Reconciliation of Races and Religions — 06 – [Part I. The Jewels of the Faiths]: The Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads; Judaism; Christianity.

THE BHAGAVAD-GITA AND THE UPANISHADS

Such criticism was hardly possible in England, even ten or twenty years ago, except for the Old Testament.

Some scholars, indeed, had had their eyes opened, but even highly cultured persons in the lay-world read the Bhagavad-Gita with enthusiastic admiration but quite uncritically.

Much as I sympathize with Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita), Jane Hay (of St. Abb's, Berwickshire, N. B.

), and Rose R.

Anthon, I cannot desire that their excessive love for the Gita should find followers.

I have it on the best authority that the apparent superiority of the Indian Scriptures to those of the Christian world influenced Margaret Noble to become 'Sister Nivedita'--a great result from a comparatively small cause.

And Miss Anthon shows an excess of enthusiasm when she puts these words (without note or comment) into the mouth of an Indian student:-- 'But now, O sire, I have found all the wealth and treasure and honour of the universe in these words that were uttered by the King of Kings, the Lover of Love, the Giver of Heritages.

There is nothing I ask for; no need is there in my being, no want in my life that this Gita does not fill to overflowing.'

[Footnote: _Stories of India_, 1914, p. 138. ] There are in fact numerous passages in the Gita which, united, would form a _Holy Living_ and a _Holy Dying_, if we were at the pains to add to the number of the passages a few taken from the Upanishads.

Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore have already studded their lectures with jewels from the Indian Scriptures.

The Hindus themselves delight in their holy writings, but if these writings are to become known in the West, the grain must first be sifted.

In other words, there must be literary and perhaps also (I say it humbly) moral criticism.

I will venture to add a few quotations:-- 'Whenever there is a decay of religion, O Bhâratas, and an ascendency of irreligion, then I manifest myself.

'For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evildoers, for the firm establishment of religion, I am born in every age.'

The other passages are not less noble.

'They also who worship other gods and make offering to them with faith, O son of Kunti, do verily make offering to me, though not according to ordinance.'

'Never have I not been, never hast thou, and never shall time yet come when we shall not all be.

That which pervades this universe is imperishable; there is none can make to perish that changeless being.

This never is born, and never dies, nor may it after being come again to be not; this unborn, everlasting, abiding, Ancient, is not slain when the body is slain.

Knowing This to be imperishable, everlasting, unborn, changeless, how and whom can a man make to be slain or slay?

As a man lays aside outworn garments, and takes others that are new, so the Body-Dweller puts away outworn bodies and goes to others that are new.

Everlasting is This, dwelling in all things, firm, motionless, ancient of days.'

JUDAISM

Judaism, too, is so rich in spiritual treasures that I hesitate to single out more than a very few jewels.

It is plain, however, that it needs to be reformed, and that this need is present in many of the traditional forms which enshrine so noble a spiritual experience.

The Sabbath, for instance, is as the apple of his eye to every true-hearted Jew; he addresses it in his spiritual songs as a Princess.

And he does well; the title Princess belongs of right to 'Shabbath.'

For the name--be it said in passing--is probably a corruption of a title of the Mother-goddess Ashtart, and it would, I think, have been no blameworthy act if the religious transformers of Israelite myths had made a special myth, representing Shabbath as a man.

When the Messiah comes, I trust that _He_ will do this.

For 'the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.'

The faith of the Messiah is another of Israel's treasures.

Or rather, perhaps I should say, the faith in the Messiahs, for one Messiah will not meet the wants of Israel or the world.

The Messiah, or the Being-like-a-man (Dan.

vii.

13), is a supernatural Being, who appears on earth when he is wanted, like the Logos.

We want Messiah badly now;

specially, I should say, we Christians want 'great-souled ones' (Mahatmas), who can 'guide us into all the truth' (John xvi.

13).

That they have come in the past, I doubt not.

God could not have left his human children in the lurch for all these centuries.

One thousand Jews of Tihran are said to have accepted Baha'ullah as the expected Messiah.

They were right in what they affirmed, and only wrong in what they denied.

And are we not all wrong in virtually denying the Messiahship of women-leaders like Kurratu'l 'Ayn; at least, I have only met with this noble idea in a work of Fiona Macleod.

CHRISTIANITY

And what of our own religion?

What precious jewels are there which we can share with our Oriental brethren?

First of all one may mention that wonderful picture of the divine-human Saviour, which, full of mystery as it is, is capable of attracting to its Hero a fervent and loving loyalty, and melting the hardest heart.

We have also a portrait (implicit in the Synoptic Gospels)--the product of nineteenth century criticism--of the same Jesus Christ, and yet who could venture to affirm that He really was the same, or that a subtle aroma had not passed away from the Life of lives?

In this re-painted portrait we have, no longer a divine man, but simply a great and good Teacher and a noble Reformer.

This portrait too is in its way impressive, and capable of lifting men above their baser selves, but it would obviously be impossible to take this great Teacher and Reformer for the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind.

We have further a pearl of great price in the mysticism of Paul, which presupposes, not the Jesus of modern critics, nor yet the Jesus of the Synoptics, but a splendid heart-uplifting Jesus in the colours of mythology.

In this Jesus Paul lived, and had a constant ecstatic joy in the everlasting divine work of creation.

He was 'crucified with Christ,' and it was no longer Paul that lived, but Christ that lived in him.

And the universe--which was Paul's, inasmuch as it was Christ's--was transformed by the same mysticism.

'It was,' says Evelyn Underhill, [Footnote: _The Mystic Way_, p. 194 (chap.

iii.

'St. Paul and the Mystic Way').

] 'a universe soaked through and through by the Presence of God: that transcendent-immanent Reality, "above all, and through all, and in you all" as fontal "Father," energising "Son," indwelling "Spirit," in whom every mystic, Christian or non-Christian, is sharply aware that "we live and move and have our being."

To his extended consciousness, as first to that of Jesus, this Reality was more actual than anything else--"God is all in all."

' It is true, this view of the Universe as God-filled is probably not Paul's, for the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians are hardly that great teacher's work.

But it is none the less authentic, 'God is all and in all'; the whole Universe is temporarily a symbol by which God is at once manifested and veiled.

I fear we have largely lost this.

It were therefore better to reconquer this truth by India's help.

Probably indeed the initial realization of the divinity of the universe (including man) is due to an increased acquaintance with the East and especially with Persia and India.

And I venture to think that Catholic Christians have conferred a boon on their Protestant brethren by emphasizing the truth of the feminine element (see pp. 31, 37) in the manifestation of the Deity, just as the Chinese and Japanese Buddhists have done for China and Japan, and the modern reformers of Indian religion have done for India.

This too is a 'gem of purest ray.'

PART II BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL