Three dynamical elements of Christianity.
As proved by observation in India, the dynamical elements of Christianity may be briefly enumerated as follows. Monotheism, tending more and more to the distinctively Christian idea of God, Our Father, is commending itself, and being widely accepted. Secondly, in a remarkable degree, Jesus Christ Himself is being recognised and receiving general homage. In a less degree, and yet notably, the Christian conception of the Here and Hereafter is commending itself to the minds of the new-educated Hindus. In the new religious organisations also, the Christian manner of worship and of public worship commends itself almost as a matter of course. In none of these spheres am I describing the outcome of visible conflict or of any loud controversy. Rather, Christianity brought close to the religious instincts and the religious ideas of India has been like a great magnet introduced among a number of kindred but non-magnetised bodies lying loosely around. In the presence, simply, of these dynamical elements, or in contact with them, Indian religious thought is becoming polarised. Towards and away from the same great points, Indian religious thought is setting. These dynamical elements of Christianity, and the illustration of their power, will be considered in the following chapters.
Of the elements of Christianity that have proved themselves dynamical, we may note the natural order in which they have come. The order in which I have stated them is the order in which they asserted themselves, first "God Our Father," then "Jesus Christ Himself." First, of this world in which we find ourselves, when our minds awake, we must have some satisfying conception. The belief in one God, in Him for whom we can find no better name than "Our Father," approved itself to awakened India, to the intellectually enlightened, and in the first place to small groups of enlightened men in the large towns, the centres of modern education and Christian influence. Then came an advance of a different nature altogether. To those spiritually minded and more intense men who needed a religious master, a hero, to whom their hearts might go out, there came, after certain obstacles had been broken down, some knowledge of the actual historical Jesus Christ. The first stage satisfied the mind of modern educated India; the second stage concerns the highest affections and the lives. We know the step, when in the Apostles' Creed we pass from "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," to the
words "and in Jesus Christ." Thereat we have brought theology down from heaven to earth; or rather, in these days we would say, in Jesus Christ we have obtained on earth, in actual history, in our affections, a foundation on which to rear our system of actual and motive-giving belief.
CHAPTER X
THE NEW RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS OF INDIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE INDIAN CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE BRĀHMAS
Two physical changes on the face of a country.
When we consider how the face of a country has been altered during the lapse of time, two great changes may be noticed, both of them due to the action of man. First we may observe that the whole general character of the country has undergone transformation. Gone are the ancient forests of Scotland, which of old in many districts clad the whole countryside, and with them have gone the wild animals which they sheltered. The forests destroyed, and the rainfall in consequence less abundant, the surface marshes and lakes have in many places vanished, taking the old agues and fevers in their train. Instead of the strongholds of chieftains in their fastnesses, surrounded by bands
of their clansmen and retainers, has come the sober, peaceful, life of independent tenants, agricultural or artisan. And so on, down through the general changes wrought on the face of a land by modern conditions of life, we might watch the evolution of new features of the landscape. But we turn to the other kind of change, which is more noticeable at first sight, and is more directly due to the action of man. Great, laboriously cultivated, fields now stretch where formerly there was only waste or forest, or at best small sparsely scattered patches; and the very products of the soil in these new spacious fields are in many cases new. Where, for example, even in Britain before the close of the seventeenth century, were the great fields of potatoes and turnips and red clover, and even of wheat, which now meet the eye everywhere as the seasons return? Where in India before the British period were the vast areas now under tea and coffee, jute and cotton, although the two last have been grown and manufactured in India from time immemorial? "It might almost be said that, from Calcutta to Lahore, 50 per cent. of the prevalent vegetation, cultivated and wild, has been imported into India within historic times."[51]