sacrifice once for all, there is no doubt religious gratification to those who go through what I have described. Our point is that, as Sir M. Monier Williams declares, in such an offering, "there is no idea of effacing guilt or making a vicarious offering for sin."[123]
The educated classes and the idea of sin.
The brahma monopoly of nearness to the Deity broken down.
The educated classes, breathing now a monotheistic atmosphere, although in close contact with polytheism in their homes and with pantheism in their sacred literature, have reached the platform on which the idea of sin may be experienced. A member of that class, a pantheist no longer, is in the presence of a personal God, a Moral Being, and is himself a responsible person, with the instincts of a child of that Supreme Moral Being, our Father. With his education, he knows himself to be independent of brahmanical mediation in his intercourse with that Being. As confirmation, it is noteworthy how many of the religious leaders of modern times, like Buddha of old, are other than brahman by caste. In a previous chapter the names of a number of these non-brahman leaders were given. Even the Hindu ascetics of these latter days are more numerously non-brahman than of old, for in theory only brahmans have reached the
ascetical stage of religious development. Whatever the reason, the brahmanical monopoly of access to and inspiration from the Deity is no longer recognised by new-educated India.
The worship of the new sects—its significance.
In like manner, the new religious associations seem to feel themselves directly in the presence of God. Congregational worship, a feature new to Hindus, is a regular exercise in the Brāhma Samāj or Theistic Association of Bengal, the Prārthanā Samājes or Prayer Associations of Western India, and the Ārya Samāj or Vedic Theistic Association of the United Provinces and the North-West of India. When Rammohan Roy, the theistic reformer, opened his church in Calcutta in 1830, he introduced among Hindus congregational worship and united prayer, before unknown among them and confessedly borrowed from Christian worship.[124] The public worship in all these bodies is indeed not unlike many a Christian service, consisting of Prayer to God, Praise of God, and expositions of religious truth. In a small collection of hymns, "Theistic Hymns," published some years ago for the use of members of the Ārya Samāj, we find many Christian hymns expressive of this personal relationship to God. We find "My God, my Father, while I
stray," and "O God, our help in ages past." Neither of these hymns, however, it must be noted, contains confession of sin. Curiously incongruous to our minds is the inclusion among these hymns of poems like "The boy stood on the burning deck," and "Tell me not in mournful numbers," and "There's a magical tie to the land of our home," etc.[125] Even among the Hindu revivalists, judged by that test of the incoming of public worship, we perceive the growth of the idea of personal relationship to God. A recent publication of that party is "Songs for the worship of the Goddess Durga." One of them, we may note in passing, is the well-known hymn, "Work, for the night is coming." All such personal relationship, we again repeat, is incompatible with pantheism, and almost equally so with the popular sacerdotalism. Not without significance do the new theists of Western India call their associations the Prārthanā Samājes or Prayer Associations, and give to the buildings in which they worship the name of Prayer Halls instead of temples. Let not men say that religion and theological belief belong to separable spheres.
The idea of sin naturally accompanies the new monotheism.
Once more, the public worship and prayer