Volume 4 / Part 2 — Part II. ON CURTIUS’ CHRONOLOGY OF THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES. (continued 4)

THE END AND THE MEANS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.

A SERMON23 PREACHED BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, ON THE DAY OF INTERCESSION FOR MISSIONS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1873.

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that, not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.

Ὁ δὲ Ἀγρίππας πρὸς τὸν Παῦλον ἔφη· Ἐν ὀλίγῳ με πείθεις Χριστιανὸν γενέσθαι. Ὁ δὲ Παῦλος εἶπεν· Εὐξαίμην ἂν τῷ Θεῳ, καὶ ἐν ὀλίγῳ καὶ ἐν πολλῷ οὐ μόνον σε, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἀκούοντάς μου σήμερον γενέσθαι τοιούτους, ὁποῖος κἀγώ εἰμι παρεκτὸς τῶν δεσμῶν τούτων. Acts xxvi. 28, 29.

When I preached on a like occasion last year, I spoke at some length of the prospects of Christian missions,24 and I ventured to give seven grounds which the peculiar circumstances of our time afforded for greater confidence in the future. First, the better knowledge of the Divine nature acquired by the extinction of the once universal belief that all heathens were everlastingly lost; secondly, the increased acquaintance with the heathen religions themselves; thirdly, the instruction which Christian missionaries have gained or may gain from their actual experience in foreign parts; fourthly, the recognition of the fact that the main hindrance to the success of Christian missions arises from the vices and sins of Christendom; fifthly, an acknowledgment of the indirect influences of Christianity through legislation and civilization; sixthly, the newly awakened perception of the duty of making exact, unvarnished, impartial statements on this subject; seventhly, the testimony borne by missionary experience to the common elements and essential principles of the Christian religion.

On these—the peculiar grounds for hope and for exertion in this our generation—I content myself with referring to the observations which I then made, and which I will not now repeat.

I propose on this occasion to make a few remarks on the End and on the Means of Christian Missions; remarks which must of necessity be general in their import, but which for that reason are the more suitable to be offered by one who cannot speak from personal and special experience.

The text is taken from a striking incident in the life of the greatest of apostolic missionaries. It was in the presence of Festus and Agrippa that Paul had poured forth those few burning utterances which to Festus seemed like madness, but which Paul himself declared to be words of truth and soberness. Then it was that the Jewish prince, Agrippa—far better instructed and seeing deeper into Paul’s mind than the heathen Festus, yet still unconvinced—broke in upon the conversation with the words which in the English translation have well nigh passed into a proverb, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” The sense which they thus give would be in itself perfectly suitable to the halting, fickle character of the Herodian family, and would accurately describe the numerous half-converts throughout the world—“Almost,” but not quite, “thou persuadest me to join the good cause.” But the sense which, by the nearly universal consent of modern scholars, they really bear in the original is something still more instructive. The only meaning of which the Greek words are capable is an exclamation, half in jest and half in earnest, “It is but a very brief and simple argument that you offer to work so great a change;” or, if we may venture to bring out the sense more forcibly, “So few words, and such a vast conclusion!” “So slight a foundation, and so gigantic a superstructure!” “So scanty an outfit, and so perilous an enterprise!” The speech breathes something of the spirit of Naaman, when he was told to wash in the Jordan—“Are not Abana and Pharpar better than all the waters of Israel?” It is like the complaint of the popular prophets in the time of Hezekiah, whose taste demanded stronger flavor than the noble simplicity of Isaiah, “Thou givest us only line upon line, precept upon precept.” It breathes the spirit of the Ephesian Christians who, when they heard St. John’s repeated maxim of “Little children, love one another,” said, “Is this all that he has to tell us?” It expresses the spirit of many an one since, who has stumbled at the threshold of the genuine Gospel—“So vague, so simple, so universal. Is this worth the sacrifice that you demand? Give us a demonstrative argument, a vast ceremonial, a complex system, a uniform government. Nothing else will satisfy us.”

As Agrippa’s objection, so is Paul’s answer. It would have indeed borne a good sense had he meant what in our English version he is made to say, “I would that thou wert converted both ‘almost and altogether.’ Halfness or wholeness—I admire them both. Half a soul is better than none at all. To have come half way is better than never to have started at all; but half is only good, because it leads towards the whole.” Nevertheless, following the real meaning of Agrippa’s remark, St. Paul’s retort, in fact, bears a yet deeper significance—“I would to God, that whether by little or by much, whether by brief arguments or by long arguments, somehow and somewhere, the change were wrought. The means to me are comparatively nothing, so long as the end is accomplished.” It is the same spirit as that which dictated the noble expression in the Epistle to the Philippians: “Some preach Christ of envy and strife, some also of good will. The one preach Christ of contention, the other of love. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached.”25

And then he proceeds to vindicate the end which makes him indifferent as to the means. Agrippa, in his brief taunt, had said, “Such are the arguments by which you would fain make me a Christian.” It is one of the few, one of the only three occasions on which that glorious name is used in the New Testament. It is here charged not with the venerable meaning which we now attach to it, but with the novel and degrading associations which it bore in the mouth of every Jew and every Roman at that time—of Tacitus or Josephus, no less than of Festus or Agrippa. “Is it,” so the king meant to say, “is it that you think to make me a Christian, a member of that despised, heretical, innovating sect, of which the very name is a sufficient condemnation?”

It is only by bearing this in mind that we see the force of St. Paul’s answer. He does not insist on the word; he does not fight even for this sacred title; he does not take it up as a pugnacious champion might take up the glove which his adversary had thrown down; he does not say, “I would that thou wast a Christian.” In his answer he bears his testimony to one of the gravest, the most fruitful, of all theological truths—that it is not the name but the thing, not the form but the reality, on which stress must be laid; and he gives the most lucid, heart-stirring illustration of what the reality is. “I would that not only thou, but all those who hear me were (I ask for no ambiguous catchword or byword, but) what you see before you; I would that you all were such as I am—such as I am, upheld by the hopes, filled with the affections, that sustain my charmed existence;” and then, with that exquisite courtesy which characterizes so many traits of the Apostle’s history, glancing at the chains which bound him to the Roman guard—“‘except these bonds.’ This, whether you call it Christian or not, is what I desire to see you and all the world.” “You see it before you in the life, the character, the spirit, of one who knows what Christianity is, and who wishes that all his fellow-creatures should partake of the happiness that he has gained, repose on the same principles that give him strength.” This, then, is the statement of the greatest of missionaries, both as to the end which he sought to attain, and the means by which he and we should seek to attain it.

I. Let us first take the End: “Such as I am, except these bonds.” That is the state to which St. Paul desired to bring all those who heard him. That, according to him, was the description of a Christian. No doubt if he had been pressed yet further, he would have said that he meant, “Such as Jesus Christ, my Lord.” But he was satisfied with taking such a living, human, imperfect exemplification as he whom Festus and Agrippa saw in their presence. “Such as Paul was.” Here is no ambiguous definition, no obsolete form. What manner of man he was we know even better than Festus or Agrippa knew. Look at him with all his characteristic peculiarities; a man passionately devoted to his own faithful friends, and clinging to the reminiscences of his race and country, yet with a heart open to embrace all mankind; a man combining the strongest convictions with an unbounded toleration of differences, and an unbounded confidence in truth; a man penetrated with the freedom of the Spirit, but with a profound appreciation of the value of great existing institutions, whether civil or religious—a thorough Roman citizen and a thorough Eastern gentleman; embarked on a career of daring fortitude and endurance, undertaken in the strength of the persuasion that in Jesus Christ of Nazareth he had seen the highest perfection of Divine and human goodness—a Master worth living for and worth dying for, whose Spirit was to be the regenerating power of the whole world. This character, this condition it was to which St. Paul desired that his hearers should be brought. One only reservation he makes; “except these bonds,” except those limitations, those circumscriptions, those vexations, those irritations, which belonged to the suffering, toil-worn circumstances in which he was at that moment placed.

Such is the aim which, following the example of their most illustrious predecessor, all missionaries ought to have before their eyes. To create, to preach, to exhibit those elements of character, those apostolical graces, those Divine intuitions, which even the hard Roman magistrate and the superficial Jewish prince recognized in Paul of Tarsus. Where these are, there is Christianity. In proportion as any of these are attained, in that proportion has a human being become a Christian. Wherever and in proportion as these are not, there the missionary’s labor has failed—there the seed has been sown to no purpose—there the name of Christian may be, but the reality is not.

This preëminence of the object of Christian missions—namely, the formation of heroic, apostolic, and therefore Christian characters—has a wide practical importance. In these days—when there is so much temptation to dwell on the scaffolding, the apparatus, the organization of religion, as though it were religion itself—it is doubly necessary to bear in mind what true Religion is, wherein lies the essential superiority of Christianity to all the other forms of religion on the surface of the earth. It is not merely the baptism of thousands of infants, such as filled a large part of the aspirations even of so great a missionary as Francis Xavier; nor the adoption of the name of Christ, as was done on so vast a scale by the ferocious rebels of China; nor the repetition, with ever so much accuracy, of the Christian creed, as was done by the pretended converts from Mahommedanism or Judaism, under the terrible compulsion of the Catholic sovereigns of Spain. Nor is it the assurance ever so frequently repeated, that we are saved; nor is it the absolution, ever so solemnly pronounced by a priest; nor is it the shedding of floods of tears; nor is it the adoption of voluntary self-degradation or solitary seclusion. All these may be found in other religions in even greater force than in Christianity. That which alone, if anything, stamps Christianity as the supreme religion, is that its essence, its object, is in none of these things, valuable as some of them may be as signs and symptoms of the change which every mission is intended to effect. The change itself, the end itself, Christianity itself, is at once greater and simpler. It is to be such as Paul was; it is to produce characters, which in truthfulness, in independence, in mercy, in purity, in charity, may recall something of the great Apostle, even as he recalled something of the mind which was in Christ Jesus. It was this clear vision of what he desired to see as the fruits of his teaching that made St. Paul so ready to admire whatsoever things were lovely and of good report wherever he found them. In Gentile or in Jew, in heathen or in Christian, he recognized at once the spirits kindred to his own, and welcomed them accordingly. He felt that he could raise them yet higher; but he was eager to claim them as his brethren even from the first.26 Even in the legends which surround his history there has been preserved something of this genuine apostolic sympathy. It was a fine touch in the ancient Latin hymn which described how, when he landed at Puteoli, he turned aside to the hill of Pausilipo to shed a tear over the tomb of Virgil, and thought how much he might have made of that noble soul if he had found him still on earth:—

It was this which made him cling with such affectionate interest to his converts, to his friends, to his sons, as he calls them, in Christ Jesus. All that he sought, all that he looked for in them, was that they should show in their characters the seal of the spirit that animated himself. Whether they derived this character from himself or from Apollos or Cephas he cared not to ask. He was their pupil as much as their master. He disclaimed all dominion over their independent faith; he claimed only to be a helper in their joy.

This reproduction of Paul—this reproduction of all that is best in ourselves or better than ourselves—in the minds and hearts of mankind, is the true work of the Christian missionary; and, in order to do this, he must be himself that which he wishes to impress upon them in humility, goodness, courtesy, and holiness, except only the straitening bonds which cramp or confine each separate character, nation, and church. No disparager of Christian missions can dispute this *—no champion of Christian missions need go beyond this. When, in the last century, the Danish missionary, Schwarz, was pursuing his labors at Tanjore, and the Rajah Hyder Ali desired to treat with the English government, he said: “Do not send to me any of your agents, for I trust neither their words nor their treaties. But send to me the missionary of whose character I hear so much from every one; him will I receive and trust.” That was the electrifying, vivifying effect of the apparition of such an one as Paul—“a man who had indeed done nothing worthy of bonds or of death”—a man in whose entire disinterestedness and in whose transparent honor the image and superscription of his Master was written so that no one could mistake it. “In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness” is the noblest work of God our Creator—the most precious result of human endeavor. If any such—by missionary efforts, either of convert or teacher, either direct or indirect—have been produced, then the prayers uttered, the labors inspired, the hopes expressed in these and like services have not been altogether in vain. One of the most striking facts to which our attention has been called as demanding our thankfulness on this day is the solemn testimony borne by the Government of India to the fruits of “the blameless lives and self-denying labors of its six hundred Protestant missionaries.” And what are those fruits? Not merely the adoption of this or that outward form of Christianity by this or that section of the Indian community. It is something which is in appearance less, but in reality far greater than this. It is something less like the question of Agrippa, but more like the answer of Paul. It is that they have “infused new vigor into the stereotyped life of the vast populations placed under English rule;” it is that they are “preparing those populations to be in every way better men and better citizens of the great Empire under which they dwell.” That is a verdict on which we can rest with the assurance that it is not likely to be reversed. Individual conversions may relapse—may be accounted for by special motives; but long-sustained, wide-reaching changes of the whole tenor and bent of a man or of a nation are beyond suspicion. When we see the immovable, and, as the official document says, “the stereotyped” forms of Indian life re-animated with a vigor unknown to the Oriental races in earlier days, this is a regeneration as surprising as that which, to a famous missionary of the past generation, seemed as impossible as the restoration of a mummy to life—namely, the conversion of a single Brahmin.

This, then, is the End of Christian missions, whether to heathens or to Christians, namely, to make better men and better citizens—to raise the whole of society by inspiring it with a higher view of duty, with a stronger sense of truth; with a more powerful conviction that only by goodness and truth can God be approached or Christ be served—that God is goodness and truth, and that Christ is the Image of God, because He is goodness and truth. If this be the legitimate result of Christianity, no further arguments are needed to prove that it contains a light which is worth imparting, and which, wherever it is imparted, vindicates its heavenly origin and its heavenly tendency.

II. This is the End; and now what are the Means? They are what we might expect in the view of so great an end. Anything (so the Apostle tells us), be it small or great, short or long, scanty or ample,—the manners of a Jew for Jews, the manners of a Gentile for Gentiles, “all things for all men,”27—are worth considering if “by any of these means he might save,” that is, elevate, sanctify, purify any of those to whom he spoke. When we reflect upon the many various efforts to do good in this manifold world—the multitude of sermons, societies, agencies, excitements, which to some seem as futile and fruitless as to others they seem precious and important—it is a true consolation to bear in mind the Apostle’s wise and generous maxim, “Whether by little or by much, whether in pretence or in truth, whether of strife or of good will, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” It may be by a short, sudden, electric shock, or it may be by a long course of civilizing, humanizing tendencies. It may be by a single text, such as that which awoke the conscience of Augustine; or a single interview like Justin’s with the unknown philosopher; or it may be by a long systematic treatise—Butler’s “Analogy,” or Lardner’s “Credibilia,” or the “Institutes” of Calvin, or the “Summa Theologiæ” of Aquinas. It may be by the sudden flush of victory in battle, such as convinced Clovis on the field of Tolbiac; or the argument of a peaceful conference, such as convinced our own Ethelbert. It may be by teachers steeped in what was by half the Christian world regarded as deadly heresy, such as the Arian Bishop Ulfilas, by whom were converted to the faith those mighty Gothic tribes which formed the first elements of European Christendom, and whose deeds Augustine regarded, notwithstanding their errors, as the glory of the Christian name.28 It may be by teachers immersed in superstitions as barbarous, as completely repudiated by the civilized world, as were those of the famous Roman Pontiff who sent the first missionaries to these shores. Sometimes the change has been effected by the sight of a single picture, as when Vladimir of Russia was shown the representation of the Last Judgment; sometimes by a dream or a sign, known only to those who were affected by it—such as the vision of the Cross which arrested Constantine on his way to Rome, or changed Colonel Gardiner’s dissolute youth to a manhood of strict and sober piety. Sometimes it has been by the earnest preaching of missionaries, confessedly ill-educated and ill-prepared for the work which they had to accomplish; sometimes by the slow infiltration of Christian literature and Christian civilization; the grandeur, in old days, of Rome and Constantinople; in our days, the superiority of European genius, the spread of English commerce, the establishment of just laws, pure homes, merciful institutions.

We do not say that all these means are equally good or equally efficacious. St. Paul, in his argument with Agrippa, did not mean to say that “almost and altogether,” that “much and little,” were the same; he did not mean that it was equally good that Christ should be preached in strife or in good-will; he did not mean that a good end justified bad means, or that we may do evil that good may come; he did not mean to justify the falsehoods which are profanely called pious frauds, nor the persecutions which have been set on foot by those who thought to do God service, or the attempt to stimulate artificial excitement by undermining the moral strength and manly independence of the human spirit. God forbid! But what he meant, and what we mean with him, is this: In true Christian missions, in the conversion of human souls from dead works, from sin, from folly, from barbarism, from hardness, from selfishness, to goodness and purity, justice and truth, the field is so vast, the diversity of character in men and nations is so infinite, the enterprise so arduous, the aspects of Divine truth so various, that it is on the one hand a duty for each one to follow out that particular means of conversion which seems to him most efficacious, and on the other hand to acquiesce in the converging use of many means which cannot, by the nature of the case, appear equally efficacious to every one. Such a toleration, such an adoption of the different modes of carrying on what John Bunyan called “the Holy War,” “the Siege of Man’s Soul,” must indeed be always controlled by the determination to keep the high, paramount, universal end always in view; by the vigilant endeavor to repress the exaggeration, to denounce the follies and the falsehoods which infect even the best attempts of narrow and fallible, though good and faithful, servants of their Lord. But, if once we have this principle fixed in our minds, it surely becomes a solace to remember that the soul of man is won by a thousand different approaches—that thus the instruments which often seem most unworthy may yet serve to produce a result far above themselves—that when “we have toiled all night and taken nothing” by keeping close to the shore, or by throwing out our nets always on one side, yet if we have courage “to launch out into the deep, and cast out our nets on the other side of the ship,” we shall “enclose a great multitude of fishes, so that the net shall break.”

He is a traitor to the cause who exalts the means above the end, or who seeks an end altogether different from that to which his allegiance binds him; but he is not a traitor, but a faithful soldier, who makes the best use of all the means that are placed in his hands. Long after the imperfect instruments have perished the results will endure, and in forms wholly unlike the insufficiency or the meagreness of the first propelling cause. The preaching of Henry Martyn may have been tinged by a zeal often not according to knowledge; but the savor of his holy and self-denying life has passed like a sweet-smelling incense through the whole framework of Indian society. “Even,” so he said himself, “if I should never see a native converted, God may design by my patience and continuance in the work to encourage future missionaries.”

The more profoundly we are impressed with the degradation of the heathen nations, with the corruption of the Christian churches, the more thankful should we be for any attempts, however slight and however various, to quicken the sluggish mass, and enlighten the blackness of the night, provided only that the mass is permanently quickened, and the darkness is in any measure dispelled. “I have lived too long,” said Lord Macaulay on his return from India to England, “I have lived too long in a country where people worship cows, to think much of the differences which part Christians from Christians.” And, in fact, as the official report to which I have referred testifies in strong terms, the presence of the great evils which Indian missionaries have to confront, has often produced in them a noble and truly Christian indifference to the trivial divergences between themselves. “Even a one-eyed man,” says the proverb, “is a king amongst the blind.” Even the shepherd’s sling may perchance smite down the Goliath of Gath. The rough sledge-hammer of a rustic preacher may strike home, where the most polished scholar would plead in vain. The calm judgment of the wise and good, or the silent example, or the understanding sympathy, or the wide survey of the whole field of the religions of mankind, may awaken convictions which all the declamations of all the churches would fail to arouse.

The misery of the war on the coast of Africa, the terrible prospect of the Indian famine, may furnish the very opening which we most desire. They may be the very touchstones by which these suffering heathens will test the practical efficiency of a Christian government and a Christian nation, of Christian missionaries and Christian people, and, having so tested it, will judge.

When the first Napoleon suddenly found himself among the quicksands of the Red Sea he ordered his generals to ride out in so many opposite directions, and the first who arrived on firm ground to call on the rest to follow. This is what we may ask of all the various schemes and agencies—all the various inquiries after truth now at work in all the different branches and classes of Christendom—“Ride out amongst those quicksands! Ride out in the most opposite directions, and let him that first finds solid ground call out to us! It may perchance be the very ground in the midst of this quaking morass where we shall be able to stand firm and move the world.”

There is one special variety of means which I would venture to name in conclusion. Ever since the close of the Apostolic age there have been two separate agencies in the Christian Church by which the work of conversion has been carried on. The chief, the recognized, the ordinary agency has been that of the clergy. Every presbyter, every bishop in the Church of the first ages, and again in the beginning of Christian Europe, was, in the strict sense of the word, a missionary; and although their functions have in these latter days been for the most part best fulfilled by following their stationary, fixed, pastoral charges, yet it is still from their ranks in all the different churches that the noble army of missionaries and martyrs in foreign lands has been, and is and must be recruited. Most unwise and unworthy would be any word which should underrate the importance of this mighty element in the work of renewing the face of the earth. But there has always been recognized, more or less distinctly, the agency of Christian laymen in this same work of evangelization. Not only in that more general sense in which I have already indicated the effect of the laws, and literature, and influence of Christian Europe—not only in that unquestionable sense in which the best of all missionaries is a high-minded governor, or an upright magistrate, or a devout and pure-minded soldier, who is always “trusting in God and doing his duty;” not only in these senses do we look for the coöperation of laymen, but also in the more direct forms of instruction, of intelligent and far-seeing interest in labors, which, though carried on mainly by the clergy, must, if they are to be good for anything, concern all mankind alike. In the early centuries of Christianity the aid of laymen was freely invoked and freely given in this great cause. Such was Origen, the most learned and the most gifted of the Fathers, who preached as a layman in the presence of presbyters and bishops. Such was one of the first evangelizers of India, Pantænus; such was the hermit Telemachus, whose earnest protest, aided by his heroic death, extinguished at Rome the horrors of the gladiatorial games; such was Antony, the mighty preacher in the wilds of the Thebaid and the streets of Alexandria; such, in later days, was Francis of Assisi, when first he began his career as the most famous preacher of the Middle Ages; such, just before the Reformation, was our own Sir Thomas More.29 In these instances, as in many others, the influence, the learning, the zeal of laymen, was directly imported into the work of Christianizing the nations of Europe. It is for this reason that we in our age also, so far as the law and order of our churches permit, have frequently received the assistance of laymen; who, by the weight of their character or their knowledge, can render a fresh testimony, or throw a fresh light on subjects where we, the clergy, should perhaps be heard less willingly. As their voices have been raised on this sacred subject of missions in many a humble parish church; as also on other sacred topics, such as Christian art and history, their words have often been heard within the consecrated walls of this and other great abbeys and cathedrals;—so, in the hope that a more systematic form may thus be given to our knowledge, and a more concentrated direction to our zeal, we shall have the privilege of listening this evening in the nave of this church to a scholar renowned throughout the world, whose knowledge of all heathen religions, ancient and modern, in their relation to the experience of Christian missions, probably exceeds that of any other single person in Europe.

I conclude by once more applying the Apostle’s words to the Means and the End of Christian missions. We would to God that whether by little or by much, whether by sudden stroke or by elaborate reasoning, whether in a brief moment or by long process of years, whether by the fervor of active clergy, or by the learning of impartial laymen, whether by illiterate simplicity or by wide philosophy—not only those who hear me, but all on whom the services of this day, far and near, have any influence, may become, at least in some degree, such as was Paul the Apostle, such as have been the wisest and best of Christian missionaries, except only those bonds which belong to time and place, not to the Eternal Spirit and the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot wish a better wish, or pray a better prayer to God on this day than that amongst the missionaries who teach, amongst the heathens who hear, there should be raised up men who should exhibit that type of Christian truth and of Christian life which was seen by Festus and Agrippa in Paul of Tarsus. May the Giver of all good gifts give to us some portion of his cheerful and manly faith, of his fearless energy, of his horror of narrowness and superstition, of his love for God and for mankind, of his absolute faith in the triumph of his Redeemer’s cause. May God our Father waken in us the sense that we are all his children; may the whole earth become more and more one fold under one Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ his Son; may the Holy Spirit of Heaven

ON THE VITALITY OF BRAHMANISM.

The delivery of a lecture on Missions in Westminster Abbey by a layman, and that layman a German, caused great excitement at the time. While some persons of great experience and authority in Church and State expressed their full approval of the bold step which the Dean of Westminister had taken, and while some of the most devoted missionaries conveyed to me their hearty thanks for what I had said in my lecture, others could not find terms sufficiently violent to vent their displeasure against the Dean, and to proclaim their horror at the heretical opinions embodied in my address. I was publicly threatened with legal proceedings, and an eminent lawyer informed me in the “Times” of the exact length of imprisonment I should have to undergo.

I did not reply. I had lived long enough in England to know that no good cause can ever be served by a breach of the law, and neither the Dean nor I myself would have acted as we did unless it had been ascertained beforehand from the highest authorities that, with the sanction of the Dean, there was nothing illegal in a layman delivering such a lecture within the precincts of his Abbey. As to the opinions which I expressed on that occasion, I had expressed them before in my published “Lectures on the Science of Religion.” Whether they are orthodox or heretical, others are more competent to determine than I am. I simply hold them to be true, and at my time of life, mere contradictions, abuse, or even threats are not likely to keep me from expressing opinions which, whether rightly or wrongly, seem to me founded in truth.

But while I refrained from replying to mere outbursts of anger, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity offered by an article published in the “Fortnightly Review” (July, 1874), by Mr. Lyall, a highly distinguished Indian civilian, in order to explain more fully some of the views expressed in my lecture which seemed liable to misapprehension. Unfortunately the writer of the article “On Missionary Religions” had not the whole of my lecture before him when writing his criticisms, but had to form his opinion of it from a condensed report which appeared in the “Times” of December 5th, 1873. The limits of a lecture are in themselves very narrow, and when so large a subject as that of which I had to treat in Westminster Abbey had to be condensed within sixty minutes, not only those who wish to misunderstand, but those also who try to judge fairly, may discover in what has been said, or what has not been said, a very different meaning from that which the lecturer wished to convey. And if a closely-packed lecture is compressed once more into one column of the “Times,” it is hardly possible to avoid what has happened in this case. Mr. Lyall has blamed me for not quoting facts or statements which, as he will have seen by this time, I had quoted in my lecture. I am reminded by him, for instance, of the remarks made by Sir George Campbell in his report upon the government of Bengal in 1871–72, when he wrote, “It is a great mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not proselytizing; the system of castes gives room for the introduction of any number of outsiders; so long as people do not interfere with existing castes, they may form a new caste and call themselves Hindus; and the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who will submit to them and pay them. The process of manufacturing Rajputs from ambitious aborigines goes on before our eyes.” “This,” Mr. Lyall observes, “is one recently recorded observation out of many that might be quoted.”

It is this very passage which I had quoted in my third note, only that in quoting it from the “Report on the Progress and Condition of India,” laid before Parliament in 1873, I had added the caution of the reporter, that “this assertion must be taken with reserve.”

With such small exceptions, however, I have really nothing to complain of in the line of argument adopted by Mr. Lyall. I believe that, after having read my paper, he would have modified some portions of what he has written, but I feel equally certain that it is well that what he has written should have been written, and should be carefully pondered both by those who have the interests of the natives, and by those who have the interests of Christian missions at heart. The few remarks which I take the liberty of making are made by way of explanation only; on all truly essential points I believe there is not much difference of opinion between Mr. Lyall and myself.

As my lecture in Westminister Abbey was delivered shortly after the publication of my “Introduction to the Science of Religion,” I ventured to take certain points which I had fully treated there as generally known. One of them is the exact value to be ascribed to canonical books in a scientific treatment of religion. When Mr. Lyall observes in limine, that inferences as to the nature and tendency of various existing religions which are drawn from study and exegetic comparison of their scriptures, must be qualified by actual observation of these religions and their popular form and working effects, he expresses an opinion which I hold as strongly as he holds it himself. After enumerating the books which are recognized as sacred or authoritative by large religious communities in India, books of such bulk and such difficulty that it seems almost impossible for any single scholar to master them in their entirety, I added (p. 111), “And even then our eyes would not have reached many of the sacred recesses in which the Hindu mind has taken refuge, either to meditate on the great problems of life, or to free itself from the temptations and fetters of worldly existence by penances and mortifications of the most exquisite cruelty. India has always been teeming with religious sects, and its religious life has been broken up into countless local centres which it required all the ingenuity and perseverance of a priestly caste to hold together with a semblance of dogmatic uniformity.”

We must take care, however, in all scientific studies, not to render a task impossible by attaching to it conditions which, humanly speaking, cannot be fulfilled. It is desirable, no doubt, to study some of the local varieties of faith and worship in every religion, but it is impossible to do this with anything like completeness. Were we to wait till we had examined every Christian sect before trusting ourselves to form a general judgment of Christianity, not one of us could honestly say that he knew his own religion. It seems to me that in studying religions we must expect to meet with the same difficulties which we have to encounter in the comparative study of languages. It may, no doubt, be argued with great force that no one knows English who is ignorant of the spoken dialects, of the jargon of sailors and miners, or of the slang of public-houses and prisons. It is perfectly true that what we call the literary and classical language is never the really living language of a people, and that a foreigner may know Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and yet fail to understand, if not the debates in Parliament, at all events the wrangling of sellers and buyers in the markets of the city. Nevertheless, when we learn English, or German, or French, or any of the dead languages, such as Latin and Greek, we must depend on grammars, which grammars are founded on a few classical writers; and when we speak of these languages in general, when we subject them to a scientific treatment, analyze them, and attempt to classify them, we avail ourselves for all such purposes almost exclusively of classical works, of literary productions of recognized authority. It is the same, and it can hardly be otherwise, when we approach the study of religions, whether for practical or for scientific purposes. Suppose a Hindu wished to know what the Christian religion really was, should we tell him to go first to Rome, then to Paris, then to St. Petersburg, then to Athens, then to Oxford, then to Berlin, that he might hear the sermons of Roman Catholics, Greeks, and Protestants, or read their so-called religious papers, in order to form out of these scattered impressions an idea of the real nature of the working effects of Christianity? Or should we not rather tell him to take the Bible, and the hymns of Christian Churches, and from them to form his ideal of true Christianity? A religion is much more likely to become “a mysterious thing,” when it is sought for in the heart of each individual believer, where alone, no doubt, it truly lives, or in the endless shibboleths of parties, or in the often contradictory tenets of sects, than when it is studied in those sacred books which are recognized as authoritative by all believers, however much they may vary in their interpretations of certain passages, and still more in the practical application of the doctrines contained in their sacred codes to the ordering of their daily life. Let the dialects of languages or religions be studied by all means, let even the peculiarities in the utterances of each town, village, or family, be carefully noted; but let it be recognized at the same time that, for practical purposes, the immense variety of individual expression has to be merged in one general type, and that this alone supplies the chance of a truly scientific treatment.

So much in justification of the principle which I have followed throughout in my treatment of the so-called Book-religions, holding that they must be judged, first of all, out of their own mouths, i.e., out of their sacred writings. Although each individual believer is responsible for his religion, no religion can be made responsible for each individual believer. Even if we adopt the theory of development in religion, and grant to every thinking man his right of private interpretation, there remains, and their must always remain, to the historian of religion, an appeal to the statutes of the original code with which each religion stands and falls, and by which alone it can justly be judged.

It may be, as Mr. Lyall says, an inveterate modern habit to assume all great historic names to represent something definite, symmetrical, and organized. It may be that Asiatic institutions, as he asserts, are incapable of being circumscribed by rules and formal definitions. But Mr. Lyall, if he directed his attention to European institutions, would meet with much the same difficulties there. Christianity, in the largest sense of the word, is as difficult to define as Brahmanism, the English constitution is as unsymmetrical as the system of caste. Yet, if we mean to speak and argue about them, we must attempt to define them, and with regard to any religion, whether Asiatic or European, no definition, it seems to me, can be fairer than that which we gain from its canonical books.

I now come to a more important point. I had divided the six great religions of the world into Missionary and non-Missionary, including Judaism, Brahmanism, and Zoroastrianism, under the latter; Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, under the former category. If I had followed the good old rule of always giving a definition of technical terms, the objections raised by Mr. Lyall and others would probably never have been urged. I thought, however, that from the whole tenor of my lecture it would have been clear that by missionary religions I meant those in which the spreading of the truth and the conversion of unbelievers are raised to the rank of a sacred duty by the founder or his immediate successors. In explaining the meaning of the word proselyte, or προσήλυτος, I had shown that literally it means those who come to us, not those to whom we go, so that even a religion so exclusive as Judaism might admit proselytes, might possibly, if we insisted only on the etymological meaning of the word, be called proselytizing, without having any right to the name of a missionary religion. But I imagined that I had said enough to make such a misunderstanding impossible. We may say that the English nobility grows, but we should never say that it proselytizes, and it would be a mere playing with words if, because Brahmanism admits new-comers, we were to claim for it the title of a proselytizing religion. The Brahmanic Scriptures have not a word of welcome for converts, quite the contrary; and as long as these Scriptures are recognized as the highest authority by the Hindus themselves, we have no right to ascribe to Brahmanism what is in direct contradiction with their teaching. The burning of widows was not enjoined in the Vedas, and hence, in order to gain a sanction for it, a passage in the Veda was falsified. No such necessity was ever felt with regard to gaining converts for the Brahmanic faith, and this shows that, though admission to certain Brahmanic privileges may be easier at present than it was in the days of Viśvâmitra, conversion by persuasion has never become an integral portion of the Brahmanic law.

However, as Mr. Lyall does not stand alone in his opinions, and as others have claimed for Judaism and Zoroastrianism the same missionary character which he claims in the name of Brahmanism, a few explanations may not be out of place.

Till very lately, an orthodox Jew was rather proud of the fact that he and his people had never condescended to spread their religion among Christians by such means as Christians use for the conversion of Jews. The Parsi community, too, seemed to share with the Quakers a prudent reluctance in admitting outsiders to the advantages conferred by membership of so respectable and influential a community, while the Brahmans certainly were the very last to compass heaven and earth for the conversion of Mlecchas or outcasts. Suddenly, however, all this is changed. The Chief Rabbi in London, stung to the quick by the reproach of the absence of the missionary spirit in Judaism, has delivered a sermon to show that I had maligned his people, and that, though they never had missionaries, they had been the most proselytizing people in the world. Some strong arguments in support of the same view have been brought forward by the Rev. Charles Voysey, whose conception of Judaism, however, is founded rather on what the great prophets wished it should have been than on what history teaches us it was. As the facts and arguments advanced by the Jewish advocates did not modify my judgment of the historical character of Judaism, I did not think it necessary to reply, particularly as another eminent Rabbi, the editor of the “Jewish World,” fully endorsed my views of Judaism, and expressed his surprise at the unorthodox theories advanced by so high an authority as Dr. Adler. I am informed, however, that the discussion thus originated will not remain without practical results, and that something like a Jewish Missionary Society is actually forming in London, to prove that, if missionary zeal is a test of life, the Jewish religion will not shrink from such a test. “We have done something,” the Rev. Charles Voysey remarks, “to stir them up; but let us not forget that our reminder was answered, not by a repulse or expression of surprise, but by an assurance that many earnest Jews had already been thinking of this very work, and planning among themselves how they could revive some kind of missionary enterprise. Before long, I feel sure they will give practical evidence that the missionary spirit is still alive and striving in their religion.” And again: “The Jews will soon show whether their religion is alive or dead, will soon meet the rival religions of the world on more than equal terms, and will once more take the lead in these days of enlightened belief, and in search after conceptions worthy of a God, just as of old Judaism stood on a lofty height, far above all the religions of mankind.”

What has happened in London seems to have happened in Bombay also. The Zoroastrians, too, did not like to be told that their religion was dying, and that their gradual decay was due to the absence of the missionary spirit among them. We read in the “Oriental” of April, 1874, “There is a discussion as to whether it is contrary to the creed of Zoroaster to seek converts to the faith. While conceding that Zoroaster was himself opposed to proselytizing heathens, most of the Parsis hold that the great decrease in the number of his followers renders it absolutely necessary to attempt to augment the sect.”

Lastly, Mr. Lyall stands up for Brahmanism, and maintains that in India Brahmanism had spread out during the last hundred years, while Islam and Christianity have contracted. “More persons in India,” he says, “become every year Brahmanists, than all the converts to all the other religions in India, put together.” “The number of converts,” he maintains, “added to Brahmanism in the last few generations, especially in this country, must be immense; and if the word proselyte may be used in the sense of one that has come, not necessarily being one that has been invited or persuaded to come, then Brahmanism may lay claim to be by far the most successful proselytizing religion of modern times in India.”

The words which I have ventured to put in italics, will show at once how little difference of opinion there is between Mr. Lyall and myself, as long as we use the same words in the same sense. If proselytizing could be used in the etymological sense, here assigned to it by Mr. Lyall, then, no doubt, Brahmanism would be a proselytizing or missionary religion. But this is mere playing with words. In English, proselytizing is never used in that sense. If I meant by missionary religions nothing more than religions which are capable of increase by admitting those that wish to be admitted, religions which say to the world at large, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you,” but no more, then, no doubt, Brahmanism, or at least some phases of it, might be called by that name. But what, according to my explanation, constitutes a missionary religion is something totally different. It is the spirit of truth in the hearts of believers which cannot rest unless it manifests itself in thought, word, and deed, which is not satisfied till it has carried its message to every human soul, till what it believes to be the truth is accepted as the truth by all members of the human family.

That spirit imparts to certain religions a character of their own, a character which, if I am not mistaken, constitutes the vital principle of our own religion, and of the other two which, in that respect, stand nearest to Christianity—Buddhism and Mohammedanism. This is not a mere outward difference, depending on the willingness of others to join or not to join; it is an inward difference which stamped Christianity as a missionary religion, when as yet it counted no more than twelve apostles, and which lays on every one that calls himself a Christian the duty of avowing his convictions, whatever they may be, and gaining others to embrace the truth. In that sense every true Christian is a missionary. Mr. Lyall is evidently aware of all this, if we may judge by the expressions which he uses when speaking of the increase of Brahmanism. He speaks of the clans and races which inhabit the hill-tracts, the out-lying uplands, and the uncleared jungle districts of India, as melting into Hinduism. He represents the ethnical frontier, described by Mr. Hunter in the “Annals of Rural Bengal,” as an ever-breaking shore of primitive beliefs, which tumble constantly into the ocean of Brahmanism. And even when he dwells on the fact that non-Aryans are invited by the Brahmans to enter in, he adds that this is done for the sake of profit and repute, not from a wish to eradicate error, to save souls, or to spread the truth. Such instances occurred even in the ancient history of India; and I had myself, in my “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” pointed out the case of the Rathakaras or carpenters who were admitted to the Vedic sacrifices, and who, probably from a mere similarity of name—their leader being called Bribu,—had the old Vedic Ribhus assigned to them as their peculiar deities. But these were exceptions, they were concessions aux nègres, deviations from traditional rules, entirely owing to the pressure of circumstances; not manifestations springing from religious impulses. If Mr. Lyall remarks himself, that a religion which thus, half involuntarily, enlarges its borders, is not, in the strict sense of the word, a missionary religion, he shows that he is fully aware of the profound difference between a religion that grows by mere agglomeration and a religion that grows by its own strength, by its irrepressible missionary zeal. In answer to his concluding remark, that this ground was not taken in my lecture, I can only say that it was, nay, that it formed the very foundation on which the whole argument of my lecture was meant to rest.

There is more force in the objections which Mr. Lyall raises against my calling Brahmanism already dead. The word was too strong; at all events, it was liable to be misunderstood. What I meant to say was that the popular worship of Śiva and Vishṇu belongs to the same intellectual stratum as the worship of Jupiter and Apollo, that it is an anachronism in the nineteenth century, and that, for our purposes, for prognosticating the issues of the religious struggles of the future, it may simply be set aside. For settling any of the questions that may be said to be pending between Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism, Brahmanism is dead. For converting any number of Christians, Mohammedans, and Buddhists back to idolworship, Brahmanism is dead. It may absorb Sonthals, and Gonds, and Bhils, and other half savage races, with their rough-hewn jungle deities, it may even raise them to a higher stage of civilization, and imbue them with the first principles of a truer faith and a purer worship, but for carrying any of the strong positions of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, Brahmanism is powerless and dead. In India itself, where it clings to the soil with a thousand roots, it was beaten by Buddhism, and, if it afterwards recovered its position, that was due to physical force, not to persuasion and conversion. The struggle between Mohammedanism and Brahmanism in India was on both sides a political rather than a religious struggle: still when a change of religion arose from conviction, we see Brahmanism yielding to the purer light of Islam, not Islam to Brahmanism.

I did not undervalue the actual power of Brahmanism, particularly its power of resistance; nor did I prophesy its speedy extinction. I said on the contrary that “a religion may linger on for a long time, and be accepted by the large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better.” “It is true,” I added, “there are millions of children, women, and men in India who fall down before the stone image of Vishṇu, with his four arms, riding on a creature, half-bird, half-man, or sleeping on the serpent; who worship Śiva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on a bull, with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. There are human beings who still believe in a god of war, Kârtikeya, with six faces, riding on a peacock, and holding bow and arrow in his hands; and who invoke a god of success, Gaṇeśa, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true that, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta, her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protruded from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood. All this is true; but ask any Hindu who can read and write and think, whether these are the gods he believes in, and he will smile at your credulity. How long this living death of national religion in India may last, no one can tell: for our purposes, however, for gaining an idea of the issue of the great religious struggle of the future, that religion is dead and gone.”

I ask Mr. Lyall, is this true or is it not? He says himself, “that Brahmanism may possibly melt away of a heap and break up, I would not absolutely deny.” Would Mr. Lyall say the same of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity? He points himself to the description which Gibbon gives of the ancient Roman religion in the second century of the Christian era, and shows how closely applicable it is to the present state of Brahmanism in India. “The tolerant superstition of the people, ‘not confined by the claims of any speculative system,’ the ‘devout polytheist, whom fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream, or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors;’ the ‘ingenious youth alike instructed in every school to reject and despise the religion of the multitude;’ the philosophic class who ‘look with indulgence on the errors of the vulgar, diligently practice the ceremonies of their fathers, and devoutly frequent the temples of their gods;’ the ‘magistrates who know and value the advantages of religion as it is connected with civil government;’—all these scenes and feelings are represented in India at this moment, though by no means in all parts of India.” If, then, in the second century a student of religious pathology had expressed his conviction that in spite of the number of its professors, in spite of its antiquity, in spite of its indigenous character, in spite of its political, civil, and social influences, in spite of its temples and priests, in spite of its schools and philosophers, the ancient religion of Jupiter had lost its vitality, was sick unto death, nay, for all real purposes was dead, would he have been far wrong? It may be replied, no doubt, that similar corruptions have crept into other religions also, that gaudy dolls are carried about in Christian cathedrals, that people are invited to see tears rolling down from the eyes of images, or to worship wine changed into blood, to say nothing of even more terrible hallucinations on the Eucharist propounded from so-called Protestant pulpits, and that, in spite of all this, we should not call the Christian religion dying or dead. This is true, and I thought that by my remarks on the different revivals of Hinduism from the twelfth to the nineteenth century, I had sufficiently indicated that new life may spring even from such apparently hopeless corruption. If it is Brahmanism that lives in the sects of Râmânuja and Râmânanda, in the poetry of Kabir and the wisdom of Nànak, in the honest purposes of Ram Mohun Roy and in the high aspirations of Keshub Chunder Sen, then I quite agree with Mr. Lyall that Brahmanism is not dead, but lives more intensely than ever.

But here, for some reason or other, Mr. Lyall seems to demur to my hopeful estimate of Brahmoism. He had expressed his own conviction that Brahmanism, though it might suddenly collapse and vanish, was more likely gradually to spiritualize and centralize its Pantheon, reduce its theology to a compact system, soften down its morals by symbolisms and interportations, discard “dogmatic extremes,” and generally to bring itself into accordance with improved standards of science and intelligence. He had also quoted with implied approval the remark of qualified observers, “that we might at any time witness a great Brahmanic reforming revival in India, if some really gifted and singularly powerful prophet were to arise among the Hindus.” But when I hinted that this prophet had actually arisen, and that in Brahmoism, as preached by Ram Mohun Roy, Debendranath Tagore, and Keshub Chunder Sen, we ought to recognize a transition from Brahmanism to a purer faith; when I pointed out that, though Christian missionaries might not wish to recognize Brahmoism as their work, it was the work of those missionary Christians who have lived in India as examples of a true Christian life, who have approached the natives in a truly missionary spirit, in the spirit of truth and in the spirit of love, Mr. Lyall replies that “Brahmoism, as propagated by Keshub Chunder Sen, seems to be Unitarianism of an European type, and, so far as one can understand its argument, appears to have no logical stability or locus standi between revelation and pure rationalism; that it propounds either too much or too little to its hearers.” “A faith,” he continues, “which contains mere fervent sentiments, and high conceptions of morality, does not partake of the complexion or nature of those religions which have encompassed the heart of great nations, nor is it generally supposed in India that Brahmoism is perceptibly on the increase.”

Mutatis mutandis, this is very much what an orthodox Rabbi might have said of Christianity. Let us wait. I am not given to prophecy, but though I am no longer young, I still hold to a belief that a cause upheld with such honesty of purpose, purity, and unselfishness as Brahmoism has been, must and will meet with ultimate success. Does Mr. Lyall think that Unitarian Christianity is no Christianity? Does he find logical stability in Trinitarianism? Does he consider pure rationalism incompatible with revelation? Does he know of any teacher who might not be accused of saying either too little or too much? In A.D. 890 the Double Procession was as much a burning question as the Homoousia in 324,—are, therefore, both Channing and Dr. Döllinger to be anathematized now? Brahmoism may not be like the religions of old, but must the religions of the future be like the religions of the past? However, I do not wish to draw Mr. Lyall into a theological argument. His estimate of the real value and vitality of Brahmoism may be right, mine may be wrong. His presence in India, and his personal intercourse with the Brahmos, may have given him opportunities of judging which I have not. Only let us not forget that for watching the movements of a great struggle, and for judging of its successful issue, a certain distance from the field of battle has its advantages, and that judges in India have not always proved the best judges of India.

One point, however, I am quite willing to concede. If Brahmoism and similar movements may be considered as reforms and resuscitations of Brahmanism, then I withdraw my expression that Brahmanism is dead. Only let us remember that we are thus using Brahmanism in two very different senses, that we are again playing with words. In the one sense it is stark idolatry, in the other the loftiest spiritual worship. The former asserts the existence of many personal gods, the latter shrinks even from the attribute of personality as too human a conception of the Highest Spirit. The former makes the priest a kind of god on earth, the latter proclaims the priesthood of all men; the former is guided by scriptures which man calls sacred, the latter knows of no sacred oracles but the still small voice in the heart of every man. The two are like two opposite poles. What is negative on one side is positive on the other; what is regarded by the one as the most sacred truth is anathematized by the other as deadly error.

Mr. Lyall tells us of Ghási Dás, an inspired prophet, who sojourned in the wilderness for six months, and then issued forth preaching to the poor and ignorant the creed of the True Name (Satnám). He gathered about half a million people together before he died in 1850. He borrowed his doctrines from the well-known Hindu sect of the Satnâmis, and though he denounced Brahmanic abuses, he instituted caste rules of his own, and his successor was murdered, not for heresy, but because he aped Brahmanic insignia and privileges. Mr. Lyall thinks that this community, if left alone, will relapse into a modified Brahmanism. This may be so, but it can hardly be said, that a reform, the followers of which are murdered for aping Brahmanic insignia and privileges, represents Brahmanism which Mr. Lyall defines as “the broad denomination of what is recognized by all Hindus as the supreme theological faculty and the comprehensive scheme of authoritative tradition to which all minor beliefs are referred for sanction.”

When I spoke of Brahmanism as dead, I meant the popular orthodox Brahmanism, which is openly patronized by the Brahmans, though scorned by them in secret; I did not, and could not, mean the worship of Bramah as the Supreme Spirit, which has existed in India from the time of the Upanishads to the present day, and has lately assumed the name of Brahmoism,—a worship so pure, so exalted, so deeply human, so truly divine, that every man can join in it without apostasy, whether he be born a Jew, a Gentile, or a Christian.

That many antagonistic forms of religious faith, some the most degraded, others the most exalted, should live on the same soil, among the same people, is indeed a disheartening truth, enough almost to shake one’s belief in the common origin and the common destinies of the human race. And yet we must not shut our eyes to the fact that amongst ourselves, too, men who call themselves Christians are almost as widely separated from each other in their conceptions of the Divine and the Human, in their grounds of belief and in their sense of duty, as, in India, the worshippers of Gaṇeśa, the god of success, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat, on one side, and the believers in the true Brahma on the other. There is a Christianity that is dead, though it may be professed by millions of people, but there is also, let us trust, a Christianity that is alive, though it may count but twelve apostles. As in India, so in Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted reticence, and what is at the root of it all, want of true love of Man, and of true faith in God.

If Mr. Lyall imagined that the object of my Lecture was to discourage missionary efforts, he must have found out his mistake, when he came to read it, as I delivered it in Westminster Abbey. I know of no nobler life than that of a true missionary. I tried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. I tried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. It is very possible, as Mr. Lyall says somewhat sarcastically, that “missionaries will even yet hardly agree that the essentials of their religion are not in the creeds, but in love; because they are sent forth to propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or disbelieve is literally a burning question.” But those who, with Mr. Lyall, consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but “flat morality,” must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing abstruse tenets, the handiwork of Popes and Councils, in the place of Christ’s teaching, and by making a belief in these positive articles a burning question, weak mortals have driven weak mortals to ask, “Are we Christians still?” Let them for once “by observation and experience” try the oldest and simplest and most positive article of Christianity, real love of man founded on real love of God, and I believe they will soon ask themselves, “When shall we be Christians at last?”

VII. OPENING ADDRESS.

DELIVERED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE ARYAN SECTION AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ORIENTALISTS, HELD IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER 14–21, 1874.

No one likes to be asked, what business he has to exist, and yet, whatever we do, whether singly or in concert with others, the first question which the world never fails to address to us, is Dic cur hic? Why are you here? or to put it into French, What is your raison d’être? We have had to submit to this examination even before we existed, and many a time have I been asked the question, both by friend and foe, What is the good of an International Congress of Orientalists?

I shall endeavor, as shortly as possible, to answer that question, and show that our Congress is not a mere fortuitous congeries of barren atoms or molecules, but that we are at least Leibnizian monads, each with his own self, and force and will, and each determined, within the limits of some preëstablished harmony, to help in working out some common purpose, and to achieve some real and lasting good.

It is generally thought that the chief object of a scientific Congress is social, and I am not one of those who are incapable of appreciating the delights and benefits of social intercourse with hard-working and honest-thinking men. Much as I detest what is commonly called society, I willingly give up glaciers and waterfalls, cathedrals and picture galleries, for one half hour of real society, of free, frank, fresh, and friendly intercourse, face to face, and mind to mind, with a great, and noble, and loving soul, such as was Bunsen; with a man intrepid in his thoughts, his words, and his deeds, such as was John Stuart Mill; or with a scholar who, whether he had been quarrying heavy blocks, or chiseling the most brittle filigree work, poured out all his treasures before you with the pride and pleasure of a child, such as was Eugéne Burnouf. A Congress therefore, and particularly an International Congress, would certainly seem to answer some worthy purpose, were it only by bringing together fellow workers of all countries and ages, by changing what were to us merely great names into pleasant companions, and by satisfying that very right and rational curiosity which we all feel, after having read a really good book, of seeing what the man looks like who could achieve such triumphs.

All this is perfectly true; yet, however pleasant to ourselves this social intercourse may appear, in the eyes of the world at large it will hardly be considered a sufficient excuse for our existence. In order therefore to satisfy that outer world that we are really doing something, we point of course to the papers which are read at our public meetings, and to the discussions which they elicit. Much as I value that feature also in a scientific congress, I confess I doubt, and I know that many share that doubt, whether the same result might not be obtained with much less trouble. A paper that contains something really new and valuable, the result, it may be, of years of toil and thought, requires to be read with care in a quiet corner of our own study, before the expression of our assent or dissent can be of any weight or value. There is too much hollow praise, and occasionally too much wrangling and ill-natured abuse at our scientific tournaments, and the world at large, which is never without a tinge of malice and a vein of quiet humor, has frequently expressed its concern at the waste of “oil and vinegar” which is occasioned by the frequent meetings of our British and Foreign Associations.

What then is the real use of a Congress, such as that which has brought us together this week from all parts of the world? What is the real excuse for our existence? Why are we here, and not in our workshops?

It seems to me that the real and permanent use of these scientific gatherings is twofold.

(1) They enable us to take stock, to compare notes, to see where we are, and to find out where we ought to be going.

(2) They give us an opportunity, from time to time, to tell the world where we are, what we have been doing for the world, and what, in return, we expect the world to do for us.

The danger of all scientific work at present, not only among Oriental scholars, but, as far as I can see, everywhere, is the tendency to extreme specialization. Our age shows in that respect a decided reaction against the spirit of a former age, which those with gray heads among us can still remember, an age represented in Germany by such names as Humboldt, Ritter, Böckh, Johannes, Müller, Bopp, Bunsen, and others; men who look to us like giants, carrying a weight of knowledge far too heavy for the shoulders of such mortals as now be; aye, men who were giants, but whose chief strength consisted in this, that they were never entirely absorbed or bewildered by special researches, but kept their eye steadily on the highest objects of all human knowledge; who could trace the vast outlines of the kosmos of nature or the kosmos of the mind with an unwavering hand, and to whose maps and guide books we must still recur, whenever we are in danger of losing our way in the mazes of minute research. At the present moment such works as Humboldt’s “Kosmos,” or Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar,” or Bunsen’s “Christianity and Mankind,” would be impossible. No one would dare to write them, for fear of not knowing the exact depth at which the Protogenes Haeckelii has lately been discovered or the lengthening of a vowel in the Saṃhitapâṭha of the Rig-Veda. It is quite right that this should be so, at least, for a time; but all rivers, all brooks, all rills, are meant to flow into the ocean, and all special knowledge, to keep it from stagnation, must have an outlet into the general knowledge of the world. Knowledge for its own sake, as it is sometimes called, is the most dangerous idol that a student can worship. We despise the miser who amasses money for the sake of money, but still more contemptible is the intellectual miser who hoards up knowledge instead of spending it, though, with regard to most of our knowledge, we may be well assured and satisfied that, as we brought nothing into the world so we may carry nothing out.

Against this danger of mistaking the means for the end, of making bricks without making mortar, of working for ourselves instead of working for others, meetings such as our own, bringing together so large a number of the first Oriental scholars of Europe, seem to me a most excellent safeguard. They draw us out of our shell, away from our common routine, away from that small orbit of thought in which each of us moves day after day, and make us realize more fully, that there are other stars moving all around us in our little universe, that we all belong to one celestial system, or to one terrestrial commonwealth, and that, if we want to see real progress in that work with which we are more especially entrusted, the re-conquest of the Eastern world, we must work with one another, for one another, like members of one body, like soldiers of one army, guided by common principles, striving after common purposes, and sustained by common sympathies. Oriental literature is of such enormous dimensions that our small army of scholars can occupy certain prominent positions only; but those points, like the stations of a trigonometrical survey, ought to be carefully chosen, so as to be able to work in harmony together. I hope that in that respect our Congress may prove of special benefit. We shall hear, each of us, from others, what they wish us to do. “Why don’t you finish this?” “Why don’t you publish that?” are questions which we have already heard asked by many of our friends. We shall be able to avoid what happens so often, that two men collect materials for exactly the same work, and we may possibly hear of some combined effort to carry out great works, which can only be carried out viribus unitis, and of which I may at least mention one, a translation of the “Sacred Books of Mankind.” Important progress has already been made for setting on foot this great undertaking, an undertaking which I think the world has a right to demand from Oriental scholars, but which can only be carried out by joint action. This Congress has helped us to lay the foundation-stone, and I trust that at our next Congress we shall be able to produce some tangible results.

I now come to the second point. A Congress enables us to tell the world what we have been doing. This, it seems to me, is particularly needful with regard to Oriental studies which, with the exception of Hebrew, still stand outside the pale of our schools and universities, and are cultivated by the very smallest number of students. And yet, I make bold to say, that during the last hundred, and still more during the last fifty years, Oriental studies have contributed more than any other branch of scientific research to change, to purify, to clear, and intensify the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, and to widen our horizon in all that pertains to the Science of Man, in history, philology, theology, and philosophy. We have not only conquered and annexed new worlds to the ancient empire of learning, but we have leavened the old world with ideas that are already fermenting even in the daily bread of our schools and universities. Most of those here present know that I am not exaggerating; but as the world is skeptical while listening to orations pro domo, I shall attempt to make good my assertions.

At first, the study of Oriental literature was a matter of curiosity only, and it is so still to a great extent, particularly in England. Sir William Jones, whose name is the only one among Oriental scholars that has ever obtained a real popularity in England, represents most worthily that phase of Oriental studies. Read only the two volumes of his life, and they will certainly leave on your mind the distinct impression that Sir William Jones was not only a man of extensive learning and refined taste, but undoubtedly a very great man—one in a million. He was a good classical scholar of the old school, a well-read historian, a thoughtful lawyer, a clear-headed politician, and a true gentleman, in the old sense of the word. He moved in the best, I mean the most cultivated society, the great writers and thinkers of the day listened to him with respect, and say what you like, we still live by his grace, we still draw on that stock of general interest which he excited in the English mind for Eastern subjects.

Yet the interest which Sir William Jones took in Oriental literature was purely æsthetic. He chose what was beautiful in Persian and translated it, as he would translate an ode of Horace. He was charmed with Kâlidâsa’s play of “Sakuntala”—and who is not?—and he left us his classical reproduction of one of the finest of Eastern gems. Being a judge in India, he thought it his duty to acquaint himself with the native law-books in their original language, and he gave us his masterly translation of the “Laws of Manu.” Sir William Jones was fully aware of the startling similarity between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. More than a hundred years ago, in a letter written to Prince Adam Czartoryski, in the year 1770, he says: “Many learned investigators of antiquity are fully persuaded, that a very old and almost primeval language was in use among the northern nations, from which not only the Celtic dialect, but even Greek and Latin are derived; in fact, we find πατήρ and μήτηρ in Persian, nor is θυγάτηρ so far removed from dockter, or even ὄνομα and nomen from Persian nâm, as to make it ridiculous to suppose that they sprang from the same root. We must confess,” he adds, “that these researches are very obscure and uncertain, and you will allow, not so agreeable as an ode of Hafez, or an elegy of Amr’alkeis.” In a letter, dated 1787, he says: “You will be surprised at the resemblance between Sanskrit and both Greek and Latin.”

Colebrooke also, the great successor of Sir William Jones, was fully aware of the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and even Slavonic. I possess some curious MS. notes of his, of the year 1801 or 1802, containing long lists of words, expressive of the most essential ideas of primitive life, and which he proved to be identical in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Slavonic.1

Yet neither Colebrooke nor Sir William Jones perceived the full import of these facts. Sir William Jones died young; Colebrooke’s energies, marvelous as they were, were partly absorbed by official work, so that it was left to German and French scholars to bring to light the full wealth of the mine which those great English scholars had been the first to open. We know now that in language, and in all that is implied by language, India and Europe are one; but to prove this, against the incredulity of all the greatest scholars of the day, was no easy matter. It could be done effectually in one way only, viz., by giving to Oriental studies a strictly scientific character, by requiring from Oriental students not only the devotion of an amateur, but the same thoroughness, minuteness, and critical accuracy which were long considered the exclusive property of Greek and Latin scholars. I could not think of giving here a history of the work done during the last fifty years. It has been admirably described in Benfey’s “History of the Science of Language.”2 Even if I attempted to give merely the names of those who have been most distinguished by really original discoveries—the names of Bopp, Pott, Grimm, Burnouf, Rawlinson, Miklosich, Benfey, Kuhn, Zeuss, Whitley, Stokes—I am afraid my list would be considered very incomplete.

But let us look at what has been achieved by these men, and many others who followed their banners! The East, formerly a land of dreams, of fables, and fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakable reality; the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colors and definite outlines. Two worlds, separated for thousands of years, have been reunited as by a magic spell, and we feel rich in a past that may well be the pride of our noble Aryan family. We say no longer vaguely and poetically Ex Oriente Lux, but we know that all the most vital elements of our knowledge and civilization,—our languages, our alphabets, our figures, our weights and measures, our art, our religion, our traditions, our very nursery stories, come to us from the East; and we must confess that but for the rays of Eastern light, whether Aryan or Semitic or Hamitic, that called forth the hidden germs of the dark and dreary West, Europe, now the very light of the world, might have remained forever a barren and forgotten promontory of the primeval Asiatic continent. We live indeed in a new world; the barrier between the West and the East, that seemed insurmountable, has vanished. The East is ours, we are its heirs, and claim by right our share in its inheritance.

We know what it was for the Northern nations, the old barbarians of Europe, to be brought into spiritual contact with Rome and Greece, and to learn that beyond the small, poor world in which they had moved, there was an older, richer, brighter world, the ancient world of Rome and Athens, with its arts and laws, its poetry and philosophy, all of which they might call their own and make their own by claiming the heritage of the past. We know how, from that time, the Classical and Teutonic spirits mingled together and formed that stream of modern thought on whose shores we ourselves live and move. A new stream is now being brought into the same bed, the stream of Oriental thought, and already the colors of the old stream show very clearly the influence of that new tributary. Look at any of the important works published during the last twenty years, not only on language, but on literature, mythology, law, religion, and philosophy, and you will see on every page the working of a new spirit. I do not say that the East can ever teach us new things, but it can place before us old things, and leave us to draw from them lessons more strange and startling than anything dreamt of in our philosophy.

Before all, a study of the East has taught us the same lesson which the Northern nations once learnt in Rome and Athens, that there are other worlds beside our own, that there are other religions, other mythologies, other laws, and that the history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel is not the whole history of human thought. In all these subjects the East has supplied us with parallels, and with all that is implied in parallels, viz., the possibility of comparing, measuring, and understanding. The comparative spirit is the truly scientific spirit of our age, nay of all ages. An empirical acquaintance with single facts does not constitute knowledge in the true sense of the word. All human knowledge begins with the Two or the Dyad, the comprehension of two single things as one. If in these days we may still quote Aristotle, we may boldly say that “there is no science of that which is unique.” A single event may be purely accidental, it comes and goes, it is inexplicable, it does not call for an explanation. But as soon as the same fact is repeated, the work of comparison begins, and the first step is made in that wonderful process which we call generalization, and which is at the root of all intellectual knowledge and of all intellectual language. This primitive process of comparison is repeated again and again, and when we now give the title of Comparative to the highest kind of knowledge in every branch of science, we have only replaced the old word intelligent (i.e., interligent) or inter-twining, by a new and more expressive term, comparative. I shall say nothing about the complete revolution of the study of languages by means of the comparative method, for here I can appeal to such names as Mommsen and Curtius, to show that the best among classical scholars are themselves the most ready to acknowledge the importance of the results obtained by the intertwining of Eastern and Western philology.

But take mythology. As long as we had only the mythology of the classical nations to deal with, we looked upon it simply as strange, anomalous, and irrational. When, however, the same strange stories, the same hallucinations, turned up in the most ancient mythology of India, when not only the character and achievements, but the very names of some of the gods and heroes were found to be the same, then every thoughtful observer saw that there must be a system in that ancient madness, that there must be some order in that strange mob of gods and heroes, and that it must be the task of comparative mythology to find out, what reason there is in all that mass of unreason.

The same comparative method has been applied to the study of religion also. All religions are Oriental, and with the exception of the Christian, their sacred books are all written in Oriental languages. The materials, therefore, for a comparative study of the religious systems of the world had all to be supplied by Oriental scholars. But far more important than those materials, is the spirit in which they have been treated. The sacred books of the principal religions of mankind had to be placed side by side with perfect impartiality, in order to discern the points which they share in common as well as those that are peculiar to each. The results already obtained by this simple juxtaposition are full of important lessons, and the fact that the truths on which all religions agree far exceed those on which they differ, has hardly been sufficiently appreciated. I feel convinced, however, that the time will come when those who at present profess to be most disquieted by our studies, will be the most grateful for our support,—for having shown by evidence which cannot be controverted, that all religions spring from the same sacred soil, the human heart; that all are quickened by the same divine spirit, the still small voice; and that, though the outward forms of religion may change, may wither and decay, yet, as long as man is what he is and what he has been, he will postulate again and again the Infinite as the very condition of the Finite, he will yearn for something which the world cannot give, he will feel his weakness and dependence, and in that weakness and dependence discover the deepest sources of his hope, and trust, and strength.

A patient study of the sacred scriptures of the world is what is wanted at present more than anything else, in order to clear our own ideas of the origin, the nature, the purposes of religion. There can be no science of one religion, but there can be a science of many. We have learnt already one lesson, that behind the helpless expressions which language has devised, whether in the East or in the West, for uttering the unutterable, be it Dyaushpitâ or Ahuramazda, be it Jehovah or Allah, be it the All or the Nothing, be it the First Cause or Our Father in heaven, there is the same intention, the same striving, the same stammering, the same faith. Other lessons will follow, till in the end we shall be able to restore that ancient bond which unites not only the East with the West, but all the members of the human family, and may learn to understand what a Persian poet meant when he wrote many centuries ago (I quote from Mr. Conway’s “Sacred Anthology”), “Diversity of worship has divided the human race into seventy-two nations. From among all their dogmas I have selected one—the Love of God.”

Nor is this comparative spirit restricted to the treatment of language, mythology, and religion. While hitherto we knew the origin and spreading of most of the ancient arts and sciences in one channel only, and had to be satisfied with tracing their sources to Greece and Rome, and thence down the main stream of European civilization, we have now for many of them one or two parallel histories in India and in China. The history of geometry, for instance,—the first formation of geometrical conceptions or technical terms—was hitherto known to us from Greece only: now we can compare the gradual elaboration of geometrical principles both in Greece and India, and thus arrive at some idea of what is natural or inevitable, and what is accidental or purely personal in each. It was known, for instance, that in Greece the calculation of solid figures began with the building of altars, and you will hear to-day from Dr. Thibaut, that in India also the first impulse to geometric science was given, not by the measuring of fields, as the name implies, but by the minute observances in building altars.

Similar coincidences and divergences have been brought to light by a comparative study of the history of astronomy, of music, of grammar, but, most of all, by a comparative study of philosophic thought. There are indeed few problems in philosophy which have not occupied the Indian mind, and nothing can exceed the interest of watching the Hindu and the Greek, working on the same problems, each in his own way, yet both in the end arriving at much the same results. Such are the coincidences between the two, that but lately an eminent German professor,3 published a treatise to show that the Greeks had borrowed their philosophy from India, while others lean to the opinion that in philosophy the Hindus are the pupils of the Greeks. This is the same feeling which impelled Dugald Stewart, when he saw the striking similarity between Greek and Sanskrit, to maintain that Sanskrit must have been put together after the model of Greek and Latin by those arch-forgers and liars, the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition. The comparative method has put an end to such violent theories. It teaches us that what is possible in one country is possible also in another; it shows us that, as there are antecedents for Plato and Aristotle in Greece, there are antecedents for the Vedânta and Sânkhya philosophies in India, and that each had its own independent growth. It is true, that when we first meet in Indian philosophy with our old friends, the four or five elements, the atoms, our metaphysics, our logic, our syllogism, we are startled; but we soon discover that, given the human mind and human language, and the world by which we are surrounded, the different systems of philosophy of Thales and Hegel, of Vyâsa and Kapila, are inevitable solutions. They all come and go, they are maintained and refuted, till at last all philosophy ends where it ought to begin, with an inquiry into the necessary conditions and the inevitable forms of knowledge, represented by a criticism of Pure Reason and, what is more important still, by a criticism of Language.

Much has been done of late for Indian philosophy, particularly by Ballantyne and Hall, by Cowell and Gough, by the editors of the “Bibliotheca Indica,” and the “Pandit.” Yet it is much to be desired, that some young scholars, well versed in the history of European philosophy, should devote themselves more ardently to this promising branch of Indian literature. No doubt they would find it a great help, if they were able to spend some years in India, in order to learn from the last and fast disappearing representatives of some of the old schools of Indian philosophy what they alone can teach. What can be done by such a combination of Eastern and Western knowledge, has lately been shown by the excellent work done by Dr. Kielhorn, the Professor of Sanskrit at the Deccan College in Punah. But there is now so much of published materials, and Sanskrit MSS. also are so easily obtained from India, that much might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany—much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.