India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

(d) Eschatology.

In Hinduism, as in Christianity, man is directed to look to a judgment-seat and a system of rewards and punishments in the world to come. While this doctrine again, in its development and detail, differs essentially from that of the Christian faith, it is well to call attention to it as a point of contact. It breathes the spirit of karma, which, in its retributive power, has been compared by some to the doctrine of heredity, and by others, to that of fate. Karma demands the full future fruition of every act done in the body; and many re-births, with intervals of keener suffering and bliss in numerous hells and heavens, are the countless steps in the doleful fugue of emancipation—a process which is enough to appall any but the patient, stolid soul of a Hindu. And yet this weary detail of a very long and sisyphean effort to shake off this mortal coil and to enter into rest is worthy of the missionary's attention, as it represents, perhaps, the most elaborate system of eschatology outside of the New Testament. It is [pg 076] also ethical in its character, and in its fundamental principles has chords which harmonize with those of the Christian doctrine.

(e) The Doctrine of Faith.

This doctrine maintains that, by devotion to a personal god, salvation is achieved. This idea separates this doctrine from, and apparently antagonizes, the prevailing philosophy of the land—Vedantism. This cult of Bhakti is connected with Krishnaolatry, which is the worship of the most unworthy and licentious god of the Hindu pantheon.

Of Vaishnavism, or the worship of Vishnu, in which the bhakti, or faith, doctrine prevails, Sir Monier Williams remarks:—“Notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions and hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, it is the only Hindu system worthy of being called a religion. At all events it must be admitted that it has more common ground with Christianity than any other form of non-Christian faiths.” The basal truth of bhakti—that of supreme attachment to, or faith in, a personal god—could not fail of rousing within the devout lofty and stirring emotion. Bhaktar, i.e., those who have given themselves absolutely to this doctrine and make it the motive and inspiration of their lives, are oblivious to all other bonds, abjuring among themselves even caste and all its demands, and proclaiming the true oneness of the brotherhood of the faith among all the devotees of the same god.

Rock-Cut Temple, South India.

Thus we have today a large and vigorous class of Hindus who have subordinated every doctrine and practice of their religion to that of faith, or bhakti. [pg 077] I believe, with not a few illustrious scholars, that this doctrine traces its origin to Christianity. Like everything else which Hinduism had absorbed, it has been considerably transmuted in the process. It has been necessarily and greatly affected and degraded by the character of the gods who have been its objects. It has been debased by contact with idolatry and error, with superstition and sensuality. And yet we trace its lineaments to its lofty, divine origin, and hesitate not to say that it furnishes a common ground of a fundamental truth of which Christian missionaries have not yet sufficiently availed themselves in their work for this people.

Hindus have also done not a little thinking in the elaboration of the doctrine of salvation. In their discussion as to the relative potency of divine grace and human agency in the salvation of man they became divided into two antagonistic schools, corresponding, very closely, to the Calvinistic and Arminian, among Christians—the Tengaliar maintaining the “cat theory” and the Vadagaliar the “monkey theory”; so called because one party holds that, just as the cat saves her kitten by seizing and carrying it away bodily, so God seizes and saves man without his own effort. This is the doctrine of absolute grace. The other party insists that the relation of the young monkey to its mother, whereby its rescue from trouble depends upon its own grasp, best represents the process of salvation in which man's coöperation is necessary.