No one was more surprised than the clergyman, to whom he wrote that he was a Christian, that he required no instruction or persuasion, but simply wished to be baptized. His mind was like a crystal, perfectly bright and transparent. He held nothing back from me, but the answer which I most cared for, he could not give. His father, a learned man, holding a high place among the Brâhmans socially, a kind of bishop or dean, as we should call it, owed it to his position, not only to disown, but to disinherit, nay, publicly to curse, his son. The loss of his fortune was nothing to the son; but when it came to the curse, the father himself shrank back. He loved his son, and it is hinted that to a certain extent he may have shared his feelings. So, in order to evade the necessity of the curse, he retired from the world and took upon himself the vow of perpetual silence (Mauna-vrata). We wonder at the Trappists and their silence, but they at all events live in company with other Trappists. But to be silent among friends who speak must be a greater trial still. These men generally retire from the world altogether. Nehemiah Goreh’s father, after he had retired into the forest, never uttered a single word again to any human being. He disappeared altogether, and, though for several years his son and his friends hoped that he would return, he never came back. He probably went out of his mind, and died, as many Sannyâsins die in the forests of India. There are more tragedies in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Nor was that all. Even his wife was taken away from the new convert, though she really was devoted to her husband. Timid as Hindu ladies are, his young wife had been frightened when asked before a judge whether she would remain with her apostate husband or return to her parents. This is what the law enjoins in case of a husband becoming a Christian. But after she had taken refuge in her parental home she repented, and wished to join her husband again. And here a curious scene occurred. The husband actually had to elope with his own wife, and carry her off by main force. After that the law allows a new appeal; the guilty couple were brought once more before a judge, and when the young wife (she was only thirteen) was asked what she wished to do, she declared publicly that she would remain with her husband, and was then allowed to return to him and to her home. What more could a man sacrifice for his religious convictions? All I can say is that in the whole of my life I have never seen so true a Christian, so true a martyr, as Nehemiah Goreh. Few Christians, not even bishops, would have passed through such ordeals unscathed. And with all that, he was a philosopher, he knew what philosophy could say and had said on the possibility of revelation and of religion, and yet he was perfectly satisfied with Christianity in its very simplest form. One thing he said sometimes, to account to me for the momentous step he had taken, and for the sacrifices he had made to retain his inward honesty. “Christianity is so pure,” he said. One can quite understand how this purity must have told on a mind that had waded through the impurities of the sombre worship of Siva, and the lascivious innuendos of the legends of Krishna and the shepherdesses, however much they may be explained as a mere allegory. Even as an allegory, the story of a god who carries off the clothes of the shepherdesses while bathing, is not edifying. If it is meant for devotion without guise or disguise, the meaning is too much hidden for ordinary mortals. We may be able to account historically or mythologically for many excrescences of religion, but we cannot dispute them away, nor can we wonder that a pure mind, sickened by them, should turn with a delightful relief to the pure and fresh atmosphere of Christianity.
There was for a time real danger of Nehemiah’s falling into utter despair, and all that his friends could do was to send him back, as soon as possible, to India, and to find him some occupation there as a teacher and Scripture reader. There, what seems almost an innate tendency of the Indian mind soon developed itself in Nehemiah, namely, asceticism and a complete renunciation of the world. For a time he was attracted by outward ceremonial and symbolism, and found comfort in it; but when that also failed to satisfy him, he became, to all intents and purposes, a Christian Sannyâsin (hermit). For himself he wanted nothing, even controversy had no longer any charm for him; though, in the essays which he was induced to address to his countrymen on the insufficiency of the six systems of native philosophy, he proved himself a subtle critic of Hinduism, and a powerful defender of Christianity. These essays, originally written in Hindi, have been translated into English by Dr. Fitz-Edward Hall, under the title of “Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems,” Calcutta, 1862, and they are extremely interesting and useful.
Judging from letters which I received from him from time to time, he never quite recovered the balance of his mind. His trials had been too much for him. Not only had he lost his father and his wife, but he became separated even from his children, so that no cares of this world should disturb his peace with God and in God. But to give up a religion—the religion of our father and mother, the religion of our childhood and of all our friends, however imperfect it may be from our own point of view, inflicts a wound that heals but slowly, and is apt to break open again and again. Why should missionaries fail to see this, and expect from their heathen pupils sacrifices which they themselves would shrink from by a natural instinct of self-preservation? It is no answer to say that the religion of those whom they wish to bring over to Christianity is antiquated, vulgar, hideous, and false. The religion in which a man is born, the religion of a man’s father and mother, has always something sacred in it that ought to be respected. Is there a single missionary who, if he had been born a Hindu or a Parsi, would have embraced Christianity without a struggle? When we consider how unimportant the differences are between the religion of reformed and unreformed Christians if compared with the treasures that both share in common, why should it be such a wrench for a Roman Catholic to become a Protestant, except that his father and mother were Roman Catholics? The points of difference between them are all, without exception, the work of men, and often of men who have no very high record in the pages of history. Yet to give up the mass for the eucharist, the wafer for the bread, the mixed for the pure wine, has often been too much even for a truly Christian heart, and has separated those who were meant to be brothers in Christ. I say all this only in order to make people understand what trials and tortures Nehemiah Goreh had to undergo before he could take that step which, from a missionary point of view, seems so easy and natural. To be torn away from all our friends, to think that they are all wrong and we alone are right, was too great an effort to a sensitive mind, such as his was, and left a wound behind which it required a very strong and healthy nature to bear and many years to heal. That he should have become a kind of Christian Sannyâsin, or anchorite, was natural; that he should have been attracted for a time by childish ritualism was a pity. This, however, was chiefly due to personal influences, and, if it in any way soothed his broken spirits, no one would grudge him such anodynes. I was much touched when, in one of his later letters, after expressing his perfect satisfaction with what Christianity had given him, he added, “Yet, I often feel like a man who has taken poison.” He was for many years a useful member of a Christian brotherhood at Sigra, founded by the Rev. R. M. Benson, whom I remember meeting often in old days in the cheerful common-room of Christ Church. They were very kind to him, and he was most grateful to his brothers. Yet I feel doubtful whether even they understood him fully, and made allowance for all his troubles and all his sacrifices.
When Nehemiah Goreh was in England for the last time, and staying at Oxford, he was not allowed to come to see me, except on the very day of his departure. This was unkind to both of us; he was in no more danger from me than I was from him. I know that in his early days he had used the wings of his mind with great freedom, that he had tried to soar to the highest abodes of the Divine, and to fathom the deepest abysses of human nature, fearless of all consequences. He reminded me in that respect of Dr. Pusey, who often declared that he had studied more heresy than anybody else; but, having seen the horrors of utter darkness on every side, he felt it his duty to warn others, and to keep them from seeing what he had seen. Strange only that Nehemiah, brought up as he had been in the doctrines of the Vedânta, should not have seen how even the highest heights and the deepest depths which can be reached by the human mind are lighted up by the omnipresence of Brahman, the Indian name and concept of what we mean by the omnipresent Father, or, if you like, of that ineffable Godhead of which even the Father is one person only. He had become tired of his lifelong search, and had long closed his eyes to this world of seeming. When at last his heart ceased to beat, he felt satisfied that all was well, and that he was safe in trusting in Christ.
It is curious that he should not have drawn more of his countrymen to follow him. His original conception of Christ’s teaching was such that many an excellent Hindu could honestly have accepted it. If anywhere, the harvest is ripe in India, and the labourers are many. Unfortunately his philosophical Christianity became more and more ecclesiastical, nay ritualistic in time, through influences which he was too weak to resist. He might have done a great work in India; but what India wants is the young and vigorous Christianity of the first century, not the effete Christianity of the fifteenth century, still less its poor modern imitations. Much the same opinion was expressed by an Indian correspondent, Mr. Brojolall Chuckerbutty, a personal friend and admirer of Nehemiah Goreh. In one of his letters to me he said: “Years ago I had a long discussion in my own house with Nehemiah Nîlakantha Goreh concerning the Christian religion. He, of course, tried hard to convert me to his faith. But we arrived at a conclusion in which nothing was concluded. I really could not understand how a man of Mr. Goreh’s intelligence and learning, who had discarded Hinduism, could accept, in its stead, popular Christianity which stands on the same level with popular Hinduism. By popular Christianity I mean the Christianity of the Church, as contra-distinguished from the Christianity of Christ.”
His friends have sometimes found fault with Nehemiah Goreh for having during the latter part of his life so completely withdrawn himself from the world and its social obligations. But here too we must learn to make allowances for the old Indian leaven. He longed for rest. It was a recognised thing in India—I speak, of course, of ancient India—that a man who had fought his fight might retire from the world, shake off all shackles, and become free, even here on earth. Many left their homes and lived in forests—a most delightful way of life in India. These anchorites, fugitives from the world, wanted very little to support life, and that little, so far as we know, was either supplied by nature or given them readily by the members of their family, or even by strangers. There was no lack of family affection in India, but higher than all worldly affections stood the ideal of Vairâgya, freedom from all desires and passions, freedom from all worldly attachments, freedom from all that must perish, real happiness in the Eternal, in the Self, that is, in God who changes not. Some of the most beautiful poetry of ancient and modern India was inspired by that sentiment of unworldliness, the very opposite of that passionate love and attachment which forms the constant theme of European poetry. Love, so far as it means passion and desire, or exclusive attachment to one person, was considered as of this world, and everything belonging to this world was perishable, and therefore not worthy of our highest affection. The Buddhists adopted the same doctrine, but, while condemning love, they preached pity—a splendid substitute. Father and mother, wife, husband, and children were not excepted. They, too, should never be passionately loved or idolised, but they should always be pitied. That pity means a great deal, it may mean all that is best in love. The very relation in which husband and wife, father and mother, parents and children stood to each other could be of this life only, not of that life in which they neither marry nor are given in marriage, the life that underlies even this life on earth. We find it difficult to enter into these ideas, they are so entirely absent from our own literature, particularly from our poetry; which deals mostly with passionate love, but they were quite familiar to the Hindus. We call them strange and curious and extravagant, and then we have done with them. But the subject is not so easily disposed of, and in a country such as India, it is difficult to say who has chosen the good part. There the man at rest with himself and with his God, the man free from all worldly fetters, was a recognised character, and was allowed to live up to his ideals without let or hindrance. How those ideals were realised we may learn from Indian poetry, from the Vairâgya-Sataka, for instance (the century of dispassionateness) ascribed to Bhartrihari, and from many similar works. There we read[[4]]:—
“A hermit’s forest cell, and fellowship with deer,
A harmless meal of fruit, stone beds beside the stream,
Are helps to those who long for Siva’s guidance here,
But be the mind devout, our homes will forests seem[[5]].”