India, Its Life and Thought

by John P. Jones

3. I believe also that the Incarnation of our Lord, in its uniqueness and supreme power as the true manifestation of God, is finding rapidly increasing appreciation among the people of India.

India is the land of a myriad incarnations. The doctrine has run to seed, as it were, among this people. They are burdened with the excess of their eagerness to find God, and with their manifold imagination in giving Him form and earthly existence. There is no doctrine in Hinduism which has been carried to such a reductio ad absurdum.

Hindus to-day would gladly accept Christ as one of Vishnu's incarnations, if Christians would permit. I am not sure but that the tenth incarnation of Vishnu was meant to represent Christ. In any case, their growing familiarity with Him is gradually creating in their minds a disgust with the monstrosities of their own incarnations. Many of them are learning that God's Incarnation in Christ is the only one which has "descended" to the earth for the spiritual uplifting and redemption of our race; and, therefore, that it is the only incarnation which has within itself the seed of permanence and of universality. The petty, grotesque, and local "descents" of India will satisfy no one in these days of growing breadth and union, when the people are aspiring after an all-India nationality.

In Christ only is India finding the perfect revelation of God, because He alone revealed Him as the Father of boundless love; God, the Father of all men, loving them with an infinite passion and seeking them even unto death,—that is the message of the Christian Incarnation. And how strangely does it contrast with the moral obliquity and selfish indifference to human interest which characterize Hindu incarnations! In Christ do we find that God is the ever present, personal, loving Father, seeking to bring home again His lost children. He is supremely just and holy as Ruler and Provider; but His justice and holiness are illumined and transfused by His love. And as the Eternal Spirit He is striving in the hearts of men to bring them to Himself. This is the incarnation which is gaining ever increasing power in this land and whose worship is spreading from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.

4. The cross of Christ will be accepted in India as the highest expression of God's love to man.

It is true that, among many Hindus to-day, as among the Greeks and Jews of old, the cross of Christ is an offence and a stumbling-block. The idea of vicarious atonement runs counter to the long-cherished doctrine of Karma. And it is possible that the universal prevalence of the Karma doctrine in the land will give to the doctrine of atonement the same one-sided aspect which it has obtained among many Christians of the West, in the present day, whereby the element of vicariousness, or its God-ward efficiency, has been considerably eliminated. They may remain content to consider the cross merely as a supreme manifestation of love, as that part of the divine example which has infinite power to attract men toward the highest life of lowest service and self-effacement. However this may be, at present, the cross in India has more significance than the trident to the Hindu. And the language of the cross appeals with increasing force to all men of thought. And I am encouraged to think that the modern commendable habit, among educated Hindus, of harking back to the oldest and the best of their religious writings, may carry India away again from its emphasis upon Karma to the original, pre-Buddhistic idea of vicariousness, when, for instance, in the Purusha Suktha of the Rig Veda, the Purusha is represented as being sacrificed by the gods. In the Brahmanas, also, it is said that the Prajabathi sacrificed himself in behalf of the gods.

Indeed, it has been well said that the doctrine of Karma itself, as connected with the doctrine of transmigration, carries within itself a strong element of vicariousness; since the person suffering in this birth knows nothing of the experiences of a supposed previous birth, and is, therefore, suffering for a past of which he is ignorant and for which his conscience cannot hold him responsible.

5. I believe, also, that the Christian conception of sin is gaining ever widening acceptance in India and will ultimately prevail as against the Hindu idea.

The doctrine of atonement and the doctrine of sin are intimately related; where the atonement is ignored or slighted, the conception of sin is apt to lose its ethical content and to become formal. India, through Buddha, abandoned, largely, its long-cherished principle of vicariousness and the multiplicity of its sacrifices. The consequence has been the gradual emasculation of the principle of atonement, until the word has become emptied of content and degraded so as to mean only the eating of a filthy pill because of a certain ceremonial uncleanness, which all the best people of the land know to be no uncleanness whatever.

It is natural, under these circumstances, to see the idea of sin also cease to have reference to moral obliquity and violation of ethical principles, and to refer only to intellectual blindness and (more commonly) to ceremonial laxness and ritualistic malfeasance. It is not surprising, therefore, that under this double departure from the truth, conscience should have lost its place of importance and of authority to so large an extent in this land.