Chapter IV: Contrast with Christianity

The immense difference between the Hindu and Christian religions has doubtless already frequently suggested itself to the reader. It will not be necessary, therefore, to dwell on this topic at very great length. The contrast forces itself upon us at every point.

[Sidenote: The Aryas and Israelites--their probable future, about 1500 B.C. Contrast of their after-history.] When, about fifteen centuries B.C., the Aryas were victoriously occupying the Panjab, and the Israelites were escaping from the "iron furnace" of Egypt, if one had been asked which of the two races would probably rise to the highest conception of the divine, and contribute most largely to the well-being of mankind, the answer, quite possibly, might have been, the Aryas. Egypt, with its brutish idolatries, had corrupted the faith of the Israelites, and slavery had crushed all manliness out of them. Yet how wonderful has been their after-history! Among ancient religions that of the Old Testament stands absolutely unique, and in the fullness of time it blossomed into Christianity. How is the marvel to be explained? We cannot account for it except by ascribing it to a divine election of the Israelites and a providential training intended to fit them to become the teachers of the world. "Salvation is of the Jews."

The contrast between the teachings of the Bible and those of the Hindu books is simply infinite.

[Sidenote: Hindu theology compared with Christian.] The conception of a purely immaterial Being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, which is that of the Bible regarding God, is entirely foreign to the Hindu books. Their doctrine is various, but, in every case, erroneous. It is absolute pantheism, or polytheism, or an inconsistent blending of polytheism and pantheism, or atheism.

Equally striking is the contrast between Christianity and Hinduism as to the attributes of God. According to the former, he is omnipresent; omnipotent; possessed of every excellence--holiness, justice, goodness, truth. According to the chief Hindu philosophy, the Supreme is devoid of attributes--devoid of consciousness. According to the popular conception, when the Supreme becomes conscious he is developed into three gods, who possess respectively the qualities of truth, passion, and darkness.

[Sidenote: Conception of God.] "God is a Spirit." "God is light." "God is love." These sublime declarations have no counterparts in Hindustan.

He is "the Father of spirits," according to the Bible. According to Hinduism, the individual spirit is a portion of the divine. Even the common people firmly believe this.

Every thing is referred by Hinduism to God as its immediate cause. A Christian is continually shocked by the Hindus ascribing all sin to God as its source.

[Sidenote: The object of worship.] The adoration of God as a Being possessed of every glorious excellence is earnestly commanded in the Bible. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God; and him only shalt thou serve." In India the Supreme is never worshiped; but any one of the multitudinous gods may be so; and, in fact, every thing can be worshiped _except_ God. A maxim in the mouth of every Hindu is the following: "Where there is faith, there is God." Believe the stone a god and it is so.

[Sidenote: The sense of sin.] Every sin being traced to God as its ultimate source, the sense of personal guilt is very slight among Hindus. Where it exists it is generally connected with ceremonial defilement or the breach of some one of the innumerable and meaningless rites of the religion. How unlike in all this is the Gospel! The Bible dwells with all possible earnestness on the evil of sin, not of ceremonial but moral defilement--the transgression of the divine law, the eternal law of right.

[Sidenote: Atonement.] How important a place in the Christian system is held by atonement, the great atonement made by Christ, it is unnecessary to say. Nor need we enlarge on the extraordinary power it exercises over the human heart, at once filling it with contrition, hatred of sin, and overflowing joy. We turn to Hinduism. Alas! we find that the earnest questionings and higher views of the ancient thinkers have in a great degree been ignored in later times. Sacrifice in its original form has passed away. Atonement is often spoken of; but it is only some paltry device or other, such as eating the five products of the cow, going on pilgrimage to some sacred shrine, paying money to the priests, or, it may be, some form of bodily penance. Such expedients leave no impression on the heart as to the true nature and essential evil of sin.

[Sidenote: Salvation. Sanctification.] Salvation, in the Christian system, denotes deliverance, not only from the punishment of sin, but from its power, implying a renovation of the moral nature. The entire man is to be rectified in heart, speech, and behavior. The perfection of the individual, and, through that, the perfection of society, are the objects aimed at; and the consummation desired is the doing of the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. Now, of all this, surely a magnificent ideal, we find in Hinduism no trace whatever.

[Sidenote: Views of life. The great tenet of Hinduism.] Christianity is emphatically a religion of hope; Hinduism may be designated a religion of despair. The trials of life are many and great. Christianity bids us regard them as discipline from a Father's hand, and tells us that affliction rightly borne yields "the peaceable fruits of righteousness." To death the Christian looks forward without fear; to him it is a quiet sleep, and the resurrection draws nigh. Then comes the beatific vision of God. Glorified in soul and body, the companion of angels and saints, strong in immortal youth, he will serve without let or hinderance the God and Saviour whom he loves. To the Hindu the trials of life are penal, not remedial. At death his soul passes into another body. Rightly, every human soul animates in succession eighty-four lacs (8,400,000) of bodies--the body of a human being, or a beast, or a bird, or a fish, or a plant, or a stone, according to desert. This weary, all but endless, round of births fills the mind of a Hindu with the greatest horror. At last the soul is lost in God as a drop mingles with the ocean. Individual existence and consciousness then cease. The thought is profoundly sorrowful that this is the cheerless faith of countless multitudes. No wonder, though, the great tenet of Hinduism is this--_Existence is misery._

[Sidenote: The future of the race. The struggle between good and evil.] So much for the future of the individual. Regarding the future of the race Hinduism speaks in equally cheerless terms. Its golden age lies in the immeasurably distant past; and the further we recede from it the deeper must we plunge into sin and wretchedness. True, ages and ages hence the "age of truth" returns, but it returns only to pass away again and torment us with the memory of lost purity and joy. The experience of the universe is thus an eternal renovation of hope and disappointment. In the struggle between good and evil there is no final triumph for the good. We tread a fated, eternal round from which there is no escape; and alike the hero fights and the martyr dies in vain.

It is remarkable that acute intellectual men, as many of the Hindu poets were, should never have grappled with the problem of the divine government of the world.

[Sidenote: The future of the Aryan race.] Equally notable is the unconcern of the Veda as to the welfare and the future of even the Aryan race. But how sublime is the promise given to Abraham that in him and his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed! Renan has pointed with admiration to the confidence entertained at all times by the Jew in a brilliant and happy future for mankind. The ancient Hindu cared not about the future of his neighbors, and doubtless even the expression "human race" would have been unintelligible to him. Nor is there any pathos in the Veda. There is no deep sense of the sorrows of life. Max Müller has affixed the epithet "transcendent" to the Hindu mind. Its bent was much more toward the metaphysical, the mystical, the incomprehensible than toward the moral and the practical. Hence endless subtleties, more meaningless and unprofitable than ever occupied the mind of Talmudist or schoolman of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: The words of St. Paul illustrated by Hinduism.] But finally, on this part of the subject, the development of Indian religion supplies a striking comment on the words of St. Paul:

"The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood
from the things that are made. But when they knew God they
glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."

[Sidenote: Moral power.] Hinduism is deplorably deficient in power to raise and purify the human soul, from having no high example of moral excellence. Its renowned sages were noted for irritability and selfishness--great men at cursing; and the gods for the most part were worse. Need we say how gloriously rich the Gospel is in having in the character of Christ the realized ideal of every possible excellence?

[Sidenote: Ethical effect of Hinduism. The people better than their religion.] _Summa religionis est imitari quem colis_: "It is the sum of religion to imitate the being worshiped;"[33] or, as the Hindus express it: "As is the deity such is the devotee." Worship the God revealed in the Bible, and you become god-like. The soul strives, with divine aid, to "purify itself even as God is pure." But apply the principle to Hinduism. Alas! the Pantheon is almost a pandemonium. Krishna, who in these days is the chief deity to at least a hundred millions of people, does not possess one elevated attribute. If, in the circumstances, society does not become a moral pesthouse it is only because the people continue better than their religion. The human heart, though fallen, is not fiendish. It has still its purer instincts; and, when the legends about abominable gods and goddesses are falling like mildew, these are still to some extent kept alive by the sweet influences of earth and sky and by the charities of family life. When the heart of woman is about to be swept into the abyss her infant's smile restores her to her better self. Thus family life does not go to ruin; and so long as that anchor holds society will not drift on the rocks that stand so perilously near. Still, the state of things is deplorably distressing.

[Sidenote: The doctrine of incarnation.] The doctrine of the incarnation is of fundamental importance in Christianity. It seems almost profanation to compare it with the Hindu teaching regarding the Avataras, or descents of Vishnu. It is difficult to extract any meaning out of the three first manifestations, when the god became in succession a fish, a boar, and a tortoise. Of the great "descents" in Rama and Krishna we have already spoken. The ninth Avatara was that of Buddha, in which the deity descended for the purpose of deceiving men, making them deny the gods, and leading them to destruction. So blasphemous an idea may seem hardly possible, even for the bewildered mind of India; but this is doubtless the Brahmanical explanation of the rise and progress of Buddhism. It was fatal error, but inculcated by a divine being. Even the sickening tales of Krishna and his amours are less shocking than this. When we turn from such representations of divinity to "the Word made flesh" we seem to have escaped from the pestilential air of a charnel-house to the sweet, pure breath of heaven.