deny its reality; but how in this practical modern world can a man retain the doctrine of Maya or Delusion. It has dropped from the speech and apparently out of the mind of the educated classes.
The ideas of Sin and Salvation by faith in Jesus Christ not yet dynamical.
I have suggested that those features of Christianity that are proving to be dynamical in India will be found to be those same that are proving to be dynamical in Britain. The converse also probably holds true, as our religious teachers might do well to note. The doctrines of Sin and Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ do not yet seem to have commended themselves in any measure in India. Positive repudiation of a Christian doctrine is rare, but the flourishing new sect of the North-West, the Āryas, make a point of repudiating the Christian doctrine of salvation by faith, although not explicitly denying it in their creed. Over against it they set up the Justice of God and the certainty of goodness and wickedness receiving each its meed. One can imagine that salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, the outstanding feature of Christianity, may have been unworthily presented to the Ārya leaders, so that it appeared to them merely as some cheap or gratis kind of "indulgences." The biographer of the Parsee
philanthropist, Malabari, a forceful and otherwise well-informed writer, sets forth that idea of salvation by faith, or an idea closely akin. He is explaining why his religious-minded hero did not accept the religion of his missionary teachers. "The proud Asiatic," he says, "strives to purchase salvation with work, and never stoops to accept it as alms, as it necessarily would be if faith were to be his only merit." The unworthy presentation of "salvation by faith" may have occurred either in feeble Christian preaching or in anti-Christian pamphlets. Neither is unknown in India; and anti-Christian pamphlets have been known to be circulated through Ārya agencies.
The ideas of sin incompatible with pantheism.
To appreciate the attitude of the Hindu mind to the doctrines of Sin and Salvation, we must return again to the rough division of Hindus into—first, the mass of the people, polytheists; secondly, the educated classes, now largely monotheists; thirdly, the brahmanically educated and the ascetics, pantheists. It is only with the monotheists that we have now to deal. As already said—to the pantheist the word sin has no meaning. Where all is God, sin or alienation from God is a contradiction in terms. The conception of sin implies the two conceptions of God and Man, or at least
of Law and Man; and where one or other of these two conceptions is lacking, the conception of sin cannot arise. In pantheism, the idea of man as a distinct individual is relegated to the region of Maya or Delusion; there cannot therefore be a real sinner. Does such reasoning appear mere dialectics without practical application, or is it unfair, think you, thus to bind a person down to the logical deductions from his creed? On the contrary, persons denying that we can sin are easy to find. Writes the latest British apostle of Hinduism, for the leaders of reaction in India are a few English and Americans: "There is no longer a vague horrible something called sin: This has given place to a clearly defined state of ignorance or blindness of the will."[119] I quote again also from Swami Vivekananda, representative of Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. It is from his lecture published in 1896, entitled The Real and the Apparent Man. His statement is unambiguous. "It is the greatest of all lies," he says, "that we are mere men; we are the God of the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a
hell; and the partially good see it as heaven; and the perfect beings realise it as God Himself. By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence." Such is the logical and the actual outcome of pantheism in regard to the idea of sin, and such is the standpoint of Hindu philosophy.
Sankarachargya, the pantheist's, confession of sins.
Or if further illustration be needed of the incompatibility of the ideas of pantheism and sin, listen to the striking prayer of Sankarachargya, the pantheistic Vedantist of the eighth century A.D., with whom is identified the pantheistic motto, "One only, without a second."[120] It attracts our attention because Sankarachargya is professedly confessing sins. Thus runs the prayer: "O Lord, pardon my three sins: I have in contemplation clothed in form thee who art formless; I have in praise described thee who art ineffable; and in visiting shrines I have ignored thine omnipresence."[121] Beautiful expressions indeed, confessions that finite language and definite acts are inadequate to the Infinite, nay, contradictions of the Infinite, expressions fit to be recited in prayer