India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

(b) Morally, the native Christian develops slowly. One writer has recently claimed that the Christian of India manifests little, if any, preëminence over the Hindu, in this respect. This is not true. He is certainly moving forward and upward morally. But it should be remembered that moral character is not one of the first results of Christian conquest among such a people. It is rather the highest and last fruit upon the tree of Christian life. It should not be forgotten that what we regard in the West as the high moral traits of a Christian gentleman are the product of more than 1,000 years of Christian living.

The native Christian manifests, in this respect, the weakness of his antecedents and his environment. When we remember that weakness of character to which we have referred as belonging to the Hindu it is not surprising that the native Christian, who is daily surrounded by men of that faith and who imbibes [pg 134] the atmosphere of that religion, should largely be affected by the same evil. A few years ago an English barrister complained to me of certain Christian witnesses who had given evidence in a case recently conducted by him in Madura. “I hate to have your Christians as witnesses in any of my cases,” he says; “for whenever they venture to give false evidence they instantly falter and stumble and are caught by the opposing counsel. A Hindu, when he gives false evidence, will tell a straight and a plausible story. But your Christians are too much affected by twinges of conscience.” What was embarrassing and annoying to him was encouraging to me! That our Christians should occasionally give false evidence did not surprise me; but that they, in this matter, should be differentiated, by this disinterested observer, from Hindu witnesses is a reliable testimony in favour of their growing veracity.

Among the higher class of native Christians, which is annually increasing in number, there is marked improvement in character. Especially among mission agents do we have opportunity to witness this development. They are growing in sincerity and reliability. The missionary is learning, with increasing pleasure, to place confidence in their veracity. And yet, we must mourn that moral progress among our people, both high and low, is not more rapid and satisfying.

Social immorality, as we have seen, is very prevalent in that tropical country. It is natural that this should annoy and worry us greatly among our native Christians. It is a sad fact that more of our mission agents are dismissed on account of this sin than any [pg 135] other. Hindu society is not only largely demoralized by this evil, there is also no public sentiment against it. But, under the influence of a growing sentiment in behalf of chastity and purity, the evil is gradually diminishing among our native Christians.

One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a noble life, can be severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the publicly immoral ones.

It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find, not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), “to hold the [pg 136] mystery of the faith in a pure conscience”; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.

(c) Religiously, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm; but the many little superstitions which are connected with private life and social customs have still a quiet influence and a lingering power over them. These largely belong to the life of those who have recently accepted the Christian faith. It may be that some of them will never make that progress in life which will lift them entirely above some of these Hindu superstitions. But the great majority of native Christians today have religiously had no connection whatever with Hinduism and have entirely substituted Christian rites and observances for those of the Hindu religion. And they apparently have large satisfaction in them. The old Hindu idea of the supreme value of asceticism is largely yielding to a Christian altruism which abandons self-centred, self-seeking, activity in favour of loving sympathy for, and an endeavour to do good to, men.

We also notice that among them the idea of the efficacy of certain forms and ceremonies is lessening [pg 137] in favour of a conviction of the power of the inner life of faith.

And yet it should be constantly kept in mind that ceremony and ritual must always find a larger place in the religious life of India than in that of the United States. The inhabitant of India is tropical and poetic in temperament. He beholds things, and appreciates and appropriates spiritual blessings, more through the help of forms and ceremonies than does the man of the West. A rite appeals to his nature more strongly and lends to him greater facility in getting at its underlying truth and antitype than it does to us. Indeed it is his nature to look at Christian truth through the eyes of a poet; and ceremonies consequently convey to him the largest significance and are more revealing of the spirit within. We seek divine truth and spiritual blessings more directly than he. It would be therefore a mistake for us to expect that practical, unpoetic mind of ours in the Oriental, or to present religious truth to him in its nakedness, unadorned and unenforced by rite and ritual. It has been, and, to some extent, continues to be the fault of our Congregational Missions in India that they try to lift the native Christian to those dry, unadorned, simple forms of religious service which indeed satisfy the missionaries, but which ignore the great difference of nature and temperament between themselves and the converts. It should be remembered that in India people think vocally. Even as they must and do read aloud in order to read intelligently, so must they worship aloud in order to worship feelingly and thoughtfully. Hence the wisdom and urgency for them of a ritual and a responsive service.

(d) Spiritually, the Indian Christian is slowly and surely developing on definite lines of his own.