In the new theism of educated Indians we may note that the conception of the deity as female is practically gone. Not so among the masses, particularly of the provinces of Bengal and Gujerat, the provinces distinctively of goddesses. The sight of a man in Calcutta in the first hour of his sore bereavement calling upon Mother Kali has left a deep impression upon me.[83] Be it remembered, however, what his cry meant, and what the name
Mother in such cases means. It is a honorific form of address, not the symbol for devoted love. The goddesses of India, not the gods, are the deities to be particularly feared and to be propitiated with blood. It is energy, often destructive energy, not woman's tenderness that they represent, even according to Hindu philosophy and modern rationalisers. We may nevertheless well believe that contact with Christian ideas will yet soften and sweeten this title of the goddesses.
The new theism is largely Christian theism—God is termed Father;
Or Mother.
The new theism of educated India is more and more emphatically Christian theism. Anyone may observe that the name, other than "God," by which the Deity is almost universally named by educated Hindus is "The Father," or "Our Heavenly Father," or some such name. The new name is not a rendering of any of the vernacular names in use in modern India; it is due directly to its use in English literature and in Christian preaching and teaching. The late Keshub Chunder Sen's Lectures in India, addressed to Hindu audiences, abound in the use of the name. The fatherhood of God is in fact one of the articles of the Brāhma creed. In his last years, the Brahma leader, Keshub Chunder Sen, frequently spoke of God as the divine Mother, but we are not to
suppose that it expresses a radical change of thought about God. Keshub Chunder Sen's last recorded prayer begins: "I have come, O Mother, into thy sanctuary"; his last, almost inarticulate, cries were: "Father," "Mother." Where modern Indian religious teachers address God as Mother, it is a modernism, an echo of the thought of the Fatherhood of God. The name is altered because the name of Mother better suits the ecstasies of Indian devotion, where the ecstatic mood is cultivated. A case in point is the Hindu devotee, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, who died near Calcutta in 1886. "Why," Ramkrishna Paramhansa asks, "does the God-lover find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? Because," his answer is, "the child is more free with its mother, and consequently she is dearer to the child than anyone else.[84] Another instance we find in the appeal issued by a committee of Hindu gentlemen for subscriptions towards the rebuilding of the temple at Kangra, destroyed by the earthquake of 1905. The president of the committee, signing the appeal, was a Hindu judge of the High Court at Lahore, a graduate from a Mission College. "There are Hindus," thus runs the appeal, "who by the grace of the Divine
Mother could give the [whole] amount ... and not feel the poorer for it."[85]
The Ārya Samāj and the name Father.
The Hindu College, Benares, and the name Father.
The Ārya Samāj, on the other hand, seems set against speaking or thinking of God as the Father. Specially present to their minds and in their preaching is the thought of God's absolute justice; and they hold that His Justice and His Fatherhood are contradictory attributes. Virtue will have its reward, they assert, and Sin its punishment, both in this and the following existences. We recognise the working of their doctrine of transmigration, perhaps also the effect of a feeble presentation of the Christian doctrine of the Father's forgiveness of sin. Nevertheless, we may note in a hymn-book published in London for the use of members of the Ārya Samāj resident there, such hymns as "My God and Father, while I stray," and "My God, my Father, blissful name," as if the name were not explicitly excluded. We also read that the very last parting words of the founder of the Āryas himself were: "Let Thy will be done, O Father!"[86] The heart of man will not be denied the name and the feeling of "God who is our home." Turning