India's Problem, Krishna or Christ. John P. Jones
090] will. Monism necessarily, in the last analysis, carries every act and motive back to the supreme Will and establishes an all-inclusive necessitarianism which is fatal to human freedom; and it therefore excludes sin as an act of rebellion against God. Much is made of sin, so called, in the Hindu system, as we shall presently see; but nowhere is more care needed than here that we may distinguish between ideas conveyed by this word in these two faiths. In Christianity the ethical character of sin is emphasized. It is described as a thing of moral obliquity and spiritual darkness. According to the Upanishads the only defect of man is an intellectual one. He is in bondage to ignorance. Plato made ignorance the chief source of moral evil and proposed philosophy as a remedy for the malady. The Vedantin differs from the Greek philosopher only in his more absolute condemnation of (avidya) ignorance as the mother of all human ills. Remove this—let a man attain unto a true knowledge of self, of the fact that he has no real separate existence and is one with the Supreme Soul—and he becomes thereby qualified for his emancipation and ends his long cycle of births. Moreover, in the polytheism of the Puranas and in the laws and customs of Manu sin generally means only ceremonial defilement and the violation of customs and usages.
Hinduism, therefore, has never addressed itself to the task of helping man as a sinner—of regenerating his heart, of establishing within him that beautiful thing known in Christian lands and philosophies as a well rounded, symmetrical and perfect character. For many reasons and in many ways [pg 091] it has aimed at a very different consummation in man from that consistently sought by Christ and His religion.
3. The Agency and Means Recognized and Appealed to by those Faiths Respectively.
By what power and instrumentality are the above ends to be sought and attained? They will be, doubtless, quite as divergent as the aims themselves were found to be.
In Christianity God Himself is the agent who works out its scheme of salvation. He entered, through infinite condescension, into human life and relations in the Incarnation. He wrought, in the days of His flesh, the redemption of our race—a work which finds its climax in His atoning death. In the person of the Holy Spirit He is working and bringing to full fruition, in the hearts and lives of men, the redemption which He wrought.
Into this, man enters not as an efficient cause of his own redemption. He cannot atone for his past, nor has he the assurance within himself for the future. Hence the atoning sacrifice of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit of God which becomes in him a source of peace, of power and of hope. Yet, in this divine work, man is neither passive nor apathetic. In the exercise of saving faith he not only appropriates the works and gifts of God but also enters into full and active harmony and coöperation with God in his own regeneration and salvation. So that the Apostle Paul aptly urges the Philippian Christians (Phil. 2:12) to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God [pg 092] which worketh in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
How different is the picture presented to us by the Hindu Shastras of the means of human redemption—a picture, however, consonant with the aims which they have set before themselves to accomplish for man. The first and all-present fact of this faith is the terrible loneliness and isolation of man in the great struggle of life. His destiny is in his own hands, and he must fight single-handed against a thousand odds in the awful battle for emancipation.
Karma is the word used to express this thought which has possessed the Hindu mind from the earliest days to the present. This word may be translated “works,” and means the acts by which the soul determines its own destiny. In Vedic times the all-powerful works were sacrifice and ritual. In the Upanishads they are meditation and self-mortification. Today they are ceremonial, with works of charity, self-renunciation or religious mendicancy generally added.
In pre-Buddhistic days sacrifice abounded in Brahmanism; and it grew to such proportions that the revolt headed by Gautama and incarnated in Buddhism became universal. But vicariousness was largely wanting as an element in, and as a cause of, their sacrifices. They were rather offered with a view to nourish the gods and as a means of acquiring power. He who sacrificed a hundred horses was said to gain thereby even larger power than Indra himself possessed—a power which enabled him to dethrone this god of the heavens. Such was the power said to inhere in sacrifice that the gods themselves combined [pg 093] to prevent men from the practice lest they should rise to larger power than themselves! With the triumph and subsequent absorption of Buddhism into Brahmanism the latter abandoned its sacrifices and accepted the Buddhistic emphasis upon Karma, and doomed every soul to the tread-mill of its own destiny. To every human word, deed or thought, however insignificant, there is fruit which must be eaten by the soul.
It is claimed for this doctrine that it well emphasizes the conservation of moral force. Christianity also conserves, to the last, moral force; not however by insisting upon man bearing himself the whole burden, but by enabling him to cast the burden upon the Lord who graciously offers to bear the load of human guilt belonging to every soul.
Another word in India which is synonymous with large power and merit is Yoga. It is inculcated in the Yoga philosophy and is supposed to stand for a high mental discipline which speedily qualifies one for absorption into the Deity. It is manifested in the form of abstract meditation and austerity—an austerity embodied in asceticism and self-mortification. From early times this method has been held high in honour, and today is universally esteemed as the most powerful and speedy boat wherewith to cross the sullen stream of human existence. The grand object of Yoga is to teach how to concentrate the mind—an object based upon the idea that the great and sole need of man is not moral and spiritual regeneration, but more light, i.e., a clear, intellectual apprehension of things. Not only is this basis of philosophy false in supposing that such intellectual gymnastics can [pg 094] finally exalt and save a soul, it is also radically defective in its general rules and practical results. No one who has studied the childish rules which are prescribed to the Yogis, or has observed in India many of even the better type of Yogis can fail to be impressed with the degradation to mind and morals which is indissolubly connected with it. Barth's observation on the processes of Yoga is eminently true. “Conscientiously observed,” he says, “they can only issue in folly and idiocy; and it is, in fact, under the image of a fool or an idiot that the wise man is often delineated for us in the Puranas for instance.”9
Meditation upon the Divine Being and upon self is a supreme duty inculcated by Christianity. Here God is a Personality upon whom the mind can be centred and find rest and exaltation. The self also is conceived as a being with a separate and infinitely high destiny marked out before it. Concentrated thought, deep emotion and lofty purpose, in view of these objects, is supremely profitable. But what is there left worthy of thought for the Vedantist Yogi when the Divine Being is the unknowable and the Yogi himself the deluded child of (Maya) illusion and (avidya) ignorance—those twin enemies to all true and worthy knowledge? It cannot be elevating to detach the mind from things worldly and attach it to nothing!
Incarnation, as we have seen above, has in later times become a popular doctrine in India. The avatars (“descents”) of members of the Hindu pantheon, especially of Vishnu, the second member [pg 095] of the Triad, wield a large influence in the religious life of the masses. Yet the doctrines should, by no means, be regarded as identical or even similar in Hinduism and Christianity. It should be remembered that in Hinduism it is believed and magnified by those who also hold the law of Karma as supreme. There is hardly a Vaishnavite and Krishnaolater who does not believe firmly that his destiny is writ large upon his forehead—that nothing that this or any god may do can affect his adrishta which is that felt but unseen power working out the Karma vivaka, or fruition of works, done by him in former births. This belief directly antagonizes incarnation from the Christian standpoint, where it appears as God's mighty instrument of grace to man. Not so from the Hindu standpoint. The incarnations of Vishnu are referred to in their Shastras “as consequences of deeds which the god himself had performed. One was the fruit of sins he had committed; another of a curse which had been pronounced upon him.” And yet they are doubtless frequently referred to as undertaken with a view to benefit and help our race. If such was their