There are signs of an approaching reformation in India which will supplement its intellectual renaissance. Just as the growing power of Christianity in the second and third centuries of our era was shown by the competition of new and imitative religions like that of Mithra, and by spasmodic attempts on the part of the old heathenism to interpret its mythology symbolically and to reform its moral practice; just as the growing power of the gospel in the fifteenth century led the Roman Church to slough off some of its abuses and to tolerate among its adherents reformers before the Reformation; so in India the new learning from the West and the missionary proclamation of the gospel have brought about a state of religious unrest which could only be allayed by efforts on the part of Hindus and Moslems alike to interpret their faiths more rationally and to prove that these faiths were equal if not superior to Christianity itself. The Brahmo-Somaj, which Ram Mohun Roy founded at the end of the eighteenth century, largely as a result of his horror at the murder of his sister by suttee, has led to the abolition of that cruelty. Ram Mohun Roy sought to purge Hinduism of its corruptions by appealing to its earlier and purer scriptures. He was the first to establish a vernacular press in India, and, with Alexander Duff, the first English schools. Though he did not formally profess Christianity, he studied our Christian Scriptures, acknowledged their value and influence, and published a book entitled "The Precepts of Jesus."
Another Hindu who exerted great influence during the half-century just passed was Keshub Chunder Sen. He passionately adored Christ as his true Master. Yet he was practically Unitarian, and his later years belied the promise of his brilliant beginnings. Though a member of the Brahmo-Somaj, he split the body in two by his violation of its prohibition of child-marriage, and wasted his strength in attempts to combine Western rationalism with the ecstatic fervors of the East. As the result, the Brahmo-Somaj has declined, until in numbers and influence it has now hardly more than five thousand adherents in all India. Mozumdar was one of its representatives who sought to give Oriental interpretation of Jesus, but one without ethical or saving power. The Arya-Samaj is a more consistent effort to reform Hindu religion by bringing it back to the purer standards of the Vedas. Swami Dayanand was the founder of the society. He was led to renounce idolatry by seeing a mouse eat food offered to an idol and run without hindrance over the idol's robes and hands. Of all the reforming bodies, the Arya-Samaj most retains the confidence of the masses in the north of India. But its tenets are not acceptable to the educated classes of the south, and it needs a further infusion of both science and religion.
Thus far we have treated only of Hindu progress. A word must be said of progress among the Moslem population of India. Here the Aligarh Movement demands attention. Sir Seyd Ahmad Khan was its leader. He was of noble family, entered the English service, and took part with the British in crushing the mutiny of 1857. When the Mohammedan population afterward fell under suspicion, he gathered round him a company of liberal young men and sought by educational means to bridge the gulf between Moslem and English. He claimed that British rule in India represented Christian civilization, and that this is no enemy to Islam, but only its complement and helper. He saw that only religion could heal the breach and rescue Islam from decline. He founded the Aligarh College in Delhi, and devoted himself to the cultivation of friendliness, not only between Moslem and English, but also between Moslem and Hindu. This college is one of the strongest educational forces in North India.
Returning to Hindu progress, we mark the work of such men as the Swami Vivekananda. It will be remembered that he represented India at our Chicago Parliament of Religions, where Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the Orient to answer Lady Macbeth's question, "Who shall cleanse this red right hand?" Vivekananda sought to blend Christian philanthropy with the Vedantic philosophy. Identity with the Supreme is to be attained, not only by passive contemplation, but also by active unselfish service. But this truth was mixed with strange interpretations of Scripture. Jesus' declaration, "I and my Father are one," was made to mean, "Every man and woman is God." And Vivekananda was quite willing himself to be worshiped. His fundamental error, indeed, was his lack of the sense of sin. He said to his audience in Chicago: "The Hindus refuse to call you sinners. Ye divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a man so. It is a standing libel on human nature." Yet, in spite of this deification of self and of all humanity, he did much to inspire pity for the poor, to awaken India to self-consciousness, and to give hope of national unity.
We must not ignore the work of The Theosophical Society, though it has made a name for itself more in Europe and America than in India. While it has done something to encourage education and to teach modern science, it has used the knowledge thus given as an instrument in defending superstition. The immoralities of Krishna are discussed and palliated in Mrs. Besant's Magazine for the instruction of young students. Charms, incantations, astrology, idolatry, caste, are all woven into the system, for the sake of propitiating the Indian mind, so that its influence is hostile to Christianity and to missions. Idols are to be worshiped because they are "centers of magnetism." In England Mrs. Besant predicts a second advent of Christ. But in India this becomes a new avatar of Krishna. In spite of her stout denunciation of child-marriages and her inculcation of modern science, her propaganda has not been so much a reform of Indian religion, as it has been a hindrance to reform. Hindu devotees indeed have eulogized her for what they call her successful opposition to the proselyting efforts of Christian missionaries.
And yet, even the Theosophical Society, with all its absurdities of levitation and the astral body, has been compelled to bear some witness to Jesus Christ. He is "the light that lighteth every man," and he has given even to this system some elements of truth. We do not hesitate to recognize the truth that Buddha and Confucius, taught, and to regard it as a ray of Christ's light shed forth before the rising of the sun. And it is our privilege to conclude our list of Hindu reformers with the name of Justice Renade, who recognized in Christ the source of all former revelations of God.
Justice Renade, in his social reform movement of the last fifty years, has carried the spirit of philanthropy into practice, more fully than did Vivekananda or Mrs. Besant, and without any of their fantastic self-exaltation. Renade recognized the elements of truth in both the Hindu and Moslem systems, and he saw in Christianity the influence destined to unite them. He would not throw away the old, but he would utilize it while he added the new. And with this acknowledgment that "he who is not against us is on our side," we may well close our sketch of reformers before the reformation. We sum up the lessons of history when we recognize in Hinduism the two great ideas of divine immanence and incarnation, in Mohammedanism the two equally essential truths of divine transcendence and personality. And we see the absolute dependence of India upon Christianity for its true Reformation. India needs the missionary more than she needs the schoolmaster. Let us pray that she may have a religious revival that shall turn the intellectual awakening into moral channels. That religious revival will furnish a center of unity in Christ, the one and only Revealer of God; not in a Hindu philosophy, nor in a Moslem Koran, but in a living Person, present with all his people, the soul of their soul and the life, and imparting to them his own Spirit of love and brotherhood. In Christ alone can India's renaissance become a complete reformation.