 1901 was said to have been 
 largely owing to a plague of rats. The farmers said : 
 ' These are the spirits of all our friends who died during the 
 famine ; they died of hunger ; now they have returned in 
 rats' form to eat the food due to them. How could we 
 kill them ? ' 
 
 And why does a soul occupy a particular body at a 
 given time either higher or lower in the scale of creation ? 
 Because of some act committed, good or bad, in a former 
 birth. The kind of body that the soul inhabits, and the 
 kind of life that it Hves therein, are determined with 
 absolute precision by the quality of the actions of all past 
 lives. 
 
 Souls originally pure, by becoming united to matter, 
 which in all Eastern systems is essentially evil, acquire 
 degrees of impurity, which have to be purged away by 
 successive transmigrations, alternated with periods of 
 reward or punishment in graduated heavens or hells. 
 These awards of merit or demerit contracted in a former 
 life being exhausted, a new birth on earth, determined by 
 the previous lives, has to take place. 
 
 According to Manu, there is a triple order of trans- 
 
 ■ See Vedanta- Sutra., II. iii., 17; Katha-Upanishad., ii. 18; Bha- 
 gavad-gita, ii. 19, 20. 
 
 16 
 
226 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 migration — the passage of a soul through the highest, 
 middle, and lower stages of existence — resulting from good 
 'or bad acts, or words, or thoughts, produced by the in- 
 fluence of the Sankhyan trinity of gunas — viz., goodness, 
 passion, and darkness. These gunas, or ' cords,' are the 
 actual ingredients of which Prakriti — the great material 
 producer — is constituted,' and they make up the whole 
 world of sense evolved out of Prakriti, one or other of 
 them being in excess in any given body. They make man 
 divine and noble, human and selfish, bestial and ignorant, 
 according to the predominance of goodness, passion, or 
 darkness. The highest of the first stage of existence is 
 Brahma himself; the lowest, either a vegetable or a 
 mineral ; other forms in an upward order being worms, 
 insects, fishes, reptiles, snakes, tortoises, etc. For sins of 
 act, a man takes a vegetable or mineral form ; for sins of 
 word, the form of a bird or a beast ; for sins of thought, 
 that of a man of the lowest caste. A triple self-control in 
 thought, word, and deed leads to emancipation from all 
 births and final beatitude.^ 
 
 ' The slayer of a Brahman must enter, according to the 
 circumstances of his crime, the body of a dog, a boar, an 
 
 ' See also Bhagavad-gita, xiv. 5-25. 
 
 " Sir M. Monier- Williams has pointed out (' Indian Wisdom,' 
 p. 336) that we see the working of the Hindu idea of transmi- 
 gration in the ten incarnations of Vishnu. In the first three Vishnu 
 is represented as being present in the bodies of animals ; in the 
 fourth, as taking the form of half a lion and half a man — a transition 
 to 'that of the complete man. Here again the divine essence com- 
 mences with the smallest type of humanity — a dwarf; and then it rises 
 to mighty heroes. 
 
 It has been conjectured that the notion of imparting instruction 
 by means oi fables, in which animals figure as the speakers, first sug- 
 gested itself to Hindu moralists when the doctrine of transmigration 
 had taken firm root in India— that is, with the growth of Brahmanism 
 in Manu's time. 
 
VIEWS OF FINAL BEATITUDE 227 
 
 ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a 
 Chanddla or a Pukkasa: 'If a man steal grain in the 
 husk he shall be born a rat ; if honey, a great stinging 
 gnat ; if milk, a crow ; if woven flax, a frog ; if a cow, a 
 lizard ; if a horse, a tiger ; if roots or fruit, an ape ; if a 
 woman, a bear.' ' Manu elsewhere speaks of ' the gliding 
 of the soul through ten thousand miUions of wombs.' ^ 
 The world, according to the Hindu conception, which 
 largely corresponds with Plato's, is thus peopled with 
 countless bodies, the temporary abodes of fallen human 
 souls, all expiating their sins in these rounds of unceasing 
 transmigration. 
 
 How, now, is deliverance to come ? As we saw in the 
 last chapter, the bondage is due to works, good or bad, and 
 ignorance of the true nature of the soul. When a birth is 
 taken action of some kind begins. And virtue and vice, 
 the result of action, create merit and demerit ; the one 
 needs to be rewarded, and the other punished ; so that 
 new virtues as well as new vices only prolong the miserable 
 cycle of births and. deaths. Birth is thus not a blessing, 
 but the penalty of previous sin. The aim of the soul 
 should therefore be to snap the chain by getting rid of 
 works altogether, by eradicating the desires ; and then, 
 when there is no longer the ripening of actions {karma) 
 into merit or demerit, and when, by knowledge {Jndna), 
 the identity of the human and the Divine spirit is 
 realized, the soul, purified and liberated, is fit to join the 
 universal soul. Final beatitude — the grand problem of all 
 the systems — is then attained, though only by the elect 
 few, and this beatitude is loss of personality — a cessation of 
 self-conscious being. This is the only salvation believed in 
 or desired — salvation, not from the burden of sin, but from 
 the burden of existence. 
 
 ■ Institutes of Manu, xii. 55-67. ° Ibid., vi. 63. 
 
228 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Buddhism does not teach the transmigration of sou/s as 
 such, for Buddha, as we have seen, was led to repudiate the 
 doctrine of soul altogether, and to explain the problem of 
 the world by his doctrine of karma — the survival of effects^ 
 or character. Buddhism, opposed to Hinduism, is thus 
 materialistic ; and since the effects of a man's deeds in a 
 given life will not be experienced by the man himself, but 
 by some other being, its system is characterized by gross 
 injustice. 
 
 In the Hindu belief, on the other hand, there are certain 
 underlying truths whose value no Christian can fail to 
 recognise. And there can be little doubt that it has been 
 these truths, mixed though they have been with much 
 error, which have given vitality and continuance to the 
 doctrine through so many centuries. Every error will live 
 as long, and only as long, as its share of truth remains 
 unrecognised ; and while Christianity recognises all the 
 truths that other faiths contain, it adds others which they 
 do not possess. 
 
 The belief witnesses, for example, to the continued 
 existence of the soul in a future life ; to the reality and 
 relative independence of finite spirits across the waves of 
 change ; to the conservation of moral energy. In theory it 
 is spiritualistic, and hence on a distinctly higher level than 
 that of Buddhism. One who believes that he is so far 
 independent of his body, that he once inhabited other 
 bodies, and will hereafter inhabit still others, will scarcely 
 regard the spirit as a mere function of matter. And yet, as 
 it has been well pointed out,^ owing to the false conception 
 of the relation between soul and body, the actual working 
 out of the system is largely materialistic. ' If the soul of a 
 man and that of a spider can exchange tenements with no 
 
 ' In a lecture by the Rev. W. Hooper, D.D. See ' Bombay 
 Decennial Conference Report,' pp. 92, 93. 
 
ENDLESS PROGRESS OF THE SOUL 229 
 
 more inconvenience than might be involved in two people 
 exchanging houses, then it is plain that bodies bear no 
 necessary, or even natural, relation to the souls that occupy 
 them.' Nothing is really human or animal except the body 
 in each case. Duty, virtue, intellect, together with the 
 merit and demerit which the soul is supposed to carry with 
 it, become essentially material qualities, since they are the 
 result, not of the soul's activity, but of the influence upon 
 it of the particular body inhabited for the time being. In 
 Christian philosophy the soul is the ' Ego,' and each soul 
 finds its expression in the outward body that relates it to 
 the present life of discipline and education, and any 
 exchange of one body or expression for another would 
 be impossible, since it would mean the confusion and 
 destruction of personal identity. 
 
 Another important truth witnessed to is the sense of sin, 
 and that st'n is inevitably followed by suffering ; that demerit 
 must receive its penalty. 
 
 Further, the soul receives the due reward of its deeds in 
 a body, hereby resembling Christian belief, and sharply con- 
 trasted with the idea of the ghostly spectres of Greek 
 philosophy. The Christian, however, concerned with 
 character rather than with merit, and believing more con- 
 sistently than the Hindu in the endless progress of the soul, 
 looks for a spiritualized or psychical body as its future 
 home; one more fitted, and not less fitted, for the soul's 
 development than the present body, whose sphere of 
 exercise will not be this lower, earthly world, with the same 
 round of evils and temptations, but another and a higher 
 sphere where the soul and its faculties may expand, until it 
 finally reaches perfection. We thus see that one favourite 
 argument for the re- birth theory — namely, that one brief 
 life of a few years, which is all that Christianity gives man, 
 is too short an educational course, and that a succession of 
 
230 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 births represents an ascending scale of development for the 
 soul — is invalid, since Christianity postulates another and a 
 higher sphere of existence, where, not in another corporeal 
 body which has no relation to the previous body, but in its 
 own psychical or spiritual vehicle, the soul shall gather 
 strength and purity and press forward to perfection. 
 
 Once more, the doctrine of transmigration undoubtedly 
 offers a strong support to that instinct of justice which is 
 innate in human nature, and to that retributive power of 
 action which we have seen at work in the doctrine of Karma. 
 
 And this brings us to the positive arguments commonly 
 adduced for transmigration. 
 
 It is said that only by this doctrine can we satisfactorily 
 account for the present mixture of good and evil among 
 men, and for the inequalities in the distribution of happiness 
 and misery in the present life, and that unless we suppose 
 former stages of either virtuous or vicious existence, par- 
 tiahty and injustice must be ascribed to God. This is a 
 problem that would seem to have weighed with peculiar 
 heaviness on the Indian mind, as it realized all too keenly 
 the sharp social contrasts that had been accentuated by the 
 tyranny of caste. 
 
 But the inequalities of condition around us are not as 
 great as they seem. Happiness is the supreme thing that 
 men desire ; and wealth and high position do not always 
 bring pleasure and peace, neither do poverty and sickness 
 always make men sad. God is not unjust in setting one 
 thing over against another, as when we see the poor peasant 
 contented, and the wealthy monarch miserable. 
 
 Then, again, happiness and misery are very largely the 
 result of our own character and conduct, here and now. 
 The idle, the imprudent, the intemperate, live in poverty 
 and suffering ; while the industrious and the virtuous, as a 
 rule, enjoy prosperity and happiness. For happiness is not 
 
THE WORLD AND DISCIPLINE 231 
 
 in ouhvard surroundings ; it is the possession of a good and 
 tranquil heart. In being what he is, whether good or bad, 
 every man has his reward. The reward is spiritual. An 
 act of love will make the soul more loving ; an act of dis- 
 honesty or impurity will make the soul more base. The 
 real differences between men are in the men themselves, 
 not in their fortunes. The good of being good is in being 
 good, not in outward success ; the evil of being evil is in 
 being evil, no matter whether a man be living in a palace 
 and faring sumptuously every day. For we must not 
 suppose that a wicked man, living in prosperity, is escaping 
 justice. Justice is at work within, in the decay of character. 
 A bad man, who is dead to goodness, loses the truest joy 
 and wealth of life, even though he be unconscious of the 
 loss, and though to all appearance he be a prosperous man. 
 To be insensible of sin, to be morally degraded and not to 
 know the degradation, is the greatest calamity that can 
 befall a man— far greater than any mere physical deformity 
 or loss. And this work of moral degradation — the destruc- 
 tion of virtue, a deepening depravity and decay, the ruin of 
 the soul — is ever going on in the wicked man, and, if 
 unarrested, will be consummated in the life to come. 
 
 Further, the conditions of life depend very much on the 
 conduct of others. If a man does good, others will be 
 benefited; if evil, others will suffer. A vicious man, for 
 example, sets fire to a shop; a whole bazaar is burnt down. 
 Why do so many suffer ? Not because they are in fault, not 
 because God is partial, but because they happened to live 
 near one another. If all men were good and honest, and 
 just in their dealings with others, there would be far less 
 misery in the world. By removing the evils that men inflict 
 on one another, one reason assigned for the belief in 
 transmigration would disappear. 
 
 Viewing the world, then, as a school of discipline for the 
 
232 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 formation of character, rather than as a place of judgment, 
 we have not to go back to former births to explain the 
 differences of happiness and condition. God apportions 
 to each man his particular employment and responsibilities, 
 and knows well the kind of training that each requires. 
 One man's character may require an experience of poverty 
 and pain, another man's the test of prosperity. 
 
 But there is another and a stronger argument advanced 
 in favour of transmigration, namely, the inequalities of birth. 
 Why is one man bofn rich and another poor, one man born 
 a king and another a peasant, one a genius and another 
 an idiot, one in the full possession of all his senses, powers 
 and limbs, and another bereft of them — a cripple, or blind, 
 or leprous ? Why does one soul see light in the Australian 
 Bush, while another is ushered into all the civilization of 
 the West ? In the same family, why is one child born in 
 robust health, while another is a sufferer all his days ? 
 Such cases undoubtedly present the greatest difficulty ; for 
 persons born with such defects cannot be charged with any 
 fault or folly of their own, except on the hypothesis of a 
 former birth. And how do we explain the reason of the 
 environments into which we are born ? Are they deter- 
 mined by mere accident, or is it not rather that as our 
 past has been so we find our present ? 
 
 Now, there is a modern scientific doctrine that throws a 
 flood of light upon this mystery, and offers a satisfactory 
 explanation of much in the ancient problem that gave rise 
 to transmigration — the doctrine of heredity. And here we 
 have demonstrated proof in the place of mere conjecture. 
 The hypothesis of transmigration was invented in an age 
 ignorant of modern science. Like the dogma of the 
 eternity of souls, it is not a universal and necessary truth, 
 which, like ultimate scientific and mathematical ideas, or 
 like the idea of God, rests on universal consent, and cannot 
 
HEREDITY AND BIOLOGICAL LAW 233 
 
 possibly be shaken. It does not, like all true knowledge, 
 become equally certain to other minds, and so capable 
 of standing the test of the common reason of humanity. 
 These old dogmas are merely the conventions, assumptions, 
 and opinions of a particular class of people, who have lived 
 for ages imprisoned within their own area, and cut off from 
 the higher scientific evolution of Europe. The nations of 
 the highest civilization, who are now achieving most for the 
 world, do not believe in them. 
 
 The law of heredity, on the other hand, one of the most 
 valuable possessions of modern psychology, is not doubted 
 by any careful student of human nature or biology. As far 
 back as the dawn of history it has been recognised as one of 
 the most potent forces in the development of life. And the 
 Bible states that the consequences of sin run through three 
 and four generations, while the results of righteousness 
 may endure to a thousand. Heredity thus works for the 
 regeneration as well as for the degeneration of the world. 
 The continuity and sohdarity of the race is a terrible reality. 
 We who live now are products of the past. We are what 
 our ancestors have made us. Not our own virtues and 
 vices contracted in some former birth, but the virtues and 
 vices of those who have lived before us, reach our time ; 
 and moral and intellectual qualities, virtues, and vicious 
 habits, and certain diseases, are all in the stream of heritage 
 which flows from the distant past. 
 
 ' Heredity,' says Ribot, ' is that biological law by which 
 all beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in 
 their descendants ; it is for the species what personal 
 identity is for the individual.' By this law ' the individual 
 receives from his parents by birth his chief vital forces 
 and tendencies, his physical and spiritual capital ' ; while 
 environment — another no less important law — 'consists of 
 all the events and conditions surrounding him afterwards 
 
234 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 that modify his nature and change the tendency of his 
 life.' ' 
 
 There is certainly a strong analogy between heredity and 
 karma, though it is not complete. Heredity, e.g., operates 
 only within the savie species. Karma, on the other hand, 
 operates through all species of animated being. And yet, 
 since the person who originally started my chain of karma 
 was no more my present self than my grandfather was — the 
 nexus that links successive births being, not a continuous 
 personality, but only some physical chain — the law of 
 Karma may be regarded as the law of heredity in a 
 different form. 
 
 A child is born, and resembles one or both of his parents. 
 But — according to the latest theory of heredity, which is 
 founded on the ' continuity of the germ-plasm,' which passes 
 over from one generation to another — since each new 
 germ grows out of the united germ-plasms of two parents, 
 there arises a mingling of their characters in the offspring. 
 And hence every individual is a complex result, repro- 
 ducing in ever-varying degrees the diverse characteristics 
 of his two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grand- 
 parents, and other more remote ancestors.^ Family like- 
 ness, personal or mental idiosyncrasies, traits of genius, 
 moral habits, together with predisposition to diseases or 
 crime, are transmitted and reproduced. All that distin- 
 . guishes species as species is invariably inherited. ' Like 
 produces like.' 
 
 But the most striking examples of heredity would seem 
 to be in the line of evil — along that particular line which 
 transmigration for the most part takes — and probably 
 because a process of decay is always more rapid than a 
 
 ' ' lieredity and Christian Problems,' by Amory H. Bradford, p. 2. 
 Macmillan & Co.) 
 "^ See ' Darwinism,' by A. R. Wallace, p. 439. (Macmillan & Co.) 
 
HEREDITY AND INSTINCT 235 
 
 process of growth. The law is abundantly manifested in 
 the transmission of qualities that lead to vice, pauperism, 
 and crime. Diseases run in families. One family may be 
 liable to consumption, another to rheumatism, another to 
 insanity ; while such evils as scrofula and syphilis may 
 reappear in successive generations. It has been stated 
 that one-half of the cases of insanity among the higher 
 classes in France, and about one-third among the lower 
 classes, have been inherited from parents or ancestors. 
 
 Leprosy is reckoned one of the remote forms of the 
 diseases that spring from impure and improper connections. 
 The same kind of reason is true of idiocy and of deaf and 
 dumb children. In Hinduism these terrible afflictions are 
 regarded as the consequences of great sins in former births. 
 Medical men, however, find little difficulty in tracing all 
 peculiarities of bodily health and soundness, or the reverse, 
 to nearer or more remote causes of constitutional disease. 
 
 The class known as ' instinctive criminals ' is composed 
 of persons who take to anti-social ways by instinct of 
 nature, who lie, and cheat, and steal, and murder. They 
 are driven to such courses by an instinct born in them. 
 To this class, it is said, belong fully two-thirds of our 
 whole criminal population, and a still larger proportion of 
 prostitutes and habitual drunkards. 
 
 The criminal is very closely related to the insane, and, 
 personally, often resembles the idiot. If we enquire into 
 the family history of these criminals, we find a most 
 intimate relation existing between the instinctive criminal 
 and other degenerate conditions, as epilepsy, insanity, and 
 drunkenness. All these states are met with in the parents 
 and brothers and sisters of criminals, and so generally as to 
 prove beyond all possibility of doubt that the moral decay, 
 of which instinctive crime is the outcome, is but one of the 
 many forms in which family degeneration shows itself. In 
 
236 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the majority of cases crime appears in one or two or three 
 members of the family, the brothers and sisters showing the 
 taint in various other ways. One will be scrofulous or a 
 deaf-mute, another idiotic or epileptic, a prostitute, or an 
 habitual drunkard, as the case may be. 
 
 But, happily, there is a beneficent and gracious, as well 
 as a stern and dark, side to this law of heredity. He who 
 forms his own character on a high moral level is helping to 
 form the character of subsequent generations. We may 
 bequeath a heritage of blessing, as well as a heritage of woe, 
 to our posterity. We are not shut up along our narrow 
 line of karmic forces, which are concentrated and spent on 
 self alone ; but a vast vision of possibilities opens before 
 us, and by our faithfulness to conscience and to moral law 
 we may be distinct helps in the upward life to individuals 
 and families yet unborn. 
 
 Nor must we overlook the correlative law of ' environ- 
 ment.' By the overruling of a merciful Providence — 
 which, in the midst of natural law, always ' makes for 
 righteousness ' — heredity may be largely modified by 
 environment ; otherwise the vicious would reproduce the 
 vicious to the end of time, and there would be no redemp- 
 tion. Improved circumstances and pure and healthy 
 surroundings result in a corresponding elevation of cha- 
 racter and life ; and, happily, by reason of our Divine 
 origin, there is always something in human nature which 
 responds to education and religion. Thus, redemptive 
 processes may set in from our very birth ; and by human 
 sympathy and help, and still more by Divine grace, we 
 may, if honest, resolute, persistent, and prayerful, escape 
 from the despotism of the past, and even ' checkmate our 
 ancestry.' 
 
 The action of these laws, then, is demonstrated beyond 
 any possibility of doubt. If it be said", as it has been by 
 
THE SOUL AND ITS EMBODIMENT 237 
 
 Hindus, that heredity is a law of the physical and mental 
 organism only, and does not touch the soul—' the psychic 
 or atomic qualities ' — the reply is that there is such a mutual 
 relation between the moral and spiritual nature and the 
 present body, that the same law must intimately concern 
 the higher part of our nature, and cannot be excluded from 
 any scheme of spiritual philosophy. Moreover, the very 
 inequalities of birth that are made so much of, and that 
 manifest themselves in physical deformities and defects, as 
 well as in diverse mental powers, are themselves cited as 
 the prime argument for a previous existence of the soul, 
 and for such action of the soul as to merit the particular 
 penalty or reward, thereby affirming the intimate relation 
 between the soul and its embodiment. 
 
 The connection here, however, is not at all apparent; 
 for mere physical suffering and calamities — such as being 
 born a leper, or lame, or poor — cannot, in the nature of 
 things, be regarded as equivalents for spiritual punishment, 
 being of a totally different character. To suppose such a 
 sequence is to confuse two utterly distinct conditions. No 
 such confusion as this is tolerated in science ; and it strikes 
 one that the Brahman caste of India, the purity of its blood, 
 and its intellectual superiority, are better explained by the 
 hereditary transmission of qualities than on the assump- 
 tion that Brahmans were all remarkably virtuous in former 
 births. 
 
 Why resort to unproved hypotheses when differences of 
 birth and condition and other difficulties can be satisfactorily 
 explained by scientific facts ? Science is a realm of light ; 
 the dogma of transmigration greV up in an age of priestly 
 tyranny and darkness. 'Sacerdotalism,' says Principal 
 Fairbairn, ' could not allow those who had despised its 
 authority to pass for ever out of its power; and trans- 
 migration did for the Eastern priesthood what purgatory did 
 
238 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 for the Western : ' ' it strengthened the authority of priest- 
 craft by means of terror. The doctrine had its roots, as we 
 have seen, in the Brahmanical conception of God ; for a 
 crude pantheism, which sees but one Divine essence in 
 animals and men, always involves transmigration ; but 
 while the Brahraans made the theosophic theory of eman- 
 ation the basis of their claims, the sanctions which enforced 
 them were drawn from the migrations of the soul before it 
 could attain union with Brahma. 
 
 ' Absorption was the prize of the elect few, transmigra- 
 tion the doom of the many.' Only the selected Brahmans 
 attained the first ; almost the whole world revolved in the 
 dreary circle of the second.^ And it was this part of the 
 Brahmanical faith — that which intensified the actual 
 miseries of the present and the possible miseries of the 
 future — which became so real and terrible to the people 
 generally. A debased priestcraft, the curse of all religions 
 — in distinction from the ' holy priesthood of the New 
 Testament' — makes religion a calamity. It is founded 
 on dogmas which, like that of transmigration, create 
 despair. 
 
 There is another aspect of modern thought which has also 
 cast a flood of light on the ancient problem of life that gave 
 rise to the notion of transmigration ; and for this we are 
 indebted to the Bible, and especially to the Christian view 
 of suffering. The religion of Christ has given the latest 
 answers to the earliest questions. 
 
 A great revolution was introduced into the religious 
 world by the teaching and the sufferings of Christ. The 
 thought, even in pious minds, had previously been : Let the 
 wicked suffer in this world, and let the righteous prosper and 
 rejoice. That was the common conception in the time of 
 
 ' ' Studies in the Philosophy of History and Religion,' p. 140. 
 ' Ibid., p. 153. 
 
CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SUFFERING 239 
 
 Job, and that is the thought, erroneous as Christians regard 
 it, which underlies the Hindu doctrine of Karma. Because 
 there is sin in the world, there must be suffering — that is 
 perfectly true ; but because there is suffering, Hindu philo- 
 sophy concludes, with the ancients in Job's time, that there 
 must have been sin^a totally different supposition. 
 
 And the supreme value of the Book of Job is that it gives 
 a new idea of God, and a new conception of suffering, 
 which became fully revealed in the life and teaching of 
 Christ. The calamities that so perplex us, the sufferings 
 that have worked so many sorrows, are not necessarily 
 penalties, neither are they accidents ; there is a Divine 
 purpose in them. What was confusion to Job is order 
 to God. Man's suffering has a place in God's plan ; it 
 means that God is seeking man's good. The blameless 
 man who suffers is a man whom God is using for the 
 conquest of evil, which can only be overcome through pain- 
 ful obedience. If God permits evil to come to a good 
 man — in the only form in which it can come to him, as 
 calamity, loss, disease, suffering — He does so in order that 
 He may make it a condition and a means of higher good, 
 alike to the man himself and to others. If the good suffer, it 
 is that they may be tried and tested ; and the tried are the 
 purified, and the moral helpers of the world. 
 
 God is a Redeemer ; man is to be redeemed ; and 
 redemption is a progressive work, begun here, but stretching 
 away into another world, and perfected under nobler condi- 
 tions than are here possible. This is the only conception 
 of God which has hope for the universe. We are not in 
 the hands of impersonal and inexorable law, but in the 
 keeping of a living, loving God ; and with this thought, man 
 need never despair. Faith in such a God, and in the moral 
 good for which He works, inspires man with courage, 
 patience, and moral purpose ; it helps him to feel that 'life 
 
240 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 is all the nobler for being a battle against evil, all the 
 worthier to be lived that its Maker has designed that it 
 should at once educate and redeem through suffering.' ' 
 
 And this view of suffering becomes confirmed and 
 glorified in the life and work of Christ. Christ was the 
 greatest sufferer our world has seen ; yet He knew no sin, 
 and in the midst of all His suffering He was happy and 
 serene. Why ? Because He accepted to the full the 
 Divine function and work of suffering. His sufferings 
 cannot be explained on any theory of transmigration ; only 
 on the theory that through suffering God works out the 
 redemption of the world. ' Though He was a son, yet 
 He learned obedience by the things which He suffered ; 
 and having been made perfect, He became unto all them 
 that obey Him the author of eternal salvation' (Heb. v. 
 8, 9, R.V.). 
 
 Thus we see that, while the law of heredity clearly shows 
 that we suffer, not because of sins we have committed in a 
 former birth, but because there is such a thing as sin in the 
 world, and because of the wrong-doing of others who have 
 preceded las in the past, this casts no reflection on the 
 Author of our being, when we observe that He uses this 
 very suffering as the instrument of our highest good, as 
 a means by which we shall be delivered from all evil, 
 and evil itself be at length banished from the universe. 
 
 But the transmigration of the soul is beset by certain 
 distinct and positive difficulties ; and the following objec- 
 tions may be urged against the belief. 
 
 In the first place, the doctrine seems to be at variance 
 with other Hindu doctrines, based on quite different 
 theories of the world and life.'' 
 
 ■ See Principal Fairbairn's ' City of God,' p. i86. 
 ' This has been pointed out by Dr. W. Hooper in his lecture as 
 above. 
 
TRANSMIGRATION AND SRADDHA 241 
 
 It is diflScult to reconcile it with Hindu Veddntism. If the 
 individual soul is really identical with the one Supreme Soul, 
 and its apparent distinction from it and from other souls is 
 only the result of Maya or Illusion, then transmigration 
 itself is all an illusion ; and ' where remains the advantage 
 of contending for the belief that each separate soul 
 pursues its own way through countless bodies, meeting in 
 every one with the exact reward of its own works and no 
 others, when all souls are really but one with one another 
 and with Brahma ? ' It may be added too, as Kapila 
 pointed out, that, if all souls are absolutely one, each person 
 would be the same in his mental and moral state; all 
 actions would be alike ; oneness of soul would produce 
 a uniformity of birth conditions. 
 
 Further, can transmigration and the eternity of souls both 
 be true ? Transmigration presupposes a chain of countless 
 links, the links being connected with one another as action 
 and the fruit of action, cause and effect. But such a 
 chain cannot, in the nature of things, be endless, as we 
 saw in the last chapter (p. 199). And human souls, 
 whose reason for existence is action and the fruit of actions, 
 cannot be eternal. If the law of Karma is said to be as 
 eternal as God, then the primal injustice must be imputed 
 to the Divine Being. 
 
 Again, is it not opposed to the worship of ancestors and to 
 funeral ceremonies? The two proceed on opposite theories 
 of life. The Vedas represent the spirits of the departed — 
 the Pitris — not as transmigrating, but as dwelling with Yama, 
 the King of Hades ; and these ancestors disappear in trans- 
 migration. How can the Hindu widow hope by Sati to 
 rejoin her husband; for where is he? And where is the 
 necessity of performing the funeral rites, if the body which a 
 man last inhabited is a matter of far greater concern than the 
 existence of his father ? Yet in such ancient writing as the 
 
 17 
 
242 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Aitareya-Brahmana of the Rig-veda occurs the line, in the 
 story of Sunahsepa : ' A father by his son clears off a debt ' ; 
 that is, a man is in debt to his ancestor till he has a son, 
 because the dead depend for happiness on the ceremonies 
 performed by sons. And this view of the future life is 
 everywhere presupposed by orthodox Indian life and Indian 
 law. Inheritance, according to the Hindu belief, is not 
 a handing on of property, but a handing on of a sacred 
 obligation to perform religious rites for departed ancestors, 
 the prosperity being merely the means by which this obli- 
 gation is to be fulfilled. But if every soul must bear the 
 consequences of the good or evil forces set in motion by the 
 soul itself, how can any srdddha ceremonies arrest the 
 ripening of acts ( karma-vipdka), or what right have we to 
 try to interfere with the processes of justice ? The doctrine 
 of the sraddha cannot be reconciled with the belief in 
 transmigration. 
 
 Neither is it consistent with the Hindu belief in Divine 
 mercy. As has already been shown, there is no place for 
 mercy in a scheme of natural and impersonal law. Justice 
 alone, stern and inflexible, must reign there. This is what 
 philosophy discerns, but the heart of Hinduism rebels ; 
 though, unlike the scheme of the Christian Gospel, which 
 shows us one Divine Lord of mercy dispensing free grace 
 to all without distinction, Hinduism in its polytheistic 
 system postulates numberless independent ones, and seeks 
 to escape by mere favour or luck from the action of 
 righteous law. 
 
 Transmigration is unscientific; it offers violence to the 
 known constitution of things. To suppose that the souls 
 of intelligent and moral beings can inhabit animals, 
 vegetables, and even rocks, that they can exchange 
 tenements as easily as persons change houses, is opposed 
 to all that science teaches. The human soul, with its 
 
TRANSMIGRATION UNSCIENTIFIC 243 
 
 intellectual and moral perceptions, its sense of responsi- 
 bility and duty, its faculty for Divine worship, differentiates 
 a human being from all other creatures and things in the 
 world. Man's body, again, is exactly suited to his soul, 
 while the bodies of animals are as exactly suited to their 
 several instincts and habits. Perfectly distinct classes of 
 things and beings thus exist in the world — organic and 
 inorganic — and all the organic beings — all animals and 
 plants — reproduce their own kind exactly, in which all 
 the special characters of the class reappear. The wisdom 
 of the elephant, the fierceness of the tiger,~the reason and 
 the speech of man, are reproduced from age to age. But 
 transmigration confuses all this beautiful order. Scientists 
 tell us that Nature always keeps in view a certain definite 
 type or ideal standard, to which, amidst innumerable modi- 
 fications, each organized fabric always shows a decided 
 tendency to conform. ' For such a fabric to be tenanted 
 by a miscreant human spirit were to disturb its integrity, 
 to destroy its proper character. It would lose its place 
 in the classifications of science ; it would constitute an 
 anomaly to the known order of things. The supposition 
 that the human soul may occupy such a dwelling-place 
 without affecting its movements and interrupting its 
 functions, without displaying itself, is inconceivable.'' 
 And there is no sign among the lower animals of the 
 existence of any suffering soul — any soul undergoing 
 penalty; as a matter of fact, the animal creation leads 
 a happier existence than man, an existence free from 
 care, anxiety, and trouble. Anatomists have never yet 
 detected a single trace in a lower animal of the super- 
 addition of a rational human soul ; and the notion that it 
 can be transmuted into the proper nature of any inferior 
 creature is a mere assumption, falsified by the phenomena 
 ■ See Griffith's ' Essay on the Bhagavad-gita,' p. hi. 
 
244 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 and laws of vegetable and animal reproduction. Nature, 
 interpreted by science, is against it. 
 
 Transmigration is at variance with tAe universal law of 
 development. By an instinctive effort of Nature everything 
 tends to advance itself; the march of Nature is progressive, 
 not self-revolving. The science of geology shows without 
 a doubt that there has been an ascending order of life, 
 with no break in the vast chain of development. Nature 
 never halts ; retrogression she resists. And so with man's 
 moral and spiritual being. God intends it ever to pass on 
 to a more complete and finished condition. But trans- 
 migration makes man an exception in the universe ; it 
 arrests him in his upward struggles. When he is maturing, 
 and ought to take another and higher step in the scale of 
 being, he is rudely thrust back to atone for some demerit 
 contracted in a former birth and degraded to a brute, or 
 a worm, or a pumpkin, despoiled of all that is noble, and 
 hopeful, and Divine in him. And why is this ? Because 
 the outward condition of the soul is in each new birth deter- 
 mined by each action in succession in a previous birth, and 
 not by the balance struck. That is the most striking feature 
 of the doctrine of karma. ' A good man,' says Rhys Davids, ' 
 'who has once uttered a slander, may spend a hundred 
 thousand years as a god in consequence of his goodness, 
 and when the power of his good actions is exhausted, may • 
 be born as a dumb man on account of his transgression.' 
 The application of the doctrine is as minute as it is wide. 
 It is related by Burnouf that a son of King Asoka was in 
 a previous life a huntsman ; and he once put out the eyes 
 of five hundred gazelles. For that action he suffered the 
 pains of hell for many hundred thousand years ; and there- 
 after had /lis eyes put out five hundred times in as many 
 
 ■ The Hibbevt Lectures, 1 88 1, p. 84. 
 
TRANSMIGRATION UNPHILOSOPHICAL 245 
 
 human lives. ' Karmic justice, knowing only the outward 
 man, takes hold of every sitigle deed, whenever done ; and 
 so disturbs and puts back what may be a growing character. 
 
 The doctrine is unphilosophical. The human soul stores 
 up its knowledge in memory ; it never loses an atom of the 
 information which it has once acquired.^ In old age we 
 recall the scenes and incidents of our youth, and some- 
 times, when they seem to have been quite forgotten, in an 
 illness, in delirium, the past wonderfully reappears. Now, 
 all the items of knowledge thus thrown up are related to 
 the one single life in this world of which we are conscious. 
 How is it that the soul, having such marvellous powers 
 of recollection, never remembers anything of former births ? 
 
 It is true that this difficulty is evaded by the Hindu 
 systems maintaining that at each death the soul is 
 divested of mind (manas), understanding, and conscious- 
 ness. Memory and consciousness of personal identity do 
 not go over into the life after death. But this assumption 
 only increases the philosophical confusion. The soul 
 exhibits such a unity of constitution that, if any part 
 or faculty is taken away, such as memory or perception, 
 it is not the same being, it ceases to be the same soul, as 
 Kapila, the reputed founder of the Sankhya school, says it 
 is through all its migrations. 
 
 Moreover, supposing that at death the soul is deprived 
 of its faculties, on its re-birth into the world it is again 
 invested with them, and becomes once more the perfect 
 human soul. Then, with memory complete and sound, 
 how is it that it does not remember its former births? 
 
 The ancient rishis, it is said, did possess this power 
 of recollection, but this is a mere assertion ; and even if 
 
 ' Introduction to the ' History of Indian Buddhism,' pp. 360-370. 
 = See Dr. Mullens' ' Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy, 
 
246 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 it were possible for the practice of yoga- to produce such 
 power, the fact remains that no one in the present day, 
 however pious and abstracted, pretends to have any remem- 
 brance of any previous existence ; and this, in the absence 
 of any positive proof that might estabhsh it, is sufficient for 
 its rejection. 
 
 Hence it follows that the system of transmigration is 
 unjust If the past is all forgotten, we can know nothing 
 of our former virtues or former faults. If we should be 
 told of them, we should not connect them with ourselves ; 
 they would seem to us as the actions of other persons. 
 Is such a man the same being that he was ? He is prac- 
 tically another man. And so, if he has committed faults in 
 a former birth, and has to suffer for them now, where is the 
 morality of such punishment if he cannot connect those 
 faults with himself? He cannot remember what he did 
 nor why he is punished, a state of things which utterly 
 destroys the foundations of moral government. Who 
 would ever think of punishing a child for faults committed 
 years ago, and which are quite forgotten ? Tlie theory 
 of transmigration, framed to provide against an apparent 
 injustice in the unequal distribution of happiness and 
 misery, thus involves a real injustice. 
 
 The system is consequently non-remedial; it fails to 
 effect the intended benefit. The object is the punish- 
 ment of sin and the progressive improvement of the 
 soul. But if a person has no memory of the past, and 
 therefore cannot say, 'I committed that crime,' if all 
 connection between the deed and its consequence is 
 cut off, he can make no confession, he cannot be urged 
 to penitence, because he can feel no guilt. How, then, 
 can the moral character of the criminal be improved? 
 And can any one be improved by being sent back to 
 the very world where he became impure, amid old 
 
TRANSMIGRATION NON-REMEDIAL 247 
 
 temptations, and in the midst of the scenes of sin, with 
 sinful tendencies unchanged, and without a word of 
 instruction and warning derived from his previous 
 history ? Can this be wise, can it possibly be a 
 successful plan ? Still less can . an impure nature be 
 drawn from its impurity by being made to inhabit a 
 cow, a boar, or a centipede. The souls thus doomed 
 must become like the filthy beasts they are compelled 
 to inhabit, and cannot pass from thence to the path of 
 wisdom. On the contrary, if any light can be thrown 
 at all on the unnatural subject by the cases of demoniac 
 possession recorded in the Gospels, the evil spirits impel 
 those into whom, for the time being, they migrate to 
 self-destruction. ' The soul is debased, denaturalized. 
 The attempt to raise the brutes to the level of man 
 results in the degrading man to the level of brutes. 
 Bad as he was before, he loses every trace of excellence, 
 and is placed beyond the reach of sympathy and redemption. 
 And must not positive moral harm be done when 
 people are made to believe in the existence of sin when 
 there is no conscience of sin ? If a man cannot re- 
 proach himself with any former sin, his conscience is 
 unaffected ; conscience cannot work where there is no 
 memory. And if conscience be dead with regard to 
 past sin, which one cannot call to mind, while yet a 
 fictitious existence is given to the sin, conscience will 
 also be dead to the actual sins of the present — sins 
 which we can and must attribute to ourselves. And 
 this is probably the baneful cause of the fact that the 
 Hindu conscience is so difficult to arouse. Conscience, 
 paralyzed by a false belief, fails to do its proper work. 
 Hence the belief is immoral, and exercises a disastrous 
 and deadening influence upon character and life. 
 ' See St. Mark's Gospel, chap. v. 
 
248 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Calamity befalls a Hindu ; perhaps he is really suffer- 
 ing the consequence of some misdeed, or he is in a 
 condition from which he ougkt to extricate himself. 
 What is his own view of the situation? He does not 
 condemn himself at all ; fate is against him ; it is written 
 on his forehead ; the effect of some unknown deed is 
 inevitable ; he is not free to alter it ; he is destined to 
 it; he must therefore passively submit. Where there is 
 no conviction of sin, and, consequently, no moral blame, 
 there will be no sense of responsibility, no belief in 
 freedom, in the power of the will to do. The moral 
 dynamic will be wanting. An erroneous belief of this 
 kind, while it may explain that spirit of contentment 
 and submission which is one of the strongest traits of 
 the Hindu character and one of its greatest charms, 
 thus engenders apathy and unconcern ; it deprives a man 
 of the sense of present duty, and robs him of the power 
 to struggle energetically with difficulties and misfortunes, 
 so as to overcome them — a distinctive feature of the 
 West. It acts as a barrier to the alleviation of human 
 maladies, and to the removal of social evils ; it is inimical 
 to sanitary science and to national progress. There are 
 some 200,000 deaf-mutes in India, of which 24,520 are 
 to be found in the Madras Presidency; and there are in 
 the country only three small schools for this afflicted 
 class; one at Bombay, another in Calcutta, and the third 
 at Palamcotta, the noble enterprise of Miss Swainson. 
 Orthodox Hindus have strong religious prejudices against 
 educating the deaf and dumb ; they consider these 
 afflictions a Divine dispensation with which they have 
 no right to interfere. 
 
 So is it with poor lepers, of whom there are another 
 200,000 sufferers in British India. And their religion 
 teaches them that their sufferings are due to great sins 
 
TRANSMIGRATION AND FATALISM 249 
 
 committed in a former birth : and therefore they must 
 perform certain ceremonies by way of atonement ; and 
 not be interfered with by Government, and put into 
 segregation hospitals which would be jails. 
 
 In the same way vaccination is resented. Any attempt 
 to check the ravages of small-pox which does not take 
 the form of an offering to the goddess Kali — the tutelar 
 deity of the disease — is opposed to the popular religion. 
 If Kali claims a victim, she must have that victim, or 
 remain unappeased. 
 
 Under the influence of this same fatalistic behef, a 
 criminal has no encouragement to amend his ways ; and 
 when sentence is passed upon his misdeeds, he regards 
 it as predestined. There is a story told of a Buddhist 
 carter in Ceylon, who when condemned to death for a 
 crime, told the Judge that he did not mind, as his turn 
 would come, since the Judge himself would be re-incarnated 
 in the form of a bullock, whom he, the cattle-driver, at 
 some future time, would send over the highest precipice 
 in Ceylon ! 
 
 The world to the average Hindu is a huge lottery, in 
 which both the prizes and the blanks have been drawn 
 long before he was born ; and he must merely be the 
 passive recipient of whatever has been allotted him. The 
 consciousness of independent personality does not exist ; 
 and this is the root of the most serious defects of the 
 Hindu character. The spring of life has disappeared. 
 
 Terrible famine and pestilence have in recent years 
 overspread India. Why were the people so apathetic 
 and unconcerned ? Why is it so difficult at such times 
 to rouse them to a sense of duty, and get them to grapple 
 manfully with the misfortune ? Because such calamity is 
 regarded as their fate. The energy of th^ West and the 
 fatalism of the East are strikingly contrasted in our Indian 
 
250 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Empire : and we see how a superstitious belief acts as a 
 barrier to the alleviation of human ills, stands in the 
 way of health and happiness, and a right discharge of 
 the ordinary responsibilities of life. 
 
 The system has now been going on for thousands of 
 years : has the Hindu nation become better age after 
 age? Its own Sastras say. No. The first age was the 
 age of truth, the Ji^rifa age ; the present is the £a/t 
 Yiiga, the age of ignorance, folly, and sin, one ' period ' 
 of which, it is said, is now drawing to a close. It is 
 the universal lamentation of Hindu reformers that the 
 nation has degenerated. And any improvement that is 
 taking place at the present time is due, not to the belief 
 in transmigration, but to foreign influences that are in- 
 directly destructive to it. 
 
 And what kind of conduct does the belief induce towards 
 others in sorrow, or what consolation can it afford in times 
 of trouble? There is not much comfort in the thought 
 that the suffering is inevitable, that it is common to all, 
 the working out of natural law. When sickness and 
 bereavement come, what hope can be administered by 
 a faith that drives one to despair? Of hope, in the 
 Christian sense, in view of death and the future life, 
 there is absolutely none. It would be a cruel mockery 
 to try to comfort one by some bright vision shortly to 
 dawn upon the soul. The dying man must simply 
 proceed on his unknown journey into the dark beyond, 
 and what will befall him next he cannot know. 
 
 And what of the tears and miseries of a large number 
 of the twenty-one millions of Indian widows, and the 
 degrading sins to which many of them are driven, arising 
 from their being taught to regard themselves as the cause 
 of their bereavement through sins committed in a former 
 life? This charge alone is enough to set the doctrine in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CURE 251 
 
 its true and ghastly light, in the view of all right-feeling 
 and reflecting people. 
 
 How different the doctrine of the Divine mercy as 
 taught in the Gospels, and in the hght of a Divine 
 Fatherhood ! The sweetest, strongest note of the Gospel 
 is its promise of a cancelled past through atoning Love, 
 by which the claims of justice and of mercy are alone 
 and for ever reconciled ; and it has in addition such 
 moral power that, whenever truly accepted, it proves a 
 sure and complete remedy for sin. It insures sincere 
 repentance, as we have already seen ; effects the re- 
 generation of our nature, and removes sin's moral 
 consequences. 
 
 Thus, the hypothetical and terrifying system is un- 
 necessary. It may give place to a more humane and 
 moral one. The chief difficulty which it seeks to explain, 
 namely, the inequalities of birth, is largely accounted for 
 by the facts of heredity; and as for moral improvement 
 and spiritual purification, God has, in the present con- 
 stitution of things, provided a better way. Moral cor- 
 rection is to be derived from moral agencies, among 
 which the very suffering that is such a mystery to non- 
 Christian minds plays a distinguished part. The cure 
 for the soul's evils must come from spiritual treatment. 
 Error is to be corrected by truth ; defilement by the rise 
 of virtuous energy ; defects of character and conduct by 
 the exhibition of a moral Ideal, and by the communica- 
 tion of Divine power to conform thereto. Not by being 
 born again into the same sinful world, but by being 
 born anew, here and now, through the Divine Spirit, 
 does the soul rise to a higher, purer life. Not by being 
 united to a lower animal, but by being united to a Higher 
 Nature, do we learn to forsake the ways of sin. God has 
 revealed Himself in Christ as the present Saviour from 
 
252 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the dominion of evil ; and in Him we may realize at 
 once, with no dread of unknown future births, free 
 forgiveness for all the past, the great liberation from all 
 bondage of corruption, and — what is the summum bonum 
 of Hindu thought and endeavour, though with a large 
 addition — conscious and eternal union with God Himself. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HINDU ASCETICISM 
 
 The Highest Saintliness — Texts quoted — A Modem Ascetic — ■ 
 Criticism of Yoga Exercises — Their Immoral Results^' Not to 
 be ' — Christian Correspondences and Contrasts — The Contem- 
 plative Life — Prayerless and Self-seeking System — Hindu and 
 German Pessimism — Brahmist Estimate of the Vedanta — Self- 
 control ; Self-renunciation ; Self-realization — Perversion of Great 
 Truths — Hindu and Christian Asceticism — Union with the 
 Divine — How attained in Christianity — Bible Passages — 
 Experience of the Christian Saint — The Vedanta and the 
 Christian Heaven. 
 
 One more subject remains to be considered. Reference 
 has frequently been made to the practices of Yoga — the 
 Vedanta road to the highest saintliness. This is the 
 supreme method of attaining liberation from continued 
 births and union with the Divine. 
 
 Says the sage : ' No one who is not an ascetic brings his 
 sacrificial works to perfection or obtains knowledge of the 
 Highest Self. For it is said, By ascetic penance goodness 
 is obtained, from goodness understanding is reached, 
 from understanding the Self is obtained, and he who has 
 obtained that does not return.' ' Again : ' Having said 
 farewell to all living things, having gone to the forest, and 
 
 ■ Mait.-Upan. , iv. 3. 
 253 
 
254 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 having renounced all sensuous objects, let man perceive 
 the Self from his own body.' ' And ' this is the rule for 
 achieving it : restraint of the breath, restraint of the senses, 
 meditation, fixed attention, investigation, absorption, these 
 are called the sixfold Yoga.' ^ And again : ' If a man 
 practises Yoga for six months, and is thoroughly free (from 
 the outer world), then the perfect Yoga, which is endless, 
 high, and hidden, is accomplished. But if a man, though 
 well enlightened, is still pierced by passion and darkness, 
 and attached to his children, wife, and house, then perfect 
 Yoga is never accomplished.' 3 And once more: 'Living 
 things are loved, not for the love of the living things, but for 
 love of the Self. ... It is the Self that one must see, and 
 hear about, and think about, and meditate upon.'* 'And 
 when, after cessation of mind, he sees his own Self, smaller 
 than small, and shining, as the Highest Self, then, having 
 seen his Self as the Self, he becomes Self-less, and because 
 he is Self-less he is without limit, without cause, absorbed 
 in thought. This is the highest mystery, viz., final libera- 
 tion.' 5 Through a certain ' artery, when it has been joined 
 by the breath, by the sacred syllable Om, and by the mind, 
 let him proceed upwards, and after turning the tip of the 
 tongue to the palate, without using any of the organs of 
 sense, let greatness perceive greatness. From thence he 
 goes to self-lessness, and through self-lessness he ceases to 
 be enjoyer of pleasure and pain, he obtains aloneness (final 
 deliverance).' ^ 
 
 Much prominence is given, as we have seen, to Yoga in 
 the Bhagavad-gita. ' He who on every side is without 
 attachments, whatever hap of fair and foul, who neither 
 likes nor dislikes, of such a one the understanding is well 
 
 ' Mait-Upan., vi. 8. = Mid., l8. 
 
 3 /did., 28. ■• Brihad.-Upan. II., iv. 5. 
 
 5 Mait-Upan., vi. 20. ' //liti., vi. 21. 
 
THE YOGA OF THE SELF 255 
 
 poised. When, again, as a tortoise draws in on all sides its 
 limbs, he withdraws his senses from the objects of sense, 
 then is his understanding well poised.' ' ' Renouncing all 
 actions by Manas, the sovereign dweller in the body resteth 
 serenely in the nine-gated city (the body, the city of 
 Brahma), neither acting nor causirig to act.'^ 'Having 
 made external contacts external, and with gaze fixed 
 between the eyebrows ; having made the outcoming and 
 incoming breaths equal, sending forth through the nostrils, 
 with senses, Manas and Buddhi controlled, solely devoted 
 to liberation, having cast away hope, fear, and passion, he 
 verily is liberated for ever.' 3 ' He who is satisfied with 
 wisdom and knowledge, unchanging, the senses subdued, 
 harmonized, to whom a lump of earth, a stone and gold 
 are the same, is called a Yogi.' ■* 
 
 In the Vedanta Sara we are told that the secret know- 
 ledge of the Veda — i.e., the unity of souls and of Brahma, 
 as pure Intelligence, which is the purport of the Vedanta — 
 is to be taught to ' a qualified person ' {adhikdrin), the pos- 
 sessor of ' right knowledge.' The qualifications enjoined 
 are of no ordinary kind, s Such a one must, by methodical 
 reading of the Vedas and Vedangas, in some one of his 
 numerous births, have obtained a general idea of the whole 
 system of Yoga. Then, by performing rites, such as prayers 
 and the birth sacrifice, by penances, and mental devotional 
 exercises, and by abstaining from things done with desire 
 of reward, and from forbidden things, such as the slaying 
 of a Brahman — all of which are only subsidiary to the 
 purification of the intellect and the concentration of the 
 mind ; by the possession of quiescence, self-restraint, absti- 
 
 ' Bhagavad-gita, ii. 57, 58. " Ibid., v. 13. 
 
 3 Ibid., V. 27, 28. ■• Ibid., vi. 8. 
 
 s See Colonel Jacob's ' Manual of Hindu Pantheism,' pp. 18-23, 
 1 14-120. 
 
2S6 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 nence, endurance, i.e., bearing the polarities of heat and 
 cold — contemplation and faith, the recluse will have got rid 
 of all sin, and thoroughly cleansed his mind. 'To the 
 seeker of emancipation, who is tranquil in mind, who has 
 subdued his senses, whose sins are gone, who conforms 
 to the teaching of the Sastras and is virtuous, and who, 
 long and continuously, has followed a teacher, this is to be 
 taught ' ' — i.e., the discerning that Brahma is the only 
 eternal substance. Other indispensable means for the 
 obtaining of such a state are certain religious postures of 
 the hands and feet, regulation and restraining of the breath, 
 restraint of the organs of sense, and, above all, fixed atten^ 
 tion of the ' internal organ ' upon the ' Secondless Reality.' 
 All drowsiness, distraction, passion, tasting of enjoyment, 
 and similar hindrances, are to be resolutely controlled. 
 And then, ' motionless as a lamp sheltered from the wind,' 
 meditation, without recognition of subject and object, 
 comes to be realized. As the Bhagavad-gita says ; 'As the 
 flame of a lamp standing in a sheltered spot flickers not, 
 such is the traditional simile of a mind-restrained Yogi, 
 absorbed in the Yoga of the Self.' ^ And having gone 
 through the various processes and postures, and pro- 
 nouncing inaudibly the mystic syllable Om, ' in order to 
 tranquillize circulation and retard the respiratory move- 
 ments,' the state of Samddhi, the last and highest stage 
 of Yoga, is reached. 'It is a state of perfect human 
 hibernation, in which a Yogi is insensible to heat and 
 cold, to pleasure and to pain. ... It is the total suspen- 
 sion of the functions of respiration and circulation, but not 
 the extinction of these functions.' 3 The supreme purpose 
 of all these exercises is the removal of ignorance regarding 
 
 ' Upadesasahasri, 324. = Bhagavad-gita, vi. 19. 
 
 3 See a pamphlet on the Practice of Yoga, by Sub- Assistant-Surgeon 
 Paul (Messrs. Lazarus and Co., Benares, 1882). 
 
SAMADHI, OR SELF-HYPNOTISM 257 
 
 the essential unity of the universe, deliverance from further 
 births, and the acquisition of the joy that is the essence of 
 Brahma. 
 
 Some remarkable instances of such a state of hiberna- 
 tion, or trance, are on record, the best-authenticated and 
 most recent being, perhaps, that of the Bengali ascetic 
 Ramakrishna. In Professor Max Miiller's ' Life and 
 Sayings,' etc., we read : ' 
 
 ' From all we can learn, it is quite clear that he had, by a powerful 
 control of his breath and by long-continued ascetic exercises, arrived 
 at such a pitch of nervous excitability that he could at any moment 
 faint away or fall into a state of unconsciousness — the so-called 
 Samadhi. This Samadhi may be looked at, however, from two 
 points — as either purely physical or psychical. From an ordinary 
 Samadhi a man may recover, as one recovers from a fainting-fit ; but 
 the true Samadhi consists in losing one's self, or finding one's self 
 entirely in the Supreme Spirit. From this Samadhi there is no 
 return, because there is nothing left that can return. A few men 
 only who have reached it are enabled to return from it by means of 
 a small remnant of their Ego, and through tTie efiicacy of their wish 
 to become the instructors and saviours of mankind. Something very 
 like Samadhi is the state of deep, dreamless sleep, during which the 
 soul is supposed to be with Brahman for a time, but able to return. 
 This deep, unconscious sleep is one of the four states — waking, 
 sleeping with dreams, sleeping without dreams, and dying. With 
 Ramakrishna it often happened that, when he had fallen into this 
 deep sleep, he remained in it so long that his friends were afraid he 
 would never return to consciousness, and so it was at last at the 
 time of his death. He had fallen into a trance, and he never 
 awoke. ' 
 
 A stranger to such strange experiences, and a foreigner, 
 ought not, perhaps, to intrude into so great a mystery. 
 One v\rould, at any rate, treat with all seriousness, and even 
 sympathy, a subject essentially sacred, and an object of 
 such sublime aim and passionate pursuit. At the same 
 time, one cannot but feel that ' it is here,' as Barth says, 
 
 ' P. 94- 
 
 18 
 
2s8 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 ' that this haughty theosophy collapses and pays the 
 penalty of its disdain of all practice and observance.' 
 Extraordinary processes are prescribed, which, if ' con- 
 scientiously observed,' he says, ' can only issue in folly and 
 idiocy.' ' It is at least evident that by habitual and 
 incessant contemplative thought the recluse may not 
 only weaken his rational conviction of external reality, but 
 even lose the sense of his own individual personality. 
 
 To wake from the dream of existence, to extricate itself 
 from future births, the soul, ' involuted in a succession of 
 concentric material envelopes,' or sheaths, has to strip 
 itself of these varying vestures, by operations in which a 
 fanciful physiology plays a prominent part — for there is 
 not a little materialism at the bottom of all these con- 
 ceptions — and has literally to re-enter the heart again, in 
 order to bring itself into contact with the Supreme Unity 
 and reach pure Brahma. 
 
 It must penetrate through the unreal into the real ; 
 repress every feeling, desire, and thought ; deliver itself 
 from the bondage, not only of external things, but of its 
 own individuality, and swoon away into unconsciousness 
 — a species of self-hypnotism, samddhi. Thus, it is not 
 order and perspicuity of ideas that lead to truth ; but a 
 state of cerebral exaltation, in which, if it were possible, 
 every thought would cease — the last residue of abstraction 
 pushed to its farthest limits. According to Patanjali him- 
 self, the author of the system. Yoga is 'the suppression 
 of the transformations of the thinking principle.' = Union 
 with the Divine — held by some to have been an idea of a 
 later graft, and foreign to the original system — is not sought 
 by pure feeling, high thought, and strenuous endeavour — 
 by the activity of the conscience and the will — but by 
 
 ' ' The Religions of India, ' pp. 82, 83. 
 " Yoga Sutras, i. 2. 
 
DIFFERENT KINDS OF YOGA 259 
 
 vacuity and ecstasy. The pursuit is not one 'of perfect 
 character, but of perfect characterless.' It is not exertion, 
 but inertion — vairdgya — which is the path to liberation ; 
 and the highest ideal of the devout life is that led by the 
 mendicant ascetic, the Sannyasin, who has renounced 
 everything — family, home, and worldly ties, and more, 
 personality and the whole phenomenal world. He alone 
 is qualified to know and become Brahma. 
 
 That is Yoga, which means, literally, the state of union 
 between the lower Self and the higher Self — a condition 
 which, rightly understood, all devout souls desire, but one 
 that is achieved in Hinduism by a practice of discipline 
 which Gough thinks must have been derived from the 
 semi-savage races of the North, whose god Siva — the lord 
 of Yogins — was the great typical ascetic. The votaries of 
 modern spiritualism, clairvoyance, and animal magnetism, 
 will find most of their theories and practices far outdone 
 by the notions of the Yoga system ; by the extraordinary 
 powers gained over Nature, and the superhuman knowledge 
 acquired by the occult influence of the will, which were in 
 vogue in India over 2,000 years ago. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, however, that different kinds 
 of Yoga are recognised by the different sects of the 
 Hindus. The saintly worker, who lives in the world, yet 
 with a mind detached, is called Karma Yogi; he who 
 seeks union through love with the God of love is called 
 Bhakti Yogi ; he who seeks union through mysticism. Raja 
 Yogij and he who seeks for unity of existence through 
 philosophy, which is the highest point of the Upanishads, 
 is called Jndna Yogi. It is true, also, that the later 
 developments and extravagances of asceticism, as depicted 
 in the Epics, and those insane and cruel mortifications 
 which are associated with the Yogis and Vairagis of North 
 India; the base practices of Hatha Yoga — a system of 
 
26o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 austere bodily gymnastics for the purpose of mental 
 control and exaltation : these find no favour in the Upani- 
 shads and the Vedanta ; though the severe regime of 
 renunciation and abstraction therein prescribed undoubtedly 
 prepared the way for them, and opened the door for much 
 imposture. 
 
 Having reached the height of ecstatic vision and reunion, 
 the perfect sage so long as he lives — though of no further 
 practical use to the world, for he is now ' the liberated but 
 still living man ' — may do good and evil, and incur no 
 stain. ' He that knows the truth,' says one of the 
 Upanishads, 'is sullied neither by good actions nor by 
 evil actions ' ; ' As water adheres not to a lotus-leaf, so no 
 sinful deed adheres to one who knows thus.'' Similarly 
 the Bhagavad-gita : ' He who acteth, placing all actions in 
 Brahma, abandoning attachment, is unpolluted by sin as 
 a lotus-leaf by the waters.' ^ And again : ' The thought 
 afflicts him not. What good have I left undone, what evil 
 done ? ' 3 ' Then a thief is not a thief, a murderer not a 
 murderer ... he is not followed by good, not followed 
 by evil.' ^ The same teaching is found in the Epics : ' As 
 a water-bird is not defiled by moving in the water, so a 
 liberated Yogi is not polluted by merit or demerit.' ' Evil 
 adheres not to an enlightened man, any more than water 
 clings to a leaf.'s Very singular and questionable morality, 
 whose exercise at all by one already passed into a state of 
 practical unconsciousness it is difficult to understand. But 
 in the theosophy of the anchorite of the forest, ' action and 
 passion, works and the recompense of works, the religion 
 of ancestral rites and usages, the sacrifices and the gods 
 sacrificed to, are alike unreal. They are figments of the 
 
 ' Chhandogya-Upan. IV., xiv. 3. ^ Gita v. 10. 
 
 3 Taittirlya-Upan. ii. 9. ■• Bvihad.-Upan. IV., iii. 22. 
 
 5 Mahabharataj xii. 249, 17 ; 299, 7. 
 
THE YOGIN AND NIRVANA 261 
 
 world-fiction, and for the finished theosophist, they have no 
 existence.' ' Every work, whether virtuous or vicious, is 
 but a gesture in a dream. So the Buddhist enlightened 
 one — the fictitious Mahatma — no longer a citizen of earth in 
 his inmost nature, continues to live on in the first rest of 
 Nirvana, as a completed being. The perfect Yogi is a 
 sovereign being, over whom nothing perishable has power 
 any more — not even the laws of Nature. Death even 
 can add nothing to his bliss ; it will only abolish the last 
 appearance of duality. And then, so far as he, an individual, 
 is concerned, he is gone, passed into extinction or ever- 
 lasting Nirvana or repose. For, as Professor Wilson 
 observes : ' Annihilation, as regards individuals, is as 
 much the ultimate destiny of the soul as it is of the body, 
 and "-Not to he" is the melancholy result of the religion 
 and philosophy of the Hindus.' ^ 
 
 A more recent Sanskrit scholar. Colonel Jacob, observes 
 on the moral results of Hinduism generally : ' Some of the 
 Upanishads, the chief source of the Vedanta doctrine, do 
 without any qualificatiott declare that sin and virtue are 
 alike to one who knows Brahma ; and the system is 
 therefore rightly charged with immorality. But, in- 
 dependently of such teaching as this, what moral results 
 could possibly be expected from a system so devoid ot 
 motives for a life of true purity? The Supreme Being, 
 Brahma, is a cold Impersonality, out of relation with the 
 world, unconscious of its own existence and of ours and 
 devoid of all attributes and quahties. The so-called 
 personal God, the first manifestation of the Impersonal, 
 turns out on examination to be a myth ; there is no God 
 apart from ourselves, no Creator, no Holy Being, no Father, 
 no Judge — no one, in a word, to adore, to love, or to fear. 
 
 ■ Cough's ' Philosophy of the Upanishads,' p. 263. 
 ^ ' Essays on the Religion of ihe Hindus,' ii. 114. 
 
262 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 And as for ourselves, we are only unreal actors on the 
 semblance of a stage ! The goal is worthy of such a creed, 
 being no less than the complete extinction of all spiritual, 
 mental, and bodily powers by absorption into the Im- 
 personal.' ' 
 
 Now, though it is difficult to suppose that any but a 
 comparatively few in the present day, even in India, 
 really rejoice in such a prospect as- this, in the idea of 
 an impersonal Essence in which their own individuality is 
 to be merged and lost for ever, and make this an object 
 of real and earnest endeavour, who think it sweet ' to be 
 wrecked in the ocean of the Infinite,' the whole subject is 
 yet so great and suggestive that it cannot but command 
 attention. For fanciful, exaggerated, and essentially erro- 
 neous as Christians believe it to be, it yet witnesses, as 
 all great errors do, to great truths ; and it is only by 
 distinctly recognising and liberating the irufk that underlies 
 the error, and of which the error is the counterpart, that 
 error can be successfully met and overcome. 
 
 And, in the first place, contemplation — meditation — on 
 which the Upanishads and Vedanta insist so much, 
 plays a most important part in the religious life. No 
 doubt the influences of an Indian climate, which indispose 
 one for active exertion, have had much to do with the 
 subordination of physical to spiritual life, with the felicity 
 felt in inward contemplation and complete quiescence ; 
 and Indian Christianity should contribute something very 
 beautiful and true, on the side of meditative worship, to 
 the overactive, bustling life of the West. With our 
 Western instinct, the ' will to live,' for which Matthew 
 Arnold rebuked his fellows, we have done little to change 
 the mind of India ; and, indeed, we ourselves need more 
 quiet and concentration of thought in our religion, and in 
 ■ ' Hindu Pantheism,' pp. 129, 130. 
 
CHRISTIAN COMMUNION 263 
 
 this respect may learn something from the Vedanta. Yet 
 Christianity itself has had its old monastic and conventual 
 type of life, with its absorbing mysticism, as has been so 
 well depicted in Tennyson's poems ' St. Agnes' Eve ' and 
 ' Sir Galahad.' And for some spirits it may have been the 
 only way of redemption from the tyranny of the present 
 world. And for all periods of solitude and secret prayer, 
 silent spaces wherein the soul may give itself up to 
 intense communion with God, are the means of heighten- 
 ing, broadening, deepening the spiritual life. There is a 
 stretch of spirit that obscures for the time the multi- 
 tudinous trivialities of earth ; and the ' ampler ether,' the 
 ' diviner air,' on the mountain summits of the soul, 
 stimulates clear thinking, and lofty aspirations, and large 
 enthusiasms. 
 
 ' This is thy hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, 
 Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, 
 Thee fully forth emerging, pondering the themes thou lovest best, 
 Night, sleep, death, and the stars.' 
 
 Intercourse with God is the great Christian reality. 
 It is an act of communing with One whom we know 
 to be other than ourselves, One who has revealed Himself 
 to us, and who is able to help us in every time of need. 
 But that is not the act of the Hindu sage, whose prime 
 object is not to commune with Brahma, but to meditate 
 on certain negative attributes — not gross, not subtle — not 
 on righteousness and mercy ; and then to understand his 
 identity with It : it is to ^now rather than to ie or do. 
 The process is intellectual rather than moral, though the 
 intellect itself is to be submerged in the end. The aim of 
 the Hindu recluse is not to iecome something, but to come 
 to a true understanding of reality. That is not moral 
 development, even though morality may have some part 
 
264 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 to play in the initial process. What the Christian seeks 
 is not so much to know as to be ; sanctity, moral perfec- 
 tion of character is what he desires. Hence the felt need 
 of Prayer. But Divine grace and assistance are incon- 
 sistent superfluities in such a state as the orthodox Vedantist 
 supposes, since they involve duality. The reciprocal 
 activities of love, worship, adoration, can find no place in 
 such a system. We cannot worship an impersonal Some- 
 what. If the main doctrine of the Vedanta be true, then 
 prayer — the universal exercise in which men of every cUme 
 can meet at the feet of one common Father — and worship 
 — the noblest activity of the soul— must be abandoned. 
 And one may meditate all his life on what one imagines 
 to be God, and get no nearer to Him, unless He reveal 
 Himself. 
 
 Further, what is the real value and ultimate utility of 
 all such contemplative and devotional exercises? These 
 pauses are the times from which the soul, quickened and 
 fed, may issue forth refreshed and renewed, not recede 
 still further from the world into a useless state of apathy 
 and unconsciousness. That is their chief intention, to 
 vivify and expand the soul — to distribute in public those 
 forces we accumulate in private. The training for God 
 is the beginning of earthly wisdom. The powers of mind 
 that fit us for heaven are precisely those that fit us for 
 earth. ' It is from within the Divine sanctuary that we 
 are to be armed for the battle of life. It is in meeting my 
 God that I learn to meet my brother. It is behind the 
 veil of eternity that I speak to the things of time.' 
 
 The religious life of the rishis stops with the climax 
 of abstract contemplation ; it does not pass into action. 
 But high endeavour is a greater test of capacity than 
 merely meditating. What of the novelist who always 
 carries his story in his brain ? What of the poet who 
 
A SOLITARY SALVATION 265 
 
 never puts his thrilling thoughts on paper ? What of the 
 artist who never transferred his noble conceptions to the 
 canvas ? And what of the sage who never realized, 
 never actualized, his high ideals ? It is only then that 
 the real power of the man appears. The expert in 
 Christianity, at any rate, is not the man who has learned 
 about it, but he who has lived it. And true religion is 
 a thing which must be learned by doing it. We may 
 know the way to heaven, yet never walk it. For truth 
 and knowledge to be of any value, they must cease to be 
 abstract and academic ; they must be translated into 
 high and noble deeds, active philanthropy, arid a feeling 
 or fraternity. That is why the West has progressed, 
 while the immobile East has been stationary for centuries : 
 it has put into action its religious truths. Without their 
 application to the living questions of social and national 
 life, all religious ideals and aspirations are but leaves 
 of a barren tree. Mazzini points out, in his fine essay 
 on ' The Condition and Progress of Europe,' that the 
 individual conscience and social tradition are the only 
 two criteria which we possess for realizing the truth. 
 But conscience has no part in the system of Patanjali 
 any more than in the fatalism of Spinoza. As the Deity 
 has no concern with human actions, whether good or bad, 
 so the ' perfect man ' lives in a state of complete isolation 
 in which all necessity for action and all sense of duty are 
 entirely lost. And a dreamy existence in a Maya world, 
 such as the Vedanta postulates, can never act as a stimulant 
 to moral life generally, or give an impulse to the resuscita- 
 tion of national character. A world and a life that are 
 all Maya are obviously not worth reforming. 
 
 And if mystic meditation means simply self-seeking, the 
 soul itself shrivels and dies by a natural process. And 
 no one can question that the system of the Upanishads, 
 
266 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 like the old monastic system, was mainly a self-regarding 
 one. It is the relinquishment for one's own sake of the 
 world and our fellow-men, our families and friends, 
 instead of the endeavour to regenerate them ; aiming at 
 a solitary salvation at the expense of our duty to others. 
 It is the destruction of the social passion and of the 
 idea of love. Impelled by the very necessity of one's 
 nature to seek only what is profitable, there is no possi- 
 bility of self-sacrifice. How different the Gospel of Jesus, 
 which means not the winning of heaven, but the redemp- 
 tion of earth ! ' Whosoever would save his life shall lose 
 it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and 
 the Gospel's shall save it' (Mark viii. 35). It is im- 
 possible for the true Christian to live a life isolated and 
 alone and out of sympathy with his fellows ; he yearns 
 for a corporate life, a life of brotherhood; he feels the 
 need of the ' communion of saints ' and of a common 
 worship. A man who lives in religious solitude, sharing 
 no other man's sorrow and gladness, misses more than half 
 the strength and nearly all the joy of life, while grace and 
 beauty of character are quite impossible to him. Thus, 
 the highest Hindu doctrine of society and duty, fully 
 developed in Buddha's extreme asceticism, unfits it alto- 
 gether for a universal religion. It is an ideal for monks 
 and not for men. The religion that requires a man to 
 retire from the active duties of the world, and to think 
 out his salvation in a solitary hermitage, carries with it the 
 seeds of its own condemnation. The emancipation of 
 the individual soul is a miserable conception; while 
 throwing away self for the sake of humanity, losing life 
 to gain it, is the sublime and essential idea of the 
 -Gospel. 
 
 The following is a striking admission from one of the 
 Brahmist papers as to the source of the idea of Prayer 
 
NO PRAYER IN VEDANTISM 267 
 
 and of other elements of piety, and affords a valuable 
 Hindu estimate of Vedantism : 
 
 ' The third and last, but in many respects the most important, 
 element of Brahmo devotion, namely, prayer, with its accompanying 
 elements of piety — repentance and moral struggle — is pre-eminently 
 a Christian element of piety. There is little or no prayer in Ve- 
 dantism ; it is pre-eminently a contemplative, and not an ethical, 
 religion. Apart from a negative purity of mind which it cultivates 
 as a preparation for deep and undisturbed meditation, it is almost 
 as much dead to the moral interests of man as to his worldly interests. 
 There is prayer in Vaishnavism, but it is not a very prominent feature 
 in it. It would not be too much to say that it is from Christianity 
 that Brahmos have learnt to pray, and prayer has been, and will 
 continue to be, our salvation — the salvation of India. Vedantism, 
 with its lofty Meditation, could not raise India. Vaishnavism, not- 
 withstanding its high ideal of Bhakti, could not purify and reform 
 India, though its services have been most valuable in some respects. 
 For its exclusive attention to the emotional side of piety, for not 
 giving prominence to the moral elements of religion, it failed to 
 establish the kingdom of God in the soul — the object it sought to 
 attain. It is prayer, repentance, and moral struggle — elements 
 which the Brahmo Samaj has inherited from Christianity — that have 
 made the crude monotheism which our Vedantic forefathers be- 
 queathed to us, a religion of life. It is these Christian elements of piety 
 that have saved us from that quietude and moral torpor to which 
 Vedantic Meditation consigns the mind, when it is cultivated to the 
 exclusion of other elements of piety. It is these elements that have 
 saved us from that spiritual voluptuousness and aversion to an active 
 life which necessarily result from the exclusive emotionalism character- 
 istic of Vaishnavism. It is the spirit of Christianity which has taught 
 us that the service of man is the service of God, and that it is an 
 integral, an indispensable, part of true piety. True, Vaishnavism 
 recognises the " service of God " as a part of piety, but this " service '' 
 is not identical with the service of man ; it is the service of images 
 representing Vishnu. It is Christianity that has taught us the true 
 meaning of the service of God. It is Christianity also which has 
 taught us that the purification and reformation of our domestic and 
 social life is an integral part of religion — a lesson which the best 
 forms of Hinduism are ignorant of. It is the spirit of Christianity that 
 gives life and energy to our social aims, aspirations, and efforts. We 
 set our face against all Hindu revivals and all special movements on the 
 
268 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 part of Brahmos in favour of Hindu modes of spiritual culture, mainly 
 because we are- afraid that such movements will inevitably lead, as 
 they are already leading, to a rejection of the Christian or ethical 
 elements of religion : prayer, repentance, moral struggle, active 
 philanthropy, and social reform —elements which are not congenial 
 to the nature of the typical Hindu. But these constitute the very life 
 of Brahmoism. Without Vedantic Meditation and the ecstatic Bhakti 
 of Vaishnavism, Brahmoism would be poor ; but without the ethical 
 and practical spirit of Christianity Brahmoism would die. ' ' 
 
 Passing now to the strange and difficult subject of Yoga, 
 and to the severe ascetic exercises required to reach it, 
 here again we see the perversion of a most important 
 truth. The Yoga system of Patanjali is a theistic branch 
 of the atheistic Sankhya system of Kapila, whose teaching, 
 as pointed out by Mr. Davies in his 'Hindu Philosophy,' ^ 
 is closely allied with the latest philosophy of Germany, 
 as set forth by Schopenhauer's, ' World as Will and Idea ' 
 and Von Hartmann's ' Philosophy of the Unconscious ' ; 
 while Patanjali's system bears a close resemblance to 
 Spinoza's exposition of God and Nature. All these 
 philosophical systems are alike pessimistic, and regard 
 conscious life as an unmixed evil made miserable by pain ; 
 maintaining, with Jeremy Bentham, that pain is the only 
 evil in the world, and the necessary consequence of 
 existence. The ideal state is thus the unconscious, im- 
 passive life, and the highest aim is, therefore, not goodness 
 nor self-sacrifice for others, but 'self-suppression, the 
 annihilation of the conscious self, which is the cardinal 
 principle of Buddhism.' In his Sankhya Siitras (i. i) 
 Kapila taught that 'the complete destruction of pain is 
 the highest object of man.' With him and with Patanjali 
 there is no moral greatness in the suffering and discipline 
 of pain, and no moral elevation and refinement in sharing 
 the pain of others, and no hope for the world in any 
 
 ' The Indian Messenger (Calcutta). ^ See p. 102 and Note D. 
 
CHRISTIAN YOGA 269 
 
 social schemes of amendment or in any Gospel of 
 redemption. The one end of philosophy is for each 
 individual life to escape as quickly as possible from all 
 contact with matter to the final goal of a painless, 
 unconscious, unbroken repose. 
 
 This is the object of all Yoga exercises, and bearing 
 as they do some resemblance to the system of Zeno, 
 it must be allowed that they present a masculine and even 
 sublime side, as well as a weak and morbid one. The 
 whole-hearted surrender, the strenuous endeavour, of these 
 ancient sages to reach what they conceived to be the 
 Infinite must command our admiration ; while self-control 
 — the complete mastery of the appetites and passions — 
 without which Yoga cannot be obtained, is one of the 
 finest virtues, and rightly understood, essential to true 
 manhood. 
 
 Further, death to self and death to the world, as signified 
 in Yoga, is one of the highest states of mind it is possible 
 to reach. It is essentially Christian, though the nominal 
 Christian may know very little about it. The idea of 
 a stern contest going on between the flesh and the spirit 
 (Rom. vii. and viii.), of the necessity of mortifying the 
 unholy deeds of the body — uncleanness, passion, evil 
 desire, covetousness (Col. iii. 5) — even of crucifying the 
 flesh with the passions and lusts (Gal. v. 24), and of 
 the world being crucified unto us (vi. 24) : such an idea 
 is essential to the religion of Christ, and pervades the 
 New Testament. 
 
 And no religion, not even that of Buddha, requires more 
 absolute self-renunciation than that of Christ, though few of 
 His followers really reach it. Indeed, He probably recog- 
 nises a nearer approach to the practice of His own teaching 
 in the East, where a worthy Object alone is needed for the 
 true cultivation of the virtues of Yoga and Bhakti. ' He 
 
270 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of 
 Me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is 
 not worthy of Me '(Matt. x. 37). 'Whosoever doth not 
 bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My 
 disciple' (Luke xiv. 27). 'Whosoever he be of you that 
 renounceth not all that he hath, cannot be My disciple ' 
 (xiv. 33). That is Christian Yoga — a severe and arduous 
 exercise, yet not incompatible with the doing of our duty in 
 the world. 
 
 For in Christ we have gained a new conception of renun- 
 ciation — one that Buddha never understood — and have 
 found through Him that desire is good, and great, and 
 eternal. In the Hindu Yoga, mortification is extended to 
 all desire, good as well as evil, in order to reach that in- 
 difference which, strangely enough, is the condition of pure 
 intelligence. In the Christian Yoga the evil desires are to 
 be suppressed that the good ones may be more stretiuously 
 developed in pursuit of the ideal : ' Be perfect, as your 
 heavenly Father is perfect ' (Matt. v. 48). Christian piety 
 — the reverse of the Hindu and Buddhist type — is based 
 on joy, and can never be manifested by misery, which 
 cannot be pleasing to God. Christ's goal was never death, 
 but life — life more abundant, life for evermore ; and it was 
 the beauty and the joy of life which made it worth dying 
 for. To the unimpassioned conception of the East, Christ 
 thus opposes His own ideal of human Ufe, as a life full of 
 energy and power, and full of love to others ; and self- 
 realization, not self-renunciation, becomes the highest end 
 of existence. Renunciation is but the means to an end, 
 and the end vs, fulness of life. In the realization of the true 
 Christian idea of renunciation, the East and the West must 
 yet unite ; the ' will to live ' of the West, while being im- 
 parted to the East, becoming pervaded by its peace. 
 
 We thus see that the extreme self-suppression, the 
 
A CULTUS OF SELF 271 
 
 crushing out of natural instincts and desires, and all the 
 penances and self-torture of the Indian Yogi and ascetic— 
 for which the Upanishads prepared the soil — are mistaken 
 exaggerations of the idea of self-sacrifice, which is indis- 
 pensable to all true religion. The body may be kept in 
 subjection without being maimed and mortified ; the senses 
 and appetites may be restrained without being destroyed ; 
 the feelings and affections may be disciplined without being 
 stifled. 
 
 It is also true that solitude and self-denial, though they 
 may be helpful to abstraction, do not necessarily conduce 
 to a holy life. Bishop Butler who knew human nature so 
 well, has observed with reference to ascetic practices : 
 ' Those who aimed at the destruction of the passions upon 
 the foot of philosophy appear to have had better success in 
 eradicating the affections of tenderness and compassion 
 than the passions of envy, pride, and resentment.' ' Other- 
 worldliness may be as immoral as what is called worldliness. 
 There is an Indian proverb that says that ' the most austere 
 hermit is the most consummate rogue.' The Stoic, who in 
 philosophical pride affected to despise wealth and pleasure, 
 pain and death, and pretended to be perfect and equal to 
 God, proved after all to be a mere man of like passions as 
 his fellows. And why ? Because it is only by a constant 
 living in the presence of God that men can conquer the 
 evil tendencies of their nature and attain to the purity and 
 holiness which God demands. The sages of the Upani- 
 shads transpose this process, and make the presence of 
 God the end and result of a course of mortification. 
 Christianity starts with the presence and help of God, 
 and through them achieves the mastery over the lower self. 
 
 Men and women there have always been who have 
 attempted to retire from the world altogether, only to find 
 
 ■ See Macaulay's Essay on Lord Bacon. 
 
272 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 in cloister or in forest the foul exhalations of earth rather 
 than the sweet dews of heaven ; that the one devil from 
 whom they have fled in the city has here taken to himself 
 seven devils more. Christianity has even had its St. 
 Simeon Stylites — the Syrian saint who, in order to acquire 
 religious merit and to be nearer heaven, spent thirty-seven 
 years on the tops of different pillars, and was blistered by 
 the sun by day and stung by the frost at night. But since 
 self was never absent from his thought, his soul still cleaved 
 to sensual pleasures. 
 
 The special deformity of this exaggerated asceticism is 
 its extreme self-righteousness and repellent selfishness, to 
 say nothing of the encouragement to imposture to which it 
 directly tends. Are not the practices prescribed for Yoga, 
 though representing a lofty religious effort, and therefore to 
 be reverently regarded, devoid of any beneficent purpose ? 
 What benefit do they confer upon the world? The mere 
 ideal of self-suppression is sadly imperfect, and really un- 
 moral, unless inspired by the love of God and man. It is 
 this vast underlying contrast in aim and motive that differ- 
 entiates the Hindu and Christian ideals. The Christian 
 ideal is to love God with all our heart, and to love our 
 fellows as ourselves — love to God shown in love to man. 
 A religion that does not make others better is not true 
 religion. If we practise self-denial merely for the sake of 
 showing power over self, for the sake of self-discipline, it is 
 the most miserable of all delusions. It simply generates 
 spiritual pride. On the other hand, if we practise it for the 
 sake of another, it becomes the highest religious act. ' To 
 bear pain for the sake of bearing it,' as F. W. Robertson 
 has said, ' has no moral quality at all ; but to bear it rather 
 than surrender truth, or in order to save another, is positive 
 enjoyment, as well as ennobhng to the soul.' 
 
 The impersonal God of the Vedanta, as we have seen, is 
 
CHRISTIAN AND HINDU ASCETICISM 273 
 
 no object of personal love ; so that it is, after all, nothing 
 more than one's own self which one is bent on realizing — a 
 bigger self, indeed, but nothing to call out altruistic affec- 
 tion. Yoga thus practised is only ' a magnified and refined 
 cultus of self — in fact, egoism on a colossal scale.' Which 
 exhibits the highest ideal — the life of the Yogi, wasted in 
 solitary self-discipline till unconsciousness is achieved, or 
 that of Christ, the champion of the poor and oppressed, 
 who 'went about doing good,' and whose continuous 
 sacrifice was for others, not for self? There we have the 
 great distinction between Christian and Hindu asceticism 
 and self-denial. The true Christian ascetic is not the 
 recluse, but the philanthropist, the man who will give up 
 everything for the sake of the present and eternal good of 
 his fellow-men. And surely it is a nobler thing to act 
 according to the dictates of reason and conscience in moral 
 choices, and in an active life, than to devote the whole 
 mental energy to annihilating the distinction between being 
 and non-being. 
 
 If it be urged that the moral course has already been 
 gone through, and that the sage has reached the moral 
 zenith of his life, when he may leave such things behind, 
 the very idea of leaving the most important of all things 
 behind is self-condemnatory. 'A man who surrenders 
 the effort to be better and more useful in favour of the 
 effort to be wiser is committing a species of suicide. It 
 is to exercise only a fraction of the power possessed by 
 the soul; a retreat on the part of the monarch into a 
 secluded corner of his empire ; an abandonment of all 
 departments of government but one, and that not the 
 highest ; a melancholy and senseless abdication.' ' ' He 
 most lives who thinks most — feels the noblest — acts the 
 best.' 
 
 ' The Calcutta Epiphany. 
 19 
 
274 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 But it will be further urged that the sublime end in view 
 of all this has to be considered, which is nothing short of 
 union with the Supreme Spirit, and then a condition of 
 unbroken and eternal peace. 
 
 Now, here, unquestionably, the Vedantist is at his best. 
 Here we have the highest consummation of religion. The 
 conception is the truest and most sacred that the soul can 
 possibly entertain. And this aspiration after the Divine, 
 this longing for union with God, the Centre and Source of 
 all being, constitutes the strength and charm of pantheism, 
 and is the burden of the Upanishads. And if the religion 
 of Christ did not offer an equivalent, and more, the 
 ideal of the Vedanta would be unsurpassed ; though 
 what its realization actually may be we cannot tell, since no 
 one has ever related or recorded his experience ; whereas 
 the Christian union has been realized, and testified to, by 
 thousands of saintly souls. 
 
 Union with God — the Christian knows nothing higher. 
 But he reaches it in a different way from that of the 
 Vedanta ; he reaches it through the only way by which it is 
 possible to reach it : not by abstract thought, by stretches 
 of the imagination, by stupendous self-effort, and by the 
 final loss of all that is highest in man and the universe — 
 personality — but through the Divine Man, who is a fact of 
 history, in whose mysterious nature the Divine and the 
 human are united, and who has made this union possible to 
 all who become livingly united unto Him. The ideal of 
 the Indian is the acquisition of that wisdom, which, by 
 destroying ignorance, crushes out all the causes of misery, 
 and, by putting an end to the curse of existence, loses the 
 finite in the Infinite. Without any painful and wearisome 
 search, the Christian reaches at once the highest wisdom in 
 Christ himself, who, by removing man's ignorance of God 
 throiigh His revelation of God's Fatherly character, removes 
 
REVELATION THROUGH CHRIST 275 
 
 also the chief cause of human misery — man's sinful distrust 
 of God — and fills the soul with Divine peace and joy. 
 
 We see this great truth not only taught by Christ, as one 
 of the fundamental truths of religion, but gloriously illus- 
 trated in the Incarnation itself. All along through human 
 history there has been a world-process in which the Eternal 
 Idea has sought its realization, and God has united Himself 
 to, and manifested Himself in, humanity, the self-revelation 
 reaching its highest point and fullest expression in the 
 person and life of Christ. By the union of the Eternal 
 Logos with the highest creature, in Jesus of Nazareth, the 
 circle of being was made complete. For the Incarnation 
 not only brought the invisible and unknown God within the 
 range of our human sympathies, but it was also a revelation 
 of human nature, and changed for us the whole aspect of our 
 moral and spiritual life, by disclosing the presence of a 
 Divine and infinite element in our nature, by revealing an 
 ideal glory and beauty in man, an essential affinity (sdrHpya), 
 though not identity (sdyujya), with the nature of God. 
 ' The creature can at ijo time be equal with its Creator ; 
 and as man may not become God, God, out of the great 
 love He bore the world, was willing to become man.' As 
 Shelling said : ' Only the personal can heal the personal, 
 and God must become man that man may come again to 
 God.' 
 
 For it is the teaching of the Bible that man was 
 originally created in the image of God, and therefore 
 destined for eternal union with Him. But this image 
 was obscured by sin, and men lost the knowledge of God, 
 and fashioned gods of their own imaginings. Christ, the 
 Revealer of God, comes, and, having 'put away sin by the 
 sacrifice of Himself (Heb.ix. 26), has reconciled man to 
 God, and revealed afresh the union. When the Divine Son 
 became incarnate, He took upon Him human nature, and 
 
276 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 by doing so revealed the essential unity of God and man. 
 He found the Divinity, which is the real man, behind every 
 human being, and in so doing established also the truth of 
 universal brotherhood. God and man are related to each 
 other as Father and son, and apart from that truth universal 
 brotherhood is an empty name. 
 
 ' He that hath seen Me,' says Christ, ' hath seen the 
 Father'' (John xiv. 9). ' I and the Father are one' (x. 30). 
 ' In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and 
 ve in Me, and I in you' (xiv. 20). 'That they all maybe 
 one, even as thou. Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they 
 also may be in Us' (xvii. 21). 'I in them, and Thou in 
 Me, that they may ht. perfected into one' (xvii. 23). 'God 
 hath granted unto us precious and exceeding great 
 promises, that through these ye may become partakers of 
 the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is 
 in the world by lust' (2 Pet. i. 4). 
 
 ' Partakers of the Divine nature.' The Vedantist can offer 
 the Christian nothing that he does not already possess, and 
 possess in a still higher measure, and far greater reality. 
 For with no loss of conscious personality, but with the 
 capacity for power and blessedness intensified and 
 heightened to an infinite degree, he participates in that 
 Nature. One with the Supreme Being without realizing and 
 enjoying it ! Well might the practical Dvaita, Madhava- 
 charya, turn such a conception into ridicule. The Christian 
 saint experiences not only the highest state of mind that 
 a Hindu philosopher has ever reached on earth, but has 
 risen to a higher state of knowledge and consciousness than 
 the non-Christian sage could ever dream of. 
 
 The highest state that the ancient sage reached was that 
 of self-abnegation — death to self and death to the world. 
 Yet, according to Christ, this moral state is only the 
 threshold of the highest spiritual Christian consciousness. 
 
PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE 277 
 
 It is only when death to self and death to the world have 
 been truly experienced that the highest consciousness 
 possible to the Christian saint can begin. The Vedantist 
 can only say, ' I am crucified to the world ' ; the Christian 
 can add, ' Nevertheless / /we.' The Vedantist can only say, 
 ' No longer I ' ; the Christian rises higher, and says, ' No 
 longer I, but CArisi liveth in me ' (Gal. ii. 20) — marvellous 
 words which have to be experienced to be understood. At 
 every stage there is no negation, but positive attainment of 
 life, more life and fuller; more personal and intense, hke 
 the life of Him who is alive for evermore. 
 
 And why is this ? The sage of the Vedanta has nothing 
 upon which to fix his thoughts but se/f : they do not rest 
 on the basis of truth and of objective reality. The Christian 
 has the sublimest and most real object on which to centre 
 his thoughts — the Incarnate Lord. The most entrancing 
 and enn'obling consciousness is that of being united with and 
 absorbed with Christ, in whom all truth and loveliness are 
 concentrated. The experience of the Christian saint is so 
 lofty and unique that Christ declared that the least in the 
 kingdom of God was greater than the greatest of all past 
 seers and prophets (Luke vii. 28). A peace that passeth 
 all understanding is the possession of the soul that exercises 
 Yoga — union — with the glorified God-Man.' 
 
 The Christian Gospel thus offers all that the Vedanta 
 offers, and infinitely more. So true is it that every previous 
 revelation flows into the revelation we have in Christ, and 
 loses itself in Him. Christ includes all teachers. All 
 ' other masters ' are in Christ. We do not deny the truths 
 they taught ; we can delight in all. We can give heed to 
 all the prophets ; but every truth in every prophet melts 
 into the truth we have in Christ. And Christ tells us that 
 li/e, not death, is what our souls are made for. That is 
 ' See on this point 27ie Epiphany, September, 1894. 
 
278 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 His distinctive message to the non-Christian world. To 
 be made one with the Divine, ' not in the dull abyss of 
 characterless nonentity, lapsing from the personal down to 
 the impersonal, from the animate to the inanimate, from 
 the self back to the mere thing ' ; but in the reciprocal 
 embrace of conscious love, mutually realized and enjoyed — 
 that is,, the true and highest bhakti-yoga — knowing even as 
 we are known. 
 
 The Yoga of the Vedanta stands for the Christian 
 heaven. There is, indeed, much that is sublime and true 
 in the ideal end of the Vedantist : the promise of release 
 from the sorrows of the heart and the burdens of existence ; 
 of a ' repose unbroken by a dream,' of everlasting peace. 
 And the promise is an imperfect forecast of Christian 
 experience. The Christian heaven is no material paradise 
 of the future, no lower transitory state, as known to 
 Brahmanism, and therefore unsatisfactory ; it corresponds 
 with the ultimate of the Upanishads, and signifies a beatific 
 state of knowledge, holiness, and joy, in the very presence 
 of God, of which no previous religion had the slightest 
 conception. It is begun in a life of faith and active good- 
 ness, realized in Christ, here on earth, and consummated 
 in a higher, richer fruition of existence hereafter — the 
 fullest, personal life of the spirit for evermore. ' Absent 
 from the body ... at home with the Lord ' (2 Cor. v. 8). 
 The promise of the Vedanta is no promise of felicity such 
 as this, but of a Nirvana in which the soul shall cease to 
 be a soul, and be merged into the one characterless being, 
 the characterless beatitude. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 VEDANTISM AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Limitations of the Vedanta— Not open or suited to all— Disqualified 
 for a Universal Religion— What has it done for India?— Con- 
 trasted with the Bible — Old Religions subverted by Civilization 
 —No Regenerating Power — Hindu Testimonies — The Hope of 
 India — Revival of Ancient Hinduism — Progress, not Retrogression 
 — Recovery of Lost Spirituality — Value of the Vedanta — Its Con- 
 tribution to Indian Christianity — Meeting of the East and the 
 West. 
 
 Our last reflection is that this true knowledge of God and 
 future felicity are open to all. For Christ calls the least 
 and the lowest, the guiltiest and most degraded, of mankind 
 to His kingdom, to become sons of God, and perfect as 
 He is perfect. 
 
 The great flaw in the Vedanta system is the limit of 
 the highest salvation to an exceedingly difficult process, 
 demanding an acquaintance with metaphysical problems 
 to which the poor and unlearned, the woman and the child, 
 cannot possibly attain ; although all are alike God's children, 
 with the same needs and aspirations, the same claims 
 and rights. Hence we have the invidious distinction which 
 characterizes all such religions, that of an esoteric and exoteric 
 system — one secret, the other open ; the former for adepts, 
 the latter for the masses ; a speculative philosophy for the 
 
28o ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 few, a gross, material worship for the many : and whoever 
 lacks speculative intellect must suffer the miseries of life. 
 For in a world where only the few have knowledge, the 
 highest salvation can come, not to the poor in spirit, but 
 only to the elect circle of the thinkers. Such a system is 
 not suited to men of all temperaments, all types of mind 
 and character, all degrees of intellect, all stages of life ; 
 and is inconsistent with the Divine method in Nature, 
 where God's best gifts are universal, where His light shines 
 and His pure air circulates alike for all. And ' what is not 
 good for the swarm is not good for the bees,' according to 
 the old sentiment finely expressed by Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 If the dream of a universal religion be true, that religion 
 cannot possibly be based on the Upanishads and the 
 Vedanta. To make them the religion of a people is to 
 declare it to be a national or, rather, local affair, and not 
 cosmopolitan ; it is to confine it to a corner of the globe, 
 and to a select coterie even in that corner. For if, as it 
 has been often urged, this ancient Indian system can be 
 properly understood only in the original Sanskrit, and if 
 this be true religion at its highest, then it depends, not 
 only on superior intellect, but also on special linguistic 
 talent, and talent to study a dead language ! Its pursuit, 
 to say the least, is impracticable. And no religion that is 
 recondite, and that requires a pandit or learned person to 
 explain it, can ever be the universal religion. That must 
 be accessible to all, easily understood by all, capable of 
 world-wide expansion, and of meeting the needs of every 
 land and race. 
 
 There is but one science of the universe, one astronomy, 
 and one geography, and one chemistry, for all the globe ; 
 and if the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man 
 be true, there can be but one bond of spiritual union for 
 such a family; one religion, which, while embodied in 
 
A UNIVERSAL RELIGION . 281 
 
 varying national forms, yet gives expression to the same 
 spiritual facts that are common to all mankind. True 
 religion deals with universal problems connected with 
 God and man, and man's duty to God and to his fellow, 
 and with sin and salvation ; and when solutions of these 
 are found for one people, they are found for all. There is 
 nothing local or national about such problems and about 
 the knowledge that illumines them ; the light thrown upon 
 them must of necessity be such as all nations can appre- 
 ciate; the answers given to the questions arising out of 
 them must be universally true. Such a religion, while 
 treating all men as equal in the sight of God, must avoid 
 matters on which men are sure to differ, such as ceremonials, 
 minute rituals, and theological subtleties, and must deal 
 supremely with the universal needs and realities of character 
 and life. These, again, must be presented in a form 
 adapted to the capacity of all, independent of language, 
 dchdryas, and priests, and exhibited in an attractive and 
 commanding Personality, in whose faultless example the 
 living principle expounded can be seen in action.' 
 
 The knowledge of God, to be necessary for salvation, 
 must be of such simple, spiritual, and concrete kind as to 
 be available, not only for a few deep thinkers and acute 
 reasoners, the elect of the race, but for ' the man in the 
 street,' for the striving throng of busy toilers, whose labour 
 is so necessary to the welfare and progress of mankind ; 
 who cannot possibly solve the problems of life by philo- 
 sophical meditation, but whose souls are as dear to God as 
 that of the recluse. And just as a school is best judged, 
 not by the achievements of its few brilliant scholars, but by 
 what it makes of the mass of its ordinary, commonplace 
 lads, so it is the glory of Christianity, that it is not only 
 
 ' See an excellent lecture on ' Universal Religion,' by E. P. Rice, 
 B.A. (Madras: Lawrence Asylum Press, 1897). 
 
282 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 welcomed by souls ' naturally Christian,' but has the means 
 to take hold of and transform the mediocre multitude, who 
 in all levels of society are spiritually dull and worldly, 
 together with the great masses and the outcasts, who have 
 been contemptuously abandoned by other faiths, and for 
 whom the philosophy of the Vedanta, in particular, has as 
 yet done nothing. What has it done for the women and 
 the widows, the fallen and the oppressed, the pariahs, 
 publicans, and sinners; while the religion of Christ has 
 been all over the world seeking to save the lost ? Has it 
 promoted popular education, the elevation of women, and 
 good government ; has it abolished caste and polygamy ; 
 driven away the dancing-girls from the temples ; repressed 
 vice and encouraged virtue ? 
 
 ' Was it this philosophy,' asks the late Bishop Caldwell, ' which 
 abolished female infanticide, the Meriah sacrifice, and the burning of 
 widows ? Is it this which is covering the country with a network of 
 railways and telegraphs ? Is it this which has kindled among the 
 native inhabitants of India the spirit of improvement and enterprise 
 which is now apparent ? What could be expected of the philosophy oi 
 apathy but that it should leave things to take their course ? There is 
 much real work now being done in India in the way of teaching truth, 
 putting down evil, and promoting the public welfare ; but that work is 
 being done, not by Vedantists or quietists of any school, but by 
 Christians from Europe, whose highest philosophy is to do good, and 
 by those natives of India who have been stimulated by the teaching and 
 example of Europeans to choose a similar philosophy. ' 
 
 Fifty years of Christian influence have done, more for 
 the true welfare of India than a thousand years of the 
 Vedanta. 
 
 How has it thus come to pass that the fates of the 
 old Indian classics and of the Bible, their influence on the 
 moral and social improvement of the world, have been so 
 different? Covering the course of the world from the 
 
 ' ' Krishna and the Bhagavad-glta, pp. 27, 28. 
 
THE BIBLE AND PROGRESS 283 
 
 creation to the final restitution of all things, the Bible is 
 embedded in, and associated with, the past history of 
 the race ; yet it is not a preacher of ancient history or 
 philosophy, but of the Living God, and of His relation to 
 the living facts of to-day. Addressed to all men without 
 distinction, and having intimate spiritual concerns with all 
 men, it is the Book for the million, and deals with all the 
 duties and problems of practical life. The late Dean 
 Stanley calls the Bible the guiding book of the world's 
 history, and speaks of its ' insight into the wants of men 
 far beyond the age in which it was written.' He refers to 
 that modern element which we find in the Bible ; to the 
 enforcement of principles and duties which for years and 
 centuries lay almost unperceived, but which are now seen 
 to have been in accordance with the utmost requirements 
 of philosophy and civilization. 
 
 This is exactly what is wanting in the old religions. 
 There lacks in every one of them the principles of pro- 
 gress, and that element of universality which is Chris- 
 tianity's distinctive glory. They have no social promise 
 in them. Their fatal lack of motive power, their imper- 
 fect morality, and their incapacity to give vitality and 
 vigour to their principles, is the secret of their failure. 
 Social degeneracy is the historic outcome. There is no 
 trace in them of any ' modern element,' of universal adap- 
 tation to the wants of men. They have reflected the 
 climate, country, race, time, in which they arose ; and 
 whatever influence they may have exerted, they did not 
 draw nations out of the beaten track in which they had 
 lived. 'Notwithstanding the material and political revo- 
 lutions which they underwent,' says M. Guizot, ' these 
 ancient nations followed in the same ways, and retained 
 the same propensities as before.' ' For the old creeds are 
 • ' Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, ' pp. 58, 59. 
 
284 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 not fitted to harmonize with the intellectual, social, and 
 moral progress of the modern world. Advancing civili- 
 zation destroyed the religions of Greece and Rome as it 
 is paralyzing the popular religions of India to-day. Only 
 Christianity can bear 'the brunt of advancing civiliza- 
 tion.' It is the only religion that comports with the 
 march of modern progress, as represented by the fore- 
 most nations of the world. ' There is but one example 
 of a religion,' says Mr. Lecky, 'which is not necessarily 
 subverted by civilization, and that example is Chris- 
 tianity.' ' New and fresh among the old, decadent 
 cultures, it has manifested, again and again in its history, 
 remarkable vitality; while it is also capable, by the 
 regenerating power of its spiritual teachings and moral 
 ideals, and by the new and higher type of manhood which 
 these produce, of preparing any nation to assimilate the 
 best results of progress, and to enter on a new and nobler 
 social and political career : so vital is the connection 
 between the highest religious thought and the moral and 
 social life of a people. And what have all the philoso- 
 phies and sciences of the world done for the regeneration 
 and progress of mankind compared with the one truth — 
 ' God IS love.' ? 
 
 That the moral forces of the ethnic religions are not 
 capable of uplifting and regenerating society is strikingly 
 seen in India to-day ; while we have ample proofs of the 
 transforming and elevating power of Christianity. And 
 this is freely admitted by Hindus themselves. It was but 
 a few years ago that a Brahman official, to whom the 
 Madras Government gave the important duty of writing 
 the ' Progress Report ' of the Presidency, pointed out that 
 from a Hindu standpoint there was no hope for the social 
 amelioration of the out-caste pariahs within Hinduism. 
 
 ' Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe,' vol. i., p. 306. 
 
HINDU TESTIMONIES 285 
 
 There was but one way for them to rise, and that was to 
 renounce Hinduism, and accept either Mohammedanism 
 or Christianity. A still more emphatic testimony was 
 borne by the Brahman Commissioner of the census of 
 1891, for the State of Travancore, and submitted in a 
 State paper to the native Prince : 
 
 ' The heroism o^ raising the low from the slough of debasement is 
 an element of civilization unknown to ancient India. But for the 
 Christian missionaries in the country these humble orders would for 
 ever remain unraised. The Brahman community of Southern India 
 are not doing for the lower classes what the casteless Britisher is 
 doing for them. The credit of this philanthropy, of going to the 
 homes of the low, the distressed, and the dirty, putting the shoulder 
 to the wheel of depraved humanity, belongs to the foreigner.' 
 
 Again, let a native paper ' point out the source of the 
 impulse that has given rise to female education and 
 medical relief for women : 
 
 ' The Christian missionary must be esteemed to be one of the 
 greatest benefactors of our country. . . . He has honeycombed the 
 land with girls' schools. . . . With the wonderful aggressiveness 
 characteristic of their vigorous race, a body of devoted women have 
 come to live in India, to minister to the relief of the sick and educate 
 the ignorant. ... It is a matter of standing reproach to us that we are 
 not able to do ' half as much as the Christian missionaries are doing for 
 us. Where are the hospitals for Hindu ladies founded by the Hindu 
 religious organizations ? Where are the Hindu women who, influenced 
 by i&etr religion, are willing to devote their lives to the service 
 of their sisters ? The cause of the absence of »such devotion is due 
 to the totally different ideas that have been taught to them, and in a 
 way to render them useless to themselves and other women. It is we, 
 the men of India, that have to bear the blame. We differ in many 
 respects from the views of missionaries, but they are a great object- 
 lesson as to what immense good men and women can do to others.' 
 
 And once more : the standard of social morality has 
 considerably improved in India in recent years, as seen 
 ' The Madras Hindu. 
 
286 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 especially in the anti-Nautch movement, which seeks to 
 discountenance the performances of temple dancing-girls, 
 whose presence at public functions and private enter- 
 tainments has from time immemorial been considered 
 indispensable. In connection with this movement, the 
 necessity of something being done to reclaim this un- 
 fortunate class is being recognised, though the Indian 
 reformers see no hope of help from their own people, and 
 appeal to Christians. 
 
 ' There is plenty of scope for active work,' said the Social Reformer 
 of Madras recently, ' not only for policemen, but for earnest men and 
 women — of course, among Christians. Our countrymen must pardon 
 us for this piece of plain speaking, as they have never shown the 
 least anxiety to reclaim the fallen : for once fallen always fallen would 
 appear to be their maxim.' 
 
 Testimony such as this, coming as it does from reflec- 
 tive Hindu minds, shows clearly the direction in which 
 hope for India lies. It can hardly come from any revival 
 of the past, if such a thing were possible ; for history 
 would only repeat itself. The spirit of progress is abroad 
 in the country. The educated classes are not satisfied 
 with the existing state of things — in politics, in society, 
 or in religion. They want something else in all these 
 departments of life, and to become better men and 
 citizens. Many desire to modify the existing form of 
 government, so as to meet their felt needs and aspirations. 
 Others are thoroughly dissatisfied with the social customs 
 of the country ; they are conscious that Hindu society Is 
 anything but what it ought to be, and desire some very 
 radical reforms. And, then, the education which they have 
 received has opened the eyes of a large number to the fact 
 that their religion has become formal and superficial, and 
 falls to touch the innermost recesses of the heart. And 
 so they desire to purify It, to divest it of its superstitions, 
 
RETROGRADE TENDENCIES 287 
 
 and, if possible, to animate the dry bones with some vivi- 
 fying force. Thus, the desire for change in all these 
 directions is not a mere idle desire; it is a desire to 
 change for the better, and is itself a most hopeful sign. 
 It is undoubtedly due to the foreign influences at work in 
 the country ; and the fact needs to be realized that these 
 three great movements — political, social, religious — have 
 arisen simultaneously ; and are designed to progress together, 
 and on similar lines, as they have done in other lands. 
 
 But here we are confronted with a singular anomaly to 
 which reference has already been made (p. 15). While the 
 changes desired in the political and social spheres is a 
 change onward, in the direction of the progressive insti- 
 tutions of the West, the proposed change that holds the 
 ground at present in the field of religion is a change back- 
 ward to the ancient thought and ideals of the East. In 
 political and social matters faith is to be exercised in the 
 principles of evolutionary development and progressive life ; 
 while in religious matters, which form the foundation of 
 the other two, a retrogressive step is to be taken. Such 
 guides as the late Swami Vivekananda and Mrs. Annie 
 Besant have affirmed that the future greatness of India 
 must rest, not on going forward with the rest of the world, • 
 but on going back to the spiritual teachings of the past. 
 They would recall India to her ancient knowledge and 
 ancient worship. But the stubborn fact to be noted is 
 that they did not save the country from degenerating. 
 A tree is judged by its fruits. If the ancient spirituality 
 was so lofty, why was it not retained? Why has it not 
 been a mighty conserving power throughout the land? 
 And why should the late Sir Madhava Rao, an eminent 
 Hindu statesman, have had to confess that no community 
 on the face of the earth suffers more from self-created 
 evils than the Hindu community? Why has India become 
 
288 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the most illiterate land in the world? Is the present moral 
 exhaustion only an accident, or a natural development of 
 the seed sown long ago in the religious philosophies of 
 the East ? A Bengali gentleman some time ago wrote the 
 following : 
 
 ' There is something rotten in our constitution, which no medicament 
 can touch. When the springs of good have run dry, there is no hope 
 for the people. Given the necessary force of character, and voluntary 
 effort may raise beautiful constructions. Without it progress is no more 
 possible than the saving of life by stimulants when the vital forces are 
 failing. The sap has ceased to circulate in our national life, for the 
 great soil of character is parched. ' 
 
 And instead of planting some living seed of moral effort 
 into this impaired national life, the present leaders would 
 advise the people to go back to the soil where the germs of 
 the present moral listlessness and decay were sown. But 
 is there any hope that by seeking once more the fountain- 
 head, the stream may be made to take a different 
 course from that which it has actually pursued? Is 
 the present state of Hindu society the legitimate or 
 the perverted outcome of the ancient philosophy of the 
 universe, which taught that the supreme effort was to 
 ' shake off every mode of personal existence, and to be 
 out of the world for ever, in the unbroken repose of 
 absorption or nirvana ? Pantheistic thought has always 
 exercised a paralyzing influence on all moral and human 
 life. 
 
 And a revival of dead institutions is impossible. The 
 older ideals have been played out, and it is folly appealing 
 to them once more. No nation ha^ 3r gone back to its 
 early past, its cradle-bed. The golden ^e is before us, not 
 behind ; and distance — a subtle artist — always lends a false 
 sheen and glory to objects that are far away. A faitl: that 
 lives on the credit of its past is not a living faith. A 
 
THE FORWARD MOVEMENT 289 
 
 religion unable to do valiant and righteous work in the 
 present is one that the world can easily spare. The 
 religions that look backward have no hope beyond them- 
 selves ; the religion that looks forward is prophetic, and 
 believes in a Living God, whose purposes widen as the 
 ages roll. It is impossible to arrest India in its material, 
 social, and political advance ; nor would any true friend 
 of the people desire it : only India must have the same 
 guiding and controlling principle that is moulding and 
 ennobling Western nations, and which interprets the life 
 around us, and not the life of centuries ago. The present 
 Hindu reaction against a foreign will — the resurrection of 
 the national spirit which is now challenging the West — 
 cannot but gain respect for the patriotism that inspires it ; 
 but much of the clamour for a ' revival of ancient Hinduism' 
 is mere idle talk, and very few who advocate it really under- 
 stand what they mean by it : it is an appeal to a false 
 sentiment rather than a response to sincere conviction. 
 With some, indeed, we would fain believe that it is the re- 
 quickening of a long-dormant religious sense ; and there is no 
 way of recovering a lost spirituality but to become spiritual 
 here and now, and to have the moral exhaustion repaired, 
 the failing vital forces renewed, through faith in the Living 
 God, the perennial Source of spirit life for all souls. 
 
 With reference to the ' Hindu Revivalism,' a remarkable 
 communication appeared not long since from a Brahman 
 correspondent in an Indian paper, ' from which we quote 
 the following : 
 
 ' It is a well-known l^jo'- ■:j]s;aX truth that the continued existence of 
 any type depends on its i.;pacity to adapt itself to altered environments ; 
 and the principle holcci -^ood of all human institutions. You can no 
 more make feudalism flourish in England to-day than you can make 
 
 ' The Madras Mail. 
 20 
 
290 ASPECTS OF HINDU RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 the religion of the Puranas or Vedas serve the Hindus of to-day. . . . 
 The very fact that the ancient institutions died out is a proof that they 
 had ceased to suit the community. . . . Whatever of the older forces 
 still at work can be profitably utilized should still be used, but the im- 
 portant thing is to recognise clearly that there can be no going back 
 to Vedic times, and that the present state of things cannot long continue 
 imchanged. ... It is a sheer vifaste of time and energy to infuse life 
 into the dry bones of an ancient system. It is reforination, and not 
 revival, that is wanted.' 
 
 The Veda and the Vedanta vifill ever stand out among 
 ' the monumental achievements of the human mind ' ; 
 they will always be deeply interesting studies of a phase of 
 thought through which a nation has passed ; but as a key 
 to existence, as a practical guide of life, as a stimulus to 
 moral energy, what can they accomplish ? To suppose 
 that they discovered the highest doctrine, the final philo- 
 sophy of religion, is to deny the doctrine of evolution, to 
 reverse the order of human development. In the various 
 religious Scriptures of the world, as in other things, there 
 is a ' survival of the fittest ' ; and that will survive which 
 speaks most closely, not so much to the intellect as to the 
 conscience and the heart of men and women, learned and 
 unlearned, in the West and in the East. There is nothing 
 derogatory in this to ' the sacred books of the East ' ; they 
 had a place to fill, and some noble thoughts, as we have 
 seen, to contribute to the religious system of the world. 
 
 And Vedantic thought is so thoroughly Indian that 
 the Indian Christianity of the future will of necessity take a 
 Vedantic colouring. Each nation of the world and each 
 great religion is the manifestation of a human want ; and the 
 demand of the Indian heart is for a fixed, unchangeable 
 foundation on which the soul may rest amid the changes of 
 this fleeting world. The God whom India seeks and must 
 find is a God who is Eternal and Unchangeable, and who 
 abides in the heart, whose true home is the inmost soul of 
 
INDIAN CHRISTIANITY 291 
 
 man. The West has to learn from the East, and the East 
 from the West. The questions raised by the Vedanta will 
 have to pass into Christianity if the best minds of India 
 are to embrace it ; and the Church of the ' farther East ' 
 will doubtless contribute something to the thought of 
 Christendom of the science of the soul, and of the omni- 
 penetratlveness and immanence of Deity. 
 
 It is no accident, but a Divine purpose, that has brought 
 the East and the West together, so that each may recognise 
 the other's strength, and understand and appreciate each 
 other's best ideals. Just as the religion of Christ triumphed 
 over the religions of Greece and Rome, not by destroying, 
 but by absorbing from Greek philosophy and literature, and 
 from Roman jurisprudence and government, all in them 
 that was good and true, so will it be in India. Christ will 
 yet satisfy the spiritual hunger and thirst to which the great 
 religious ideas of the East only give expression ; and India, 
 while retaining and transmitting something of her idealistic 
 and mystic passion and subtle thought, her desire to be 
 liberated from her past and present Karma by entrance 
 into a life that shall dispel the shadows, will surely find 
 the enlightening revelation of the Gospel to be in complete 
 accord with the best sentiments of her best minds, the 
 true realization of the visions of her seers, the real 
 fulfilment of the longings of her sages. 
 
 ' God Himself is weaving, 
 Bringing out the world's dark mystery, 
 In the light of faith and history ; 
 And as web and woof diminish, 
 Comes the grand and glorious finish, 
 When begin the Golden Ages, 
 Long foretold by seers and sages.' 
 
 miiot Stock, PaUrnoster Rcrisf, London,