A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

In the fifteenth century the European world was intellectually born again. The barbarian Goths and Vandals had put an end to the Roman Empire, and learning had taken refuge in the monasteries. Even that learning had become ecclesiastical. Precious manuscripts of the Greek classics had their original writing wiped off to make room for monkish homilies. The people were in ignorance and were ruled by the priests. But the Crusades had brought about a new intercourse between the West and the East. The fall of Constantinople sent Greek books and Greek scholars to Venice and to Rome. Greek art inspired Michelangelo and Raphael. A great wave of enthusiasm for the new learning swept over Europe. The printing-press multiplied copies of the old literature and put them in the hands of the poor. It was the precursor of a new civilization, and because it was a new birth of thought, we call it the Renaissance.

The Renaissance, however, needed another factor to complement it. Not merely intellect was sleeping, but also man's moral nature. Conscience and will required new stimulus. Religious reformation was necessary as much as intellectual revival. Greek books brought with them the vice, as well as the art, of the East. Renaissance without Reformation produced the Borgias and their unspeakable wickedness. Erasmus without Luther would never have saved Europe from ruin. It was the new view of Christ that showed men their sins, brought repentance and hope, purified literature, gave power to social truth, and united with the new learning to make possible our modern civilization. It was a triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness, for Christianity involves both Renaissance and Reformation.

A similar intellectual change has been coming over the Eastern world, and has been awakening the slumbering nations. Who would have foretold a half-century ago that Turkey and Persia, Japan and China, would now have constitutional governments and legislative assemblies? The world has moved very fast during the past decade. Modern inventions have given new wings to thought, the nations have been coming to self-consciousness, freedom is in the air, even war is teaching the absurdity of committing the destiny of a whole people to the arbitrary rule of any single monarch. The success of Japan in her struggle with Russia aroused the whole East. China has awaked from the sleep of ages. And India is the scene of unrest, and will not be satisfied until her vast populations are given a larger share in her government.

India has witnessed the beginnings of her renaissance. The universities which her rulers have established have diffused the new learning. But they have also raised up a host of educated men, some of whom can find no employment except in sedition. False philosophies, imported from the West, have made these same men agnostic, and have disposed them to put evolution in place of God. Old religions have lost even their little power to control the moral life, and a vague desire for independence of all restraint has led to revolutionary and even anarchistic plots. We have some of the same dangers in our Southern States. The negro is in many cases receiving a higher education than he can utilize, and is becoming a possible leader of revolt, while there is a vast inflammable multitude of uneducated negroes whom he can incite to violence and disorder. As with us, Christianity is needed side by side with education, so in India to-day, intellectual renaissance needs to be supplemented by religious reformation.

A glance at the history of India's religious systems will help our understanding of the problem. The earliest record is that of the Rig-Veda. It is a recognition of the powers of nature, and an exaltation of them to divine honor and worship. The apostle Paul gives us the further explanation that this deification of God's works was the result of a previous unwillingness to retain the personal God in their knowledge. To worship God's manifestations is to lose the sense of his unity and his moral governance. Men preferred the sun in the heavens to the Sun of Righteousness. They lost sight of the true God in self-chosen admiration of his works. "While the Semitic mind gravitated toward the ethical and the personal, the Aryan gravitated toward the philosophic and the impersonal."

The Upanishads are the second series of Hindu scriptures. These practically identify the human soul, as well as all natural objects, with the supreme God. The self is only a manifestation of Brahma. The trend is toward absolute pantheism. The individual is lost in the whole, and the realization of this is salvation. But humanity cannot be content without the semblance of personality in God, and since everything has become divine, it was easy to regard not only natural powers, but also personal beings as gods. Polytheism was the result. Vishnu and Siva, gods of reproductive and destructive powers, came to be worshiped. Incarnation and transmigration followed. The incarnation was not the incarnation of the supreme Brahma, but of one of the subordinate deities, Vishnu, and even this incarnation was but a temporary assumption of human form—a vanishing manifestation, to be put off again like a worn-out garment when the real god returned to his heaven. The Hindu Trimurti was never the Christian Trinity; for Christ is not only the supreme God manifest in the flesh, but also the eternal Revealer of God, who takes our humanity to be a part of himself forever, the partaker of his inmost being and the sharer of his throne.

While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha, passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. And what shall we say of the other deities of the Hindu pantheon, but that they are personifications of every human caprice and vice. The Krishna of the Puranas has infected all India with his licentiousness, and has given sanction to the worst forms of lust.

The growth of caste was another result of the loss of a personal and moral God and the deification of his works. Since all things came to be regarded as manifestations of deity, the order of society and its distinctions became fixed. The origin of caste is to be found in the superiority of the Aryan conqueror to the Dravidian aborigines. The people of light complexion looked down on the dark-skinned race, and drove them to the wall. Intermarriage between the two classes of the population became abhorrent to the ruling class, and all manner of restrictions were put upon their intercourse, till even the shadow of the outcaste falling upon the Brahman brought contamination. Let us not blame the Aryan too hastily, for in South Africa and in our own Southern States we see the same denial that God has made of one blood all the races of men, and the same exclusion of the darker race from all privileges of human brotherhood. Slave-owners were shocked when Abraham Lincoln lifted his hat to salute a negro, and Southern men protested when President Roosevelt entertained Booker Washington at his table. Christian proclamation of human brotherhood constitutes one of the chief obstacles to the success of the gospel in India.

The low place of woman and her lack of education is another obstacle which must be removed if India is to profit by the renaissance of learning. This undervaluing of the physically weak is itself a fruit of man's apostasy from God. And as Brahmanism set its stamp of approval upon distinctions of caste and fixed them for centuries, so it was with woman's position and influence. She was condemned to inferiority. She became a mere instrument of man's pleasure, or a mere drudge in his household. She never sat with him at his meals, but ate what was left after he had been served; she never walked by his side, but always followed behind, when she was not shut up in the zenana at home. One of the best signs of a new civilization in India is the growing conviction among the higher classes that woman must be educated, if her children are to emerge from their superstitions and become of use in the modern world. The suttee has been abolished by law, but child-widowhood yet remains to curse the lives of millions. There is no better proof that Christianity is permeating society with its influence than is found in the increasing number of girls who are seeking education in our mission schools and colleges. Pundita Ramabai has become a glory to her own countrymen, as much as has Rabindranath Tagore by his utterance, "The regeneration of the Indian people to my mind, directly and perhaps solely, depends upon the removal of this condition of caste." We may add that the dominion of caste and the degradation of woman will come to an end together, and nothing but Christianity will abolish them.

The renaissance of learning is not enough. A new spirit of love is needed to solve the problems of India. For there is no country of the world where racial antagonisms are so felt. Entirely apart from the distinctions of caste, which are racial in their origin, there is the distinction of Hindu from Mohammedan, which has its origin in religion. Remember that, of India's population, sixty-five millions are Moslems, while one hundred and eighty millions are Hindus. The Hindu men of caste cannot help paying some respect to the Mohammedans, for they are compelled to acknowledge their financial and executive power, just as they acknowledge, without admiring, the power of their British rulers. They cannot treat Moslems as outcastes, but they will not associate with them; and they cherish a settled antipathy to them. All this the Mohammedans heartily reciprocate. English policy has in times past cultivated this mutual dislike, lest union between the two religious sects should lead to the formation of a party too strong for British rule to keep in subjection. One religion has been used to defeat the influence of the other. Of late years only has it been true that both have been forced to recognize the impartial justice of British rule; and this recognition has been gained by the gradual admission of able men from both parties to many important judicial and administrative positions in the Indian government. But the antagonism of religions still remains, and it constitutes a most serious bar in the way of a united India.