CHAPTER XVI
JESUS CHRIST THE LODESTONE
Instances of Indian homage to Christ, and dislike of His Church.
Bengal.
Bombay.
Madras.
Interesting phases of that divided mind—homage to Christ, resentment towards His disciples—may be found on opposite sides of the great continent of India. In Bengal, a not-infrequent standpoint of Brāhmas in reference to Christ is that they are the true exponents of Christ's spirit and His teaching. Western Christian teachers, they say, are hidebound by tradition; and the ready-made rigidity of the creeds of the Churches is no doubt a factor in the state of mind we are describing. Looking back as far as to 1820, we see in The Precepts of Jesus, published by the founder of the Brāhma Samāj, that standpoint of homage to Christ and dissent from accepted views regarding Him. Illustrative of that Brāhma standpoint, we have also the more recent book, The Oriental
Christ, by the late Mr. P.C. Mozumdar, the successor of Keshub Chunder Sen. But the attitude is by no means limited to Brahmas. "Without Christian dogmas, cannot a man equally love and revere Christ?" was a representative question put by a senior Hindu student in Bengal to his missionary professor. In South India, Mahomedans sometimes actually describe themselves as better Christians than ourselves, holding as they do such faith in Jesus and His mother Mary and His Gospel. The case of Mahomedans is not, of course, on all fours with that of Hindus, since Mahomedans reckon Christ as one of the four prophets along with their own Mahomed. In Bombay province, on the other side of India from Bengal, we find Mr. Malabari, the famous Parsee, pupil of a Mission School, doubting if it is possible for the Englishman to be a Christian in the sense of Christ's Christianity, the implication being that an Indian may. What element of truth is there in the idea, we may well ask? From Indian Christians, be it said, we may indeed look for a fervency of loyalty to Christ that does not enter into our calculating moderate souls; and from India, equally, we may look for that mystically profound commentary on St. John's Gospel which Bishop Westcott declared he looked for
from Japan. But to return. About Mr. Malabar! himself, his biographer writes: "If he could not accept the dogmas of Christianity, he had imbibed its true spirit," meaning the spirit of Christ Himself. "The cult of the Asiatic life" is the latest definition of Christianity given by a recent apologist of Hinduism, one of a small company of Europeans in India officering the Hindu revival. Crossing India again and going south, we find the late Dr. John Murdoch, of Madras, an eminent observer, adding his testimony regarding the homage paid to the Founder of Christianity. "The most hopeful sign," he writes, "is the increasing reverence for our Lord, although His divinity is not yet acknowledged."[98] And of new India generally, again, we may quote Mr. Bose, the Indian historian. "The Christianity [of North-western Europe] is no more like Christianity as preached by Christ than the Buddhism of the Thibetans is like Buddhism as preached by Gautama." Take finally the following sentences from a recent number of a moderate neo-Hindu organ, the Hindustan Review (vol. viii. 514): "Christ, the great exemplar of practical morality ...; the more
one enters into the true spirit of Christ, the more will he reject Christianity as it prevails in the world to-day. The Indians have been gainers not losers by rejecting Christianity for the sake of Christ."[99]