India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

Hinduism, therefore, has never addressed itself to the task of helping man as a sinner—of regenerating his heart, of establishing within him that beautiful thing known in Christian lands and philosophies as a well rounded, symmetrical and perfect character. For many reasons and in many ways [pg 091] it has aimed at a very different consummation in man from that consistently sought by Christ and His religion.

3. The Agency and Means Recognized and Appealed to by those Faiths Respectively.

By what power and instrumentality are the above ends to be sought and attained? They will be, doubtless, quite as divergent as the aims themselves were found to be.

In Christianity God Himself is the agent who works out its scheme of salvation. He entered, through infinite condescension, into human life and relations in the Incarnation. He wrought, in the days of His flesh, the redemption of our race—a work which finds its climax in His atoning death. In the person of the Holy Spirit He is working and bringing to full fruition, in the hearts and lives of men, the redemption which He wrought.

Into this, man enters not as an efficient cause of his own redemption. He cannot atone for his past, nor has he the assurance within himself for the future. Hence the atoning sacrifice of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit of God which becomes in him a source of peace, of power and of hope. Yet, in this divine work, man is neither passive nor apathetic. In the exercise of saving faith he not only appropriates the works and gifts of God but also enters into full and active harmony and coöperation with God in his own regeneration and salvation. So that the Apostle Paul aptly urges the Philippian Christians (Phil. 2:12) to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God [pg 092] which worketh in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

How different is the picture presented to us by the Hindu Shastras of the means of human redemption—a picture, however, consonant with the aims which they have set before themselves to accomplish for man. The first and all-present fact of this faith is the terrible loneliness and isolation of man in the great struggle of life. His destiny is in his own hands, and he must fight single-handed against a thousand odds in the awful battle for emancipation.

Karma is the word used to express this thought which has possessed the Hindu mind from the earliest days to the present. This word may be translated “works,” and means the acts by which the soul determines its own destiny. In Vedic times the all-powerful works were sacrifice and ritual. In the Upanishads they are meditation and self-mortification. Today they are ceremonial, with works of charity, self-renunciation or religious mendicancy generally added.

In pre-Buddhistic days sacrifice abounded in Brahmanism; and it grew to such proportions that the revolt headed by Gautama and incarnated in Buddhism became universal. But vicariousness was largely wanting as an element in, and as a cause of, their sacrifices. They were rather offered with a view to nourish the gods and as a means of acquiring power. He who sacrificed a hundred horses was said to gain thereby even larger power than Indra himself possessed—a power which enabled him to dethrone this god of the heavens. Such was the power said to inhere in sacrifice that the gods themselves combined [pg 093] to prevent men from the practice lest they should rise to larger power than themselves! With the triumph and subsequent absorption of Buddhism into Brahmanism the latter abandoned its sacrifices and accepted the Buddhistic emphasis upon Karma, and doomed every soul to the tread-mill of its own destiny. To every human word, deed or thought, however insignificant, there is fruit which must be eaten by the soul.

It is claimed for this doctrine that it well emphasizes the conservation of moral force. Christianity also conserves, to the last, moral force; not however by insisting upon man bearing himself the whole burden, but by enabling him to cast the burden upon the Lord who graciously offers to bear the load of human guilt belonging to every soul.