RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT OF INDIA.
By Stephen N. Haskell
It is a difficult matter to describe the religious condition of India so that it may be appreciated by those who have never been on the ground and seen for themselves. The heathen of India are unlike those of Africa, where a native knows nothing but his own kraal, wives, and tribe, having had no knowledge of other nations, and where they do not even keep a record of weeks, months, or years, only from the last war or famine or some noted event; and even where the missionaries have been obliged to invent a name in the native language for the Supreme Being. In India the heathen have had their religion, their holy books, and their genealogical reckoning for thousands of years, as they claim, before the Christians' Bible was given. They had commercial relations with other nations at a very early date, and some historians assert that such existed before the days of Solomon. It is certain that at a very early age the Egyptians carried arms to the Ganges, and fitted out a fleet of four hundred ships in the Arabian Gulf, to establish trade with India. The Turks founded Alexandria to rival Tyre, and it became the greatest commercial city of the world, and was for eighteen centuries the chief seat of trade with India. Indian commerce insured Egyptian opulence, so when Rome controlled it, her streets were filled with aromatic spices, clothes, linen, coral, silver, and jewels brought from Hindustan. Constantinople became the mart for Indian and Chinese goods. The Scriptures make mention of India as early as the time of Esther. Five hundred years before Christ, the Brahmins worked out in the schools of philosophy a religion for the people of India. They had a knowledge of the solar system, so as to fix dates for their feasts; and they gave to the Greeks a knowledge of astronomy. Since the Europeans have established schools and colleges in India, the natives enter, compete with those from the Occident, and even take prizes on essays written upon the "Evidences of Christianity" as well as the sciences, and still they remain Hindus or Mohammedans as the case may be. They are not ignorant of the Christian religion, nor of other religions, any more than they are of the sciences. This refers more particularly to the higher castes. Neither is India like the United States, the people of which came from all the different nations of Europe. Americans profess to believe in one true God, and Christ as a Saviour of mankind, but differ in faiths and modes of worship. In India it is entirely different. There is a mixture of all the Asiatic nations, and all agree in denying the doctrine of creation out of nothing, yet they differ in their teaching as to the origin of the appearance of the universe. Creation out of nothing is to them an absurdity. It is said:— "The product of something is something, the product of nothing is nothing. Oil is in sesamum before it is pressed, milk in the udder before it is drawn, rice in the husk before it is shelled. A thing possible is made from that which is competent to produce it. Cloth, not pottery, is made from yarn; milk, not water, is taken to make curds; a potter does not weave cloth, but makes jars and vessels from his clay and wheel. The product is nothing more than the cause itself. The divinity is fire; he is the sun; he is the brilliant stars; he is water; he is the lord of all creatures; he is man; he is woman; he is the maiden; he is youth; he is the bee with the dark plumage; he is the green bug with ruby eyes; he is the cloud, the womb of lightning, the seasons, the sea. He is the universe and all things produced in it."280To the Hindu, Brahma is the supreme being, the god of gods, of whom Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are manifestations. "All the gods are in Brahma as cows in a cow-house. In the beginning Brahma was this (universe). He created gods; having created gods he placed them in these worlds." When charged with polytheism and violating the primary law respecting the unity of God, they reply that Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, etc., are only manifestations of the supreme Brahma. There is one other point on which there is a general agreement by Indian worshipers. They are idolators, as manifested in the worship of graven images as well as all kinds of animals. What to the European would seem to be most absurd and preposterous, is not only consistent and popular here, but any forms representing the Christian worship to an unseen god, unless it be the ritualistic service, are equally absurd to the Indian. The Parsees worship the sun, the moon, the sea, and fire. They have their temples, and altars on which sandal-wood is kept burning day and night, yielding its sweet fragrance, and before it they bow and worship their god. The Jews have their synagogues, with their ritualistic forms. The heathen with his ten thousand gods has his ceremonies, and his various temples, some for the monkey god, others for the sacred cow, and for graven images of every description of wood, stone, iron, and brass. The Mohammedans have their mosques, without idols, yet so sacred that none are allowed to step within the precincts with shoes on. The Romanists have their churches, with holy water, and they burn incense like the heathen. As far as rites and ceremonies are concerned, there is apparently no difference, save that one is termed Christian and the other idolatrous. The idols of the heathen have been transferred to the Roman churches, christened with the names of the various apostles, the Virgin Mary, saints, and others, and made sacred by holy water which has been prepared by the hand of man. The images of the heathen have been made sacred by the living river of the Ganges. Now imagine a city of eight hundred thousand heathen, with their various temples, the holy Ganges running through it, to its shores thousands flocking daily, some having made long pilgrimages to bathe in its holy waters, the sick being brought and covered with the sacred mud, and the dead carried to be burned on its banks; and in this city of eight hundred thousand heathen there are half a dozen missionaries more or less, and less than one hundred European citizens who profess Christianity, and an army of a few hundred soldiers; and many of those who nominally profess Christianity outside of the missionaries live lives not as good as those of many of the devoted heathen, and are guilty of crimes that would make the idolator blush,—imagine all these, and more, and you have to some extent an idea of an Indian town. In some of the cities there are a larger proportion of Christian missionaries and native Christians, and in others there are less. The Hindus who worship these various idols all agree as to the holiness of the Ganges water. Some cities are Hindu cities, because that element is prominent; others are Mohammedan cities, because that element is the most prominent; and there are a few small towns in India that may be said to be Christian. But out of the two hundred and sixty-eight million people in all India it is claimed that there are somewhat more than one million native Christians, besides the Europeans. The popular religion of India is Hinduism, but modern Hinduism is not a unit. It means the worship of a thousand gods. The word Hindu itself is not a national, nor even a geographical, denomination, but signifies a fortuitous conglomeration of sects, tribes, races, hereditary professions, and pure caste, so that the religion of this population of Hindus is at first sight a heterogeneous confusion. From the most ignorant to the Brahmins, the higher castes, they are all idolators, and this idolatry may be divided into two classes—Brahminical and non-Brahminical. Idolatrous worship is from blind allegiance to custom, or from fear, or a pure desire to obtain some worldly benefit. Practically, the worship of the land has deteriorated from its former religious caste into mere amusement and sensuous display, and it is not associated with any religious and moral teachings as it was in former time. The large temples are richly decorated, some of them are even covered with gold plates. The thought of India where Christianity has taken its strongest hold is as diversified as its popular worship; and this mixed idolatry of this pre-Christian world, which to Europeans or Americans appears dead, is universal here, and lives with a power, held by caste, although most of its ancient vigor has declined. The agents which have riven asunder and keep separate the general interests of the Indian people are furnished and applied by caste. The great outward and visible signs of caste,—fellowship, intermarriage, and the sharing of food,—are the points which unite or isolate groups. Now, caste seems to be a stereotyped mould which has in India preserved those antique prejudices of blood and religion, which have been worn out or destroyed in almost all countries of equal or inferior civilization, where particular distinctions, through amalgamation, and according to the ordinary course of civilization, have declined; but in India this process is interrupted and foiled by the religious element of disseveration. The community, instead of coalescing, is again split up by divergencies of doctrine, of ritual, or by some mere caprice of superstition, into separate bodies, which eat and intermarry only among themselves. This establishes and preserves idolatry. New objects of adoration are continually being discovered and becoming popular, certain shrines come into fashion, or a new image is set up, or a temple built. New prophets arise with fresh messages to deliver, or with fresh rules for a devout life. Holy men are canonized after they are dead, as among the Romanists; thus the objects of Hindu adoration are constantly changing and increasing. Said a leading missionary: "Should I set up a hideous object, different to any other that is worshiped, in a niche in the wall, soon the heathen would flock around it, bringing their holy water from the Ganges, and pour out their libations to it." It is evident to every observant mind traveling in India that the forms of the Romanists and of the ritualists, wherever they may be found and under whatever name, have had their origin in idolatrous worship. When the Saviour uttered the words, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him; [and that] God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," they had a far deeper meaning than many suppose. It is not in forms and ceremonies, neither is it our works that bring to us salvation, it comes wholly in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. It has ever been a plan devised by Satan to in some way get into partnership with the Lord, so that he may leave his mould on Christian experience. Idolatry as manifested in India is only this Satanic principle in full bloom; but many sincere and devout men in every class of Christian association bring with them, to a greater or less extent, this principle, and weave it into their Christian experience. But in proportion as this principle is brought into Christian experience, it detracts from the honor due to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the divine power of God, and the influence of his Holy Spirit, which must affect the heart; and when it is thus touched by the Spirit of God, it becomes transformed in its tastes and desires, and the work of Christ becomes a delight, and his holy law is loved, his requirements, whatever they may be, are a pleasure, not because they are imperative duties that must be performed, but because the divine principle has changed the heart, and it now is the outgushing of the soul. Where this does not exist, there is something wrong in our service to God, the Creator. The religion of Jesus Christ enlightens the mind, and sanctifies the judgment, so that the worship of God becomes intelligent and acceptable in his sight.