Class _Q_K-I 
 
 Book .§t 
 
 Copyright N° 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
• The Lost Sheep 
 by a. w swokd 
 
mt Htgilt of tfie Wotl* 
 
 A BRIEF COMPARATIVE STUDY 
 OF 
 
 Christianity and Non-Christian 
 Religions 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY 
 OF MISSIONS * * * * * WEST MEDFORD, MASS. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
? 
 
 <>1 
 
 %\ 
 
 Copyrjoht, April, 191 1 
 
 CENTRAL O 'MMivi EE ON 1 HE UNITED 
 MISSIONS 
 
 Frank Wood, Printer 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 ©CU305H36 
 
^ 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 Chapter I. Hinduism 1 
 
 Chapter II. Buddhism 61 
 
 Chapter III. Animism, Confucianism and 
 
 Taoism 121 
 
 Chapter IV. Mohammedanism . . . 177 
 Chapter V. What the Christians of Asia 
 Think of the Non-Christian 
 
 Religions 241 
 
 Chapter VI. Christ, the Only Light of 
 
 the World , 297 
 
 Index 369 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Ten years have passed since the organization of the 
 Central Committee on the United Study of Missions 
 in connection with the Ecumenical Conference held in 
 New York, May, 1900. Ten study books have been 
 published through the Macmillan Company, and about 
 seven hundred thousand copies have been sold through 
 Women's Boards of Missions. The last volume, 
 "Western Women in Eastern Lands," by Helen Barrett 
 Montgomery, has reached sales of nearly one hundred 
 thousand, and marks not only the completion of ten 
 years of study but the fiftieth anniversary of the organi- 
 zation of Women's Foreign Missionary Boards in the 
 United States. It has led to the celebration of the 
 Jubilee of Missions. 
 
 Our book for the coming year, "The Light of the 
 World," is published by the Central Committee. Its 
 author is Mr. Robert E. Speer, who deals in an 
 attractive and sympathetic way with the great religions 
 of the world. No one is better fitted for the task, and 
 Mr. Speer has in these sj x chapters presented fairly 
 these Eastern faiths and shown clearly their inadequacy 
 to human need. The testimony of eminent men who 
 have come out from these religions into the true Light 
 cannot be disputed or discounted.. 
 
 The presence in our own country of certain men and 
 women who are giving incomplete and incorrect state- 
 ments of non-Christian faiths, which are sometimes 
 accepted by American women, makes this volume 
 especially valuable at this time. 
 
 Mrs. Henry W. Peabody. 
 Miss E. Harriet Stanwood. 
 Miss Rachel Lowrie. 
 Mrs. Decatur M. Sawyer. 
 Miss Grace T. Colburn. 
 Mrs. A. V. Pohlman. 
 Miss Elizabeth C. Northup. 
 Miss Olivia H. Lawrence. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Christ is the Light of the World. He is its 
 only and its perfect Light. In comparing Chris- 
 tianity with the other religions of the world 
 Christians are not seeking for something in the 
 other religions which Christianity lacks. We 
 believe that in Christ all fullness dwells and that 
 we are to be complete in Him. We make the 
 comparison of Christianity with the non-Christian 
 religions for three purposes: First, to discover 
 where the points of contact and of separation are v/ 
 
 found, in order that Christianity may be the 
 more effectively presented to the non-Christian 
 peoples; Second, to bring clearly into view 
 those fundamental differences between Chris- 
 tianity and all other religions which justify and 
 require the effort of missions to make Christianity 
 the religion of all men; and, Third, to bring to 
 light by the comparison of Christianity with the 
 gropings of the non-Christian faiths, and by its 
 application to all the life of humanity, those 
 latent and inexhaustible treasures in Christianity 
 which will otherwise be undeveloped. 
 
 It is on this basis that we lay Christianity 
 down for this comparison. Not for one moment 
 do we classify it with the world's religions or 
 regard it simply as the natural crown of humanity's 
 religious aspiration. There is in it something 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 radically distinctive which sets Christianity in a 
 class apart and alone. As the Rev. C. F. Andrews 
 has said in a recent article in a Christian 
 periodical in India: — 
 
 Christ is indeed the fulfillment of each world- 
 religion, and the Light of each world-faith, yet He is 
 something infinitely more. He is the Crucified. And 
 He makes, with every one who comes to Him, the 
 tremendous primary condition of sacrifice, of death. 
 In Himself is a new beginning, a new life-start; but this 
 can only be reached by the death of the old life. Christ 
 came indeed to fulfill Judaism ; but there was no easy, 
 smooth, accommodating, assimilative evolution. The 
 Jews crucified Him. Paul the Apostle is never tired of 
 declaring that Christ was the fulfilling of the law; yet he 
 knew, through intense agony of suffering, that he must 
 die to the law, in order to live to Christ; that the old 
 man must be crucified, so that the new man may be 
 made manifest. Even so, Hinduism, great and noble as 
 it is, must die and be reborn before it can live to 
 Christ. The Christian believes in fulfillment — no one 
 more so! but it is fulfillment through the Cross; fulfill- 
 ment through a resurrection from the dead. ( The 
 Indian Standard, November, 1910.) 
 
 It is as those who are certain of this, and who 
 know Christ to be the Lord of all mankind, the 
 Saviour of the world, that we take up in candor 
 and sympathy the study of the religious thought 
 and life of the nations which have not known of 
 Christ and must be won to Him. The very 
 security of our faith in Christ makes it possible 
 for us to view in love and tenderness all out- 
 reachings of men after that which can be found 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 in Christ alone, and to regard in pity and com- 
 passion all those deep evils which have burdened 
 the religious nature and darkened the worship 
 and polluted the life of man. 
 
 Our one desire is to know the facts in order 
 that we may clearly discern and fully discharge 
 our duty. In seeking for these facts we shall 
 consider first Hinduism, then Buddhism, then 
 Animism, Confucianism and Taoism, and then 
 Mohammedanism. These religions include prac- 
 tically the whole population of the non-Christian 
 world. After these studies we shall weigh the 
 testimony of the men of Asia who have in their 
 own personal experience tested and compared the 
 non-Christian religions with Christianity; and 
 last of all, w T e shall consider the claims of Chris- v 
 tianity as the final and absolute religion. 
 
 In these studies there has been no attempt at 
 novelty of statement. The effort has been simply 
 to set forth the comparative facts clearly and 
 carefully, citing at every point the most fair and 
 competent authorities, and seeking only to bathe 
 the whole investigation in the atmosphere of 
 missionary sympathy and of a Christian faith, at 
 once open-minded and perfectly fearless and 
 assured. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 HINDUISM 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 Hinduism is at once the oldest and the newest, Complexity 
 the most massive and the most loose-woven, the of Hinduism, 
 most composite and the most simple, with the 
 noblest and basest elements of any of the non-Chris- 
 tian religions. In its most ancient and worthy 
 form it dates from the dawn of history. In the 
 gray of that early morning when the Aryans moved 
 out from Central Asia, our ancestors passed west- 
 ward, while the ancestors of our Indian kinsmen 
 streamed south through the mountain passes of 
 the Punjab, and subdued or absorbed the Dra- 
 vidian aborigines. Yet Hinduism is also the 
 newest of religions, shifting its view and modi- 
 fying its character to incorporate the forces that 
 beat upon it and to which it would fain adapt 
 itself without surrendering its integrity or break- 
 ing with its past. It is the most massive and 
 composite of religions. It is indeed rather a 
 conglomerate of religions than a religion. The 
 social principle of caste gives it a firm and mar- 
 velous unity, but within this unity there is a 
 diversity of ideas, of theological principles, and 
 of moral character so comprehensive as to include 
 all contradictories and to make room for the 
 
4 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 highest and lowest elements. On the one hand 
 are the ideas of redemption from the world and of 
 union with God, which India has sought with 
 "desperate resolution for three thousand tragic 
 years," contempt for all earthly things as of no 
 account in comparison with the heavenly treasure, 
 the spirit of sacrifice and devotion which found 
 utterance in such prodigal and reckless offering 
 of life in loyalty to religion that it had to be 
 prohibited by the British Government in the name 
 alike of mercy and of truth, and the exaltation of 
 bhakti or living faith as the true way by which to 
 draw near to God. On the other hand is the idea 
 of pantheism which vitiates India's thinking 
 about God and the world, and which, penetrating 
 the whole Hindu faith, obscures the personality 
 of God, reduces the actual world to illusion, and 
 obliterates the fundamental moral distinctions. 
 And beneath this are idolatry, base and debasing 
 conceptions of God, and in certain sections of 
 Hinduism the vile and unspeakable degradation 
 which exalts lust into a religious principle. 
 Noble We shall be able better to estimate the good 
 
 Qualities oi that is in Hinduism and more justly to discern 
 Indian People. anc i judge the evil, if we distinguish between the 
 religion and the people of India. Some people 
 are better than the logical result of their religious 
 ideas would suggest, and others are worse. Here 
 in the West we are worse than our religion. Its 
 commonest requirements are in advance of our 
 practices. But in India the people are better 
 
HINDUISM 5 
 
 than their religion. They fall short, as we do, 
 of what their best religious ideals require of 
 them, but many of them live far above its moral 
 permissions. India would be a sorry land if 
 there were no men in it superior in character to 
 Hinduism's gods. "It is a wonder to my mind,'' 
 said Bishop Caldwell, "that the people of India, 
 with such a religion as theirs, should possess so 
 many good qualities as I believe they do ; and my 
 explanation of the wonder is that, notwithstanding 
 their religion, God has conferred upon them, 
 through the teaching of His providence and 
 through the inheritance of experience, many 
 excellent gifts. I admire much that I see 
 amongst the people of India. I admire their 
 religiousness; I admire their temperance; I 
 admire their patience and gentleness and courtesy ; 
 I admire their care of their ' relations to the 
 farthest remove, and, in many particulars, I 
 admire what remains of the primeval framework 
 of their village system and their social system. 
 Only let the still more important elements of 
 individual and national character which are pro- 
 duced by Christianity, and by Christianity alone, 
 be superadded to these and similar characteristics 
 of race, and the result will be a style of character 
 of which neither India nor Christianity will have 
 need to be ashamed. " ("Christianity and Hin- 
 duism, ' * p. 40. ) In general, even now the people 
 of India are simple, temperate, kindly, religious. 
 There are five sins for which, in their view, 
 
6 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 there is no atonement — killing a Brahman, rob- 
 bing a Brahman, defiling a teacher's wife, eating 
 cow's flesh, and drinking intoxicants. The god 
 Krishna said, "A drunkard shall, in his next 
 birth, get the birth of a dog or a vulture." And 
 no people on earth have shown more religious 
 devotion, uttered in more ready and unhesitating 
 sacrifice. "I have found no people in Europe 
 more religious," says Sir Monier Williams, 
 "none more patiently persevering in common 
 duties, none more docile and amenable to author- 
 ity, none more dutiful to parents, none more 
 faithful in service. ... I doubt, however, 
 whether the worst Indians are so offensive in 
 their vices as the worst type of low, unprincipled 
 Europeans. . . . They show greater respect for 
 animal life than Europeans. They have more 
 natural courtesy of manners, more duti fulness, 
 more veneration for rank, age and learning, and 
 they are certainly more temperate in eating and 
 drinking." ("Modern India and the Indians," 
 pp. 88, 128 — quoted by Sukumar Haldar, "Hin- 
 duism," p. 22.) The natural virtues, or capaci- 
 ties for virtues, of the Indian people are needed 
 for the uses of Christ. 
 The Good And we are able to recognize not only the good 
 
 in Indian that is in the Indian people but also, as has been 
 
 Religion. said, and as we shall have to consider more fully 
 
 later, the good that is in the Indian religion and 
 its sacred books. It is true that even the most 
 friendly judges of these writings admit that the 
 
HINDUISM 7 
 
 good is buried in what is worthless or worse. 
 Max Muller, in the "Preface to the Sacred Books 
 of the East, " speaks of the good in them as treas- 
 ures extracted from refuse, as solitary fragments 
 of pure gold disinterred from a heap of rubbish. 
 Dr. Jacob Chamberlain gathered a collection of 
 these fragments, which he was accustomed to 
 quote in his preaching in India and in his mis- 
 sionary addresses in America. But he was accus- 
 tomed to point out, as Max Muller also admitted, 
 that these noble passages w r ere as oases in great 
 deserts, and he told of an old Indian who ex- 
 claimed in surprise at hearing these quotations, 
 "I never found any things like these in our 
 sacred books." 
 
 We shall understand better the religious prob- The Sacred 
 lem in India and have some idea of the religious Books of 
 development which has taken place if we look I" n£ luism. 
 for a moment at these sacred books which record 
 the history of Indian religion, and which, as the 
 Bibles of India, exercise a powerful influence 
 over its religious life to-day. The sacred litera- 
 ture of Hinduism is of two classes, Sruti, "that 
 which is heard or revealed," and Smriti, "that 
 which is remembered and handed down by tradi- 
 tion." The Sruti includes the four Vedas, the 
 Rig- Veda, the Sama-Veda, the Yajur-Veda and 
 the Atharva-Veda, and the three portions of each 
 of these Vedas ; i. e., the Mantras, the Brahmanas 
 and the Upanishads. The Smriti may be said 
 to denote all the post-Vedic literature under the 
 
8 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 five divisions: (1) The Darsanas or six Systems 
 of Philosophy. There were six of these systems, 
 as follows: Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, 
 Mimansa and Vedanta, of which the last has been 
 the most influential; (2) The six Vedangas, 
 covering rules for sacrifice, grammar, astronomy, 
 etc.; (3) The Smarta-sutras, containing rules relat- 
 ing to domestic rites and conventional usages; (4) 
 The Dharma-sastras, or Law-books, of which the 
 most famous and influential was the Code of 
 Mann; (5) The Bhakti-sastras, including the great 
 poems, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and also 
 the Puranas and Tantras. Of this literature, 
 the hymns of the Vedas or the Mantras express 
 the early stage of religious thought, which 
 may be called physiolatry ; the Brahmanas rep- 
 resent ritualism and sacrifice; the Upanishads 
 and Darsanas, rationalistic and pantheistic phil- 
 osophy ; Manu, caste and domestic usages, and 
 the Bhakti-sastras the principle of devotion to 
 personal gods. 
 The Vedic Of all this literature, India thinks most to-day 
 
 Hymns. f t h e Vedic hymns, the Upanishads, the Vedanta 
 
 philosophy, and the section of the Mahabharata 
 known as the Bhagavad-gita. (1) The Arya 
 Samaj represents the highest devotion to the 
 Vedas. In the Arya catechism occurs the ques- 
 tion, "What revelation is true and infallible?" 
 and the answer is, "The Vedas are the only 
 infallible revelation," conforming to the Arya's 
 tests of a true revelation. The next question is, 
 
HINDUISM 9 
 
 "Give the meaning of the Vedas;" and the 
 answer is, "The divinely inspired writings con- 
 tained in the oldest books that exist in the world, 
 embodying the highest secular, spiritual and 
 occult truths, sciences and philosophies, are 
 called the Vedas. ' ' The noblest god in the Vedic 
 hymns is Varuna, of whom Professor Hopkins - 
 says, "Varuna beside the loftiest figure in the 
 Hellenistic pantheon stands like a god beside 
 a man." (''Religions of India," p. 172.) But 
 Varuna was not popular, and he was displaced by 
 other deities, — Agni, the fire god, and Indra, the 
 warrior god. If there had only been a succession 
 of poets like those who composed the penitential 
 hymns in the Rig-Veda, says Dr. Griswold, 
 "Varuna might have prevailed; just as Yahweh 
 in Israel prevailed over the Baalim. And if 
 Varuna had prevailed, the religious history of 
 India would have been different from what it has 
 been. 'If Varuna had prevailed,' as Professor 
 Bloomfleld says, 'India would have become mono- 
 theistic and theocratic, which it never did.' " 
 (Griswold, "The God Varuna in the Rig-Veda," 
 p. 33.) Not only are the Vedas, accordingly, not 
 monotheistic, as Nehemiah Goreh, one of the 
 most notable -converts from Hinduism, showed 
 ("Supposed and Real Doctrines of Hinduism," 
 pp. 11-18), but the baser gods triumphed over 
 the nobler ones. 
 
 (2) The Upanishads were the Hindu scriptures UpanisKads. 
 which appealed so forcefully to Schopenhauer. 
 
10 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 u Oh, how thoroughly is the mind here washed 
 clean of all early engrafted Jewish superstitions, 
 and of all philosophy that cringes before those 
 superstitions! In the whole world there is no 
 study, except that of the originals, so beneficial 
 and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It 
 has been the solace of my life; it will be the 
 solace of my death." The Upanishads represent 
 the groping of men's souls for peace after their 
 discontent with the futility of the sacrificial ritu- 
 alism of the Brahmanas. Their object, as Max 
 Muller says, was "to show the utter uselessness — 
 nay, the mischievousness — of all ritual perform- 
 ances; to condemn every sacrificial act which has 
 for its motive a desire or hope of reward; to 
 deny, if not the existence, at least the exceptional 
 and exalted character of the Devas, and to teach 
 that there is no hope of salvation and deliverance 
 except by the individual Self recognizing the true 
 and universal Self, and rinding rest there, where 
 alone rest can be found." ("Hibbert Lectures, " 
 pp. 340, 341.) This note of pessimism, which 
 has never since left Indian thought, now appears. 
 How can the soul be glad when its only hope of 
 salvation is found within itself? And with all 
 this sad but noble questioning the Upanishads 
 mingle much that is unworthy. As Williams 
 says, they are "a labyrinth of mystical ideas and 
 puerile conceits." Max Muller says that it was 
 a problem with him how these books "should, 
 side by side of so much that is fresh, natural, 
 
HINDUISM 11 
 
 simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that 
 is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but 
 even hideous and repellent." ("The Upani- 
 shads, " Vol. I, Introduction.) 
 
 (3) The Vedanta philosophy in the Upanishads, Darsanas. 
 and in the philosophical writings of the Darsanas 
 which followed them, is the great intellectual in- 
 fluence among the thoughtful Hindus to-day. It 
 
 is the higher Hinduism as opposed to popular 
 Hinduism. The best book on the subject is 
 Slater's "The Higher Hinduism in Relation to 
 Christianity." These two types of Hinduism, 
 the philosophical and the popular, present to the 
 missionary enterprise the great religious problem 
 of the present day, and must be considered later 
 together. 
 
 (4) The most popular Bible of Hinduism to- Bhagavad- 
 day is the Bhagavad-gita, embodying the Vedanta gita. 
 view and also ministering to the popular need of 
 
 faith in some personal deity. It is this combina- 
 tion which gives it its favor. As Mr. Slater 
 says, "The insufficiency of a pantheistic creed, 
 and the need of some Object of worship and 
 devotion in which the heart may rest, are shown 
 very clearly in the Bhagavad-gita, the most 
 popular devotional book of the thoughtful classes 
 of India. Its main teaching is that men's devo- 
 tion (bhakti) must be directed to a person — the 
 Krishna, the Ishta Devata — as a representative 
 of the Supreme, with the additional quality of a 
 Redeemer. It arose from a fusion of the tran- 
 
12 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 scendental and popular elements, both of which 
 had existed all along in Hinduism. It seeks to 
 combine the mystic pantheism of the Vedanta 
 with an attractive mythology, and hence its 
 popularity." ("The Higher Hinduism," p. 
 125.) The aim of the book is also to harmonize 
 the doctrines of the three most influential of the 
 philosophical schools, the Yoga, the Sankhya 
 and the Vedanta. It is the loftiest flight of 
 Hindu thought and feeling, with many noble 
 sentiments, with none of the degrading represen- 
 tations of Krishna found in the Puranas. Its 
 style is deemed incomparable and Krishna be- 
 comes in it not simply a great hero, but the 
 Supreme Being. The poem possesses a charm 
 and beauty of its own, and is more Christian in 
 sentiment than any other Indian literature. It 
 inculcates such virtues as " 'fearlessness, purity of 
 heart, steadfastness, self-restraint, harmlessness, 
 truth, absence of wrath, renunciation, peaceful- 
 ness, absence of calumny, compassion to living 
 beings, uncovetousness, mildness, modesty, ab- 
 sence of fickleness, boldness, forgiveness, forti- 
 tude, uprightness, amity, absence of pride,' as 
 Divine and human properties." (Gita, XVI, 1-3; 
 Slater, "The Higher Hinduism, p. 146.) But 
 all that is good in the Gita is in Christianity, 
 and, on the other hand, it teaches a doctrine that 
 would justify murder; it upholds caste, binding 
 its shackles on again against the assault made 
 upon them by Buddhism; it blends pantheism 
 
HINDUISM 13 
 
 with polytheism; it teaches that all qualities, 
 whether good or bad, proceed from Krishna, and 
 so it obscures ethical distinctions and paralyzes 
 moral responsibility; it teaches the Vedantic 
 doctrine of Maya or illusion, the unreality of the 
 world; it has no conception "of the real evil of 
 sin as a violation of a moral government, and 
 makes no provision whereby sin may be justly 
 forgiven and its thraldom and government 
 removed." "The salvation it teaches," as 
 Bishop Caldwell said, "is not a salvation from 
 sin by means of a new birth to righteousness, 
 commencing in the present life and projected 
 hereafter, but merely a salvation from the necessity 
 of being born again in repeated births, by means 
 of the final emancipation of spirit from matter." 
 And yet the Gita is India's noblest religious book. 
 
 "The one idea which is impressed on the India Still 
 mind," says the Rev. J. N. Farquhar, after a Seeking a 
 survey of the sacred books of India, "is that Blble - 
 Hindu literature is an endless succession of fruit- 
 less attempts to reach a satisfying sacred book. 
 As the history of Hinduism is a long search after 
 God, each new effort implying the failure of the 
 preceding, so the unimaginable extent of the 
 sacred literature is an open confession that the 
 right book has not yet been found. There are 
 many Hindu books which please the philosopher; 
 there are many Hindu books which amuse and 
 interest the peasant; but there is no Hindu book 
 which interests both and uplifts both. Every 
 
14 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 aspect of Hinduism and every sect has its sacred 
 book, but there is no book which teaches Hindu- 
 ism as such. Perhaps the Gita is the best com- 
 pendium in existence, but even the Gita is a 
 sectarian manual and is totally unfit for the 
 educated. Does not this history, so great, so 
 suggestive, and yet so unsatisfying, show that the 
 Hindu soul needs just such a book as the Bible?" 
 ("The Young Men of India," March, 1910. 
 Article, "The Bibles of India," p. 41.) 
 
 "I am not a Christian," wrote a Hindu in a 
 widely quoted article in an Indian magazine eight 
 years ago, "but I think the more Christ-like we 
 become, the better for us and our land. And 
 towards securing this happy end, nothing can be 
 more effective than the practice of placing before 
 the minds of our students daily and repeatedly the 
 ideal of love, self-abnegation, and suffering for 
 others' sake, that is presented to us in the pages 
 of the Gospels. What figure in the ancient 
 history of India impresses us with greater rever- 
 ence, except it be Raja Ram Chundra? But the 
 narrative, describing the life and deeds of the 
 latter, is marred with gross inconsistencies, and 
 its value as a testimony is much diminished. 
 How simple, how direct, how unadorned is the 
 Gospel narrative! Truth is stamped on it; it 
 carries its proof along with it. No external evi- 
 dence is needed. Half an hour's study of the 
 Bible will do more to remodel a man than a 
 whole day spent in repeating the slokas of the 
 
India — Jain Temple at Sadkee, Oodeypore 
 (Figure of Vishxu) 
 
HINDUISM 15 
 
 Puranas or the mantras of the Rig- Veda. " 
 ("The Kayastha Samachar," August, 1902. 
 Article, "The Religion of Our Young Men, " pp. 
 144, 145.) "Yes," Max Muller tells us a friend 
 wrote to him, "you are right; how tremendously 
 ahead of other sacred books is the Bible! The 
 differences strike one as almost unfairly great." 
 But the unfairness lies in withholding the one 
 supreme book from the world. 
 
 The three forms of Hinduism then with which Hinduism 
 Christianity comes into contact to-day in India To-day. 
 may be said roughly to be philosophic Hinduism, 
 popular Hinduism and reformed Hinduism. The 
 lines of distinction are not, of course, clear. 
 Philosophic Hinduism and popular Hinduism 
 both represent a moral advance on the Hinduism 
 of two centuries ago. The influence of the con- 
 tact with Christian ethics and the legislation of 
 the British Government have abolished, as we 
 shall see, many gross evils, but both philosophic 
 and popular Hinduism cling still to positions 
 from which many Hindus are prepared to break 
 . away. Something must be said about each of 
 these three types of Hinduism. 
 
 1. As a result of the Western education which Philosophic 
 India has been receiving for fifty years and of the Hinduism, 
 revived study of Sanskrit by European students 
 whose labors have been popularized in India by 
 native scholars, the educated classes of India 
 "now understand something of the history of 
 their religion and know that their ancient faiths 
 
16 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 were very different from modern Hinduism." 
 The consciousness of the necessity of religion and 
 the growth of the spirit of nationalism have com- 
 bined with the Christian influences to produce a 
 great reaction in favor of ancient Hinduism. 
 "Just as the scholars of mediaeval times in 
 Europe appealed to the reason and the imagination 
 by eulogizing the speculations and poetry of the 
 ancient world, so the Hindus of to-day turn to 
 their long-forgotten literature, and seek to meet 
 the needs of society by a renovated Hinduism. 
 The more thoughtful of the people have beaten a 
 retreat from their temples to their sacred books. 
 Conscious of the unsoundness of much of the out- 
 ward structure of their faith, they have fallen 
 back with the boldness of despair on their ancient 
 philosophy, which is now thrust to the front as 
 the main support of Hinduism." (Slater, "The 
 Higher Hinduism," p. 12.) The core of this 
 new Hinduism is the Vedanta philosophy, the 
 old pantheism of India, read full of new meanings 
 drawn from India's contact with Christianity and 
 Western thought. Essentially, however, it is the 
 old pantheistic philosophy. In its view the uni- 
 verse is God; from Him it proceeds, into Him it 
 is dissolved, in Him it breathes. God alone 
 exists truly, the world falsely; the soul only is 
 God and no other. Nothing really exists but the 
 one impersonal Spirit which is God. This 
 Spirit is itself Existence, Knowledge, Joy, but 
 the existence is without consciousness and the joy 
 
HINDUISM 17 
 
 is only freedom from the miseries of transmigra- 
 tion. "When this impersonal unconscious Spirit 
 assumes ^consciousness and personality — that is, 
 when it begins to exist in any object, to think 
 about anything or be joyful about anything — it 
 does so by associating itself with Maya, the 
 power of Illusion." (Murdoch, "Philosophic 
 Hinduism," p. 19.) It is only through the influ- 
 ence of Maya or illusion that we look upon things 
 as different, such as the potter and his pots or the 
 weaver and his beam, or indeed that we see them 
 as existing at all. (Lai Behari Dey, "Vedan- 
 tism, " p. 4.) The central word of the Vedanta 
 is Ekamivadvitiyam, "One only without a 
 second." God only is. 
 
 It is true that into all this the modern Vedan- 
 tists have woven a great' deal that was never 
 dreamed of in the Upanishads, but they have not 
 abandoned the old pantheistic philosophy. "The 
 creation," says Saradananda, "is as eternal as 
 the creator himself." And Vivakananda, in one 
 of his lectures on the unifying of one's self in the 
 Infinite, exclaimed, "I am neither body nor 
 changes of the body. Nor am I sense nor object 
 of senses. I am existence absolute. Bliss ab- 
 solute. Knowledge absolute. I am it. I am it. 
 I am neither death, nor fear of death, nor was I 
 ever born, nor had I parents. ... I am without 
 form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time. 
 I am in everything. I am the basis of the Uni- 
 verse. Everywhere am I." ("Homiletic Re- 
 
18 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 view," April, 1901. Article by F. F. 
 Ellinwood, "Vedantism in America," p. 306.) 
 
 Vfvakananda. No two personalities have contributed more to 
 this neo-Hinduism, or drawn the imagination of 
 Indians more powerfully to a revivification of the 
 ancient faith, than Vivakananda and Mrs. Annie 
 Besant. Vivakananda, whose real name was 
 Narendra Nath Datta, was a graduate of a mis- 
 sionary college in Calcutta and a member of a 
 well-known family there, some of whose members 
 were Christians. He studied law, but did not 
 practice. For a time he was a member of the 
 Brahmo Samaj, and as a teacher in the Metro- 
 politan Institution founded by the reformer 
 Vidyasagar, tried to prove the hollowness of 
 Hinduism. Later he became a disciple of a 
 Hindu Ascetic, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, 
 though he never himself practiced asceticism. 
 He was not a scholar, and he was sometimes 
 carried beyond the truth in his enthusiasm, but 
 he was a man of much eloquence and magnetism, 
 and his success in America as a preacher of the 
 higher Hinduism paved the way for many suc- 
 cessors, and his influence in India powerfully 
 aided the revival of a nationalistic Hindu spirit. 
 (See "Swami Vivakananda and His Guru.") 
 
 Mrs. Besant. Mrs. Besant also has had an interesting history. 
 
 She has been successively Protestant and High 
 Church Christian, anti-Christian, theist, atheist, 
 materialist, anti-materialist, Malthusian and anti- 
 Malthusian, spiritualist, theosophist, pantheist, 
 
HINDUISM 19 
 
 polytheist and Hindu. The theosophical move- 
 ment, with which she is still allied, exerts a wide 
 influence in India. It is a movement within Hin- 
 duism, and Mrs. Besant is at present the leading 
 figure in it and in the Hindu revival, ardent in 
 her devotion to the ancient glories of Hinduism, 
 and in her opposition to the progress of Chris- 
 tianity. With the patriotic devotion of India to 
 its past we cannot but have great sympathy; and, 
 as we shall see, in some of the ideas of that past, 
 and all the more as modified by the necessities of 
 India's spiritual experience and by contact with 
 Christian thought, there are the very points of 
 contact which we seek and without which we 
 should be in despair of reaching the Indian mind 
 and heart. 
 
 2. The theology of popular Hinduism is poly- p opu i ar 
 theism, and its worship is idolatry. It "con- Hinduism, 
 ceives the Impersonal Spirit as making itself 
 known under three forms," says Dr. Datta. 
 "Brahma (masculine, not Brahma, neuter) the 
 Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the 
 Destroyer. Modern Hinduism concerns itself 
 mainly with the last two persons of its trinity. 
 Both are closely related to certain accessory 
 divinities, such as Ganesa and Subrahmanya, the 
 two sons of Siva, Rama and Krishna, the two 
 most important incarnations of Vishnu, or to 
 female divinities, such as the wives of Siva and 
 Vishnu. Brahma apparently needs no remem- 
 brance; his work of creation is done, and nothing 
 
20 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 can undo it. Probably not more than three 
 temples exist to his honor throughout India. On 
 the other hand, the worship of Siva and Vishnu 
 forms the very heart of the later Hindu religion. " 
 (Datta, "The Desire of India," p. 85.) Of the 
 moral and religious character of popular Hindu- 
 ism, Hindu witnesses will be the best. Sukumar 
 Haldar calls it "gloomy temples, blood-stained 
 altars and hideous images," a "filthy veil" which 
 hides the romantic scenery of the ancient faith 
 that lies forgotten beyond. And he adds in his 
 defence of the ancient faith, "No one has 
 attempted to demonstrate the original monothe- 
 istic form of the Hindu religion without raising 
 against himself a host of bigots believing in the 
 existence of 330 millions of deities. The very 
 fact that the Brahman priests had at one time a 
 predominant influence over state and society suffi- 
 ciently accounts for the consequences that have 
 followed. Such being the case, it is no wonder 
 that foreigners in India and superficial observers 
 should form a low estimate of the Hindu religion. 
 Exoteric Hinduism to-day has scarcely a single 
 element of unmixed good to boast of. The rites 
 of religion and the ceremonials of society scarcely 
 exhibit a single aspect which is in any way cal- 
 culated to impress favorably a superficial foreign 
 critic. These are deplorable facts. To these, 
 indeed, are due in a great measure the thousand 
 woes that are telling on the present generation of 
 Hindus. . . . What is forced upon their notice 
 
HINDUISM 21 
 
 (i. £., the notice of Englishmen in India) by daily 
 experience gives them the idea that Hinduism is 
 about the worst religion that ever claimed a fol- 
 lowing." (Haldar, "Hinduism," pp. 4, 5.) 
 "The Daily Hindu," one of the strongest native 
 papers in India, the organ of the Orthodox 
 Hindus of Madras, is even more plain spoken: 
 "The glory has departed out of our religious 
 institutions, and what once contributed to purify 
 the minds of millions of men and women are now 
 the grovelling ground of some of the most igno- 
 rant and wretched of human beings . . . who 
 merely wallow in a mire of voluptuous pastimes, 
 wasting the pious contributions of the widow and 
 the orphan, and breeding around them a whole 
 host of idle, able-bodied vagabonds. The vast 
 majority of these endowments are corrupt to the 
 core. They are a festering mass of crime and 
 vice and gigantic swindling. " (Quoted in "The 
 Missionary Review of the World," April, 1896, 
 p. 261.) 
 
 "The Reis and Rayyet, " an influential paper 
 of the Orthodox Hindus of Calcutta, speaks 
 contemptuously of Mrs. Besant's ecstacies over 
 the beauties of Hinduism, and says, "When an 
 English lady, of decent culture, professes to be an 
 admirer of Tantric mysticism and Krishna wor- 
 ship, it behooves every well-wisher of the coun- 
 try to tell her plainly that sensible men do not 
 want her eloquence for gilding what is rotten. . . . 
 If the Upanishads (commentaries on the Vedas, 
 
22 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 etc.) have a charm for Mrs. Besant, she is quite 
 welcome to proclaim her views on the subject. 
 But the Upanishads do not form any part of the 
 religion of the Hindus as it is found in their 
 everyday life. In actual practice they are either 
 Sivites or Saktas or Krishna worshipers. In 
 fact, abomination worship is the main ingredient 
 of modern Hinduism, and we therefore ask Mrs. 
 Besant to study the subject a little more carefully 
 than she yet appears to have done. If she will 
 follow our advice she may, provided she is 
 sincere herself, admit sooner or later that the 
 course she is now pursuing is fraught with mis- 
 chief. " While of the Brahmanic priesthood 
 "The Hindu" declares, "Profoundly ignorant as 
 a class, and infinitely selfish, it is the mainstay of 
 every unholy, immoral and cruel custom and 
 superstition in our midst, from the wretched 
 dancing girl, who insults the Deity by her exist- 
 ence, to the pining child widow, whose every 
 tear and every hair of whose head shall stand up 
 against every one of us who tolerate it on the Day 
 of Judgment; and of such a priestly class our 
 women are the ignorant tools and helpless dupes. " 
 It is not unnatural that Hindus themselves 
 should speak thus, just as Christians are the 
 severest critics of degraded forms of Christianity, 
 but Christian students who are eager to view the 
 religious phenomena of India with sympathy, 
 have also to speak in sweeping terms of the great 
 mass of Hinduism. "I verily believe," says Sir 
 
HINDUISM 23 
 
 Monier Williams, "that the religion of the most 
 of the Hindus is simply demonolatry. Men and 
 women of all classes, except perhaps those edu- 
 cated by ourselves, are perpetually penetrated 
 with the idea that from the cradle to the grave 
 they are being pursued and persecuted, not only 
 by destructive demons, but by simple, mischievous 
 imps and spiteful goblins. This, in my opinion, 
 is the true explanation of the universal worship 
 of Ganesa, lord of the demon hosts." (Quoted 
 by Grant, "Religions of the World," p. 94.) 
 And in the development of popular Hinduism, 
 known as Saktism or Tantrism, the religion 
 reaches its lowest and worst stage. The Saktas 
 worship the female manifestation of the god Siva 
 and the Tantras are their sacred books. The 
 worship of the left-hand Saktas includes unmen- 
 tionable orgies and their Tantras are too evil to 
 be translated. (Hume, "Missions from the 
 Modern View," pp. 72-74.) 
 
 Swami Vivakananda himself, in addressing The Tantras. 
 Bengalis in Calcutta, characterized the Vamachara 
 Tantras thus: "Give up this filthy Vamachara 
 that is killing your country. . . . When I enter 
 my own country (meaning Bengal), with all its 
 boast of culture, it is a most disgraceful, hellish 
 place I find, when I see how much the Vamachara 
 has entered our society. These Vamachara sects 
 are honeycombing our society in Bengal, and it 
 is those who carry on the most horrible debauchery 
 at night who in the day time come out and 
 
24 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 preach most loudly about 'achara' (conduct), 
 and in this way they are backed by the most 
 dreadful books. They are ordered by the books 
 to do these things. You know it who are in 
 Bengal. The Bengali Sastras are the Vamachara 
 Tantras. They are published by the cart loads, 
 and poison the minds of your children instead of 
 teaching them your Srutis (/. £., the Vedas). Do 
 you not feel, fathers of Calcutta, a shame that 
 such horrible stuff as these Vamachara Tantras, 
 with translations, too, should be put into the 
 hands of your children, boys and girls, and their 
 minds poisoned, and that they should be brought 
 up with the idea that these are the Sastras of the 
 Hindus?" ("Colombo to Almora," p. 260. 
 Quoted in "The Indian Standard," March 16, 
 1901, p. 7.) And it is the Tantras, not all of 
 which we may be thankful are immoral or vile, 
 that have shaped popular Hinduism. "Apart 
 from the Srouta and Smarta rituals," said 
 Vivakananda, "all the forms of the popular reli- 
 gion from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin have 
 been taken from the Tantras, and they direct the 
 worship of the Saktas, the Saivas, the Vaishnavas, 
 and all others." Of popular Hinduism then it 
 can only be said that it is idolatry and demon 
 worship, and that in its lower forms it is the 
 uncleanness against which Christianity has ever 
 been so uncompromising, and against which are 
 barred forever the gates of that City wherein 
 there shall in no wise enter anything unclean, or 
 he that maketh an abomination and a lie. 
 
HINDUISM 25 
 
 3. Reformed Hinduism. Again and again in Reformed 
 the history of India, when polytheistic and panthe- Hinduism, 
 istic notions have been carried to extremes, 
 reformers have arisen to recall the people to 
 simple monotheism. The early Vaishnava 
 Reformers of the twelfth, thirteenth, fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries taught "the existence of one 
 supreme personal God of infinite power, wisdom 
 and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all 
 things, a God whom they called Vishnu, and 
 whom they believed to be distinct from the 
 human soul and the material world." The 
 Vaishnava worship has led almost necessarily to 
 corruption, however. Its doctrine of avatars and 
 the character of the deity who was incarnate in 
 them were not helpful, and "viler practices as a 
 part of religion have flourished among the fol- 
 lowers of Vishnu than among almost any other 
 class of religionists." In the sixteenth century 
 a great monotheistic reaction came under the 
 leadership of Kabir. His negative principles 
 were clear and useful. He "discouraged the 
 worship of all the Hindu gods and also the 
 observance of Hindu rites and ceremonies of 
 every description, whether orthodox or schismat- 
 ical," but like the modern Arya Samaj and the 
 Behais in Persia, his followers were allowed to 
 refrain from acting upon their principles when it 
 was advantageous to do so. Kabir, moreover, 
 was very indefinite in his positive declarations of 
 faith. After Kabir came the Sikh reform under 
 
26 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Nanak, who, like Kabir, had been undoubtedly 
 influenced by the stern monotheism of the Moham- 
 medans, and both he and Kabir strove to fuse 
 Hindus and Moslems in a common belief in one 
 only God. This effort naturally failed, and 
 Govind made it finally impossible when he turned 
 the Sikh sect into a nation, and established a 
 political dominion, wrested from Islam, in the 
 Punjab. 
 
 These movements did not affect Bengal, in 
 which lived the three great leaders of the Reform 
 Movement of the last century. Their movement 
 has its logical connection, however, with the 
 same spirit of reaction from popular orthodox 
 Hinduism to a purer faith which found expression 
 in Kabir and Nanak, for in the sixteenth century 
 the Vaishnava movement was inaugurated in 
 Bengal by Chaitanya, a singularly attractive 
 character, who went about preaching salvation 
 by faith. It was the analogue of Luther's 
 Reformation. He professed to oppose the 
 Saktism that was then prevalent in Bengal, and 
 he taught devotion of the human soul to Vishnu, 
 symbolized under the figure of human love. 
 That and the licentious antinomianism, which 
 was the inevitable consequence of his unbalanced 
 doctrine, led to great degeneracy in some of the 
 Vaishnava sects of Bengal. But his reform 
 remained as a memory, at least, of the effort of 
 an earnest man to get back of the idols and the 
 form of his faith to the one living God. 
 
HINDUISM . 27 
 
 Ram Mohun Roy was the founder of modern R am Mohu 
 religious reform in India. He was born in 1772, Roy. 
 and was brought up in one of these Vaishnava 
 sects in Bengal. Each morning he was accus- 
 tomed to read a chapter in the Bhagavata Purana, 
 the Vaishnava Bible, and being a lad of honest 
 and careful mind, he found himself unable to 
 accept it, and was led to turn back to the Vedic 
 system — especially as expressed in the Upani shads. 
 He studied Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew so as to 
 compare the Hindu, Moslem and Christian Scrip- 
 tures. Monier Williams says of him that he 
 "was the first earnest-minded investigator of the 
 science of religion that the world has produced. 
 From his earliest years he displayed an eagerness 
 to become an unbiased student of all the religions 
 of the globe. His sole aim in such studies was 
 to seek out religious truth for himself with per- 
 fect fairness and impartiality." These studies 
 made him more and more dissatisfied with the 
 idolatry and social customs of Hinduism. 
 
 And the situation at the time in Bengal was 
 such as to awaken the concern of such an honest 
 and earnest man. Immorality and corruption 
 were general and revolting. Socially the. condi- 
 tions were equally bad. The caste system was 
 rigid as stone. "The horrible rites of suttee and 
 infanticide were the order of the day. There 
 were indeed many instances of true suttees . . . 
 but it should not therefore be forgotten that in a 
 great many instances the suttee was the victim of 
 
28 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 her greedy relatives, and in more, of rash words 
 spoken in the first fit of grief, and of the vanity 
 of her kindred who considered her shrinking from 
 the first resolve an indelible disgrace." "Many 
 a horrible murder was thus committed, the cries 
 and shrieks of the poor suttee being drowned by 
 the sounds of tom-toms, and her struggles made 
 powerless by her being pressed down with bam- 
 boos. The condition of the Hindu female in 
 those days was truly pitiable. Education among 
 females was unknown. Kulinism, polygamy and 
 everyday oppression made the life of the Hindu 
 female unbearable. Hindu society, with caste, 
 polygamy, Kulinism, suttee, infanticide, and 
 other evils, was rotten to its core. Morality was 
 at a very low ebb. Men spent their time in vice 
 and idleness, and in social broils and party 
 quarrels. As to education among the people, of 
 what even the Muktubs could impart there was 
 little. What little learning there was was confined 
 to a few Brahmans, and it was in the main a vain 
 and useless learning. Ignorance and superstition 
 reigned supreme over the length and breadth of 
 the country. There was darkness over the land, 
 and no man knew when it would be dispelled." 
 (Introduction to Ram Mohun Roy's English 
 Works, Vol. I, pp. vi, vii.) 
 
 Ram Mohun Roy felt the shame of all this. 
 He felt also the deepening influence of Western 
 civilization as it was represented in the British 
 Government in India and in the Western educa- 
 
HINDUISM 29 
 
 tion which was beginning to be offered to the 
 people. The movement which he began sprang 
 even at the outset from, and as years went by 
 became almost the direct product of, the innu- 
 merable dissolving agencies which Christian 
 Government and Christian religion introduced 
 into India. Ram Mohun Roy began by attacking 
 idolatry on the ground that it -was not sanctioned 
 by the Vedas. On the same ground he supported 
 the movement against widow burning. On caste 
 he compromised. He strongly supported Alex- 
 ander Duff in establishing his educational work, 
 and he defended its Christian basis, and wrote a 
 book on "The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to 
 Peace and Happiness." In a letter prefixed to 
 one of his later works he says, "The consequence 
 of my long and uninterrupted researches into reli- 
 gious truth has been that I have found the 
 doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral 
 principles and better adapted for the use of 
 rational beings than any other which have come 
 to my knowledge." 
 
 The most notable step taken by Ram Mohun Brakmo 
 Roy was the organization in Calcutta, in 1830, Samaj. 
 of the Brahma Sabha, or Society of Brahma, the 
 one self-existent God of Hinduism. This was 
 not intended to be a new sect or church, but 
 simply a place of pure monotheistic worship. 
 "The trust deed of the building," which was 
 endowed, "laid down that it was to be used as a 
 
30 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 place of meeting for the worship of the Eternal, 
 Unsearchable and Immutable Being who is the 
 Author and Preserver of the Universe; that no 
 graven image, statue or sculpture, carving, paint- 
 ing, picture, portrait, or likeness of anything 
 shall be admitted within the building; that no 
 sacrifices shall be offered there ; that nothing 
 recognized as an object of worship by other men 
 should be spoken of contemptuously there; and 
 that no sermon be delivered but such as would 
 have a tendency to promote piety, morality and 
 charity." This was the first Theistic Church 
 planted in India, and in it for the first time 
 Hindus united in public worship and prayer. It 
 was the first sign of "the greatest change that has 
 ever passed over the Hindu mind." 
 Debendranatk After Ram Mohun Roy's death in England, 
 Tagore. when he was on a visit, the Brahma Sabha or 
 
 Brahmo Samaj, as it came to be called, became 
 Hinduized for a time, and then was revivified 
 under the influence of Debendranath Tagore, a 
 wealthy friend of Ram Mohun Roy, who had 
 received a skeptical education and led a dissolute 
 life, but had then passed through a real re- 
 ligious experience and taken hold of the 
 Brahmo Samaj, which was disorganized and 
 impotent, and who gave it definiteness of form 
 and a positive foundation in the Brahmic Cov- 
 enant, which he made the basis of member- 
 ship: — 
 
% - 
 
 ,"*\pf 
 
 
 ^aB 
 
 - 
 
 ''-■'lii 
 
 
 - 
 
 , 
 
 : .l 
 
 -<4 ; 
 
HINDUISM 31 
 
 Om 
 I herewith embrace the Brahmic faith. 
 
 1st Vow. I will worship, through love of Him and 
 performance of the works He loveth, God the Creator, 
 the Preserver, and the Destroyer, the Giver of Salva- 
 tion, the Omniscient, the Omnipresent, the Blissful, the 
 Good, the Formless, the One without a second. 
 
 2d Vow. I will worship no created object as the 
 Creator. 
 
 3d Vow. Except the day of sickness or of tribulation, 
 every day, the mind being undisturbed, I will engage it 
 with love and veneration in God. 
 
 4th Vow. I will exert to perform righteous deeds. 
 
 5th Vow. I will be careful to abstain from vicious 
 deeds. 
 
 6th Vow. If through the influence of passion, I com- 
 mit any vice, then wishing redemption from it, I will 
 make myself cautious not to do it again. 
 
 7th Vow. Every year and on the occasion of every 
 happy domestic event of mine, I will bestow gifts upon 
 the Brahmo Samaj. 
 
 Grant me, O God, power to observe the duties of this 
 great faith. 
 
 Om 
 One only without a second. 
 Under Debendranath the Christian element fell 
 into the background, and Christ's name was 
 debarred on the ground that some people called 
 him God. The emphasis laid by Ram Mohun 
 Roy on the Upanishads was transferred to the 
 Vedic hymns, which were made the real authori- 
 tative Scripture. But this led to a further step. 
 The Vedic hymns themselves, it was soon felt, 
 were not a valid authority, and the Samaj fell 
 back on external nature and internal intuition. 
 
32 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 KesW> The next stage in the development was taken 
 
 Gmnder by Keshub Chunder Sen, who, coming into the 
 
 S en - leadership of the Samaj about 1860, dropped 
 
 nature, rested boldly on intuition as the only basis 
 of authority, and advanced courageously to break 
 with caste and with the Hindu restraints upon 
 woman. A rupture in the Samaj resulted, and 
 Keshub founded a vigorous new society practic- 
 ally on the basis of Unitarian Christianity. The 
 following was the substance of the system of 
 doctrine of the new Brahmo Samaj : — 
 
 God is the first cause of the universe. By His will 
 He created all objects out of nothing, and continually 
 upholds them. He is spirit, not matter. • He is per- 
 fect, infinite, all merciful, all holy. He is our Father, 
 Preserver, Master, King and Saviour. 
 
 The soul is immortal. Death is only the dissolution 
 of the body. There is no new birth on earth after 
 death; the future life is a continuation and development 
 of the present life. The men that now live are the 
 embryos of the men that are to be. 
 
 The true Scriptures are two — the volume of nature 
 and the natural intuitions implanted in the mind. The 
 wisdom, power and mercy of the Creator are written 
 on the universe. All ideas about immortality and 
 morality are primary convictions rooted in the constitu- 
 tion of man. 
 
 God Himself never becomes man by putting on a 
 human body. His divinity dwells in every man, and is 
 displayed more vividly in some ; as in Moses, Jesus 
 Christ, Mohammed, Nanak, Chaitanya, and some other 
 great teachers who appeared at special times and con- 
 ferred vast benefits on the world. They are entitled to 
 universal gratitude and love. 
 
HINDUISM 33 
 
 The Brahma religion is distinct from all other systems 
 of religion ; jet it is the essence of all. It is not hostile 
 to other creeds. What is true in them it accepts. It is 
 based on the constitution of man and is, therefore, 
 eternal and universal. It is not confined to age or 
 country. 
 
 All mankind are of one brotherhood. The Brahma 
 religion recognizes no distinction between high and low- 
 caste. It is the aim of this religion to bind all mankind 
 into one family. 
 
 Duties are of four kinds : (1) Duties towards God — 
 such as belief in Him, love, worship and service ; 
 
 (2) Duties towards self — such as preservation of bodily 
 health, acquisition of knowledge, sanctification of soul ; 
 
 (3) Duties towards others — such as veracity, justice, 
 gratitude, the promotion of the welfare of all mankind ; 
 
 (4) Duties towards animals and inferior creatures — such 
 as kind treatment. 
 
 Every sinner must suffer the consequences of his own 
 sins sooner or later, in this world or the next. Man 
 must labor after holiness by the worship of God, by 
 subjugation of the passions, by repentance, by the study 
 of nature and of good books, by good company and by 
 solitary contemplation. These will lead through the 
 action of God's grace to salvation. 
 
 Salvation is a deliverance of the soul from the root 
 of corruption and moral disease, and its perpetual 
 growth in purity. Such growth continues through all 
 eternity, and the soul becomes more and more godly 
 and happy in Him who is the fountain of infinite holi- 
 ness and joy. The companionship of God is the Indian 
 Theists' heaven. 
 
 There were times in the next twenty years 
 when it seemed that Keshub Chunder Sen might 
 come clearly out into the Christian faith, but 
 there were weaknesses in the man and fundamen- 
 
34 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 tal defects in his doctrine, and he passed away a 
 stranger to the truths to which he had come so 
 near. In his last years he played into the hands 
 of the champions of orthodox Hinduism, with all 
 its idolatries and corruptions ; but it is a pleasant 
 thing that his final public address, "Asia's 
 Message to Europe," in 1883, with much folly, 
 yet included words like these: "All India must 
 believe that Christ is the Son of God. Nay, more 
 than this, I will make myself bold to prophesy all 
 India will one day acknowledge Jesus Christ as 
 the atonement, the universal atonement for all 
 mankind. . . . He has given His precious blood 
 for all of us, whether we believe it or not. . . . 
 He has done His work, let us do ours. Let us 
 believe that He has died for you and me, and the 
 atonement on our side is completed. Fellow 
 countrymen, be ye reconciled through Him!" 
 The truth of God is in these words, whether or 
 no Keshub Chunder Sen saw it with clear eyes 
 and embraced it with the simple heart of true 
 faith. And however weak he showed himself, 
 and whatever harm he wrought, no man without 
 honesty and earnestness in his heart could break 
 with his ancestral faith as he did and struggle as 
 he struggled to persuade his countrymen to take a 
 better way to God than that which leads to the 
 temple and the idols made with men's hands. 
 
 The Brahmo Samaj was the result of the 
 impact of Christianity on Hinduism. It was 
 truthfully called a "half way house" between the 
 
HINDUISM 35 
 
 two religions. It has now quite lost its im- 
 portance as a separate movement, but it is a vivid 
 illustration of what is taking place now inside of 
 Hinduism. Some of those who joined the Samaj 
 passed forward into the Christian faith. But on 
 the other side, Hinduism perceived that it must 
 again modify itself to meet the new conditions, 
 and to-day there are only a few Samajes which 
 represent any real breach with Hinduism. Some 
 have swung back to the Vedanta, and inside 
 Hinduism a place has been made for men who 
 wish to take the religious and philosophical 
 attitude of the earlier Brahmo Samaj, and who 
 can now do so without leaving the expansive and 
 ever adaptive system of their ancestors. 
 
 The reform movement in Northern India took a Arya 
 very different form from that taken in Bengal. Samaj. 
 In the north the reform society has been the Arya 
 Samaj, founded by Dayanand Saraswati, the son 
 of a Gujarati Brahman, who was born in 1825, 
 and becoming dissatisfied with popular idolatry, 
 left his father's home and wandered over Northern 
 India as a fakir, seeking knowledge and sal- 
 vation. He became increasingly convinced that 
 the true hope for his countrymen lay in a return 
 to the teachings of the Vedas, and some time 
 before 1860 he "came to a strong determination 
 to give his life fully to the restoration of his 
 countrymen to their former state of happiness and 
 prosperity." He soon began disputations with 
 the Hindu pundits, seeking "to persuade them to 
 
36 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 abandon their old teaching, accept nothing but 
 the Vedas, and join him in leading their country- 
 men back to their former state." Failing to 
 persuade the pundits, and also failing of success 
 in his next plan of establishing schools where the 
 pupils were supported and taught gratuitously, 
 he adopted the plan of traveling about, teaching 
 and establishing Samajes. He died in Rajputana 
 in 1882. The principles of the Arya Samaj, as 
 set forth in the Arya catechisms and tracts, are as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. God is the Fountain of all true knowledge, and 
 the primeval Cause of all things knowable. 
 
 2. Worship is alone due to God Who is All-true, 
 All-knowledge, All-beatitude, Incorporeal, Almighty, 
 Just, Merciful, Unbegotten, Infinite, Unchangeable, 
 without a Beginning, Incomparable, the Support and 
 the Lord of all, All-pervading, Omniscient, Imperisha- 
 ble, Immortal, Exempt from fear, Eternal, Holy and the 
 Cause of the universe. 
 
 3. The Vedas are the Books of true knowledge, and 
 it is the paramount duty of every Arya to read or hear 
 them read ; to teach and preach them to others. 
 
 4. An Arya should always be ready to accept truth 
 and renounce untruth when discovered. 
 
 5. Truth arrived at, after consummate deliberation, 
 should be his guiding principle in all actions. 
 
 6. The primary object of the Samaj is to do good to 
 the world by improving the physical, intellectual, spirit- 
 ual, moral and social condition of mankind. 
 
 7. Due love for all and appreciation of Justice, an 
 Arya should manifest in his behavior towards others. 
 
 8. He should endeavor to diffuse knowledge and dis- 
 pel ignorance. 
 
HINDUISM S7 
 
 9. He should not be content with his own improve- 
 ment, but look for it in others. 
 
 10. In matters which affect the general social well- 
 being of our race he ought to discard all difference and 
 not allow his individuality to interfere, but in strictly 
 personal matters every one may have his own way. 
 
 The sole authority with the Aryas is the 
 Vedas. All the problems of life, they hold, are 
 solved by the Vedas, and by the Vedas all modern 
 discoveries and the inventions of modern science 
 have been anticipated. The Aryas observe caste, 
 but denounce it; they conform to orthodox Hindu 
 ceremonies of marriage and burials, but inveigh 
 against them. They have been bitterly anti- 
 Christian and anti-Brahmo, very aggressive in 
 their propaganda, and very nationalistic. Their 
 revolt in principle against orthodox Hinduism, 
 however inconsistent their practice, was one more 
 distinct fruit of Christian influence upon India. 
 For the present they have retreated to the Vedas 
 as the one source of spiritual truth, and as essen- 
 tial to the development of Hindu nationality. 
 But they will inevitably learn, as the Brahmos 
 learned, that the Vedas cannot satisfy, and they 
 are already learning that sedition is not nation- 
 alism. "One notable outcome of the unrest in 
 India," writes a thoughtful missionary, "is that 
 the active opposition on the part of the Arya 
 Samaj has in great measure ceased. This is no 
 doubt due in some measure to the attitude of the 
 government towards the Arya Samaj, whose 
 
38 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 leaders have been detected as also leaders of the 
 sedition movement in the Punjab. But that is 
 not the only reason. There have been many in 
 the Arya Samaj who are sincere in their effort to 
 re-establish the old Hindu faith. The more such 
 men strive to find rest in the Vedas the more 
 surely will they fail. Some of these have come 
 out and have confessed that rest can only be found 
 in Jesus Christ. We may, therefore, anticipate 
 the downfall of the Arya Samaj movement as a 
 religious movement, and that more members will 
 come over to the Christian ranks." 
 Reform These organized movements of reform are the 
 
 Due to fruit of Christianity. Mr. Madhava Rao, C.I.E., 
 
 Christianity. on departing from Mysore in 1904 to become 
 Dewan of Travancore, said to the missionaries 
 of the province who had come to say good-by: — 
 
 Gentlemen, you know well how great is my admira- 
 tion for the English civilization, which has done so 
 much for- India. It is the fashion sometimes with some 
 of our young men, and I think they are to some extent 
 right, to say that everything that Christianity may bring 
 to us is to be found, more or less, in our own religious 
 books. But they forget that our religion had lost much 
 of its vitality and had failed to influence conduct either 
 personally, socially or politically. It is to the impact 
 of fresh civilization, and the operation of vivifying and 
 vigorous ideas, that we owe the reawakening that is to 
 be found from one end of India to another. It is to 
 Christian influences that we are indebted for the revival 
 of the Hindu religion in the form of the Brahmo Samaj, 
 and there have been other revivals also more or less 
 over the country. Even as regards the European civili- 
 
HINDUISM 39 
 
 zation and progress, it is, I believe, no less an authority 
 than Benjamin Kidd, who says that the impelling force 
 of the modern progress is to be found in the cardinal 
 principles of Christianity. As I said before, as far as 
 India is concerned, Ave should have been moving in the 
 old lines and in the old grooves but for the new ideas 
 brought by the missionaries. I will instance only a few 
 points regarding which our conceptions have been recast 
 and elevated in the light of the new religion. At least 
 these ideas could not have been got in such an emphatic 
 form from our own religion and our own past civiliza- 
 tion. Where can we find ideas about the sanctity of 
 human life, about the dignity of man, and about equality 
 of all men before the Law but in the Christian Scriptures, 
 made familiar to us in the English Laws under which we 
 live and in the philosophy and poetry of the West? 
 Another idea that we owe to Christianity is the respect 
 due to women. For all these we owe a debt of grati- 
 tude to the missionaries. They have been the pioneers 
 of education in this country. They have brought us 
 fresh ideas, they have given us higher conceptions of 
 life, and our duties and responibilities as citizens and as 
 men. It only remains for me to wish every success to 
 the missionaries in the noble and godly labors in the 
 cause of moral and spiritual regeneration of this land. 
 
 But the organized reform movements represent Christianity's 
 but a small part of the influence of Christianity Pervasive 
 upon India's religious thought and life. Entirely Influence, 
 new moral and spiritual ideals are penetrating 
 the ancient forms. The very names of old Hindu 
 gods are falling into disuse, and a completely 
 new idea of God is coming to India. "Into the 
 midst of the pantheism of ages there has slowly 
 penetrated, through the medium of Christian 
 teaching, the idea of a personal and holy God, 
 
40 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the foundation truth of all real religion." 
 (Slater, "The Higher Hinduism," p. 18.) Islam 
 did not work such a change in the religious 
 thought of India. With every practical advantage, 
 and with an opportunity of a thousand years, 
 Islam had made less impression on the religious 
 thought of Hinduism than Christianity has made 
 in three generations. Intelligent Hindus now 
 think of their own religions in terms and with 
 understandings of words which were utterly 
 unknown to their fathers, and which they owe to 
 Christianity alone. (Morrison, "New Ideas in 
 India.") The great intellectual movement of the 
 present day in India, not excepting the revived 
 Vedanta, is the effort to read Christianity into 
 Hinduism, and to gather the national fruitage of 
 Christianity without the revolution of personal 
 regeneration or the disruption of national conver- 
 sion. Was there ever a more wonderful testimony 
 to the superiority of Christianity, or a more 
 appealing confession of need? For, coming so 
 far, India must come farther. "All over India," 
 said Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall when he returned 
 from India the last time, "are men and women 
 unprepared to identify themselves with any Chris- 
 tian denomination to whom the popular forms of 
 the ancient faith have become inadequate, if not 
 distasteful, and for whom the name of Jesus 
 Christ and the distinctive truths connected with 
 that name for the redemption of individuals and 
 the reconstruction of the social order are taking 
 on new attractiveness and value." 
 
HINDUISM 41 
 
 These forms of religion which Christianity Hinduism 
 meets to-day in India all show the moral and Insufficient, 
 social insufficiency of Hinduism. "A religious 
 system," said the Report of Commission IV on 
 The Missionary Message in Relation to Non- 
 Christian Religions, at the Edinburgh Confer- 
 ence, "must be judged by its moral and social 
 results. This is an axiom for all who believe 
 that religion is the fundamental thing in human 
 nature. 'The tree is known by its fruits.' This 
 is true everywhere, but it is especially true of 
 India where the problems of religion have for 
 thousands of years been the supreme concern of 
 the greatest minds. Our correspondents trace the 
 manifold ills of Indian life, the immense outgrowth 
 of mendicant asceticism, the petrification of 
 society in the caste system, the abuse of child- 
 marriage, and the manifold hardships of widow- 
 hood to the same deep root as that which is 
 manifest in all the infamies of popular idolatry — 
 the defective conception of God, the turning away 
 of the human heart from its Father in mistrust 
 and fear, the unbelief which is the root of all sin. 
 The pathological analysis is convincing and 
 complete." 
 
 The evidence is absolute against popular Hin- 
 duism. As Bishop Caldwell says: — 
 
 The duties of life are never inculcated in any Hindu 
 temple. The discharge of those duties is never pre- 
 sented as enjoined by the gods, nor are any prayers ever 
 offered in any temple for help to enable the worshipers 
 
42 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 to discharge those duties aright. . . . Hence we often 
 see religion going in the one direction and morality in 
 another. We meet with a moral Hindu who has broken 
 altogether away from religion; and what is still more 
 common, yet still more extraordinary, we meet with a 
 devout Hindu who lives a flagrantly immoral life. In 
 the latter case, no person sees any inconsistency between 
 the immorality and the devoutness. 
 
 And not only is popular Hinduism morally and 
 socially insufficient, but so also is the higher 
 Hinduism, and its whole present attitude is a 
 confession of this. "If it looks to the revival of 
 the national faith in regard to religion, it yet 
 looks to the West for its social and political 
 ideals. In this strange divergence it confesses its 
 utter weakness as a social force; that there is 
 nothing in its ancient institutions to revive which 
 will fit the nation for its keen struggle for exist- 
 ence ; but that for the elaboration of a better order 
 of society it must look outside itself. This sev- 
 erance of religion from sociology, this failure of 
 Hinduism as a reforming agency, a regenerator 
 of society, an instrument of progress, robs it of 
 half its strength, and encourages the Christian 
 advocate to hope that, as the thoughtful men of 
 India come to study the sociological results of 
 Christ's religion in the West, and see it to be the 
 pioneer of all true progress, the only effective 
 agency in destroying the old evils, they may be 
 led to pay a deeper respect to its underlying and 
 distinctive truths.'* (Slater, "The Higher Hin- 
 duism, " pp. 15, 16.) 
 
HINDUISM 43 
 
 It will suffice to indicate four of the fundamen- Deficiencies of 
 tal deficiencies of Hinduism: — Hinduism. 
 
 1. Hinduism rests on a false social principle, the Caste, 
 principle not of brotherhood and of equality, but 
 of caste. This social principle is the essential, 
 unifying principle of Hinduism. As Guru 
 Prasad Sen says in his "Introduction to the 
 Study of Hinduism," "Hinduism is not, and has 
 never been, a religious organization. It is a 
 pure social system, imposing on those who are 
 Hindus the observance of certain social forms, 
 and not the profession of particular religious 
 beliefs. It is perfectly optional with a Hindu to 
 choose from any one of the different religious 
 creeds with which the Sastras abound; he may 
 choose to have a faith and a creed, if he wants a 
 creed, or to do without one ; he may be an 
 atheist, a deist, a monotheist, or a polytheist, a 
 believer in the Vedas or Sastras, or a skeptic as 
 regards their authority, and his position as a 
 Hindu cannot be questioned by anybody because 
 of his beliefs or unbeliefs, so long as he conforms 
 to social rules." These social rules cover the 
 whole life of the people and culminate in caste 
 and the Hindu status of woman. As to caste, 
 whatever may be said in its behalf or of its past 
 history, let one speak whose authority on the sub- 
 ject cannot be gainsaid, His Highness the Gaek- 
 war of Baroda: — 
 
 The evils of caste cover the whole range of social 
 life. It hampers the life of the individual with a vast 
 
44 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 number of petty rules and observances which have no 
 meaning. It cripples him in his relations with his 
 family, in his marriage, in the education of his chil- 
 dren, and especially in his life. It weakens the eco- 
 nomic position by attempting to confine him to particular 
 trades, by preventing him from learning the culture of 
 the West, and by giving him an exaggerated view of his 
 knowledge and importance. It cripples his professional 
 life by increasing distrust, treachery and jealousy, 
 hampering a free use of others' abilities, and ruins his 
 social life by increasing exclusiveness, restricting the 
 opportunities of social intercourse and preventing that 
 intellectual development on which the prosperity of any 
 class most depends. In the wider spheres of life, in 
 municipal or local affairs, it destroys all hope of local 
 patriotism, of work for the common good, by thrusting 
 forward the interest of the caste as opposed to those of 
 the community, and by making combined efforts for the 
 common good exceedingly difficult. But its most seri- 
 ous offense is its effect on national life and national 
 unity. It intensifies local dissensions and diverse 
 interests, and obscures great national ideals and interests 
 which should be those of every caste and people, and 
 renders the country disunited and incapable of improv- 
 ing its defects or of availing itself of the advantages 
 which it should gain from contact with the civilization 
 of the West. It robs us of our humanity by insisting 
 on the degradation of some of our fellow men who are 
 separated from us by no more than the accident of birth. 
 It prevents the noble and charitable impulses which 
 have done so much for the improvement and mutual 
 benefit of European Society. It prevents our making 
 the most of all the various abilities of our diverse com- 
 munities ; it diminishes all our emotional activities and 
 intellectual resources. Again, it is the most conserva- 
 tive element in our society and the steady enemy to all 
 reform. Every reformer who has endeavored to secure 
 
HINDUISM 45 
 
 the advance of our society has been driven out of it by 
 the operation of caste. By its rigidity, it preserves 
 ignorant superstitions and clings to the past, while it 
 does nothing to make those inevitable changes which 
 nature is ever pressing on us more easy and more 
 possible. 
 
 If Hinduism is caste and caste is this, who can 
 fail to see the duty of Christianity toward 
 Hinduism? 
 
 2. The inferiority of woman has been brought Tke Inferior- 
 as a principle into the laws and institutions of ity of 
 Hinduism. Much can be found in the Hindu Woman, 
 sacred literature in praise of woman, but for each 
 such sentiment two can be cited which degrade 
 woman to an inferior place and deny her the 
 rights without which the moral health of society 
 is impaired. Passing by the great mass of testi- 
 mony which can be cited from the Hindu Scrip- 
 tures and from Hindu reformers, not to speak of 
 the unanswerable testimony of the British statute 
 books proclaiming as criminal practice after 
 practice which Hinduism defended and for which 
 it fought in the name of the integrity of religion, 
 it will suffice to quote again the calm words of 
 the Gaekwar of Baroda : — 
 
 It is not necessary for me to dwell upon all those 
 familiar questions which cluster round the question of 
 the status of women. I would merely point out that 
 what we may most legitimately object against each is 
 that they involve a bad economy of social forces. 
 
 Early marriage, especially now that the checks on 
 early consummation are breaking down, must increase 
 
46 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 death and disease among the mothers, swell infant 
 mortality and injure the physique of the race. It inter- 
 feres, also, with the pro.per education of women. 
 
 A too strict purdah mutilates social life and makes 
 its current dull and sluggish by excluding the brighten- 
 ing influence of women. 
 
 By the denial of education to women we deprive our- 
 selves of half the potential force of the nation, deny 
 to our children the advantage of having cultured 
 mothers, and by stunting the faculties of the mother 
 affect injuriously the heredity of the race. We create, 
 moreover, a gulf of mental division in the home, and 
 put a powerful drag on progress by making the women 
 a great conservative force that clings to everything old, 
 however outworn or irrational. 
 
 The existence side by side of customs like polygamy 
 and the prohibition of widow remarriage similarly 
 shows a bad organization of society. The one keeps up 
 an unduly low standard of morality among men, the 
 other demands an impossibly high standard from 
 women. To enforce the standard we suppress our feel- 
 ings of humanity and affection and inflict severities 
 upon widows to keep their vitality low and make them 
 less attractive; yet the impossibility remains and the 
 laws of nature we have ignored avenge themselves ; for, 
 in spite of our harsh measures, we fail to preserve even 
 an ordinary standard of morality in this much ill-treated 
 class. 
 
 We do well, therefore, in protesting against these 
 evils and striving for their alteration. 
 
 We should, however, realize where the evil lies. It 
 is in the lowering of our ideas about women and the 
 relations of the sexes. 
 
 It is this ideal of woman which Christianity must 
 raise for India. 
 
 3. Religion and morality in India are both 
 
HINDUISM 47 
 
 vitiated by the pantheistic idea of God which A False 
 rules Indian thought and which has alwa) T s Thought of 
 triumphed over every reforming protest in behalf God. 
 of theism. "Pantheism," says Flint in "Anti- 
 Theistic Theories," "is the theory which regards 
 all finite things as merely aspects, modifications, 
 or parts of one eternal and self-existent being; 
 which views all material objects, and all particu- 
 lar minds, as necessarily derived from a single 
 infinite substance. The one absolute substance — 
 the one all-comprehensive being — it calls God. 
 Thus God, according to it, is all that is, and 
 nothing is which is not essentially included in, 
 or which has not been necessarily evolved out of, 
 God." This conception of God and man cannot 
 nourish a religion of affectionate devotion. "In- 
 stead of love and communion in love, it can only 
 commend to us the contemplation of an object 
 which is incomprehensible, devoid of all affec- 
 tions, and indifferent to all actions. When feel- 
 ings like love, gratitude, and trust are expressed 
 in the hymns and prayers of Hindu worship, it is 
 in consequence of a virtual denial of the prin- 
 ciples of pantheism." 
 
 And just as pantheism is fatal to true religion, 
 so also is it fatal to morals, if it is allowed to 
 work out its logical consequence. It strikes at 
 the very roots of morality. Indian pantheism 
 teaches that sin is neither real in itself nor 
 capable of reaching to what is real in man; that 
 it is but a creation of ignorance; that "though 
 
48 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the soul plunge itself in sin, like a sword in 
 water, it shall in no wise cling to it;" that the 
 distinctions of right and wrong are mere appear- 
 ances which will vanish as soon as the dream 
 state of life is dispelled. The existence of funda- 
 mental moral distinctions is contradicted or ignored 
 by pantheism. Hinduism has denied the reality 
 of the eternal and necessary distinction between 
 righteousness and sin. It admits that there is a 
 difference, but the difference is not inherent and 
 essential, but only accidental and illusory, exist- 
 ing not in facts but in our conceptions, imagined 
 under the power of illusion. As a South Indian 
 song puts it: — 
 
 To them that fully know the heavenly truth. 
 There is no good or ill ; nor anything 
 To be desired, unclean or purely clean. 
 
 Where God is seen, there can be nought but God, 
 His heart can have no place for fear or shame ; 
 For caste, uncleanness, hate, or wandering thought, 
 Impure or pure, are all alike to Him. 
 
 Sin is not one of the deep convictions of Hindu- 
 ism. There is no personal God. There is no 
 burdening sense of personal responsibility. Men 
 are God. u We are the children of God, the 
 sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect 
 beings," said Swami Vivakananda at the Par- 
 liament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. "Ye, 
 divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a 
 man so; it is a standing libel on human nature." 
 It is not a careless charge against Hinduism to 
 
HINDUISM 49 
 
 accuse it of this fundamental ethical failure. 
 Naryan Sheshadri, one of the most notable 
 Christian converts from Hinduism, ascribed his 
 conversion to the alarm he felt on discovering 
 that Hindu philosophy was destroying all sense 
 of moral responsibility. "Will you please give 
 a vivid contrast between Hinduism and Chris- 
 tianity?" writes a correspondent to "Epiphany," 
 the paper of the Oxford Mission of the Brethren 
 of the Epiphany in Calcutta; and the paper 
 replies, "Christianity teaches men to distinguish 
 vice from virtue; Hinduism does not. " ("Epiph- 
 any," Feb. 6, 1909.) Not only has Hinduism 
 failed in this, but vice and impurity have actually 
 found a home within the religion. Dancing girls 
 were devoted to the gods as prostitutes, and 
 temples were filled with abominable sculpture, so 
 that when obscene pictures or representations were 
 forbidden by the penal code, in the following 
 article: — 
 
 292. Whosoever sells or distributes, imports or 
 prints for sale or hire, or wilfully exhibits to public 
 view, any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, drawing, 
 painting, representation or figure, or attempts or offers 
 so to do, shall be punished with imprisonment of either 
 description for a term which may extend to three 
 months, or with fine, or with both, 
 
 it was necessary to make the following exception : — 
 
 This section does not extend to any representation 
 sculptured, engraved, painted or otherwise represented 
 on or in any temple or on any car used for the convey- 
 ance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose. 
 
50' THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 India needs anew conception of God and of right- 
 eousness which will make its temples fountains 
 of purity. 
 Idolatry and 4. And not only is Hinduism deficient in its 
 Gods of Bad philosophy of God. It is deficient, also, in its 
 Character. attempts to represent Him. Its pantheism is 
 allied to the lower polytheism. Popularly, it is 
 a religion of idolatry and the gods whom it 
 worships are not good gods. 
 
 It is often said that Hindu idolatry is not real 
 worship of idols, but is a true though ignorant 
 worship of the one God beyond the idols. But 
 Ram Mohun Roy knew what the facts were and 
 are. "I have observed," said he, "that both in 
 their writings and conversation, many Europeans 
 feel a wish to palliate and soften the features of 
 Hindu idolatry, and are inclined to indicate that 
 all objects of worship are considered by their 
 votaries as emblematical representations of the 
 supreme Divinity. If this were indeed the case, 
 I might perhaps be led into some examination of 
 the subject, but the truth is, the Hindus of the 
 present day have no such views of the subject, 
 but firmly believe in the real existence of the 
 innumerable gods and goddesses, who possess, in 
 their own departments, full and independent 
 power; and to propitiate them, and not the true 
 God, are temples erected and ceremonies per- 
 formed. . . . Neither do they regard the images 
 of these gods merely in the light of instruments 
 for elevating the mind to the conception of those 
 
HINDUISM 51 
 
 supposed beings ; they are simply in themselves 
 made objects of worship." And this actual 
 idolatry, of which India is full, is a shame and 
 curse to religion. The Arya Samaj catechism 
 denounces it. "Idolatry, " it says, "is a folly 
 that blunts one's mind and faculties and never 
 induces him to make onward and spiritual 
 progress, but tends to contempt and scorn being 
 thrown at Hindus by the foreigners. As long as 
 British, Romans and Grecians were idolators, 
 they could acquire no civilization and make no 
 scientific and intellectual progress. The same 
 may be said as regards Hindus. Unless they 
 give up idolatry they will never rise, be civilized 
 and improve in their social and intellectual con- 
 dition, and will by no means acquire the wisdom 
 of which the Aryas, the adorers of one God, were 
 proud. ' ' 
 
 And not only is the idolatry of India real 
 idolatry, but the characters of the gods are bad. 
 The principal deities, as Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, 
 Indra, Krishna, are represented in the sacred 
 books as guilty of theft, lying, intoxication, 
 adultery, murder. India needs a good and pure 
 God, such as she has not had for thousands of 
 years. It is true that in the Bhagavad Gita 
 Krishna is called "the holiest of the holy," but 
 even in the Gita he is not shown to be a worthy 
 god, and in the Bhagavata Purana he is repre- 
 sented as stained with crime. The Hindus say 
 that the gods are gods and that "to the mighty is 
 
52 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 no sin," but bad gods cannot make good men. 
 "I never learned purity," said Gungram, one of 
 the early Christian converts, "from reading about 
 Krishna's wicked conduct, as recorded in the 
 Shasters. I never learned to hate any sin from 
 all my knowledge of the gods of India; but from 
 this word, the word of Jesus Christ, the Saviour 
 of Sinners, Who died for us, I have learned and 
 hope to go on learning, till I shall be taken away 
 from sin altogether." 
 Contrasts These deficiencies of Hinduism bring out clearly 
 
 Between Hin- enough the contrasts between Hinduism and 
 duismand Christianity. These contrasts might be indef- 
 amty. } n jf- e jy multiplied. The initial conceptions of 
 the two religions as to religion itself are different. 
 Christianity is the expression of God's seeking 
 love. It is a revelation of God to man. Hin- 
 duism has been the embodiment of man's aspira- 
 tion after God. Their conceptions of God are 
 dissimilar, — as far apart as monotheism and pan- 
 theism. Their theories of the universe are 
 divergent. To the Christian the world is a 
 creation by God of something not identical with 
 God. To the Brahman the world is eternal with 
 God, and is of God. The two faiths differ as to 
 man. In Christianity man is the son of God, 
 fallen but under recovery by the redeeming life 
 of Christ, and his life is a great reality. The 
 Hindu Scriptures represent him as a mere illu- 
 sion, the plaything of the absolute One. For 
 him to claim real existence is the madness of 
 
HINDUISM 53 
 
 Avidya, ignorance. Life is Maya, illusion. 
 Christianity aims at the banishing of sin from 
 life and the formation of true character. Hindu- 
 ism evaporates the idea of sin. Indeed, it is an 
 impossibility, since all is God. Christianity 
 deems the great evil of the world moral. Hindu- 
 ism, intellectual. In Christianity God is work- 
 ing in men to save them, and God and men 
 are free. In Hinduism karma (deeds) deter- 
 mines everything. Every man is in the grasp of 
 the consequence of the deeds of a former life. 
 All is iron necessity, both in God and in man. 
 The great notes of Christianity are love, service, 
 sacrifice for others. The great notes of Hinduism 
 are meditation, self-mortification, asceticism. 
 Christianity holds that life is to be filled with 
 joy. . Hinduism, that individual existence is 
 inseparably bound up with sorrow. Christianity 
 teaches the singularity and determinatism of the 
 one earthly life. Here we learn to live by faith 
 and pass forward to be with God forever. 
 Hinduism teaches transmigration and the endless 
 working out in life after life of the law of 
 karma. Christianity exalts the individual at 
 the same time that it teaches the unity of souls in 
 the family of God and the body of Christ. 
 Hinduism is the foe to individual freedom. It 
 allows nothing to the individual except the 
 penalty of his deeds. Christianity is the great 
 religion of progress. Hinduism deifies the past. 
 "The code of Manu, which is the source and 
 
54 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Points of 
 
 Contact 
 
 Bet-ween 
 
 Christianity 
 
 and 
 
 Hinduism. 
 
 supreme authority for caste, has done more to 
 stereotype and degrade social and religious life 
 in India than has any other code in all the history 
 of other lands." Christianity is absolute and 
 universal. Hinduism is adaptive and ethnic. 
 •Christianity sets forth a living and perfect moral 
 ideal. Hinduism in its best and loftiest moral 
 codes presents a negative and imperfect ideal. 
 In Christianity God is all goodness. In 
 Hinduism it is not always so. We cannot shut 
 our eyes to the terrible indictment of Professor 
 Hopkins: "In modern Hinduism to kill, lust, 
 steal, drink, so far from offending, may please a 
 god that is amorous or bloodthirsty, or like Siva, 
 is the lord of thieves. Morality here has God 
 against it." (Hopkins, "The Religions of 
 India," p. 55.) In one word, Christianity 
 teaches what is entirely absent in Hinduism, — 
 that God is our Father and that men are brothers, 
 that God has suffered for man, and that the end 
 of man's life is to love God and his fellow-men 
 and to serve them in the power of love. (Jones, 
 "Hinduism and Christianity, a Comparison and 
 a Contrast," pp. 22-59; Kellogg, "Hinduism, a 
 Sermon," pp. 1-22.) 
 
 But there are also points of contact between 
 Christianity and Hinduism. If there were not, 
 the task of winning India to Christ would be 
 hopeless. The great encouragement, apart from 
 our own faith in the Gospel and our own experi- 
 ence of Christ as the Universal Saviour, is found 
 
HINDUISM 55 
 
 in the fact that Hinduism witnesses to great needs 
 which only the Gospel can meet, to longings 
 which only Christ can fulfill. Hinduism and 
 Christianity are the only two faiths which hold 
 the doctrine of incarnation as of primal impor- 
 tance. It grew up in later Hinduism in response 
 to deep human necessities. In the earlier 
 Hinduism to which the Hindu thought of to-day 
 is turning, there was also the idea of sacrificial 
 atonement for sin. The unceasing revolt against 
 pantheism in the interest of a pure theistic faith 
 has kept alive in India for hundreds of years a 
 mind for the true God. The idea of bhakti 
 or living faith is a Christian principle. Some 
 hold that it came into Hinduism as a result of 
 Christian influence, but in any case it is there. 
 The report of Commission IV at the World 
 Missionary Conference in Edinburgh presented 
 evidence from many missionaries in India bear- 
 ing on these points of contact between Hinduism 
 and Christianity. Five of these testimonies will 
 suffice. The first finds in Indian theism, the 
 second in the Vedanta, the most fruitful points 
 of contact and preparation for Christianity ; the 
 third takes the view that they are both alike ful- 
 filled and superseded by Christianity; the 
 fourth finds a preparation in the daily religious 
 life of devout Hinduism, and the fifth in the deep 
 spiritual longings of the Hindu heart. 
 
 This stream of bhakti, devious as its course has 
 so frequently been, forms the main stream of the reli- 
 
56 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 gion of India and that which has the closest relation to 
 Christianity. Its characteristics are belief in a personal 
 God, union with Him as the condition of blessedness, 
 and faith as the means whereby that union is attained. 
 It is also generally associated with a belief in avatars 
 or incarnations, as is indicated in a famous passage of 
 the Bhagavad-gita (lv. 7), and in the following passage 
 from Ramanuja, the philosopher of this school: "As 
 He (the supreme Spirit) is a great ocean of boundless 
 grace, kindness, love and generosity, He assumed vari- 
 ous similar forms without putting away His own essen- 
 tial God-like nature, and time after time incarnated 
 Himself in the several worlds, granting to His wor- 
 shipers rewards according to their desires ; namely, 
 religion, riches, earthly love and salvation, and descend- 
 ing not only with the purpose of relieving the burden 
 of earth, but also to be accessible to men even such as 
 we are, so revealing Himself in the world as to be visi- 
 ble to the sight of all, and doing such other marvelous 
 deeds as to ravish the hearts and eyes of all beings high 
 and low." This attitude in India has seldom attained 
 to a full and conscious monotheism, though that is 
 often implicit in the worshiper's devotional spirit. (M. 
 Macnicol.) 
 
 The most important fraeparatio evangelica in 
 Hinduism is the Hindu doctrine of Liberation (Mok- 
 sha, Mukti). From the time of the Upanishads 
 down to the present day, the people of India long for 
 and aspire after liberation; i. e., the salvation of their 
 souls in union with the Supreme Being. It is, indeed, 
 conceived by them as deliverance of the soul from the 
 sufferings and pains of transmigration, and in union 
 with the pantheistically conceived Godhead, details 
 which the Christian missionary cannot help regarding 
 as erroneous and quite inadequate to the deeper wants 
 of the human soul. But the main idea is most valuable 
 as a preparation for the gospel of salvation, as a point 
 
HINDUISM 57 
 
 of contact between Christianity and Hinduism, and as a 
 means of elucidation by contrast. As a matter of fact, 
 I know nothing more effective in arousing the interest 
 of a Hindu audience than the gospel presented as a 
 message of moksha; i. e., of salvation by communion 
 with God. (W. Dilger.) 
 
 There is no contradiction between the concept of the 
 universal incomprehensible Brahma and the concept of 
 the Universal Personality whose will is the order of the 
 universe. The positive elements in the concept of 
 Brahma are unity, universality, reality, and intelligence; 
 if, within that rather sketchy metaphysical outline, there 
 now appears the universal person whose will forms the 
 moral order of the world, the old idea is in no way dis- 
 turbed or weakened, but receives the rich moral content 
 necessary for its completion. God is still one, still 
 universal, still the mind of the world, while He has 
 become much more, for He is now the basis of the 
 moral as well as of the intellectual order. Thus the 
 early philosophy of India realized a conception of God 
 of the highest truth and value, and held to it faithfully 
 through all storms and changes. The theistic reformers 
 attempted a hundred times to fill this lofty truth with a 
 content that would make it the center of all religion, 
 but the very fact that each new leader projected a new 
 scheme is all the proof that is needed that no scheme 
 has proved satisfactory. The true but incomplete 
 concept of the Upanishads and the long search of the 
 theists both find their completion in the God of Chris- 
 tianity. (J. N. Farquhar. ) 
 
 The Hindu trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu and Siva) is 
 very different from the Christian conception of the 
 Trinity, yet it prepares the way and, to a great extent, 
 removes the objections to this doctrine. Better points 
 of contact and positive preparation may be found in 
 the actual religious life of the present day Hindu. A 
 reference to the daily confession of sin in every 
 
58 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Brahman's ritual is both of historical and practical 
 value on a point where it is most difficult to find con- 
 nection, because of the defective consciousness of sin 
 as a moral reality. But the deepest and most direct 
 preparation is to be looked for in the growing bhakti 
 movement, with its strong emphasis on the sincerity 
 and spiritual character of the individual's devotional 
 surrender to God. It expresses itself in many false 
 forms, and leads more often to ecstatic trances than to 
 a personal relation to the true God. Most of its fol- 
 lowers worship that they know not, yet we have here an 
 attempt on the part of the individual to break through 
 all ceremonialism and intellectualism and to worship 
 in truth and in spirit, which cannot but prepare the way 
 for the true revelation. (F. W. Steinthal.) 
 
 As to the point of contact between Christianity and 
 Hinduism, I should put first and foremost the spiritual 
 view of life as opposed to the materialistic conception 
 of the West. Though the quality of this spiritual view 
 may be very deficient, and though it may contain much 
 which is erroneous, yet there can be no question that in 
 Hinduism religion is, and has always been, the supreme 
 concern of the Hindu mind. The belief that the things 
 which are seen are temporal, while the things which 
 are not seen are eternal is deeply ingrained in the 
 Hindu temperament. Then I should say that the con- 
 ception of the oneness of God, though essentially pan- 
 theistic and bound up with polytheism, is nevertheless a 
 great religious asset, destined to be of immense value 
 for the future of Christianity in India. Pantheism in 
 India is more theistic than panistic, if the expression 
 may be allowed. The conception of the divine, that is, 
 is more in evidence than the conception of the All. 
 Again, the conception of incarnation, though presenting 
 very marked defects and misconceptions, is nevertheless 
 not a foreign idea. This conception is also associated 
 with the idea of divine action for the good of humanity, 
 
HINDUISM 59 
 
 and bhakti and the bhaktimarga again have 
 marked affinities with the Christian conceptions of 
 loving devotion on the part of man, and grace on the 
 part of God. Though the idea of salvation (7. <?., 
 moksha) is always associated with the conception of 
 rebirth, yet there is also connected with it an earnest 
 longing and passionate desire for union with God. 
 These are a few of the outsanding features, but a sym- 
 pathetic mind will find very much in Hindu religious 
 ideas which anticipates fuller expression in Christianity. 
 (Bernard Lucas.) 
 
 Do we have the sympathetic mind which will 
 not only discover the longing for that which is 
 available in Christ alone, but will also share this 
 treasure with the unsatisfied heart of India? 
 (See also Hogg, "Karma and Redemption ;" 
 Kellett, "Christ the Fulfillment of Hinduism;" 
 and Banerjea, "The Relation Between Chris- 
 tianity and Hinduism.") 
 
 Hinduism has not met India's need, and never 
 can meet it. It can be met in only one way. 
 "What India wants," said Mr. Justice Robertson 
 of the Punjab, in London in July, 1910, "is one 
 thing only, and that is Christ." 
 
 BIBLE READING 
 
 First Chapter of Romans. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 What are the noble qualities of the Indian people? 
 What are the principal sacred books of Hinduism? 
 Describe modern philosophic Hinduism. 
 What are the characteristics of modern popular 
 Hinduism? 
 
60 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Sketch the progress of reformed Hinduism and name 
 the principal reformers. 
 
 What is the difference between the Brahmo and the 
 Arya Samaj ? 
 
 How has Christianity affected the thought of 
 Hinduism? 
 
 Wherein is Hinduism deficient? 
 
 What is the place of caste in Hinduism? What 
 defence can be made of it? What are its evils? 
 
 Describe the place of woman in Hindu society and 
 the influence of Hinduism upon ideals of womanhood. 
 
 What are the defects in the Hindu ideas of God? 
 
 Summarize the contrasts between Hinduism and 
 Christianity. 
 
 What are the points of contact between Hinduism and 
 Christianity? 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Monier Williams, "Hinduism," Gorham, 1894. 
 
 Monier Williams, "Brahmanism and Hinduism," Mac- 
 millan, 1891. 
 
 Hopkins, "The Religions of India," Ginn & Co., 1895. 
 
 Mitchell, "The Great Religions of India," Revell, 1905. 
 
 Robson, "Hinduism and Christianity," Oliphant, 
 Anderson & Ferrier, 1905. 
 
 Barth, "Religions of India," Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 1882. 
 
 Wilkins, "Modern Hinduism," Scribner, Welford & 
 Co., 1887. 
 
 Slater, "The Higher Hinduism in Relation to Chris- 
 tianity," Stock, 1902. 
 
 Datta, "The Desire of India," Student Volunteer Mis- 
 sionary Union, 1907. 
 
 Bose, "Brahmoism, or History of Reformed Hindu- 
 ism," Funk & Wagnalls, 1884. 
 
 Lillingstone, "Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj," Mac- 
 millan, 1901. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 BUDDHISM 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BUDDHISM 
 
 Of all the non-Christian religions Buddhism is „ . . 
 
 Resemblance 
 
 usually regarded as most akin to Christianity. to chris- 
 The character of its founder more nearly resembles tianity. 
 the character of Christ than the character of any 
 other great religious teacher, such as Mohammed, 
 or ethical teacher, such as Confucius, or Indian 
 deity, such as Krishna or Rama. Its moral teach- 
 ings in their purity and kindliness seem to breathe 
 the spirit of the New Testament ideal of a good 
 man. Its sacred books are full of stories wearing 
 a racial color very unlike the stories of the Gos- 
 pels, but bearing, also, a curious resemblance to 
 them. Its priesthood and worship and imagery 
 dismayed the Roman Catholic missionaries who 
 saw in them a diabolical adaptation of their own. 
 So attractive has Buddhism appeared to many 
 Western minds that they have felt sure that it was 
 one of the great divine lessons, a faith which em- 
 bodied the Christian light and an adequate comfort 
 to the hearts that rested in it. Seen in Sir Edwin 
 Arnold's "Light of Asia," it has seemed to 
 them not less beautiful than Christianity and free 
 from some of its disadvantages. 
 
 Buddhism has been of special interest to West- Wide 
 ern minds, also, because it has had the largest Acceptance of 
 number of followers of any religion and, trained Buddhism. 
 
64 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 to regard pluralities as of great significance, the 
 West has looked with awe upon a religion which 
 embraces five hundred million souls. " More than 
 a third of mankind," said Arnold in the preface to 
 his poem, " owe their moral and religious ideals to 
 this illustrious prince whose personality, though 
 imperfectly revealed in the existing sources of in- 
 formation, cannot but appear the highest, gentlest, 
 holiest and most beneficent, with one exception, in 
 the history of thought. " 
 
 But both these reasons for special interest in 
 Buddhism are fallacious. The resemblances to 
 Christianity, as we shall see, are underlain by 
 deeper differences. Buddha never claimed to be 
 more than a man. The salvation which he 
 preached was to be worked out by each man for 
 himself, without help from any other man or 
 from God. The ideas which he taught, while 
 expressible to us only in language saturated with 
 Christian conceptions, embody principles radically 
 at variance with these conceptions. The stories 
 of the life of Buddha in the Buddhist Scriptures 
 which resemble at all the stories in the Gospels, 
 resemble them in the same way in which mediaeval 
 legends resemble them, and moreover, they arose 
 long after Buddha's death. And the views of life 
 set forth in these Scriptures are, as Rhys Davids 
 says, "fundamentally opposed to those set forth 
 in the New Testament." 
 
 So, also, it is misleading to speak of Buddhism 
 as embracing one third of the human race. It is 
 
BUDDHISM 65 
 
 true that Buddhism has influenced many in India 
 who are not Buddhists, but on the other hand, 
 millions of those who are called Buddhists are 
 animistic spirit-worshipers rather than Buddhists, 
 as in Burma and Siam, or moralistic spirit-wor- 
 shipers rather than Buddhists, as in China. To 
 figure out five hundred million Buddhists in the 
 world, it is necessary to include the entire popula- 
 tion of China and Japan. But the Chinese are as 
 much Confucianists and Taoists as they are Bud- 
 dhists. The influential class of the people repudiate 
 Buddhism. And in Japan Buddhism, while still 
 active and powerful, as we shall see, has really 
 ceased to be Buddhism in the sense of its founder, 
 and has lost its hold upon the educated section of 
 the people. But as a matter of fact the religion 
 of Gautama is really no man's religion to-day, so 
 great has been the departure of the system from 
 the ideas of its founder. " Not one of the five 
 hundred millions who offer flowers now and then 
 on Buddhist shrines, who are more or less moulded 
 by Buddhist teaching, is only or altogether a Bud- 
 dhist." (Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," p. 7.) The 
 population of the world which even measurably 
 follows the tradition of the first two centuries of 
 Buddhism is less than the communicant Protestant 
 church membership of the United States. 
 
 We speak of Buddhism as a religion, and in the Is Buddhism 
 forms with which we ( have to deal with it in the a Religion? 
 missionary enterprise a religion it certainly is, 
 even in those countries where it is truest to its 
 
66 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 original character. But in a strict sense, pure 
 Buddhism is not a religion. " The Buddhist," a 
 monthly magazine published by the Young Men's 
 Buddhist Association of Ceylon, frankly avows 
 this: " It is an etymological injustice to refer to 
 Buddhism as a religion, " it says. " In Buddhism 
 thought is free, and authority has no position. To 
 be a Buddhist is to be h'religatus, to be unbound, 
 to be freed from all dogmatic authority. To call 
 Buddhism a religion is a contradiction in terms. 
 Buddhism not only does not admit the existence of 
 a God, it also denies the existence of a soul, a 
 permanent, unchanging entity. In Mahanidana 
 Sutta and elsewhere the Lord has positively stated 
 that man has no soul. This denial of soul makes 
 it still more inappropriate to call Buddhism a re- 
 ligion." ("The Buddhist," July, 1907, p. 219.) 
 And editorially u The Buddhist " adds, — 
 
 If we adopt the broader definition of the term, as enun- 
 ciated by the cultured few, who, excluding the mysterious 
 and the unknowable from the sphere of religion, include 
 it within the field of human knowledge, and make it co- 
 extensive with human conduct, then indeed can Buddhism 
 be rightly called a religion. What Buddhism is has been 
 well defined by the Master himself in the following 
 verse : — 
 
 To shun all that is evil, 
 
 To practice all that is good, 
 
 To purify one's own heart, 
 
 This is the teaching of the Buddhas. 
 That expresses the whole content of Buddhism. It 
 demands no belief in a god, involves no dogma, and en- 
 joins no ritual. It is self-culture based on self-knowl- 
 
BUDDHISM 67 
 
 edge. In other words, it is the rational regulation of 
 one's own conduct. Buddhism is that, and nothing 
 more, nothing less. Whether or not that will fulfill the 
 conditions of a religion depends, as has been already in- 
 dicated, on the meaning attached to that term. One 
 thing, however, is certain — it satisfies the needs and aspi- 
 rations of men from whose eyes the scales of superstition 
 have fallen, and who need no supernatural help to under- 
 stand and appreciate what is good and true. 
 
 This is only one view of Buddhism, however, 
 and a view from which the great majority of those 
 who are called Buddhists have broken far away. 
 Their view is as great a breach from original Bud- 
 dhism as that was from the Hinduism from which 
 it sprang. 
 
 For Buddhism arose in the midst of Hinduism Origin of 
 or Brahmanism as a revolt in the interest of morals Buddkism. 
 against a sacerdotalism which divorced religion and 
 conduct, and not only in the interest of morals, but 
 also in the interest of spiritual reality. The founder 
 of the new way found no solution of life's problem 
 and no rest from its distress in the old views. 
 What could sacrifices avail when there was no 
 God, as he became convinced, to be moved by 
 them, and when the nature of man makes it im- 
 possible that a God could do anything whatever 
 for him ? And were not all men under the same 
 burden of life and equal in their impotence to 
 lighten that burden, which Buddha believed could 
 be lifted only with the extinction of life ? Bud- 
 dhism became, accordingly, a protest against 
 
68 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Brahmanism or sacerdotal Hinduism and against 
 caste. Its founder was a Hindu who lived and 
 died within Hinduism. " He would have claimed 
 that he was a correct exponent of the spirit of the 
 ancient Vedic faith. His disciples simply claimed 
 that he was the greatest, wisest and best of the 
 Hindus. As there were ' reformers before the 
 Reformation' in Europe, so in India there were 
 sages before Gautama who were dissatisfied with 
 the Brahmanical system ; but he was the Hindu 
 Luther, in whose voice all previous voices blended, 
 and whose personality fused into living unity forces 
 that had been long gathering, and originated a 
 movement that swept over India and all but sub- 
 merged for a time the monuments, institutions and 
 ordinances of the ancient religion." (Grant, 
 " The Religions of the World," p. 108.) Brah- 
 manic Hinduism, however, was too strong and 
 adaptive. It took Buddhism by the hand and 
 boldly drew it back again into the ancient system. 
 It adopted Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu. 
 It took from Buddhism " the abolition of sacri- 
 fices, great tenderness toward animal life, great 
 intensity of belief in the doctrine of transmigration 
 and in the efficacy of self -mortification as a source of 
 power in accelerating progress towards final emanci- 
 pation." (Williams, "Hinduism," p. 80.) On the 
 other hand, Buddhism degenerated. It became 
 more idolatrous than Hinduism. Also it dropped 
 its ultra-pessimism and atheism. It lost its indi- 
 
BUDDHISM 69 
 
 viduality, and as a distinct system faded out of 
 India. " The old faith took it into its arms and 
 sucked out its life blood." That is what Hinduism 
 would fain do with Christianity to-day. 
 
 While Buddhism has subsided into Hinduism in J a fnigm. 
 India, there remains in Jainism a religion akin to 
 Buddhism, maintaining a distinct existence. It is 
 a cult for the worship of the seventy-two Victori- 
 ous Ones, men who by self-discipline have tri- 
 umphed over their passions and have . attained 
 perfection. According to the census there are 
 half a million Jains. The Jains believe in sepa- 
 rate individual souls, as the Buddhists do not. 
 Their "three jewels" are Right-belief, Right- 
 knowledge and Right-conduct, instead of the Bud- 
 dhist Triad — the Buddha, the Law and the Order. 
 They are great shrine builders, and while the sys- 
 tem is cold and fruitless, it is even more punctilious 
 than Buddhism in refraining from taking life. 
 They strain water before drinking it, sweep the 
 ground before sitting down, and even wear gauze 
 over their mouths to avoid destroying insect life. 
 It is an interesting illustration of the soul's need 
 of a religion, and of the strange forms which the 
 religious instinct will create. 
 
 Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born Life of the 
 in the sixth century B. C, at a place called Kapila- Founder of 
 vastu, on the border of the river Rohini in Kasala, Buddhism, 
 the modern district of Oudh, about one hundred 
 miles northeast of the city of Benares. The date 
 of his birth is uncertain. The traditions fix it 
 
70 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 about 543 B. C, but modern European scholars 
 are disposed to place it about 500 B. C. Almost 
 all that we know of his life is legendary. His 
 father, named Suddhodana, was chief of the tribe 
 of Sakyas of the Kshatriya caste. His mother, 
 Maya, who had been childless until his birth in 
 her forty-fifth year, died shortly afterwards, and he 
 was brought up by his mother's sister, who was 
 also a wife of Suddhodana. Gautama was the 
 boy's only name. Later, when he had attained, 
 as he believed, perfect wisdom, he took the title 
 of Buddha, " the enlightened one." Many other 
 titles and names were then and later given to him, 
 such as Sakya-muni, or the sage of the Sakyas, 
 Siddartha, or "one who has fulfilled the purpose 
 of his coming," Tathagata, or he "who comes 
 and goes as his predecessors." Faithful Buddhists 
 call him "Lord of the World," "the Lord," 
 " King of the Law," etc. 
 Renunciation. He was married early to his cousin, Yasodhara, 
 and his life was surrounded by all that could make 
 a man happy. But Gautama was not happy. 
 The burden of human suffering, of the transitori- 
 ness of all pleasure, of the sheer weight of exist- 
 ence rested on his mind unceasingly, and the 
 luxury of his home did not hide the weariness and 
 woe of life from him. In his twenty-ninth year, 
 accordingly, he abandoned his home, his wife and 
 his new-born son, who he feared would only tie 
 him faster to his old life, and withdrew into seclu- 
 sion to study religion and philosophy and to seek 
 
BUDDHISM 71 
 
 for the secret of peace, the way of escape from 
 life's intolerable load. All the traditions agree in 
 their general account of the reason for Gautama's 
 resolution to forsake the world. The version put 
 forth by the Buddhists of Ceylon gives the story : — 
 The books tell us that when Prince Siddartha was 
 driving in the park one day he suddenly perceived an 
 infirm old man, with back bent by the weight of years, 
 who was creeping painfully along, leaning upon a staff. 
 Siddartha, in astonishment, asked his charioteer, Channa, 
 what that strange being might be, and Channa answered 
 that it was an old man. "Was he born in this state?" 
 further inquired the prince. " No, master, he once was 
 young and blooming as thou." "Are there more such 
 old men?" asked the prince, with growing astonishment. 
 "Very man}', master." " And how did he arrive at this 
 deplorable condition? " "It is the course of nature that 
 all men must grow old and feeble, if they do not die 
 young." "I, also, Channa?" "Thou also, master." 
 This incident made the prince so pensive that he gave 
 orders to be driven home, having lost all pleasure in the 
 beautiful surroundings. Some time after this, while out 
 driving again, he saw a leper, and when in answer to his 
 questions Channa also explained this apparition to him, 
 he was so deeply affected that thereafter he avoided all 
 amusements, and began to ponder over human misery. 
 In the course of time the third apparition was perceived 
 by him ; he saw by the wayside a corpse in a state of de- 
 composition. Violently agitated, he returned home im- 
 mediately, exclaiming: " Woe unto me, what is the use 
 of kingly splendor, all pomp and all enjoyment, if they 
 cannot guard me from old age, sickness and death ! How 
 unhappy is mankind ! Is there then no way of forever 
 ending suffering and death, which are renewed with every 
 birth?" This question occupied him henceforth uninter- 
 ruptedly. The answer thereto came to him at a subse- 
 
72 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 Evangeliza- 
 tion. 
 
 quent drive. There appeared to him an ascetic in yellow 
 garb, as worn by the Buddhist brethren, whose venerable 
 features clearly reflected his deep inner peace. This ap- 
 parition showed to the prince, troubled with the enigma 
 of existence, the way on which he had to seek its solution. 
 Henceforth the resolution matured within him to leave 
 the world and to step on the path which everyone must 
 travel who strives for perfection. 
 
 Battling with Mara, the Spirit of Evil, and 
 studying the solutions of life's problems offered by 
 other teachers, Gautama withdrew into the jungles 
 with five disciples, and there for six years gave 
 himself up to penance. But philosophy and pen- 
 ance alike were vain to lift the dire burden of 
 existence, and his disciples also left him and went 
 away. Then alone brooding deep he came to the 
 haven of peace, pierced through to the truth of 
 life's unreality, dispensed with God, and found in 
 the heart's own power of inward culture and love 
 the adequate deliverance from the curse of the 
 lusts of the soul and the will to live. He had 
 renounced the world, and now had entered into 
 the great enlightenment. He hesitated at first to 
 proclaim his discovery, but his hesitation was not 
 long, and at the age of thirty-five he started to 
 Benares to teach his doctrine of the Middle Path, 
 "the Noble Eightfold Path," and "the Four 
 Noble Truths." 
 
 On the way to Benares he met Upaka, an as- 
 cetic, who wondered at his beaming face, and 
 asked him what truth he had discovered that made 
 his face shine. Gautama answered : "I follow 
 
BUDDHISM 73 
 
 no Teacher ; I have overcome all foes ana all 
 stains ; I am superior to all men and all gods ; I 
 am the absolute Buddha ; I am going now to 
 Benares to set in motion the Wheel of the Law as 
 a king the triumphant wheel of his kingdom. I 
 am the Conqueror." ("Religions of Mission 
 Fields," p. 91.) At Benares he found the five 
 disciples who had forsaken him and won them 
 back, forming them with himself into the first 
 Sangha or Order of Monks. For forty-five years 
 he carried on his mission, itinerating through the 
 country for eight months of the year and spending 
 the rest in meditation and the instruction of his 
 fast increasing disciples. At last the end came, 
 bright with the hope of utter hopelessness. " Be- 
 hold now, Monks," he said to a great assembly as 
 the end drew near, " I impress it upon you : all 
 things are subject to the law of dissolution ; press 
 on earnestly to perfection ; soon the Tathagata's 
 final extinction will take place. At the end of 
 three months the Tathagata will enter on extinc- 
 tion." At Kusinagara the old man passed away, 
 saying with his last breath to his followers, " Be- 
 hold now, Mendicants, I say to you everything 
 that exists must pass away. Work out your own 
 perfection with diligence." 
 
 After Gautama's death his teaching was spread Spread of 
 far and wide over India. At first the new religion Buddhism, 
 worked inside the forms of Hinduism in spite of 
 its repudiation of caste. But soon the conflict 
 arose which ended in the re-absorption of Bud- 
 
74 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 dhism into the old system. This opposition and 
 the first success of the new religion forced it to a 
 development both of its ideas and of its organiza- 
 tion. These developments in their extreme form, 
 however, came later and in other lands. In India 
 for two centuries the religion retained its general 
 character, and spread from Benares through the 
 Ganges Valley. At the end of this time, Alex- 
 ander's campaign threw the country into an anarchy 
 out of which arose a dominant kingdom whose 
 king, an adventurer of low birth, was despised by 
 the Brahmans and in return patronized the Bud- 
 dhist Church. His grandson, Asoka, who united 
 nearly the whole of India under his sceptre, became 
 the Constantine of Indian Buddhism. 
 
 Asoka formally acknowledged to hold his power and 
 possessions only as a fief from the church, he convoked 
 an ecumenic council for the establishing of orthodox 
 teaching, tightened the reins of church discipline by 
 the introduction of quinquennial assemblies to be held in 
 each diocese, erected pagodas and endowed monasteries 
 with great profusion in all parts of India. 
 
 But the greatest work Asoka did was the establishing 
 of a board for foreign missions (Dharma-Mahamatra) , 
 which sent forth to all surrounding countries enthusiastic 
 preachers, who went out in self-chosen poverty, clad in 
 rags, with the alms-bowl in their hands, but supported by 
 the whole weight of Asoka's political and diplomatic in- 
 fluence. His own son, Mehendra, went out as a mission- 
 ary to Ceylon, and the whole island forthwith embraced 
 the faith of Buddha. 
 
 At the same time Cabulistan, Gandhara, Cashmere and 
 Nepaul were brought under the influence of Buddhism, 
 and thenceforth every caravan of traders that left India 
 
BUDDHISM 75 
 
 for Central Asia was accompanied by Buddhist mis- 
 sionaries. 
 
 In this way it happened that as early as 250 B. C. a 
 number of eighteen Buddhist emissaries reached China, 
 where they are held in remembrance to the present day, 
 their images occupying a conspicuous place in every large 
 temple. 
 
 So then we observe with regard to these earliest Bud- 
 dhist missionaries three things which form a remarkable 
 parallel to the line of movement followed by modern 
 Christian missions in Eastern Asia. It is evident that 
 these Buddhist missionaries went out, in the first in- 
 stance, with even greater self-abnegation than Roman 
 Catholic priests — as mendicant monks; secondly, they 
 followed in the wake of trade; and thirdly, they were 
 backed by imperial influence and diplomacy. (Eitel, 
 "Three Lectures on Buddhism," pp. 20-22.) 
 
 The sacred books of Buddhism embrace ( i ) the Sacred Books. 
 Tripitaka, which is the canon of the Southern 
 Buddhists, and which comprises the Vinaya 
 Pitaka, a collection of discourses addressed to the 
 Order of Monks, the Dutta Pitaka, discourses 
 intended specially for the laity, and the Abhid- 
 hamma, which develops the metaphysics of Bud- 
 dhism ; (2) the commentaries on the Tripitaka, 
 called Arthakatha, and (3) the canon of the 
 Northern Buddhists, accepted in Tibet and China. 
 
 None of the books of the Buddhist Scriptures 
 can at present be satisfactorily traced back of the 
 Council of Asoka, held at Patna about 250 B. C. 
 For three centuries after Gautama's death we have 
 no proof of the existence of a written canon. The 
 earliest completion of the modern Buddhist canon 
 
76 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 was in Ceylon. There the whole canon was first 
 compiled and fixed in writing between the years 
 412 and 432 of the Christian era. The canon of 
 Chinese Buddhism, Eitel holds, was begun about 
 860 and completed in 1410 A. D. The modern 
 edition of it, known as the Northern Collection, 
 is of still later date, having been completed dur- 
 ing the years 1573-1619 A. D. Recent scholars 
 fix earlier dates for the canon. 
 
 There are two great differences between the 
 Buddhist Scriptures and the Christian Bible. In 
 the first place, no inspiration whatever is claimed 
 for the sacred books of Buddhism. As Sir Monier 
 Williams says: "The characteristic of the Chris- 
 tian's Bible is that it claims to be a supernatural 
 revelation, yet it attaches no mystical talismanic 
 virtue to the mere sound of its words. On the 
 other hand, the characteristic of the Buddhist Bible 
 is that it utterly repudiates all claim to be a super- 
 natural revelation, yet the very sound of its words 
 is believed to possess a meritorious efficacy capable 
 of elevating anyone who hears it to heavenly abodes 
 in future existences. In illustration I may advert 
 to a legend current in Ceylon that once on a time 
 five hundred bats lived in a cave where two monks 
 daily recited the Buddha's Law. These bats gained 
 such merit by hearing the sound of the words that, 
 when they died, they were all reborn as men and 
 ultimately as gods." (Williams, "Buddhism," 
 p. 557.) In the second place, the Buddhist Scrip- 
 tures, and especially any extant manuscripts, came 
 
BUDDHISM 77 
 
 long after the life of Buddha and the origin of the 
 religion. There is a gap of nearly a thousand 
 years, as one writer puts it, in which the record is 
 too imperfect for us to be positive that the Pitakas, 
 as we now have them, are the Scriptures of Primi- 
 tive Buddhism. (Bishop, "Gautama or Jesus?" 
 p. 28.) Our oldest existing manuscripts of the 
 New Testament were written one hundred years 
 before the first edition of the Buddhist Scriptures 
 was undertaken. " Of the latter, not a single 
 ancient manuscript has withstood the ravages of 
 time, nor has any copy of an ancient Buddhist 
 text ever been examined critically by either friend 
 or foe in the searching manner in which all 
 the codices of the New Testament have been 
 tested." (Eitel, "Three Lectures on Buddhism," 
 p. 27.) 
 
 And what was the doctrine which Buddha Buddha's 
 discovered, which the missionaries went out to Doctrine, 
 teach, and which the sacred books enshrined? 
 It rested on the Four Noble Truths: 1. Suffering 
 or sorrow. Birth, growth, decay, death all cause 
 sorrow. All states of mind which co-exist with 
 the consciousness of individuality are states of 
 suffering. 2. The cause of suffering. The 
 action of the outer world upon us excites delight 
 or desire, and these alike are the cause of sorrow. 
 3. The cessation of sorrow. The annihilation of 
 all thirst and lust of life is the deliverance from 
 sorrow. 4. The way to deliverance is the Noble 
 Eightfold Path of 
 
78 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 1. Right belief. 5. Right means of livelihood. 
 
 2. Right feelings. 6. Right endeavor. 
 
 3. Right speech. 7. Right memory. 
 
 4. Right actions. 8. Right meditation. 
 
 Arnold's "Light of Asia" sets forth these 
 noble Truths in flowing verse: — 
 
 The First Truth is of Sorrow. Be not mocked! 
 
 Life which je prize is long-drawn agony : 
 Only its pains abide ; its pleasures are 
 
 As birds which light and fly. 
 The Second Truth is Sorrow's Cause. What grief 
 
 Springs of itself and springs not of Desire? 
 Senses and things perceived mingle and light 
 
 Passion's quick spark of fire. 
 The third is Sorrow's Ceasing. This is peace 
 
 To conquer love of self and lust of life, 
 To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, 
 
 To still the inward strife. 
 Then Sorrow ends, for Life and Death have ceased ; 
 
 How should lamps flicker when their oil is spent? 
 The old sad count is clear, the new is clean ; 
 
 Thus hath a man content. 
 
 The Fourth Truth is The Way. It openeth wide, 
 Plain for all feet to tread, easy and near, 
 
 The Noble Eightfold Path ; it goeth straight 
 To peace and refuge. Hear! 
 
 On The Way to the extinction of desire there 
 are four stages. 1. Conversion following upon 
 (a) companionship with the good; (b) hearing 
 of the law; (c) enlightened reflection; or (d) the 
 practice of virtue. Those in the first stage are 
 free successively from the first three of the Ten 
 Fetters: (1) from the delusion of self; (2) from 
 
BUDDHISM 79 
 
 doubt as to the Buddha and his doctrines, and (3) 
 from the belief in the efficacy of rites and cere- 
 monies. 2. The stage of those who will return 
 only once to this world. 3. The stage of those 
 who will never return, from whom two more 
 Fetters have fallen: (4) sensuality, and (5) malev- 
 olence. 4. The Stage of the Holy Ones or 
 Arahats, in which men become free from the 
 remaining Fetters: (6) love of life on earth, (7) 
 desire for life in heaven, (8) pride, (9) self- 
 righteousness, and (10) ignorance. When these 
 last five are broken and the Fourth Stage is 
 passed, the Buddhist believer becomes Asekha 
 and passes beyond all delusion and sorrow into 
 the perfect peace of Nirvana. And these stages 
 are not all crowded into one life time. Life 
 after life must be lived through before, treading 
 the Path, the believer can attain the goal. All 
 evil and good alike must be lived down in the 
 wheel of Transmigration before the will to live is 
 extinct and the calm of Nirvana won. 
 
 This is the core of Buddhism. It knows no No God in 
 God. It unequivocally denies the existence of Buddhism, 
 any divine Creator or Ruler of the Universe. 
 The ideal of God as a personal Father is entirely 
 alien and impossible to it. (Gogerly, "The 
 Kristiyani Prajnopati," Parti, pp. 74-105.) The 
 Buddhist Catechism of Subhadra Bhikshu, pub- 
 lished by the Maha Bodhi Society of Ceylon and 
 officially- approved, in answer to the question, 
 "Did a god-creator call the world into existence 
 
80 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 by his will?" replies, "There is no god-creator 
 upon whose grace or will the existence of the 
 world depends. Everything originates and 
 develops by and out of itself, by virtue of its own 
 will and according to its inner nature and condi- 
 tion (its karma). Only the ignorance of man has 
 invented a personal god-creator. The Buddhists, 
 however, absolutely reject the belief in a personal 
 god, and consider the doctrine of a creation out 
 of nothing a delusion." The Buddhism of 
 Gautama and of all who hold his doctrine 
 unchanged is pure atheism. 
 And No Soul And not only did Gautama deny the existence 
 n Man. f Q oc j # He denied, also, the existence of the 
 
 soul. The first of the Ten Fetters is the heresy 
 of individuality, which must be abandoned on the 
 threshold of the Path to holiness. The very doc- 
 trine of the soul or personal self is declared to be 
 a fountain of evil. It is held to constitute with 
 sensuality, heresy and ritualism the cause of 
 sorrow and suffering and despair. It was impos- 
 sible, of course, for Gautama to deny the reality 
 of sentient existence. His very purpose was to 
 escape from it. His teaching was that it had five 
 elements or Skandhas: 1, The organized body; 
 2, sensation; 3, perception; 4, discrimination, 
 and 5, consciousness; and Buddhism sees these to 
 be five steps in an endless chain of cause and 
 effect. Existence, it is said, is caused by (1) 
 ignorance or delusion; ignorance produced (2) 
 action; from action arises (3) consciousness, 
 
BUDDHISM 81 
 
 thence (4) substantiality, thence (5) the six organs 
 of perception (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and 
 mind) ; from the action of these organs arises (6) 
 sensation, thence comes (7) perception ; thence 
 (8) desire or lust; from this desire springs (9) the 
 cleaving to existence, which produces (10) indi- 
 vidual existence ; the latter finds its expression in 
 (11) birth, but birth invariably produces (12) de- 
 crepitude and death; and death, though it breaks 
 up the above-mentioned five constituents (Skand- 
 has) of individual life, leaves behind the repro- 
 ductive power, a germ as it were, which has to 
 run the same round again through ignorance, 
 action, consciousness and so forth. (Eitel, 
 "Three Lectures on Buddhism," p, 86.) In all 
 this, or back of this, there was no personal soul 
 or individuality whose immortality could frustrate 
 the effort to escape from the unrest of existence 
 into Nirvana and its calm. (Hardy, "Manual of 
 Buddhism, ' ' Ch. IX. ) The Buddhist Catechism, 
 in a note on the soul, is explicit in its statement: — 
 
 The widespread belief in an immortal soul within 
 us — that is, an individual entity, endowed with knowl- 
 edge, differing from others, created or come into exist- 
 ence, and nevertheless eternal — arises principally from 
 the egotistical desire for eternal, personal continued 
 existence. Hence this superstition is a consequence of 
 the deluded will-to-live, and belongs to the "ten fetters" 
 which chain man to existence and prevent his salvation. 
 To understand that after all it is the individuality, with 
 its wants and desires opposed to those of other individ- 
 ualities, which causes all suffering in the world, that 
 
82 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 therefore the striving for individual happiness is accord- 
 ing to its very nature wrong, and that it is best to 
 relinquish it voluntarily — that is to take a great step, 
 yea the greatest, on the road to true knowledge. But 
 man wants to preserve his individuality at any price; 
 hence the popularity of those religions which promise 
 eternal continued existence of the individuality ; hence 
 the never-ending struggle for existence ; hence all suffer- 
 ing, all sorrow, of which life is full ; hence the difficulty 
 of emancipation. "Individuality is a burning fire, O 
 disciples. And by what is it kindled? By lust, ill-will 
 and delusion." 
 
 This was Buddha's doctrine. ' 'Mendicants, " 
 said he in concluding a sermon to his monks, 
 speaking of death, "that which binds the Teacher 
 to existence (viz., tanha, thirst) is cut off; but 
 his body still remains. While his body shall 
 remain he will be seen by gods and men, but 
 after the termination of life, upon the dissolution 
 of the body, neither gods nor men will see him." 
 (Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," p. 99.) 
 
 But if there is no soul, what is there to pass 
 into Nirvana? What meaning is there in 
 Buddha's doctrine of transmigration? What is it 
 that is reborn in the long pursuit of Nirvana 
 through unnumbered successive lives? What 
 moves through the stages of the Noble Path? 
 What is salvation, or deliverance? What is there 
 to be saved or delivered? The Buddhist Cate- 
 chism answers: — 
 
 What then is it in us that is reborn? 
 
 Our will-to-live and our moral character. These 
 
BUDDHISM 83 
 
 form the core of our being, and create for themselves 
 after the disintegration of our present body a new one, 
 corresponding exactly to their nature. 
 
 Is not the individual will-to-live or individuality 
 the same as what is called "soul?" 
 
 No, it is not the same. The belief in an "immortal 
 soul" — that is, an indivisible, eternal and indestructible 
 entity, which has only taken up its temporary abode in 
 the body — Buddhism considers an error, based on igno- 
 rance of the true nature of being and of living beings. 
 Buddhism teaches no "transmigration of souls" (metemp- 
 sychosis) but the new formation of the individual in 
 the material world of phenomena in virtue of its will to 
 live (Tanha) and its moral character (Karma). 
 
 Then the being which is reborn is not the same 
 which died? 
 
 It is not the same and not another. It may seem to 
 be another to a man still in the state of ignorance, who 
 wrongly identifies the personal ego-consciousness with 
 his true being. He who has attained wisdom knows 
 that his real being is his tanha and his karma ; but that 
 the recurring ego-consciousness is only a transient 
 phenomenon, to be compared to the torch lit by a 
 wanderer at night to find his way. When he does not 
 need it any more, he extinguishes it, to light a new 
 torch for a later wandering. Thus, though the ego- 
 consciousness may change, it is in a sense by the tie of 
 Karma always the same individuality which in one birth 
 does the good or bad deed and in the next reaps the 
 fruits of these deeds, though in the absence of any sub- 
 stance passing from one life to the next it is not abso- 
 lutely the same. 
 
 This may seem elusive, but to the Buddhist Karma. 
 Karma is the most real of realities. (Rhys 
 Davids, "Hibbert Lectures," 1881, Lecture III.) 
 Men have a lust to live. It is this that sends 
 
84 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 them back into the world again. The Buddhist 
 Catechism sets forth the pure Buddhist doctrine : — 
 
 Can everybody attain Nirvana already in the present 
 birth? 
 
 Only very few can. Most men have so defective a 
 mental and moral nature, as the result of their deeds in 
 former births, that they require many rebirths before 
 they have perfected themselves sufficiently to gain 
 release. But every one who earnestly strives can gain a 
 rebirth under favorable conditions. 
 
 Does our rebirth depend solely upon ourselves? 
 
 Entirely upon our inner nature, our will. This 
 craving desire (tanha), based on ignorance (avijja) 
 which pervades us all and forms the essence of our 
 being, is the real creative power; it is what other reli- 
 gions personify as god ; it is the cause of our existence 
 and our rebirth, and in truth the creator, preserver and 
 destroyer of all things — the real trinity. 
 
 Are the nature and quality of our rebirth also depend- 
 ent upon ourselves? 
 
 Yes. The nature and quality of our rebirth are 
 dependent upon our Karma. 
 
 What is Karma? 
 
 Karma is our action ; our merit and our guilt in a 
 moral sense. If our merit preponderates, we are reborn 
 in a higher scale of beings, or as man in favorable cir- 
 cumstances ; but if we are heavily laden with guilt, the 
 necessary consequence is a rebirth in a lower form and 
 full of suffering. 
 
 Are not our actions the natural result of our inborn 
 individual character? 
 
 Certainly. But this inborn character is nothing else 
 than the product of our Karma ; i. e., of all our thoughts, 
 words and deeds in former lives. We are in every 
 moment of our existence exactly what we have made 
 ourselves to be, and we enjoy and suffer only what we 
 deserve. 
 
BUDDHISM 85 
 
 It is out of this will to live and this grip of Nirvana. 
 Karma that the Buddhist hopes to escape at last 
 into Nirvana. And what is Nirvana? It is the 
 extinction of the will to live, either here or else- 
 where. In it Karma is clean spent. Nothing is 
 left that could be reborn. Nirvana literally 
 means "to be extinguished, to be blown out like 
 a flame blown out by the wind or extinguished 
 for want of fuel." (Buddhist Catechism, p. 61.) 
 It is, as the Buddhists say, "a state of mind and 
 heart in which all desire for life or annihilation, 
 all egotistic craving has become extinct, and with 
 it every passion, every grasping desire, every 
 fear, all ill-will, and every sorrow. It is a state 
 of perfect inward peace, accompanied by the 
 imperturbable certainty of having attained deliv- 
 erance. — a state words cannot describe, and 
 which the imagination of the worldling tries in 
 vain to picture to himself. Only one who has 
 himself experienced it knows what Nirvana is." 
 (Buddhist Catechism, p. 22.) In a note the 
 Catechism admits that Parinirvana, the ulterior 
 Nirvana, "in the sense of other religions and of 
 scientific materialism, is indeed total annihilation, 
 complete dissolution of the individuality, for noth- 
 ing remains in Parinirvana which in any way 
 corresponds to the human conception of exist- 
 ence." (p. 61.) And this is what it must seem 
 to us unless we breathe into Buddhism's theory 
 of man the life of a soul. What it meant to 
 Buddha we cannot be sure. "He may have 
 
86 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 looked upon Nirvana as a state of personal 
 immortality, in which the spirit, exempt from the 
 eddies of transmigration, revels in the enjoyment 
 of unlimited happiness arising from the annihila- 
 tion of all desire. On the other hand, he may 
 have viewed Nirvana as a state of absolute anni- 
 hilation of personality and individual existence. 
 It is impossible to decide w T hich of the two views 
 Buddha actually held. But I am inclined to 
 think he most probably left the question undecided 
 in his own mind/' (Eitel, "Three Lectures on 
 Buddhism," p. 88 f.) 
 The Ethics of With no God to help him, man's struggle for 
 Buddhism. Nirvana becomes in Buddhism a discipline of 
 self-culture, as "The Buddhist" proudly declared 
 in the editorial which has been quoted. Its 
 philosophy defines its ends, but its ethics pre- 
 scribes its means. It calls for self-conquest and 
 a life of virtue and benevolence, not active and 
 disturbing, but passive and calm, abstaining from 
 all evil act or evil thought, and seeking that sub- 
 jugation of all desire and all will, even the desire 
 to see good and the will to live to do it, which 
 will issue at last in "lifeless, timeless bliss." 
 Of self-conquest the Dhammapada says, "If one 
 man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand 
 men, and if another conquer himself, he is the 
 greatest of conquerors." * But "to attain the 
 Buddhist ideal, self-conquest must be carried so 
 far as to eliminate all personal affection for 
 friends or relations. Thus in the Vessantara, the 
 
BUDDHISM 87 
 
 last of the Jataka stories of the rebirths of 
 Buddha, we are told that the final act of self- 
 conquest by which Buddha qualified himself to be 
 born as Buddha, was the giving up to a Brahman 
 who wanted them as his slaves, first his two chil- 
 dren and then his wife. When asked to surrender 
 his wife, he did not reply, "Yesterday I gave my 
 children to the Brahman ; how can I give Maddi 
 to you to be left alone in the forest?" No! he 
 was as though receiving a purse of gold, of a 
 thousand pieces of gold; indifferent, unattached, 
 with no clinging of mind he gave her up. 
 (Robinson, "The Interpretation of the Character 
 of Christ to Non-Christian Races," p. 68.) 
 And so also the Buddhist ideal of benevolence 
 aims at the utter extinction of active love as well 
 as of hate. The distinctive ideal of Christian 
 love as the will to serve and to live in order to 
 serve, Buddhism repudiates. In the Dhamma- 
 pada we read, "Let no man love anything; loss 
 of the beloved is evil. Those who love nothing 
 and hate nothing have no fetters." ("Dhamma- 
 pada, " p. 211.) "From love comes grief, from 
 love comes fear; he who is free from love knows 
 neither grief nor fear. " (P. 215.) Gautama is 
 represented as saying, "Those who cause me pain 
 and those who cause me joy, to all I am alike; 
 affection and hatred I know not." (Robinson, 
 "Interpretation of the Character of Christ to 
 Non-Christian Races," p. 70.) 
 
 Nevertheless, it was the ethics of Buddhism Caste. 
 
88 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 that constituted the really noble teaching of 
 Gautama. It renounced caste, although in Cey- 
 lon where Buddhism is at its purest, and where 
 it has prevailed for over two thousand years, caste 
 exercises a strong influence. "All castes, how- 
 ever low, were supposed to be eligible to 
 Buddha's priesthood, but in Ceylon ordination 
 gradually became the privilege of the Vellala 
 caste alone, until a Sinhalese of a lower caste 
 went to Burma and got ordained, the second 
 priestly order being open to three castes outside 
 the Vellalas, but refusing any of the other castes 
 — so making two castes of priests in the island." 
 (Ferguson, "Ceylon in 1903," p. 137.) Still, 
 in its general influence, Buddhism ministered to 
 human brotherhood. 
 
 Ten Com- Buddhism had its ten commandments or vows. 
 
 mandments. The first five of these are binding on all Bud- 
 dhists: — 
 
 1. Not to kill or injure any living being. 
 
 2. Not to take anything which does not belong to me 
 or has not been given to me voluntarily. 
 
 3. To abstain from all sexual excess and incontinence. 
 
 4. Not to lie, deceive, or slander. 
 
 5. To abstain from all intoxicants and excitants. 
 
 The next three are not obligatory upon common 
 believers, but are recommended to all pious lay- 
 men: — 
 
 6. Not to eat at improper times; i. e., not to take 
 solid food after midday. 
 
 7. To abstain from dancing, the singing of worldly 
 songs, from attending plays or musical performances ; 
 
BUDDHISM 89 
 
 in short, to abstain from all worldly and distracting 
 amusements. 
 
 8. To avoid the use of ornaments of every kind, of 
 perfumes, fragrant oils or ointments; in short, anything 
 that tends to vanity. 
 
 These eight and two more are obligatory upon 
 all priests, the additional two being, — 
 
 9. To abandon the use of luxurious beds, to sleep on 
 a hard, low couch, and to avoid all and every worldli- 
 ness. 
 
 10. To live always in voluntary poverty. 
 
 There are also ten sins: three of the body, Sins and 
 murder, theft and adultery; four of the speech, Duties. 
 lying, slander, abuse and unprofitable conversa- 
 tion; and three of the mind, covetousness, malice 
 and skepticism. There are six relationships with 
 mutual obligations: parent and child, teacher and 
 scholar, priest and householder, husband and 
 wife, master and servant, friend and friend. The 
 ethical teaching of Buddhism was not without its 
 limitations. In the matter of lying, for example, 
 four things were necessary to constitute a lie: "1. 
 There must be the utterance of the thing that is 
 not. 2. There must be the knowledge that it is 
 not. 3. There must be some endeavor to prevent 
 the person addressed from learning the truth. 4. 
 There must be the discovery by the person de- 
 ceived that what has been told him is not true." 
 (Hardy, "A Manual of Buddhism," p. 486.) 
 But there have been Christian teachers like 
 Jeremy Taylor who taught that it was right to 
 
90 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 lie to children and to insane people. Gautama's 
 personal doctrine was nobler than that. 
 The Sangha But it may be asked, how could society exist 
 
 Priesthood. anc i ethical relationships, calling for positive 
 feelings and action, be maintained under the 
 Buddhist philosophy that all desire and all life 
 were evil? The new religion, like Christianity 
 in the Middle Ages, was tempered to human 
 weakness, and different orders of disciples were 
 established. The Sangha, or order of the priest- 
 hood, alone renounced life with its action and 
 relationship, and the great body of laymen were 
 appointed a less exacting path. Christians who 
 have found a way to live on a different plane 
 from the Sermon on the Mount or the spiritual 
 experience of St. Paul, and still regard them- 
 selves as followers of Christ, must not be over 
 severe on the working adaptation of Buddhism. 
 The Buddhist Catechism defines the two orders 
 of Buddhists as follows: "The Upasakos, or lay 
 followers of the doctrine, take only the five gen- 
 eral vows, and try to the best of their power to 
 live up to the precepts of virtuous conduct and 
 benevolence contained in the Sigalovada-Suttam, 
 but remain in the world and faithfully perform 
 their duties as members of a family and citizens. 
 The Bhikkhus, however, the true disciples of the 
 Buddha, renounce the world completely, join the 
 Brotherhood of the Elect, take the ten vows, and 
 regulate their life entirely according to the rules 
 contained in the Vinayo." 
 
BUDDHISM 91 
 
 The priesthood from the outset was required to 
 renounce all worldly activity, to go forth from 
 home into homelessness, to live in monasteries or 
 as hermits, to give themselves wholly to self- 
 inspection and meditation and moral self-culture, 
 and to seek only the goal of Nirvana. Through 
 the priesthood is the only path to salvation. "In 
 the worldly life," says the Catechism, "the 
 thorough fulfillment of the Ten Vows, the throw- 
 ing off of the Ten Fetters — in short, the total 
 annihilation of desire, hatred, and delusion — are 
 almost impossible. All worldly activity rests in 
 the main on selfishness and ignorance." It is not 
 surprising that it was charged, "as the earliest 
 teachings of the Buddhist authorities distinctly 
 show, that the way to Nirvana which he (Gua- 
 tama) preached, involving, as it did, the extin- 
 guishing of all natural desire, either of what was 
 reckoned good or evil, and the adoption of a 
 celibate and mendicant life, would break up 
 families, and, practically carried out, would, 
 put an end to society. This charge the Buddha 
 seems to have met by simply replying that what 
 they thought so evil was in truth the very best 
 thing that could be. Still, a social community 
 outside the society of the mendicant disciples was 
 an absolute necessity to the very existence of the 
 latter. Beggars must have people to beg from. 
 And thus it appears to have become practically 
 necessary, from almost the very first, to devise 
 some plan which should at once permit of the 
 
92 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 propagation of the new religion, while yet allow- 
 ing the existence of families and business com- 
 munities. This need was met by the promulga- 
 tion of a secondary system of observances, which 
 might be kept while yet the man need not leave 
 the life of the householder. Not by these observ- 
 ances, indeed, could Nirvana be attained, but 
 their observance would at least render this present 
 life more tolerable, and conduce in the next life 
 to the attainment of conditions of existence more 
 favorable than the present to the securing of that 
 longed-for blessing." (Kellogg, "The Light of 
 Asia and the Light of the World," pp. 61, 62.) 
 Buddhist The fundamental weakness of Buddhist ethics 
 
 Etkics appears here. It was not a morality designed to 
 
 make men fit for human fellowship and service. 
 It was a system planned to deliver men from life. 
 It stamped every occupation or trade as incom- 
 patible with the highest type of life. It required 
 deliverance from every attachment and interest. 
 Of the true Brahmana, the truly religious man, 
 Gautama said: — 
 
 Whosoever amongst men lives by different mechani- 
 cal arts . . . he is an artisan, not a Brahmana. 
 
 Whosoever amongst men lives by trade ... he is a 
 merchant, not a Brahmana. 
 
 Whosoever amongst men lives by serving others . . . 
 he is a servant, not a Brahmana. 
 
 Whosoever amongst men possesses villages and coun- 
 tries ... he is a king, not a Brahmana. 
 
 And not only work but also learning was to be 
 escaped as a snare and a hindrance. The saint 
 
 Unsocial. 
 
BUDDHISM 93 
 
 is one who "is no follower of philosophical 
 views, nor a friend of knowledge; and having 
 penetrated the opinions that have arisen amongst 
 people, he is indifferent to learning, while others 
 acquire it." (Sutta Nipata; Mahaviyuha Sutta, 
 17; "Sacred Books of the East," Vol. X, Part 
 2, p. 174. Quoted in Kellogg, "The Light of 
 Asia and the Light of the World," pp. 321, 384.) 
 And not only are the ethics of Buddhism un- 
 social in the sense of deprecating work and 
 learning, the very essentials of human progress, 
 but the whole system is radically self-centered. 
 Though it denies the human personality, its 
 atheism only serves to make of the human person- 
 ality the center and goal of all things. Paul 
 Dahlke, whom the Buddhist world has hailed as 
 a prophet, says distinctly on this point, "The 
 mind of Prince Siddartha, called Guatama, 
 became entirely occupied with this one fact, that 
 all life is sorrow, and in the strenuous concentra- 
 tion of all his powers upon this one point, he 
 seeks to save himself from this sorrow ... he 
 seeks his own salvation, and that only. It is a 
 purely egoistical impulse, but what more natural 
 than that one who suddenly finds himself in a 
 burning house should seek first of all to save 
 himself?" The impulse may be natural, but 
 public opinion, educated by the spirit of Christ, 
 would not tolerate the action in a Christian coun- 
 try ; the man who left women and children to burn 
 would carry a stigma for the rest of his days. 
 
94 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Dr. Dahlke goes on to show that as in Gau- 
 tama's early experience, so in his ethical system 
 he shows a refined selfishness: "The greatest gift 
 of love is not bestowed in the interest of the 
 receiver thereof; the giver bestows it in his own 
 interest. . . . The whole moral scheme in Bud- 
 dhism is nothing but a sum in arithmetic set down 
 by a cold clear egoism; so much as I give to 
 others, so much will come again to me. . . . The 
 Buddhist indeed, with sober understanding, strives 
 strenuously to avoid every contact with his neigh- 
 bor. If, however, the latter comes in contact 
 with him, then he shall behave towards him as 
 his own best welfare would demand." (Quoted 
 in ''Trinity College Magazine," Kandy, June, 
 1909. Article, "Are the Ethics of Buddhism 
 Social?" pp. 340, 341, 343.) 
 Three Other Three other points in Buddhist ethics deserve 
 
 Weaknesses. a moment's attention. (1) However inadequate 
 its negative teaching may be, it is said, at least 
 Buddhism has produced a spirit of kindness and 
 consideration toward life, both of men and ani- 
 mals. This is true, but "in Ceylon, for example, 
 where the great majority of the people are pro- 
 fessed Buddhists, the Buddhist teaching as to the 
 duty of benevolence does not prevent its people 
 from committing more murders than any other 
 people in the world (of whom trustworthy records 
 exist) in proportion to their numbers." (Robin- 
 son, "The Interpretation of the Character of 
 Christ to Non-Christian Races," p. 72.) And it 
 
BUDDHISM 95 
 
 is open to question whether animals are any 
 better cared for in Buddhist lands than among us. 
 (See Ferguson, "Ceylon in 1903," p. 137 f.) 
 (2) The underlying principles of Gautama's 
 teaching, involving a belief in the misery of 
 existence and the curse of birth, reacted upon 
 the conception of womanhood. She was the 
 doorway of sorrow. In Buddha's original plan 
 she had no place in his Order, and so was ineligi- 
 ble to salvation. Indeed in Buddhism her only 
 hope of reaching Nirvana is through rebirth as a 
 man. (Eitel, "Three Lectures on Buddhism," 
 p. 83.) "The home life is pain, the seat of 
 impurity," say the Buddhist Scriptures. "So 
 long as the love of man toward women, even the 
 smallest, is not destroyed, so long is his mind in 
 bondage." (3) But it is said Buddhism at least 
 is to be admired for the spirit of toleration. In 
 this regard it has been greatly praised in contrast 
 to Christianity with its exclusive claims. But 
 the toierance of Buddhism springs from the prin- 
 ciple of indifference, from the suppression of all 
 emotion and desire, from its pure subjectivism. 
 "Often when a layman asks his priest 'Does 
 Buddha exist,' the reply will be," writes the 
 Rev. J E. Hail of Japan, " c If you believe that 
 the Buddha exists, then for you he does exist; 
 but if you believe that he is not existent, then for 
 you he does not exist.' " Tolerance loses its 
 ethical significance in such circumstances, and in 
 its very nature Buddhism must lay aside any feel- 
 
96 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 ing of intolerance because it must lay aside all 
 
 feelings whatever. Its heaven is the state of 
 
 mind where nothing matters. 
 
 Development The Buddhism which we have thus far consid- 
 
 and Division. ered hag been in the ma ; n the Buddhism of 
 
 Gautama and of the stream of tradition most 
 faithful to the primitive faith. But no religion 
 has undergone more revolutionary transformation 
 than Buddhism. The radical distinction be- 
 tween the Mahay ana, or Greater Vehicle, Bud- 
 dhism and the Hinayana, or Small Vehicle, began, 
 it may be said, on the day that Gautama died, 
 and the breach has widened with each passing 
 year. (Lloyd, ''Wheat Among the Tares," p. 
 2f.) "The Buddhist Church of Ceylon, with 
 its dependencies in Burma and 1 Siam, main- 
 tained with great tenacity the original teaching 
 of early Buddhism in comparative purity, while 
 the Northern Buddhists, — that is to say, those of 
 Northern India, Cashmere, Nepaul, and after- 
 wards those of China, Tibet and Mongolia, — went 
 on constantly adding to and expanding the com- 
 mon stock of doctrines and traditions, and enter- 
 ing into compromises with any form of popular 
 superstition they found too deep-rooted and too 
 popular to overcome." (Eitel, "Three Lectures 
 on Buddhism," p. 23.) Yet even in the south 
 Buddhism gathered up much animism, and in 
 Siam and Burma to-day, and also in Ceylon 
 itself, mingles the native spirit worship with the 
 purer faith. It is here in the south, however, in 
 
BUDDHISM 97 
 
 Cevlon, that the ancient doctrine is most firmly 
 held and ardently propagated with the adaptation 
 of the methods of Christian missions, and with 
 skillful use of all the anti-Christian material 
 which can be drawn from Western skepticism 
 and destructive criticism. Southern Buddhism, 
 however, has lost the greater part of its ancient 
 territory, and would have lost more if it had not 
 spread over the orthodox philosophy of Buddhism 
 a covering of religious ideas logically at variance 
 with it, but necessary to the religious nature of 
 man. 
 
 The changes introduced in Northern Buddhism, Northern 
 however, were vastly greater. In Tibet the Bud- Buddhism, 
 dhist clergy established a hereditary hierarchy 
 which gained the mastery over all the kings rul- 
 ing the country, and combined in the hands of 
 the priesthood the supreme temporal and spiritual 
 government of the nation, with a doctrine of per- 
 petual succession of Grand Lamas, or supreme 
 pontiffs, by successive reincarnation. When each 
 Grand Lama dies, search is at once made for the 
 babe in whom he is supposed to have become 
 reincarnate. The Tibetan Church is a great 
 organization, duplicating the whole scheme of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, "with its shaven 
 priests, its bells, and rosaries, its images, and 
 holy water, and gorgeous dresses; its service 
 with double choirs, and processions, and creeds, 
 and mystic rites, and incense, in which the laity 
 are spectators only; its abbots and monks, and 
 
98 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 nuns of many grades; its worship of the double 
 Virgin, and of the saints and angels; its fasts, 
 confessions, and purgatory; its images, its idols, 
 and its pictures; its huge monasteries, and its 
 gorgeous cathedrals, its powerful hierarchy, its 
 cardinals, its pope ... in spite of the essential 
 difference of its teachings, and of its mode of 
 thought." (Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," p. 
 250.) Buddhism introduced a literary culture 
 and some measure of civilization into Tibet, but 
 it appears never to have lifted a ringer against the 
 custom of polyandry. Indeed Lamaism sanc- 
 tioned it. As a result, the Buddhist Tibetans do 
 not increase in numbers, and immorality, nurtured 
 by polyandry, has undermined the powers of 
 increase of the people. ("The Pioneer," Alla- 
 habad, India, Oct. 26, 1908, citing Francke, 
 "History of Western Tibet.") In religion the 
 Tibetan Buddhists are notable for their labor-sav- 
 ing contrivances, the prayer wheels and prayer 
 mills and praying flags in which written prayers 
 are rotated by wind, or water, or mechanical 
 device. But it is not all form. At Lhassa, the 
 capital of Tibet, "in the evening, just as the day 
 is verging on its decline," says a French mis- 
 sionary, "all the Tibetans stop business and meet 
 together, men, women and children, according to 
 their sex and age, in the principal parts of the 
 town and in the public squares. As soon as 
 groups are formed, every one kneels down and 
 they begin slowly and in undertones to chant 
 
BUDDHISM 99 
 
 prayers. The religious concerts produced by 
 these numerous assemblages create throughout 
 the town a solemn harmony, which operates 
 forcibly on the soul. The first time we witnessed 
 this spectacle, we could not help drawing a pain- 
 ful comparison between this pagan town, where 
 all prayed together, and the cities of Europe, 
 where people would blush to make the sign of the 
 cross in public." (Monier Williams, "Bud- 
 dhism," p. 386.) 
 
 Passing north from Tibet into China and The Two 
 Japan, we see that Buddhism has undergone even Vehicles, 
 greater changes. In India and Siam and Burma 
 Buddhism has remained the Buddhism of the 
 Hinayana system, that is, the "Little Vehicle," a 
 name referring to the way in which the faith 
 offered to convey the believer across the seas of 
 sorrow into the haven of Nirvana. It is the 
 small conveyance, the little vehicle, because the 
 forms of doctrine and worship were plain and 
 few, but exacting, compared with the elaborate 
 schemes and ampler views of the Mahayana sys- 
 tem, or the School of the Great Vehicle. The 
 Hinayana was the small road to salvation. It 
 opened the door to the few who could meet the 
 'narrow requirements. The Mahayana was the 
 broad road, open to all, aiming to uplift the whole 
 of mankind to the Buddhist salvation and to 
 increase to the highest possible degree the num- 
 ber of ways or means for the obtaining of blessed- 
 ness. (De Groot, "The Religion of the Chinese, 
 
100 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 p. 166.) Some trace the two schools back to 
 Buddha's own teaching, which contained the 
 dual doctrine of a hard and an easy salvation, 
 lessons for beginners and lessons for the more 
 advanced. (Lloyd, "Transactions of The Asiatic 
 Society of Japan," Vol. XII, Part III, p. 343). 
 It is clear that the more advanced and expanded 
 doctrines of the Mahayana open the wider and 
 more varied methods of salvation. These devel- 
 opments of Buddhism have carried it forward into 
 many forms entirely inconsistent with Gautama's 
 original doctrine, into polytheism and idolatry, 
 into the deification of Buddha himself, into the 
 wildest superstition and into theistic forms which 
 are a good preparation for Christianity. We 
 have theistic, polytheistic, mystical, hierarchical, 
 ceremonial and ritualistic Buddhism, — systems 
 and ideas so contradictory that a hopeful student 
 of Chinese Buddhism, contrasting with the old 
 Buddhism of Gautama the Buddhism of Ashva- 
 gosha's "Awakening of Faith," declares that 
 
 1. The Old Buddhism was atheistic; the New is 
 theistic. 
 
 2. The Old Buddhism trusted in salvation by one's 
 own efforts (Karma); the New trusted in the help of 
 God as well. 
 
 3. The Old Buddhism believed in retirement from 
 the evil world; the New believed in living in the world 
 and in saving others as the highest virtue. 
 
 4. The Old Buddhism believed in countless transmi- 
 grations before the many could be delivered; the New 
 believed in passing into Paradise at once without any 
 rounds of transmigration. 
 
BUDDHISM 101 
 
 (Richard's translation of Ashvagosha's "The 
 Awakening of Faith," p. 12 f. ) Yet all these 
 contradictories pass under the name of Buddhism! 
 It must be confessed, however, that the new Bud- 
 dhism which Dr. Richard finds in "The Awaken- 
 ing of Faith," though the book was translated 
 into Chinese in the sixth century, has not been 
 the form of Buddhism prevalent in China. Jap- 
 anese Buddhism has come much nearer to it. 
 "Of the 26,000 Buddhist monks and nuns in 
 Japan," says Dr. Richard, "no less than 17,000 
 belong to the Pure Land School and the True 
 School, which regard this book as their fountain 
 and origin." ("The Awakening of Faith," p. 
 5.) 
 
 As early as the middle of the third century B. Buddhism in 
 C. Buddhist missionaries visited China, and at China, 
 once arrayed themselves on the side of the popu- 
 lar animistic superstition and of Taoism, in 
 opposition to Confucianism. For three centuries 
 the Buddhist propaganda met with no success, 
 until, in consequence of a dream of the Emperor 
 Ming Li in the year 61 A. D., an embassy was 
 dispatched to Cashmere and India to bring the 
 religion officially to China, and in consequence 
 Buddhism became the imperial faith. It has 
 never found favor, however, in the eyes of Con- 
 fucianism, which despises it as superstition, and 
 has again and again, in the history of China, 
 made war upon it. (De Groot, "The Religion of 
 the Chinese," Ch. VII.) But it conciliated Con- 
 
102 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 fucianism by its contribution to the ceremonial 
 adornment of ancestor worship, and it combined 
 with Taoism to minister to those religious neces- 
 sities which Confucianism ignored but could not 
 annul. In consequence, while almost all Chinese 
 are Confucianists in theory, and most of them 
 will declare Buddhism to be heresy, in practice 
 they combine Buddhist rites with the ceremony 
 of ancestor worship, and at weddings and funerals, 
 in times of sickness and emergency, they resort to 
 the Buddhist priests or temples. How far Chi- 
 nese Buddhism has departed from the Middle 
 Way of Gautama, which rejected on the one hand 
 the pleasures of sense and on the other all trust 
 in ritual and ceremony, and walked between 
 worldliness and superstition, is evidenced by 
 almost every feature of the Chinese religious 
 life, — its ceaseless worldly concern, its grotesque 
 idolatry, and the lurid symbolism of its hells, 
 whose terrors inspire men to righteousness. 
 Confucianism and the Chinese character are 
 responsible for the worldly concern, but the 
 superstition, the sense of abject dependence upon 
 unseen powers, the puerile worship and the 
 nobler conception of deities like Kwan Yin, the 
 goddess of mercy, are the reaction of men's 
 hearts, naturally religious, against the teaching of 
 Gautama that left men without any divine fellow- 
 ship or help, in the midst of forces whose mystery 
 the Buddhist metaphysics could not dispel. Yet 
 though the type of Buddhism developed in China 
 
BUDDHISM 103 
 
 influences the mass of the people, nevertheless, as 
 a whole, they have little respect for the Buddhist 
 Church and habitually sneer at the Buddhist 
 priests. The Tai-ping rebels wiped out the sys- 
 tem wherever they went; and the present educa- 
 tional reformation in China does not scruple to 
 appropriate the temples and their revenues for 
 the purposes of the new schools. Beal sums up 
 the moral and social effect of Buddhism upon the 
 Chinese people by saying, "Whilst it has not* 
 answered any great end in raising the religious 
 . tone of the masses of the people, it has certainly 
 tended to promote a love of morality, and a 
 healthy state of society, by guarding it against 
 vice or profligacy; and it has helped to raise the 
 mind to a love of the beautiful in nature, and 
 assisted in the advancement of art and litera- 
 ture. ... It did nothing, however, to promote 
 the knowledge of the true God, nor has it sup- 
 plied any substitute for the worship of Shang-ti, 
 the lord and maker of the world ; and what it has 
 given in lieu of this, viz., a somewhat meaning- 
 less spiritualism, will hardly compensate for the 
 loss of the great thought of a c supreme, personal 
 Ruler' directing and governing the world." 
 (Beal, "Buddhism in China," pp. 259, 254. 
 Nevius, "China and the Chinese," Ch. VII, 
 VIII.) 
 
 Buddhism has reached somewhat worthier In Japan. 
 developments in Japan. It came thither by way 
 of Korea in the sixth century. "Introduced at an 
 
104 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 opportune moment," says Professor Takakusu in 
 the chapter on Buddhism in Count Okuma's 
 "Fifty Years of New Japan," "Buddhism was 
 welcomed by all classes, and the majority of the 
 people soon became its adherents. It is needless 
 to say how powerful was its influence over the 
 formation of beliefs and moral principles; and 
 this influence extended to politics, education, 
 literature, industry, and art; in fact, there was 
 "nothing that was not impregnated with Buddhism, 
 or influenced by its priests. In other w r ords, the 
 ancient civilization of Japan owed its rise to 
 Buddhism. There is one strange fact connected 
 with the introduction of the religion into Japan 
 which is worthy of notice; namely, that, whilst 
 on the Continent the original spirit of Buddhism 
 was forgotten, and its adherents clung to a cor- 
 rupt form, as soon as it was brought into Japan 
 it underwent a refining process. The corrupt 
 forms were rejected, and only that which seemed 
 to the Japanese pure and good was retained, to be 
 remodeled, as it were, and formed into the Bud- 
 dhism of Japan. It was not, therefore, a mere 
 transplanting of the Buddhism of India, China, 
 Annam, or of Korea, but a new and distinct form 
 of religion. It was through this that Japan 
 happily escaped from being poisoned by the 
 unhealthy forms prevalent on the Continent." 
 ("Fifty Years of New Japan," Vol. II, p. 65 f.) 
 Stintoism. Buddhism had to gain its place, however, in 
 
 conflict with Shintoism, the indigenous cult, akin 
 
 
BUDDHISM 105 
 
 to the ancestral worship of China. The word 
 Shinto means the Divine Way, the Way of the 
 Gods. Although based on ancestor worship, it 
 is not an idolatry, — no images appear in its 
 temples. It cultivates the idea of purity, or 
 rather cleanliness. It practices prayer and, in a 
 sense, sacrifice. It is, above all, the religion of 
 loyalty. 
 
 The central conception of Shinto is expressed by the 
 word kami, which is a comprehensive term applicable 
 to anything which is high, or above oneself, whether 
 deity or emperor or feudal chief. It can even denote 
 elevation in space, as a mountain top or the hair on the 
 head. 
 
 In practice, Shinto is the organized expression of 
 Japanese patriotism. The emperor is the kami. Japan 
 is the Holy Land. "The Kami's will is the Emperor's 
 will," is a maxim dear to the heart of the Japanese. 
 The effect is that the government of Japan is regarded 
 as a theocracy, and reverence is inculcated as the proper 
 attitude of the mind of the individual in relation to the 
 State. 
 
 This reverence extends to the family. Indeed it may 
 be said to extend from the family to the State. In 
 social life the individual is nothing, the family is every- 
 thing; and the State is the national, all-inclusive 
 family, with the emperor at its head. Thus the prin- 
 ciple which teaches reverence to parents and ancestors, 
 exalts the emperor above all. 
 
 As a cult, Shinto takes shape in ceremonial and in 
 poetical liturgies which are chanted by the priests. It 
 is indeed a system of national ceremonial, and is so 
 regarded by the Japanese. It does not now claim to be 
 a religion in the sense in which Buddhism is a religion. 
 and it offers no direct opposition to other religions. 
 
106 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Shinto has no moral code. The one principle of this 
 kind which it emphasizes is that of Makoto (Truth). 
 Out of this principle developed the system of knightly 
 honor called Bushido. 
 
 "Shinto," writes Baron Keiroku Tsuzuki, "is a 
 crystallized system of rites for the veneration of the 
 personalities closely connected with our existence and 
 our national history ; in other words, a systematized and 
 complicated form of taking off our hats before the 
 emblems of our ancestors and national heroes." (Re- 
 port of Commission IV, World Missionary Conference, 
 Edinburgh, Ch. IV.) 
 
 Shintoism has in recent years disavowed any 
 religious character; yet there is an esoteric 
 Shintoism which is a practical mysticism, even a 
 god-possession. (''Transactions of the Asiatic 
 Society of Japan, ' ' Vol. XXI. Papers by Percival 
 Lowell, "Esoteric Shinto," pp. 106-135, 152- 
 197, 241-270. ) And there is a religious eclecticism 
 in Japan to-day which finds a quasi-religious 
 place for Shinto. "In what religion, then, do I 
 believe? I cannot answer that question directly," 
 says Professor Kume. "I turn to the Shinto 
 priest in case of public festivals, while the 
 Buddhist priest is my ministrant for funeral 
 services. I regulate my conduct according to 
 Confucian maxims and Christian morals. I care 
 little for external forms, and doubt whether there 
 are any essential differences, in the kami's eyes, 
 between any of the religions of the civilized 
 world. " (Okuma, " Fifty Years of New Japan, " 
 Vol. II, p. 41.) Shinto was no satisfaction of 
 
BUDDHISM 107 
 
 the religious needs of Japan in the sixth century, 
 and Buddhism found its way to the nation's 
 heart. 
 
 In Japan the religion underwent a varied devel- 
 opment. On the one hand its usages were 
 adapted to the comprehension of the multitude in 
 symbols and parables and allegories. Falsehood 
 and superstition and charms and debasing rites 
 came into the religion. But on the other hand 
 earnest men who saw the impossibility of salva- 
 tion through philosophy and asceticism and med- 
 itation found a means of salvation by faith. 
 (Knox, "The Development of Religion in 
 Japan," p. 192 f. For illustration, see "The 
 Monist, " January, 1894. Article by Z. Ashitsu, 
 "The Fundamental Teachings of Buddhism.") 
 Between these extremes twelve sects of Buddhism 
 arose, and so wide was the variance of most of 
 these from Buddha's doctrine, as was the case in 
 China as well, that judged by their teachings, 
 Buddha himself was not a Buddhist. Here 
 again, however, we must beware of judging too 
 harshly. Have there not been developments of 
 Christianity in which Jesus would not recognize 
 His religion? 
 
 Japan, impelled by its racial appetite for im- Japan Dissat- 
 provement, has never been satisfied with any isfied with 
 form of Buddhism. The old systems have a BuddKiam. 
 powerful hold upon the nation, that is not yet 
 relaxed, but they are undergoing to-day a deep 
 transformation, and a new Buddhism is taking 
 
108 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 form which is ethical and eclectic (see "The 
 New Buddhism," "The Japan Daily Mail," 
 March 31, 1892), while increasing numbers of 
 the educated men are turning away from the 
 ancient religions altogether. The religious 
 appeal of Japan may be set forth in four random 
 but typical quotations: — 
 
 1. Editorial in "The Japan Times," Septem- 
 ber 3, 1910: "'Whatever pretension Buddhism 
 may set forth in other directions, it certainly and 
 absolutely has no claim to make in this particular 
 respect; that is, in the work of the moral, intel- 
 lectual and social elevation of new Japan." 
 
 2. Editorial in "The Seoul Press," August 
 17, 1910: "We believe few will contradict us 
 when we say that Buddhism is on the wane, and 
 provided that everything goes on as it is going 
 now, is doomed to perish, sooner or later, in the 
 Island Empire. ... In fact the nation as a 
 whole regards Buddhism with cold indiffer- 
 ence. . . . To cut it short, Buddhism is dying 
 in Japan, and scarcely holds its place as a reli- 
 gion in the minds of the Japanese younger men. 
 It is not a power having great influence in the 
 shaping of their moral character." 
 
 3. Kanzo Uchimura's "An Anglo- Japanese 
 Conversation on Japanese Men and Things": 
 "They say Buddhism is the most philosophical 
 religion in the world; do you think so too?" 
 
 "Yes, if by 'philosophical' you mean 'meta- 
 physical.' No religion has so many loopholes in 
 
 
BUDDHISM 109 
 
 its philosophical system as Buddhism. Indeed, 
 it seems to be the sum total of all religions. 
 The fact that there is everything in it may prove 
 that there is nothing in it." 
 
 "But you cannot deny the great good it has 
 done to our country." 
 
 "Yes, it has done much good, and it has done 
 much evil also. It has taught us mercy to the 
 poor and worms, but on the great questions of 
 Liberty and Equality, it has been entirely silent. 
 Buddhism makes a recluse, but not a hero and 
 patriot." (P. 91 f.) 
 
 4. Count Okuma at the Jubilee of Protestant 
 Missions in Japan, October, 1909: "To be sure, 
 Japan had her religions, and Buddhism prospered 
 greatly; but this prosperity was largely through 
 political means. Now this creed has been prac- 
 tically rejected by the better classes, who, being 
 spiritually thirsty, have nothing to drink." 
 ("The Japan Daily Mail," October 9, 1909.) 
 
 There is a Living Water which can quench 
 this thirst, but it is not in Buddhism. 
 
 We come, then, at the close to ask what are the 
 contrasts and the points of contact between Chris- 
 tianity and Buddhism. 
 
 The Contrasts. Gautama's doctrine and the Contrasts 
 doctrine of philosophical Buddhism denies God. -Between ^ 
 There is accordingly no sin in the Christian con- f 18 ianity 
 
 and 
 
 ception of the word. It also denies the human B U( idnism 
 soul. Without sin to be saved from, or God to 
 be saved by and to, or a soul to be saved at all, 
 
110 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 there is, in the Christian sense, no salvation. 
 The Buddhist Catechism summarizes the differ- 
 ence between the two religions: — 
 
 What is the principal difference between Buddhism 
 and other religions? 
 
 Buddhism teaches perfect goodness and wisdom with- 
 out a personal god ; the highest knowledge without a 
 revelation ; a moral world order and just retribution, 
 carried out with necessity by reason of the laws of 
 nature and of our own being; continued existence with- 
 out an immortal soul ; eternal bliss without a local 
 heaven ; the possibility of redemption without a vicarious 
 redeemer; a salvation at which every one is his own 
 saviour, and which can be attained in this life and on 
 this earth by the exercise of one's own faculties without 
 prayers, sacrifices, penances, and ceremonies, without 
 ordained priests, without the mediation of saints, and 
 without divine grace. 
 
 But there are more differences than these. Sir 
 Monier Williams draws out the list in his last 
 lecture on Buddhism: — 
 
 According to Christianity : Fight and overcome the 
 world. 
 
 According to Buddhism : Shun the world, and with- 
 draw from it. 
 
 According to Christianity : Expect a new earth when 
 the present earth is destroyed ; a world renewed and 
 perfected ; a purified world in which righteousness is to 
 dwell forever. 
 
 According to Buddhism : Expect a never-ending suc- 
 cession of evil worlds forever coming into existence, 
 developing, decaying, perishing, and reviving, and all 
 equally full of everlasting misery, disappointment, illu- 
 sion, change and transmutation. 
 
BUDDHISM 111 
 
 According to Christianity, bodily existence is subject 
 to only one transformation. 
 
 According to Buddhism, bodily existence is contin- 
 ued in six conditions, through countless bodies of men, 
 animals, demons, ghosts, and dwellers in various hells 
 and heavens ; and that, too, without any progressive 
 development, but in a constant jumble of metamor- 
 phoses and transmutations. 
 
 Christianity teaches that a life in heaven can never 
 be followed by a fall to a lower state. 
 
 Buddhism teaches that a life in a higher heaven may 
 be succeeded by a life in a lower heaven, or even by a 
 life on earth or in one of the hells. 
 
 According to Christianity, the body of man may be 
 the abode of the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 According to Buddhism, the body, whether of men or 
 of higher beings, can never be the abode of anything but 
 evil. 
 
 According to Christianity : Present your bodies as 
 living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, and expect a 
 change to glorified bodies hereafter. 
 
 According to Buddhism: Look to final deliverance 
 from all bodily life, present and to come, as the greatest 
 of all blessings, highest of all boons, and loftiest of all 
 aims. 
 
 According to Christianity, a man's body can never be 
 changed into the body of a beast, or bird, or insect, or 
 loathsome vermin. 
 
 According to Buddhism, a man, and even a god, may 
 become an animal of any kind, and even the most 
 loathsome vermin may again become a man or a god. 
 
 According to Christianity : Stray not from God's 
 ways ; offend not against his holy laws. 
 
 According to Buddhism : Stray not from the eight- 
 fold path of the perfect man, and offend not against 
 yourself and the law of the perfect man. 
 
 According to Christianity : Work the works of God 
 while it is day. 
 
112 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 According to Buddhism : Beware of action, as caus- 
 ing rebirth, and aim at inaction, indifference, and 
 apathy, as the highest of all states. ("Buddhism," p. 
 559 f . ) 
 
 Buddha offered men no help. Each man must 
 do everything for himself, working out his own 
 salvation in fear and trembling or in joy and con- 
 fidence, but preferably with no feelings whatever, 
 knowing that God was not working in him or for 
 him, and that there was indeed no God at all. 
 Buddhism is a religion of unselfishness, but it is 
 not a religion of service. It lacks the idea of 
 duty either to God or to men. "From first to 
 last the sacred books are terribly consistent in 
 failing to recognize any sort of 'obligation. ' . . . 
 (The Buddhist) has no aim in life except to 
 escape from it." (Copleston, "Buddhism, " p. 
 150 f. ) This is the radical defect of Buddhism. 
 Its idea of self-abnegation sprang not "from a 
 lively conviction of the impermanency and 
 unreality of the world of sense, not from that 
 aspiration after communing with a being of per- 
 fectly unselfish goodness, which kindled the 
 genius of Plato and forms the deep root of Chris- 
 tian morality. Unconsciously impressed by the 
 grandeur of the life of the universe as something 
 boundless, permanent and absolute, the founder 
 of Buddhism had nothing but contempt for the 
 individual personal life as something narrow, 
 transitory and finite. He enjoined absolute un- 
 selfishness, not because selfishness appeared to 
 
BUDDHISM 113 
 
 him mean and demeaning in itself, not because 
 he recognized unselfishness as something noble 
 and ennobling in itself, but because all individu- 
 ality, all personal life, was utterly worthless to his 
 mind. He wished men to sink in themselves, 
 not that they might thereby rise in God, but 
 simply because he conceived existence to be in 
 itself an absolute evil and the source of all 
 misery. " (Eitel, "Three Lectures on Bud- 
 dhism," p. 79.) 
 
 Cut off then from the true joy of life's struggle 
 for character as an agency for work, and from the 
 active help of a living and loving God, Bud- 
 dhism lacks the power which Christianity pos- 
 sesses. Mr. Iwahashi is a Christian evangelist 
 at Gobo, Japan. In 1907 the devout Buddhists 
 of Gobo, desiring to check the spread of Chris- 
 tianity, sent for the famous priest Shaku Soyen, 
 who was one of the representatives of the Japan- 
 ese Buddhists at the World's Parliament of Reli- 
 gions, at Chicago, in 1893. Mr. Iwahashi was 
 at one time a student under him. When he came 
 to Gobo, where Mr. Iwahashi is at work, Mr. 
 Iwahashi called to pay his respects. Shaku 
 asked Mr. Iwahashi what he was doing. He 
 said, "I have now become a Christian and am 
 preaching Jesus." Shaku replied, "The Chris- 
 tian religion is a religion that has a power over 
 the lives of men that I long to see in our Bud- 
 dhism." 
 
 The Points of Contact. First of all, Buddhism 
 
114 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Points of 
 
 Contact 
 
 Bet-ween 
 
 Christianity 
 
 and 
 
 Buddhism. 
 
 rested on the foundation of some great truths 
 which we joyfully recognize as Christian, which, 
 however confused in later developments, have 
 never been lost, and which in some of the modi- 
 fications which the religion has undergone have 
 been enriched and drawn nearer still to the truths 
 of Christianity. It began with the recognition 
 of the evil and limitation of life as our mortal 
 inheritance, and the assertion of a nobler and 
 freer destiny for man. It insisted on the vital 
 relation of conduct to character and of character 
 to man's destiny. "It pointed out in the strong- 
 est terms the impermanency and hollowness of 
 everything earthly. It exhorted its devotees to 
 extend love and charity to man and beast. It 
 marked selfishness, lust and passion as the chief 
 enemies of human happiness. It pointed out the 
 superiority of the inward life over outward exist- 
 ence. It taught its adherents to look away from 
 earthly sensual objects to regions invisible, and 
 inspired them — at least to a certain extent — with 
 hopes of immortality." (Eitel, " Three Lectures 
 on Buddhism," p. 94 f. ) All this was in the 
 Buddhism of Gautama. Latent there, also, lay 
 that discovery of man's impotence to achieve 
 alone his own character and destiny to which 
 Buddhism later came. Gautama claimed that he 
 himself had attained, but the whole subsequent 
 history of Buddhism has been a search for supple- 
 ments, such supplements as are found in their 
 adequacy only in Christianity. 
 
BUDDHISM 115 
 
 And it is in the later developments that the 
 chief points of contact with Christianity are 
 found. Buddhism, in these developments, 
 abandoned its atheism and, "most wonderful of 
 all, raised the denier of God's existence to the 
 throne of the Supreme." ("The Chinese Re- 
 corder, ' ' May, 1889. Article by W. A. P. Martin, 
 "Is Buddhism a Preparation for Christianity ?" 
 p. 196.) In the Saddharma Pundarika, Sakya- 
 muni is the fullness of God. "He, begotten 
 before all worlds, is the sum total of all that is 
 divine or that is worshiped in the whole uni- 
 verse. He is the sole Lord that claims allegiance ; 
 the other Buddhas, the Gods, and the Saints, are 
 but partial emanations of the One Divine Essence 
 which has become Human in Sakyamuni." 
 (Lloyd, "Wheat Among the Tares," p. 94.) In 
 the Shin Shu sect of Japanese Buddhism, the 
 transformed faith of Gautama either is or is like 
 a new Asiatic version of central Christian truth. 
 The essence of this teaching is the doctrine of the 
 Saving Vow of Amida, which forms the faith of 
 the most religious portion of the Japanese nation. 
 
 Amida is the One Buddha, a Being of infinite life 
 and light, without beginning of life or end of days. 
 Countless ages ago he, out of his mercy, became man, — 
 his Japanese name being Hozo Biku, — and in his human 
 form and for man undertook austerities and penances 
 until he was able as man to return to that glorified state 
 from which he had descended. But, before returning, 
 he registered a vow not to accept his glory until he had 
 worked out a way of salvation for mankind — an easy 
 way, which should not depend on man's individual 
 
116 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 exertions. Having made his vow, he established a 
 Paradise, and decreed that faith in his name and vow 
 should suffice to enable the greatest sinner to enter and 
 be saved. . . . Amida has a spiritual son, Avalokites- 
 vara, incarnate again and again, on errands of mercy 
 from his Father — as Sakvamuni, for instance, and again 
 as Christ (as many a Buddhist will acknowledge) — in 
 divers forms and persons. He has an attendant, Seishi, 
 in whom resides his wisdom, and the three form a 
 Trinity whom the Amidaist will recognize as claiming 
 his worship. 
 
 "Be its origin what it will, here is a faith so 
 wonderfully like Christianity that it is difficult to 
 resist the inference that it was, in the Divine 
 Providence, intended as aftraefiaratio evangelica 
 for the gospel in Japan. It is theological, — it 
 recognizes man as a sinner, it preaches the gospel 
 to the poor, and it has a salvation by Faith in a 
 Saviour who has done everything for the soul." 
 (Report of Commission IV, World Missionary 
 Conference, Edinburgh, Ch. IV.) Most mis- 
 sionaries feel that these resemblances may be 
 pressed too far. Dr. Imbrie and Dr. Ibuka sug- 
 gest the warning that ''the gods of Buddhism are 
 all purely subjective creations of the mind, as 
 subjective as the angels of Gnosticism; mere per- 
 sonifications or apotheoses of what is craved for 
 by the heart of Buddhism. In Christ God has 
 revealed Himself in history. Amida is only a 
 cry for light; Christ is the light of the world." 
 Further, they add, "'At times in Buddhism it 
 seems as if pantheism were giving way to theism. 
 Amida, Kwannon, and many others are conceived 
 
BUDDHISM 117 
 
 of as persons. But the conception of supernatural 
 beings called gods falls far short of the concep- 
 tion of the infinite, eternal, unchangeable God 
 which is vital to Christianity, and without which 
 any religion is anti-Christian. If there are those 
 who hope to discover in Shintoism or Buddhism 
 much that is comparable with w r hat is found in 
 Judaism as points of contact with, or preparation 
 for, Christianity, they will be disappointed ; and if 
 there are any who think to find in the non-Chris- 
 tian religions of the world great truths that will 
 complement Christianity, they will not find them 
 in Japan." (Report of Commission IV, World 
 Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, Ch. IV.) 
 
 The great point of contact with Buddhism is 
 in the human needs which it discovers but cannot 
 satisfy. (1) Buddhism tells men of no god or of 
 many gods. Men cannot rest in this. Chris- 
 tianity satisfies them with God. As one Japanese 
 said, "The first thing that attracted me to Chris- 
 tianity was the grandeur of the Christian concep- 
 tion of God — Infinite, Eternal, and yet Personal. 
 That led me to think more and more of Chris- 
 tianity, and Christ was Master of my heart before 
 I knew it." Kanzo Uchimura, in his "Diary of 
 a Japanese Convert," tells us how this truth 
 delivered him. "I was taught that there was but 
 One God in the Universe, and not many — over- 
 eight millions, as I had formerly believed. The 
 Christian monotheism laid its axe to the root of 
 all my superstitions. All the vows I had made, 
 
118 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 and the manifold forms of worship with which I 
 had been attempting to appease my angry gods 
 could now be dispensed with by owning this One 
 God; and my reason and conscience responded 
 'yea!' One God, and not many, was indeed glad 
 tidings to my little soul." (2) Buddhism gives 
 men an ethical ideal, but it is inadequate. They 
 needs must recognize the higher when they see it. 
 "I studied Christianity for the sake of finding 
 fault with it, " said a priest of the Ikko Shin sect. 
 "After a thorough study of Christ, I have not 
 been able to find a single fault, but Christ has 
 pointed out a thousand faults in me, and now I 
 want to dedicate myself to Him for my whole 
 life." (3) Buddha tells men of life's weary 
 burden and offers them the hope of death. But 
 the burden is not lifted, and death is but dreary 
 cheer. Christ speaks and His word answers 
 every need: — 
 
 Come unto me and I will give you rest. 
 I am come that ye may have life and that ye may 
 have it abundantly. 
 
 If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. 
 
 BIBLE READING 
 
 First cnapter of Ephesians. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 What are Jie special reasons for Western interest in 
 Buddhism? 
 
 Is Buddhism properly a religion? Can a religion 
 exist without a belief in God? 
 
 How did Buddhism arise? 
 
BUDDHISM 119 
 
 Who are the Jains ? 
 
 Narrate the life of Gautama. 
 
 Describe the missionary extension of Buddhism. 
 
 What are the sacred books of Buddhism? 
 
 What was Buddha's doctrine? What were the Four 
 Noble Truths? What was the Noble Eightfold Path? 
 
 Was Buddha an atheist and a materialist? 
 
 What is Karma? What is Nirvana? 
 
 Describe the ethics of Buddhism and give its Ten 
 Commandments. 
 
 Describe the priesthood. 
 
 What were the great weaknesses of Buddhism? 
 
 Give some account of the division and development 
 of Buddhism. 
 
 Give some account of Buddhism in China and Japan. 
 
 Describe Shintoism. 
 
 What are the contrasts between Buddhism and Chris- 
 tianity? 
 
 What the points of contact? 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Monier Williams, "Buddhism in its Connection with 
 Brahmanism and Hinduism and in its Contrast 
 with Christianity," Macmillan, 1889. 
 
 Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," Gorham, 1894. 
 
 Rhys Davids, "Hibbert Lectures," Scribner, 1881. 
 
 Kellogg, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the 
 • World," Macmillan, 1885. 
 
 Eitel, "Three Lectures on Buddhism," Lane, Crawford 
 & Co., 1884. 
 
 Dods, "Mohammed, Buddha and Christ," Hodder & 
 Stoughton, 1893. 
 
 Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," Williams & Norgate, 
 1880. 
 
 Beal, "Buddhism in China," Gorham, 1884. 
 
 Griffis, "The Religions of Japan," Scribner, 1895. 
 
 Lloyd, "Wheat Among the Tares," Macmillan, 1908. 
 
 Aston, "The Way of the Gods." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM 
 
 It may seem incongruous, at first thought, to 
 group together the religion of the primitive 
 mind, of the lowest races, which we call animism, 
 and the sober political philosophy of the Chinese. 
 In the case of the animist, or spirit worshiper, all 
 life is peopled with unseen, supernatural forms 
 which must be dealt with. In the case of the 
 Chinese, it has been often supposed, the unseen 
 world is of small interest. The attitude of Con- 
 fucius is assumed to represent the Chinese mind 
 of all the centuries, and especially its materialistic 
 cast to-day. "Extraordinary things," we are 
 told of Confucius in the Analects, "feats of 
 strength, states of disorder, and spiritual beings 
 he did not like to talk about." The Analects 
 tell us, also, that "Ke Loo asked about serving 
 the spirits of the dead, and the master said, 
 'While you are not able to serve men, how can 
 you serve spirits?' The disciple added, 'I ven- 
 ture to ask about death, ' and he was answered, 
 'While you do not know life, how can you know 
 about death.' " (Legge, "The Life and Teach- 
 ings of Confucius," p. 101.) "To give one's 
 self earnestly," said Confucius, "to the duties 
 due to men, and, while respecting spiritual 
 beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called 
 
124 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 wisdom." (P. 102.) In this view of the 
 Chinese it has been said that they are a people 
 without religion. "This people," said Dr. 
 Fairhairn, "has a so attenuated religious faculty 
 or genius that it can hardly be said ever to have 
 known religion." ("Studies in the Philosophy 
 of Religion and History," p. 310.) 
 The Chinese On the other hand, it may be fairly argued that 
 
 a Religious thg Chinese are and have always been a very 
 eop c * religious people. "I, from my observations," 
 
 wrote Ernst Faber, an old Rhenish missionary 
 and one of the ablest students of Chinese thought, 
 "feel inclined to maintain that the Chinese be- 
 long perhaps to the most religious people (Acts 
 xvii, 22, original) of the world. Only we must 
 not look for any symptoms of religion similar to 
 those to which we are accustomed in Christian 
 lands. There are, however, comparatively more 
 temples and altars, more idols and more religious 
 practices in China than in almost all other coun- 
 tries. The whole public and private life is im- 
 pregnated by religious observations; we see every 
 important action of the government, as well as 
 almost every movement in private life, inaugu- 
 rated by different religious rites." (Faber, 
 "Introduction to the Science of Chinese Reli- 
 gion," p. 8 f.) 
 
 How profound the religious spirit of the 
 Chinese is, and indeed how indestructible is the 
 religious instinct in humanity, we may learn 
 from the fact that Confucianism, with its practi- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 125 
 
 cally naturalistic or agnostic influence, has not 
 been able to extirpate it. Beneath and back of 
 Confucianism lies the deep and ancient religious 
 mind of China. As the Hon. Pung Kwang Yu 
 said in his paper on Confucianism at the Parlia- 
 ment of Religions: — 
 
 There are some Western scholars who say that the 
 system of doctrines of Confucius cannot properly be 
 called a religion, and there are others who say that 
 China has no religion of her own. That the ethical 
 systems of Confucius cannot be called a religion may 
 be admitted without fear of contradiction, but that 
 China has no religion of her own must be taken as not 
 well founded in fact. . . . There were priests in China 
 as far back as the time of Hwang Ti. Among the official 
 titles of ancient times were the Grand Dispenser, the 
 Grand Administrator, Grand Historiographer, the 
 Grand Hierarch, the Grand Scholar, and the Grand 
 Diviner. These were the six ministers that composed 
 the Grand Council of State. The Grand Hierarch was 
 the head of the priesthood. "In ancient times," say 
 the traditions of Tsoh, "there were persons who were 
 known by their singleness of heart ; who were dignified in 
 bearing and upright in life ; whose understandings were 
 such as to enable them to get at the inner meaning of 
 things above and things below ; whose wisdom shed 
 light far and wide, whose sight was so clear that things 
 appeared to them as if illumined by a strong light ; and 
 whose hearing was so acute that they could detect the 
 faintest sound. Upon such the Divine Spirit often 
 descended. ... A form of religion was practiced in 
 China not only long before the appearance of the Con- 
 fucian school, but also long before the appearance of 
 any of the great religious founders who formulated the 
 grand systems of religious belief. ("Report of Parlia- 
 ment of Religions," Vol. 1, p. 378 f.) 
 
126 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 China's In this ancient religion of China which pre- 
 
 Pnmitive ceded Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism, 
 
 e igion. an j wn j cn underlies them all to-day and finds 
 
 expression through them in spite of its logical 
 discord with the views of Confucius and Lao-tsze 
 and Buddha, there were two elements, one an 
 elementary monotheism and the other a crude 
 animism. And it is this primitive animism still 
 dominating the Chinese mind which makes it 
 appropriate to group animism with the religions 
 of China, and not only appropriate but necessary, 
 if we are to understand the religious mind of 
 China. This is the view of the latest and best 
 students of China's religions. As Professor 
 DeGroot says: — 
 
 The primeval form of the religion of the Chinese, 
 and its very core to this day, is Animism. It is then 
 the same element which is also found to be the root, 
 the central nerve, of many primeval religions, the same 
 even which eminent thinkers of our time, as Herbert 
 Spencer, have put in the foreground of their systems as 
 the beginning of all human religion of whatever kind. 
 
 In China it is based on an implicit belief in the ani- 
 mation of the universe, and of every being or thing 
 which exists in it. The oldest and holiest books of the 
 empire teach that the universe consists of two souls or 
 breaths, called Yang and Yin, the Yang representing 
 light, warmth, productivity, and life, also the heavens 
 from which all these good things emanate ; and the Yin 
 being associated with darkness, cold, death and the 
 earth. The Yang is subdivided into an indefinite num- 
 ber of good souls or spirits, called shen, the Yin into 
 particles or evil spirits, called kwei, specters ; it is these 
 shen and kwei which animate every being and every 
 
T^ 
 
 
 ^WSJJrfgf/ ^H«pP^E^S^3g| 
 
 I Jl 
 
 [ ' , ; v 
 
 ImJ^^BjsI 
 
 
 •■'%•; '*!» '^'' 
 
 
 ' ." ?: : ;t -;.. 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 J^JiJ 
 
 "■ : '-. - ." ",.J 
 
 
 China — One of the Gods of the Chinese 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 127 
 
 thing. It is they also which constitute the soul of man. 
 His shen, also called hwun, immaterial, ethereal, like 
 heaven itself from which it emanates, constitutes his 
 intellect and the finer parts of his character, his virtues; 
 while his kwei, or poh, is thought to represent his less 
 refined qualities, his passions, vices, they being bor- 
 rowed from material earth. Birth consists in an infu- 
 sion of these souls ; death in their departure, the shen 
 returning to the Vang or heaven, the kwei to the Yin 
 or earth. 
 
 Thus man is an intrinsic part of the universe, a 
 microcosmos, born from the macrocosmos spontane- 
 ously. But why should man alone be endowed by the 
 universe with a dual soul? Every animal, every plant, 
 even every object which we are wont to call a dead 
 object, has received from the universe the souls which 
 constitute its life, and which may confer blessing on 
 man or may harm him. A shen in fact, being a part 
 of the Yang or the beatific half of the universe, is gen- 
 erally considered to be a good spirit or god ; a kwei, 
 however, belonging to the Yin or other half, is, as a 
 rule, a spirit of evil, we should say a devil, specter, 
 demon. There is no good in nature but that which 
 comes from the shen or gods ; no evil but that which 
 the kwei cause or inflict. 
 
 With these dogmata before us, may we not say that 
 the main base of the Chinese system of religion is a Uni- 
 versalistic Animism? The universe being in all its 
 parts crowded with shen and kwei, that system is, more- 
 over, thoroughly polytheistic and polydemonistic. The 
 gods are such shen as animate heaven, sun, moon, the 
 stars, wind, rain, clouds, thunder, fire, the earth, seas, 
 mountains, rivers, rocks, stones, animals, plants, things 
 — in particular also the souls of deceased men. And as 
 to the demon world, nowhere under heaven is it so 
 populous as in China. Kwei swarm everywhere, in 
 numbers inestimable. ... 
 
128 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The shen thus being gods from whom good proceeds, 
 and the kwei being specters by whom evil is wrought, 
 the conclusion is that Chinese religion must be con- 
 ceived as a system aiming at the propitiation of the 
 aforesaid gods, in order to prevail upon them to prevent 
 the devils from doing harm to man. (DeGroot, "The 
 Religion of the Chinese," pp. 3-5, 33.) 
 
 All this, as Professor DeGroot points out, is 
 just primitive animism, the religion of all the 
 primitive peoples, the African tribes, the natives 
 of the East Indies, the aboriginal races of Bur- 
 ma, such as the Karens, and of the Lao people; 
 and it is the religion of the Koreans, on whom 
 Buddhism laid but a slight and temporary hold, 
 and whose type of national character resisted the 
 formalizing influence of Confucianism. Herr 
 Warneck has given a vivid and careful account of 
 this phase of religion in his account of his ob- 
 servations among the Battak people in Borneo, 
 in "The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism." 
 Dr. Nassau has described it out of an even longer 
 experience among the tribes of Africa in "Fetich- 
 ism in West Africa." And it has been generally 
 treated in Brinton's "Religions of Primitive 
 Peoples" and Trior's "Primitive Culture." 
 "The theory of Animism," writes Tylor, "di- 
 vides into two great dogmas: first, concerning 
 souls of individual creatures, capable of contin- 
 ued existence after the death or destruction of the 
 body; second, concerning other spirits, upward 
 to the rank of powerful deities." ("Primitive 
 Culture," p. 426.) "Animism," says Herr War- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 129 
 
 neck, "is a form of paganism based on the wor- 
 ship of souls. Men, animals and plants are sup- 
 posed to have souls ; and their worship, as well 
 as that of deceased spirits, especially ancestral 
 spirits, is the essence of a religion which prob- 
 ably is a factor in all heathen religions." (Re- 
 port of Commission IV, World Missionary 
 Conference, Ch. II.) 
 
 "The belief in spiritual beings," says Dr. 
 Nassau, "opens an immense vista of the purely 
 superstitious side of the theology of Bantu Afri- 
 can religion. All the air and the future is 
 peopled with a large and indefinite company of 
 these beings. The attitude of the Creator (An- 
 yambe) toward the human race and the lower 
 animals being that of indifference or of positive 
 severity in having allowed evils to exist, and His 
 indifference making Him almost inexorable, cause 
 effort in the line of worship to be therefore 
 directed only to those spirits who, though they 
 are all probably malevolent, may be influenced 
 and made benevolent. " (Nassau, "Fetichismin 
 West Africa," p. 50.) 
 
 This is the central element in all animistic Animism a 
 religion. Men are afraid. Their great aim is Religion of 
 to placate the evil spirits. All life is shadowed Fear - 
 by this dread. Bishop Cameron of Cape Town 
 says, "The religion of the heathen Kaffirs is 
 entirely traditional and based on fear." "The 
 Zulu," says Archdeacon Johnson, "has probably 
 no conception of spiritual consolation. His 
 
130 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 actions are dictated by the desire to escape any- 
 thing more unpleasant than that which has 
 already befallen him. ' ' And Herr Warneck says, 
 "Fear is characteristic of this religion. But this 
 fear is real, and so are the efforts of the heathen 
 to banish the spirits or to appease them by sacri- 
 fices, even to deceive them if possible. About 
 all this they are pathetically in earnest, for fear 
 of unknown powers is the greatest reality, the 
 leading motive of the heathen's religious life." 
 
 "The animistic heathen," the same writer says 
 in "The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism," 
 "are not only in error; they are slaves. Fear 
 in various forms tyrannizes over the animist in 
 every situation of life. The vision of the world 
 in which his religiousness is rooted is extremely 
 dark. Even his own soul is a hostile power 
 against which he must be ever on his guard. It 
 is fond of leaving him; it allows itself to be 
 enticed away from him. . . . The souls of 
 relatives are easily wounded; and woe to him 
 who even unintentionally offends them. Prim- 
 itive man has to wind his way amid the throng of 
 the souls of the people around him, and must 
 continually bargain or fight with invisible and 
 sinister powers. To that must be added fear of 
 the dead, of demons, of the thousand spirits of 
 earth, air, water, mountains and trees. The 
 Battak is like a man driven in a frenzied pursuit 
 round and round. Ghosts of the most diverse 
 kinds lurk in house and village; in the field they 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 131 
 
 endanger the produce of labor; in the forest they 
 terrify the woodcutter; in the bush they hunt the 
 wanderer. From them come diseases, madness, 
 death of cattle, famine. Malicious demons sur- 
 round women during pregnancy and at confine- 
 ment; they lie in wait for the child from the day 
 of its birth ; they swarm round the houses at 
 night; they spy through the chinks of the walls 
 for their helpless victims. The dead friend and 
 brother becomes an enemy, and his coffin and 
 grave are the abode of terror. It is fear that 
 occasions the worship of the departed. Fear is 
 the moving power of animistic religion, in Asia 
 as in Africa." 
 
 And it is not only fear that at once produces And of 
 and is produced by animism. It breeds witch- Spiritual 
 craft, sorcery, demonology, and in Africa it has Povert y- 
 led to cannibalism and depopulation. And its 
 whole ideal of religion, in spite of its apparent 
 spiritualization of the universe, is earthly and 
 sensuous. The worshiper is worshiping with no 
 confession, no love, rarely any thanksgiving, be- 
 ings whom he fears as capable of harming him 
 in his material interests, and what he is seeking 
 is not something religious, but some material 
 good. As Dr. Nassau says: — 
 
 The being to whom he appeals is not God. True, he 
 does not deny that He is ; if asked, he will acknowl- 
 edge His existence. But that is all. Very rarely, and 
 only in extreme emergencies, does he make an appeal to 
 Him; for he thinks God so far off, so inaccessible, so 
 indifferent to human woes and wants, that a petition to 
 
132 THE LIGHT OP THE WORLD 
 
 Him would be , almost in vain. He therefore turns 
 to some one of the mass of spirits which he believes to 
 be ever near and observant of human affairs, in which, 
 as former human beings, some of them once had part. 
 
 As to the character of the salvation sought, it is not 
 spiritual ; it is a purely physical salvation. A sense of 
 moral and spiritual need is lost sight of, although not 
 eliminated. This is an index of the distance the negro 
 has traveled away from Jehovah before he finally 
 reached the position of placing his trust in a fetich. 
 By just so much as he seems to himself living in a 
 world crowded with unseen but powerful spiritual beings 
 (with whom what a Christian calls "sin" has no repre- 
 hensible moral quality), by just so much he seems to 
 have lost sight of his own soul and its moral necessities. 
 
 The future is so vague that in the thought of most 
 tribes it contains neither heaven nor hell ; there is no 
 certain reward or rest for goodness, nor positive pun- 
 ishment for badness. The future life is to each native 
 largely a reproduction, on shadowy and intangible lines, 
 of the works and interests and passions of this earthly 
 life. In his present life, with its savagery and oppres- 
 sion and dominance of selfish greed and right of might, 
 goodness has no reward. It is badness which in his 
 personal experience makes the largest gains. From 
 this point of view, while some acts are indeed called 
 "good" and some "bad" (conscience proving its simple 
 existence by the use of these words in the record of 
 language), yet conscience is not much troubled by its 
 possessor's badness. There is little sense of the sinful- 
 ness of sin. There is only fear of possible human 
 injury by human or subsidized spiritual enemies. This 
 is all the salvation that is sought. (Nassau, "Fetichism 
 in West Africa," p. 77 f.) 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 133 
 
 It is to these animistic peoples that the gospel The Gospel i 
 comes as a mighty revelation and deliverance. It Message of 
 unifies the world to them with its doctrine of one Joy and 
 God. It delivers them who were all their life- Freedom - 
 time subject to bondage, by showing them that 
 this God is both power and love. "The message 
 of a living God," says Warneck, "in contrast to 
 the animistic deities who live a self-centered life 
 in heaven, strikes the heathen's heart. It is 
 thought a sweet message that God does not live 
 in unapproachable retirement, but is a loving and 
 acting One, dealing with men, blessing or pun- 
 ishing them. His omnipotence proved through- 
 out in face of human distress and demoniac 
 power wins the heathen's heart, and invites him 
 to try this great and good God's help. Soon he 
 will try to come in contact with God through 
 prayer, and then rejoices, childlike, when he 
 finds himself heard. Such experience overthrows 
 superstition and fear. This immediate, natural 
 relation to the almighty, personal God, is one 
 of the loveliest experiences observed in animistic 
 heathen, and is not uncommon." (Report of 
 Commission IV, World Missionary Conference, 
 Ch. II.) 
 
 No peoples of the world make a stronger 
 appeal to the heart of the Christian Church to- 
 day than the animistic people. And no people 
 are readier to respond to the gospel. Without 
 God and without hope in the world, at the mercy 
 of evil spirits and of their own sorcerers, dwelling 
 
134 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 among a thousand terrors, the arrows of demons, 
 shot at night, and the pestilence of unseen foes 
 that creeps at noonday, poor and made poorer by 
 the ruinous exactions of their superstitions, — 
 these are those in bondage whom the gospel 
 would set free ; these are the eyes that are blinded, 
 which the gospel would open to the Light that 
 would be the Light of all the World. 
 
 It is this animism which ruled the popular 
 mind of China before Confucius arose, which in 
 Chinese form rules it now in spite of Confucius, 
 and which completely transformed the original 
 philosophy of Lao-tsze until his system became a 
 great mass of polydemonistic, polytheistic super- 
 stition. 
 Primitive But there was also in the ancient Chinese reli- 
 
 Monothcism gion, and there is in Chinese religion to-day, a 
 in China. f ar no bler element. A multitude of spirits 
 
 roamed about the world, evil spirits causing all 
 evil. Natural objects were inhabited by spirits 
 and worshiped. There were sacrifices and exor- 
 cisms and oracles. But over all this there were 
 gods, and over all gods was the superior power 
 called Heaven, the Supreme Ruler, Shang-ti, or 
 God. The spirits of cloud and rain and wind 
 were ministers assisting Shang-ti. In the prayers 
 found in the "Statutes of the Ming Dynasty" 
 (1368-1642 B. C.) we read: "It is yours, O 
 spirits, with your Heaven-conferred powers, and 
 nurturing influences, each to preside as guardian 
 over one district, as ministers assisting the great 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 135 
 
 Worker and Transformer, and thus the people 
 enjoy your meritorious services." Legge con- 
 tends that the early religion was a true primitive 
 monotheism, "that there had grown up round it 
 an inferior worship of multitudinous spirits; that 
 this inferior worship was not a nature worship, 
 and that it was subordinate to the homage due to 
 God." It is impossible now to determine how 
 strong the popular animism was, and how pure 
 the primitive monotheism. When looking back 
 we first find any standing ground in the history, 
 we perceive that the worship of Heaven, of the 
 superior ruler, was the annual function of the 
 sovereign of China, acting for himself and as the 
 representative of his people, that the worship of 
 the spirits of ancestors was a part of the state 
 ceremonial, but that in this the whole people 
 shared, reverencing their forefathers as among 
 the immortal spiritual beings, and that while the 
 idea of a supreme controlling Providence was in 
 the background of the people's mind, their prac- 
 tical daily religion was a worship of spirits, and 
 a propitiation of demons and of spiritualized 
 natural forces. 
 
 This was the religious mind of China when Confucius. 
 Confucius came. The simple facts of the great 
 teacher's life can be briefly told. He was born in 
 551 B. C. in what is now the Province of Shan- 
 tung. In Chinese his name is not Confucius, but 
 Kung-foo-tsze. His family traced its lineage 
 back to the twenty-eighth century B. C. to the 
 
136 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 mythical Hwang Ti. His father was an able and 
 prominent officer, over seventy years of age when 
 his son was born. He died when his son was 
 three years old, and his mother brought him up 
 in a hard struggle with poverty, a school whose 
 lessons he learned thoroughly. "When I was 
 young, " he said later when people were surprised 
 at the many things he could do, "my condition 
 was low, and I acquired my ability in many 
 things." His favorite boyhood play was in 
 arranging sacrificial vessels and in ceremonial 
 posturing, lie was married at the age of nine- 
 teen, and his only son, Li, was born the next 
 year. We find him now in charge of some 
 public stoics of grain, and two years later he 
 begins teaching, not boys, but young men who 
 wished to know the history and doctrines of the 
 great past which shone before Confucius as the 
 Golden Age. For ten years or more he continued 
 this teaching, pursuing, also, his own researches 
 into antiquity, and studying music, of which he 
 was fond, and to which he assigned an important 
 place in the education of individuals and the 
 order and improvement of the State. By this 
 time men began to realize that a great mind had 
 come among them, and in 517 B. C. one of the 
 chief ministers of the State of Lu, where he 
 lived, ordered his son to be placed in Confucius' 
 school. He now visited the capital of the king- 
 dom, and his fame was greatly increased. Re- 
 turning to his own state, great disorder broke out, 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 137 
 
 and it was some sixteen years before tranquility 
 was restored and he became magistrate of Chung- 
 tn. After a wonderful success there in reforming 
 the manners of the people, by methods which 
 attracted the attention of the government, he was 
 made Minister of Works and of Crime, and soon 
 reformed the whole state. We are told, "He 
 strengthened the ruling house, and weakened the 
 ministers and chiefs. A transforming govern- 
 ment went abroad. Dishonesty and dissoluteness 
 were ashamed, and hid their heads. Loyalty and 
 good faith became the characteristics of the men, 
 and chastity and docility those of the women. 
 Strangers came in crowds from other states." 
 He became the ideal of the people. But the 
 prosperity of Lu aroused the envy of other states, 
 and one of them broke down the influence of 
 Confucius by sending a present of beautiful 
 women and fine horses to the Prince of Lu, who 
 turned from the cold virtue of the Sage to these 
 warm pleasures. Confucius and his doctrines 
 were neglected, and unwillingly and hoping for 
 recall he went away. 
 
 For thirteen years Confucius and his disciples 
 wandered from state to state looking for a ruler 
 who would appreciate and accept the counsels of 
 the philosopher, but in vain. He bore his dis- 
 appointments — all the keener because they contra- 
 dicted his philosophy — with patience and noble 
 faith in the ultimate triumph of truth. When 
 his disciples were alarmed at the attack of a mob 
 upon them, he calmly said, "After the death of 
 
138 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 King Wan, was not the cause of letters and truth 
 lodged in me? If heaven had wished to let this 
 cause perish, I should not have got such a rela- 
 tion to it. While heaven does not let the cause 
 of truth perish, what can the men of K'wang do 
 to me?" In the same way, on another occasion, 
 when they were attacked by a band employed by 
 a malicious officer called Hvvan T'ui, Confucius 
 observed, '"Heaven has produced the virtue that 
 is in me; what can Hwan T'ui do to me?" 
 
 When one of his disciples hesitated to describe 
 his master to a ruler who had asked about him, 
 Confucius said, "Why did you not say that I am 
 simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowl- 
 edge forgets his food, who in the joy of its attain- 
 ment forgets his sorrows, and who does not 
 perceive that old age is coming on?" 
 
 After main hardships and bitter experiences, 
 Confucius returned in 483 B. C. to Lu for the 
 last five years of his life. lie was treated respect- 
 fully, but held no public office. lie gave himself 
 to completing his literary work, and then in 478 
 B. C. at the age of seventy-two he passed away. 
 
 ''The great mountain must crumble; 
 The strong beam must break; 
 And the wise man wither away like a plant," 
 
 were the oft quoted words which he said to him- 
 self the morning his last illness began. "No 
 intelligent monarch arises," he added to a dis- 
 ciple. "There is no prince in the kingdom who 
 will make me his master. My time has come to 
 die." 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 139 
 
 Confucius was a true sage, though he dis- Character of 
 claimed any such title. He was confident that Confucius, 
 his philosophy was adequate to meet the needs of 
 society, but to him it was not his own philosophy 
 but only the accumulated wisdom of the past, the 
 principles of the golden age. "A transmitter 
 and not a maker, believing in and loving the 
 ancients, I venture to compare myself with our 
 old P'ang, " was his description of himself. No- 
 where did he depart from the language here used, 
 and he resisted every temptation to usurp honors 
 which did not belong to him. Though more 
 deeply versed in the literature of his country than 
 any of his contemporaries, he yet professed him- 
 self deficient in knowledge, though deeply 
 enamoured of learning. Though looked upon 
 by his fellow men as a sage, he disclaimed the 
 possession of the qualities of even a "superior 
 man." "I am not virtuous enough," he said, 
 "to be free from anxieties; not wise enough to 
 be free from perplexities; and not bold enough 
 to be free from fear." (Douglas, "Confucian- 
 ism and Taoism," p. 147.) 
 
 He was a poor man, whose hands were clean 
 of all corruption, upright in all personal and 
 public relations, a seeker for truth and a believer 
 in the absolute power of the truth. He does not 
 seem to have been happy in his home relations, 
 and the general stiffness and propriety of his 
 demeanor, — the flower of that ceremonial posturing 
 which he had loved as a boy, — are well illustrated 
 
140 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 in the story of his attitude toward his son Li. 
 An inquisitive disciple once asked the boy, 
 "Have you heard any lessons from your father 
 different from what we have all heard?" "No," 
 replied Li; "he was standing alone once when I 
 was passing through the court below with hasty 
 steps and said to me, 'Have you read the Odes?' 
 On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added, 'If you do 
 not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse 
 with.' Another day, in the same place and the 
 same way, he said to nw, 'Have you read the 
 rules of Propriety?' On my replying, 'Not yet,' 
 he added, 'If you do not learn the rules of 
 Propriety, your character cannot be established.' 
 'I asked onething,' said the enthusiastic disciple, 
 'and I have learned three things. I have learnt 
 about the Odes; I have learnt about the rules of 
 Propriety; and I have learnt that the superior 
 man maintains a distant reserve towards his 
 son. ' " 
 
 Confucius himself realized the moral impotence 
 of his philosophy in the regeneration of character, 
 and even in the normal development of the 
 superior man. "In letters," he said, "I am 
 perhaps equal to other men; but the character of 
 the superior man, carrying out in his conduct 
 what he professes, is what I have not yet attained 
 to. The leaving virtue without proper cultiva- 
 tion; the not thoroughly discussing what is 
 learned; not being able to move towards right- 
 eousness of which a knowledge is gained; and 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 141 
 
 not being able to change what is not good; — these 
 are the things which occasion me solicitude." 
 There was no glow of piety in the man. 
 (Legge, "Christianity and Confucianism Com- 
 pared," p. 22.) He evaded all religious enquiry. 
 He discouraged prayer. "My prayers, " said he, 
 "were offered up long ago." "What he means," 
 says Pung Kwang Yu, "is that he considers his 
 prayers to consist in living a virtuous life and in 
 constantly obeying the dictates of conscience." 
 Again said Confucius, "He who sins against 
 Heaven has no place to pray." He was not a 
 poet, nor a philosopher in any creative or com- 
 prehensive sense. He was a student of tradition 
 and, as he conceived it, a practical politician. 
 He believed in the essential goodness and order- 
 liness of human nature; that men are as naturally 
 good as water is inclined to run down hill; that 
 all they need is example and instruction, and that 
 a right political philosophy embodied in a ruler 
 would reform and perfect society. In spite of the 
 optimism which sprang from such an inadequate 
 philosophy, — a philosophy so inconsistent with 
 the facts of life, — Confucius toward the end began 
 to lose heart. His whole experience belied his 
 fundamental principles. He felt the disappoint- 
 ment of it keenly. "My principles make no 
 progress," said he, "and I, — how shall I be 
 viewed in future ages?" 
 
 Future ages answered that question in a way of His Influence, 
 which Confucius never dreamed. "Never," says 
 
142 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 M. Hue, in an exaggeration which has truth in 
 it, "never has it been given to any mortal to 
 exercise during so many centuries so extensive 
 an empire over his fellow creatures." "It is 
 perhaps not too much to say of him," wrote so 
 conservative a missionary as Dr. Nevius, "that 
 the system of ethics and morality which he 
 taught is the purest which has ever originated in 
 the history of the world independent of the divine 
 revelation in the Bible, and that he has exerted a 
 greater influence for good upon our race than any 
 other uninspired sage of antiquity." (Nevius, 
 "China and the Chinese," p. 54.) And most 
 significantly, in the case of Confucius as in the 
 case of Buddha, both of them teachers who 
 deprecated superstition, and who taught men that 
 they were sufficient to themselves with no super- 
 natural aid, the religious heart of man responded 
 by making the teacher himself an object of 
 worship. His example and his books became the 
 determinant factors in Chinese education, and "in 
 the year 1 A. D. there began the practice of con- 
 ferring, by imperial authority, honorary titles on 
 Confucius, and in the year 57 it was enacted that 
 sacrifices should be offered to him in the govern- 
 ment colleges throughout the country. At the 
 present day he is worshiped twice a year on 
 certain days in the middle months of spring and 
 autumn. Then the emperor goes in state to the 
 imperial college in Peking, and performs his 
 homage, and presents the appointed offerings, 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 143 
 
 before the spirit tablets of Confucius and four of 
 his most famous disciples. These are the words 
 of the principal prayer on the occasion : "On this 
 month of this year, I, the emperor, offer sacrifice 
 to the philosopher K'ung, the ancient Teacher, 
 the perfect Sage, and say, O Teacher, in virtue 
 equal to heaven and earth, whose doctrines 
 embrace the time past and the present, thou didst 
 digest and transmit the six Classics, and didst 
 hand down lessons for all generations! Now in 
 this second month of spring (or autumn) in 
 -reverent observance of the old statutes, with 
 victims, silks, spirits, and fruits, I offer sacrifice 
 to thee." (Legge, "The Religions of China," 
 p. 148.) Thus the religious spirit of the Chinese 
 people took its strange revenge on the great secu- 
 laristic philosopher, and comprehended him in 
 its vast embrace, reaching from the crudest 
 fetichism through spirit, sage and god to high 
 heaven and the Supreme Ruler of all. 
 
 And yet it is not quite adequate to call Confu- ^ g j$ e n e f { n 
 cius a secularistic philosopher. He believed in Heaven. 
 Providence, and drew the sanctions of heaven 
 over his entire political philosophy. But his 
 whole conception had to do with a human govern- 
 mental organization. 
 
 His "idea of the Chinese Empire, his 'All 
 under heaven,' was a visible heaven on earth, 
 the emperor, the only son of heaven, holding, as 
 such, power and dominion over all the earth as 
 his indisputable right. His imperial laws were 
 
144 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 heavenly laws, like the laws of nature inalterable; 
 every transgression causing evil consequences, 
 even in nature. A return into the right path 
 restores the perturbed harmony. The foreign 
 treaties, forcing on China the acknowledgment of 
 other independent states as equal if not superior 
 to China, crushes this fundamental doctrine of 
 Confucianism. 
 
 '"Ancient religion was simply continued, but 
 made snl >ordinatc to the government of the state. 
 The emperor as son of heaven is subject only to 
 heaven; all gods and spirits are subject to him, 
 are rewarded and punished, promoted or degraded 
 by the emperor and his mandarins in accordance 
 with their rank. This peculiarity has become 
 very prominent in Modern Confucianism. 
 
 '"As the Chinese Empire is regarded as a 
 visible heavenly kingdom on earth, so the invisi- 
 ble world corresponds exactly to every Chinese 
 institution, even in its smallest details. There is 
 one highest ruler in heaven corresponding to the 
 emperor on earth; under Him are innumerable 
 gods of all degrees, rulers of states or large 
 provinces down to invisible constables and kitchen 
 gods. (Modern Confucianism went consistently 
 into the extreme, that the deceased have the same 
 needs in the other world as on earth, which needs 
 have to be supplied by their descendants. There 
 are also the same punishments; the torments in 
 hell are counterfeits of the tortures in Chinese 
 courts of law, in prisons and on the execution 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 145 
 
 ground. The gods are just as accessible to 
 bribes as the mandarins on earth.) Confucius 
 preferred to speak of heaven instead of God and 
 gods, probably in order to avoid confusion with 
 such beings called gods at the time, but he 
 allowed error to have its own way." (Faber, 
 "Confucianism," p. 7.) 
 
 All this was due to Confucius' principle of 
 simply sanctifying and transmitting the sacred 
 past. Into the Classics, which are the real sacred 
 books of China, were gathered up all the prin- 
 ciples of this past, whatsoever they were, in 
 politics and in religion, both the animism and 
 the monotheism; and the practice of the Classics 
 has been the politics and religion of China. And 
 yet this statement needs to be supplemented to 
 gain a just view of Confucius and of the modern 
 Chinese religion. On the« one hand, Confucius 
 did not support, more than was unavoidable in 
 his view, the popular animism; and, on the 
 other, he added nothing to the spiritual legacy of 
 ancient Chinese monotheism, and it is question- 
 able whether he transmitted all of it. Dr. Legge 
 says he knows of only one case in which Con- 
 fucius used the personal name of God, except 
 when he was quoting from the older books. His 
 practice was to avoid any such reference, and in- 
 stead to use the indefinite and merely providential 
 term of heaven. But the caution of Confucius in 
 moderating all supernaturalism has been offset by 
 the racial superstition of the Chinese people, 
 
146 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 which has poured into the actual religion of 
 China to-day a great volume of animistic view 
 and practice, which, even if it can be separated 
 from Confucianism, nevertheless affects the life 
 and opinions of every Confucianist. And it is 
 indeed entirely iair to say that these religious 
 elements, these distinctly animistic elements, are 
 a part of modern Confucianism. The Hon. Pung 
 Kwang Yu so represents Confucianism: — 
 
 The Confucianists take the meaning of the word 
 "ti," dispenser of heaven, in their interpretation of the 
 notes of Confucius to the Book of Changes. "Ti," 
 therefore, is synonymous with heaven, and there is only 
 one such. The heaven and earth constitute a dualism. 
 The conjunction of their vital essences brings forth a 
 third, the inscrutable part of which is called a spirit. 
 The heaven unites its essences with the essences of the 
 sun, moon or stars, and the resulting products of 
 spiritual force and energy are called respectively the 
 spirit of the sun, moon and stars. These are the spirits 
 of heaven. When heaven unites its essences with the 
 essences of the earth's elevations and depressions, the 
 resulting products of spiritual force and energy are 
 called the spirits of mountains, rivers, lakes and seas. 
 These are the spirits of the earth. The spirits of the 
 heaven and the earth cannot be represented by human 
 likenesses, or by natural objects, nor can they be called 
 by proper names or clothed with the vesture of mortals. 
 How much more is this true of the Lord of lords! 
 
 The spiritual essence of man produced by the union 
 of celestial and terrestrial forces, is the soul which par- 
 takes of a twofold nature, the celestial element bein'^ 
 "wen" and the terrestrial element being "pah." The 
 separation of these two elements gives rise to the exist- 
 ence of ghosts. 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 147 
 
 There are, then, celestial spirits, terrestrial spirits, 
 and human spirits. If any of these spirits, by some 
 exercise of power, or by some supernatural action, 
 benefits the creation in some way, thus emulating the 
 goodness of heaven to some extent, then it is the part 
 of the national government to take cognizance of such 
 action by raising the beneficent spirit to the rank of 
 "ti," and enrolling his name in the catalogue of canon- 
 ized spirits. It is not to be inferred from such acts of 
 the national government that spirits are "tis" or rulers 
 of heaven. What is really meant by this is that benefi- 
 cent spirits, by showing their goodness to the animated 
 creation in general and to mankind in particular, are 
 worthy to take their places by the side of heaven and 
 earth as the benefactors of mankind. It will be seen 
 that the ideas of God and spirits, as derived from revela- 
 tion, are so different from the conceptions of God and 
 spirits which the Confucianists have, that what is taught 
 by the one cannot but be different from what is taught 
 by the other. (Report of Parliament of Religions, 
 Vol. I, p. 378.) 
 
 If we eliminate, however, those elements which State 
 lead us into regions where Confucius declined to Worship and 
 go, and consider only the religious elements in Fllial Pie ty- 
 Confucianism which were given high place by 
 the Sage himself, we shall find that they are two, 
 the State worship and ancestor worship. (Gib- 
 son, "Mission Problems and Mission Methods in 
 South China," p. 88 f. ) The former is the 
 annual representative worship by the emperor, 
 in Peking, at the time of the summer solstice, 
 when, as the Son of Heaven, he offers prayers 
 for his people. The latter is the very warp of 
 Chinese religion, over which all other ideas are 
 
148 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 thrown as woof. It existed before Confucius, 
 and was approved and sanctified by him. It has 
 produced a family solidarity found nowhere else 
 in the world. It has led to the legalization of 
 concubinage as essential at times to the securing 
 of sons to maintain the family line and the unend- 
 ing worship which is indispensable to the dead 
 and the living. It has done more than any other 
 single influence, except the memorizing of the 
 Classics as the sole learning, to fossilize Chinese 
 life, and to bind the future in the shackles of the 
 past. It is the religious expression of a filial 
 piety which has many noble features, and the 
 I of which must not be lost when the idola- 
 trous elements are rendered no longer possible, as 
 they will be by the acceptance of true notions of 
 the human soul and of the natural world and of 
 the spiritual universe. No people in the world 
 should sympathize more than Christians with the 
 Chinese in their devotion to their ancestors and 
 in their exaltation of filial piety into the greatest 
 of virtues. A true and complete loyalty to the 
 great Father God goes best with true loyalty to 
 the earthly fatherhoods, which are named after 
 the heavenly. And Chinese filial piety, when 
 once its pagan elements are dissolved, is a noble 
 base on which to build a Christian Society. 
 Confucianism And it was in society, not in religion, that 
 Primarily Confucius' interest lay. He was an ancient 
 
 Political. sociologist. He viewed man and ethics always 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 149 
 
 in relation to politics. Dr. Faber sets this forth in 
 some propositions embodying his central doc- 
 trine: — 
 
 Man is considered not from a religious, not from a 
 mystical, nor again from a materialistic, but from a 
 humane-moral point of view; i, e., man as man in rela- 
 tion to men. 
 
 It contains nothing on the origin of man. He 
 appears as a blossom of nature and in highest perfection 
 as an associate of Heaven and Earth. 
 
 The ideal and the powers for carrying it out lie only 
 in man himself. The holy man is the representative of 
 the ideal man by nature, and the superior man of the 
 ideal man by moral perfection. 
 
 Sin is the excess in human desires and endeavors ; by 
 reverting into the right- path it ceases. 
 
 Man is free; destiny only presents bounds which it 
 is useless, even injurious, to break. 
 
 All virtues are directly connected with humanity, as 
 virtue par excellence. 
 
 All public virtue presupposes private virtue. The 
 latter must therefore be the chief aim of the superior 
 man. But not as hermit, but as child, brother, friend 
 and subject. 
 
 The steps on the way to perfection are : perfect 
 knowledge, a true mind, right sentiment of the heart, 
 culture of the whole person ; furthermore, an influence 
 over family, state and things generally. 
 
 The task of the state is the physical charge and the 
 moral education of the people ; the highest glory is 
 peace, not war and anarchy. (Faber, "Systematical 
 Digest of the Doctrines of Confucius," pp. 128-131.) 
 
 Christianity casts every one of these ideas in a 
 different form, in a truer form as regards sin, and 
 in each case in a form which recognizes the 
 spiritual principles in man and in society, and 
 
150 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 which relates all human action and organization 
 to God and the Kingdom of God. All this was 
 as much outside of the world of Confucius as a 
 world of three dimensions is outside of a world 
 of two. 
 The The political doctrine of Confucius is set forth 
 
 Classics. j n t ne Classics, as the nine great books of Con- 
 
 fucianism are called. These nine are The Five 
 King and The Four Shoo. The Five King 
 are The Book of Changes, The Book of 
 Historical Documents, The Book of Poetry, 
 The Record of Kites, and Spring and Autumn, 
 which is a chronicle of events extending from 
 B. C. 721 to B. C. 480. These five books are 
 looselv attributed to Confucius, but only the last 
 of them can be described as of his making. The 
 Four Shoo are the Confucian Analects, a record 
 of the savings of Confucius, The Great Learn- 
 ing, now attributed to one of his disciples, The 
 Doctrine of the Mean, ascribed to his grandson, 
 and the fourth contains the works of Mencius. 
 A few quotations from the Classics will suffice 
 to show, though very inadequately, their general 
 tone and character: — 
 
 In the way of the superior man, there are four things 
 to not one of which have I as yet attained : To serve my 
 father as I would require my son to serve me; to serve 
 my elder brother as I would require my younger brother 
 to serve me; to behave to a friend as I would require 
 him to behave to me. Earnest in practicing the ordi- 
 narv virtues, and careful in speaking about them ; if, in 
 his conduct, he has anything defective, the superior man 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 151 
 
 dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he 
 has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license. 
 Thus his words have respect to his actions, and his 
 actions have respect to his words ; is it not complete 
 sincerity which makes the superior man? 
 
 The superior man does not wait till he sees things to 
 be cautious, nor till he hears things to be apprehensive. 
 There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and 
 nothing more manifest than what is minute. There- 
 fore, the superior man is watchful over himself when 
 he is alone. 
 
 He who possesses sincerity — absolutely, that is — is he 
 who without effort hits what is right, and apprehends 
 without the exercise of thought: he is the sage who 
 naturally and easily embodies the right way. He who 
 attains to sincerity is he who chooses what is good, and 
 firmly holds it fast. And to this attainment there are 
 requisite the extensive study of what is good, accurate 
 enquiry about it, careful reflection on it, the clear dis- 
 crimination of it, and the earnest practice of it. 
 
 The ancients . . . wishing to be sincere in their 
 thoughts, first extended to the utmost their knowledge. 
 Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of 
 things. Things being investigated, knowledge became 
 complete. Their knowledge being complete, their 
 thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, 
 their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being 
 rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons 
 being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their 
 families being regulated, their states were rightly 
 governed. Their states being rightly governed, the 
 whole empire was made tranquil and happy. 
 
 It is not possible for a man to teach others who can- 
 not teach his own family. Therefore a ruler, without 
 going beyond his family, completes the lessons for the 
 State. There is filial piety; therewith the sovereign 
 
152 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 should be served. There is fraternal submission, with 
 which the elders and superiors should be served. There 
 is kindness, with which the multitude should be 
 treated. . . . From the loving example of one family 
 the whole state becomes loving; and from its courte- 
 sies, the whole state becomes courteous; while, from 
 the ambition and perverseness of one man, the whole 
 state may be led to rebellious disorder — such is the 
 nature of influence. 
 
 With the right men, the growth of government is 
 rapid, just as vegetation is rapid in the earth; and 
 indeed their government might be called an easily grow- 
 ing rush. Therefore the administration of government 
 lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by 
 means of the ruler's own character. That character is 
 to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. 
 And the teaching those ways of duty is to he cultivated 
 DV the cherishing of benevolence. 
 
 What is meant by "the making the whole empire 
 peaceful and happy depends on the government of the 
 state, 1 " is this; when the sovereign behaves to his aged 
 as the aged should he behaved to, the people become 
 filial ; when the sovereign behaves to his elders as 
 elders should be behaved to, the people learn brotherly 
 submission; when the sovereign treats compassionately 
 the young and helpless, the people do the same. 
 
 Such are the ideas which have molded the 
 education of China. For centuries the Chinese 
 people have saturated their minds in the Classics. 
 In the results we have a unique illustration of 
 what can be accomplished by fashioning an 
 isolated nation for ages by government education 
 in a single, unvarying set of text-books. Con- 
 fucius came to his unique place in China's 
 thought because he embodied the essential Chi- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 153 
 
 nese character. He originated nothing. He 
 simply expressed the genius of the race. But 
 in giving China this embodiment and expression 
 in his character and his writings, he supplied the 
 agency by which the racial character was intensi- 
 fied and its genius fixed irrevocably. A perma- 
 nent national identity has been produced, which 
 some day the gospel is to redeem and to put to 
 world uses of which Confucius could not have 
 conceived. 
 
 The last of the Confucian Classics is the Mencius. 
 volume containing the writings of Mencius, 
 whose name as a teacher is reverenced in China 
 next to that of Confucius himself. Mencius is 
 the Latinized form of Mang-tsze, "The philoso- 
 pher Mang. " He was born B. C. 371 and died 
 B. C. 288, at the age of eighty-three. He was a 
 contemporary of Aristotle and Demosthenes, 
 neither of whom has wielded a greater influence 
 over posterity. As with Confucius, his father 
 died when he was young, and he was brought up 
 by a wonderful mother. (Legge, "The Life and 
 Works of Mencius," pp. 16-18.) He was an 
 admirer and student of Confucius. "Although I 
 could not be a disciple of Confucius myself," he 
 said, "I have endeavored to cultivate my virtue 
 by means of others who were." His lot fell on 
 troublesome times, and he had to meet strange 
 new doctrines, among them those of Shin-meng, 
 an ancient Tolstoi or Ruskin, who deprecated 
 division of labor and would have the sovereign 
 
154 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 grow his own rice and cook his own meals. 
 Mencius loyally applied the doctrine of Confucius 
 to the new days. Rulers consulted him and 
 sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, his coun- 
 sel. For the most part his lot was like his great 
 predecessor's, and for the last twenty years of his 
 life he disappeared from courts, and in retirement 
 taught the disciples who gathered to him, and 
 compiled the works which have lived and molded 
 China to this day. When the philosopher Ching 
 was asked whether Mencius might be pronounced 
 to be a sage, he replied, ''I do not dare to say 
 altogether that he was a sage, but his learning 
 had reached the extrcmest point." The same 
 great philosopher also said, "The merit of 
 Mencius in regard to the doctrine of the sages is 
 more than can be told. Confucius only spoke of 
 benevolence, but as soon as Mencius opens his 
 mouth we hear of benevolence and righteousness. 
 Confucius only spoke of the will or mind, but 
 Mencius enlarged also on the nourishment of the 
 passion-nature. In these two respects his merit 
 was great. " "Mencius did great service to the 
 world by his teaching the goodness of man's 
 nature." 
 
 The Scholar Yang Kwei-shan says: "The 
 great object of Mencius in his writings is to 
 rectify men's hearts, teaching them to preserve 
 their heart and nourish their nature, and to 
 recover their lost heart. When he discourses of 
 benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowl- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 155 
 
 edge, he refers to the principles of these in the 
 heart commiserating, feeling shame and dislike, 
 affected with modesty and complaisance, approv- 
 ing and disapproving. When he speaks of the 
 evils springing from perverted speakings, he 
 says, ' Growing firs*t in the mind, they prove in- 
 jurious to government. ' When he shows how a 
 prince should be served, he says, 'Correct what 
 is wrong in his mind. Once rectify the prince, 
 and the kingdom will be settled .' With him the 
 thousand changes and ten thousand operations of 
 men all come from the mind or heart. If a man 
 once rectify his heart, little else will remain for 
 him to do.'' (Legge, "The Life and Works 
 of Mencius, " p. 41 f. ) 
 
 Of Mencius' character, Dr. Legge says: "While 
 we are not to look to Mencius for new truths, the 
 peculiarities of his natural character were more 
 striking than those of his master. There was an 
 element of 'the heroicar about him. He was a 
 dialectician, moreover. If he did not like dis- 
 puting, as he protested that he did not, yet, when 
 forced to it, he showed himself a master of the 
 art. An ingenuity and subtlety which we cannot 
 but enjoy often mark his reasons. We have more 
 sympathy with him than with Confucius. He 
 comes closer to us. He is not so awe-ful, but he 
 is more admirable. The doctrines of the sages 
 take a tinge from his mind in passing through it, 
 and it is with that Mencian character about them 
 that they are now held by the cultivated classes and 
 
156 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 by readers generally." (Legge, "The Life and 
 Works of Mencius," p. 43.) 
 
 Mencius held the same general ethical and 
 religious view as Confucius. "The five regular 
 constituents of our moral nature" are the prin- 
 ciples, attributes and faculties of benevolence, 
 righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity. 
 The duties of the human lot in the five relations, 
 as stated by Mencius, are "between father and 
 son, affection; between ruler and subject, right- 
 eousness; between husband and wife, attention to 
 their separate functions; between elders and 
 youngers, a proper distinction; and between 
 friends, fidelity." (Legge, "Christianity and 
 Confucianism Compared," p. 11.) 
 
 lie had the same placid, superficial, daily 
 contradicted optimism as to human nature. 
 "The tendency of man's nature to good is like 
 the tendency of water to flow downwards. There 
 are none but have this tendency to good, just as 
 all water flows downwards. By striking water 
 and causing it to leap up, you may make it go 
 over your forehead, and, by damming and leading 
 it, you may force it up a hill ; but are such move- 
 ments according to the nature of water? It is 
 the force applied which causes them. When men 
 are made to do w r hat is not good, their nature is 
 dealt with in this way." (Legge, "The Life and 
 Works of Mencius," p. 58.) 
 
 And yet of nature as God meant it to be, as it 
 is in His ideal, this is the true view, and Mencius 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 157 
 
 was asserting a great Christian truth when he put 
 his view in such an ideal form. "From the feel- 
 ings proper to it," said he, (( we see that it is 
 constituted for the practice of what is good. 
 This is what I mean in saying that the nature is 
 good. If men do what is not good, the blame 
 cannot be imputed to their natural powers." 
 
 His doctrine of human nature as formed for 
 virtue is a noble doctrine. The inadequacy of 
 his view lies in the fact that he does not realize 
 that the ideal has been defaced and that it cannot 
 restore itself. He is like Confucius in knowing 
 nothing of sin as the victorious foe of ideal 
 human nature, or of a way in which men may 
 recover in God the nature which they have lost 
 and be made secure in it by a supernatural life. 
 
 The third great religious teacher of China was Lao-tsze. 
 the philosopher Lao-tsze. The name is probably 
 a title of respect meaning "the old or venerable 
 philosopher." He was born in what is now the 
 Province of Honan, in B. C. 604, and tradition 
 says he was eighty years old and an old man with 
 white hair when he was born. In 517 B. C. it 
 is said that Confucius came to see him, the older 
 teacher's fame having spread far, and the inter- 
 view was not harmonious. "Those whom you 
 talk about," said Lao-tsze, "are dead, and their 
 bones are moldered to dust; only their words are 
 left. Moreover, when the superior man gets his 
 time he mounts aloft; but, when the time is 
 against him, he moves as if his feet were 
 
158 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 entangled. I have heard that a good merchant, 
 although he has rich treasures deeply stored, 
 appears as if he were poor, and that the superior 
 man, though his virtue is complete, is yet to out- 
 ward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air 
 and many desires, your insinuating habit and 
 wild will. These are of no advantage to you. 
 This is all that I have to tell you." After the 
 interview, we are told, Confucius said to his dis- 
 ciples, "I know how birds can fly, fishes swim, 
 and animals run. But the runner maybe snared, 
 the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the 
 arrow. But there is the dragon: I cannot tell 
 how he mounts on the wind through the clouds 
 and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao- 
 tsze, and can only compare him to the dragon." 
 Lao-tsze was interested in metaphysics. His 
 mind passed behind the ceremonial ideas and 
 political traditions of Confucius. lie wanted to 
 find the ultimate base of things. The transitory 
 issues of the day were of little interest to him. 
 He withdrew from them to seek the inner secret 
 of life. "The world is joyful and merry as on 
 a day of sacrifice," he said; "I alone prefer soli- 
 tude and quiet and prefer not to pry into futurity. 
 I am like an infant ere it has grown to be a 
 child; listless I roam hither and thither, as 
 though I had no home to go to. Confused and 
 dim, while the vulgar are enlightened, I alone 
 am in the dark, tossed to and fro like the sea, 
 roaming without cessation." Before he retired 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 159 
 
 wholly from the world, he wrote a book for one 
 who asked him before he went to leave behind 
 what he had found, and this book we have still 
 in the Tao Teh King. After writing it, Lao-tsze 
 passed out from the kingdom alone and unattended 
 and was seen no more. 
 
 His book is a "Treatise on the Absolute and The Tao Tek 
 the Actual." His doctrine is that we must King, 
 empty ourselves and be free from preoccupation 
 if we would be ready to receive; that emptiness 
 is necessary to usefulness, that this emptiness is 
 freedom from selfish motives; that we must be 
 humble to learn; that the highest good is like 
 water, supple, soft, silent, always seeking the 
 low place, and yet the most serviceable and strong 
 of all things; that the three precious things are 
 compassion, economy and want of presumption; 
 that good must be returned for evil, and violence 
 be laid aside. So far the doctrine is unexcep- 
 tionable, but further, with the progress of knowl- 
 edge and life, Lao-tsze had no sympathy, and 
 his doctrine would have dissolved society into 
 units, each seeking by retirement an escape from 
 the confusion of things. Professor Douglas 
 holds, also, that Lao-tsze knew nothing of a 
 personal God, so far as we may judge from his 
 treatise, "and," he adds, "a belief in such a 
 being would be in opposition to the whole tenor 
 of his philosophy." ("Confucianism and Tao- 
 ism," p. 211.) Professor Legge is less certain, 
 but says, "While the existence of God is not 
 
160 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 denied, there is no inculcation of religion in the 
 book. Lao-tsze's Taoism is the exhibition of a 
 way or method of living which men should cul- 
 tivate as the highest and purest development of 
 their nature." (Legge, "The Religions of 
 China," p. 229.) 
 Taoist But in the case of Lao-tsze, once again, the 
 
 Superstition, religious instinct, thwarted and wiled, twists 
 upon itself in abortive forms and takes revenge 
 upon those who have disappointed it. Lao-tsze 
 is now a god. Taoism, the religion which takes 
 its name from the title of his book, has made 
 him one of the Taoist triad, the "Three Pure 
 Ones," who sit together in serene stillness in ten 
 thousand temples and look down upon scenes 
 which Lao-tsze despised. And now worked 
 upon by Buddhism and gathering up into itself 
 the indigenous animism of the land, Taoism has 
 become a mass of superstitions, idolatry, demon- 
 \ olatrv and geomancy, which the best thought of 
 China regards With contempt, however super- 
 stitious that best thought may itself still be. But 
 Lao-tsze's system had in it the germs of this 
 development. The Tao Teh King begins: — 
 
 The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and 
 unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not 
 the enduring and unchanging name. As having no 
 name it is the originator of heaven and earth; as having 
 a name, it is the mother of all things. . . . Under these 
 two aspects it is really the same; but as development 
 takes place, it receives different names. Together we 
 call them the Mystery. Where the mystery is the 
 deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful. 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 161 
 
 It was here that Taoism stood out in strongest 
 contrast with Confucianism. Confucianism knew 
 nothing of mystery. Lao-tsze had a deeper and 
 more courageous insight. He knew that where 
 our commonplace explanations end, there is the 
 gateway of new and widening truth. "In the 
 recognition of this lesson," says Dr. Gibson, 
 "lies at once the strength and the weakness of 
 Taoism. In its strength it has given us the 
 Taoist metaphysic, which for freshness, depth, 
 and thorough-going idealism, has no Confucian 
 rival ; in its weakness it has produced the imbecile 
 vagaries of Taoist alchemy, geomancy, and gen- 
 eral hocus-pocus." (Gibson, "Mission Problems 
 and Mission Methods," p. 94.) 
 
 Into this network of gods and immortal sages, 
 of city gods and star gods; of a deified magician 
 known as the Jade Emperor, superintending 
 the world and an imaginary earthly heaven in the 
 Kun Lun Mountains; of elixir of life and charms 
 and exorcisms; of its pitiful Pope; of literalistic 
 hells, pictured in the most lurid detail in the 
 temples; of merit accounts in which acts are 
 appraised with exactest precision, and salvation 
 is mathematically calculated, — into all this, so 
 terrible in its weight upon a nation's life, and 
 yet so destitute of ideas and of spiritual meaning, 
 we need not enter. It is fully described in the 
 books on China, and on the religious practices 
 of the Chinese people. It is enough for us to 
 note that there is the same need for true religion 
 
162 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 to lighten the mind of China and to satisfy its 
 soul that there is among all the animistic peoples. 
 Chinese The sects which have grown up in China, corn- 
 
 Sects, pounded of Buddhist and Taoist elements, illus- 
 
 trate the religious discontent of the earnest 
 minded among the people. Some of these vege- 
 tarian organizations represent a real religious 
 longing, and have prepared multitudes to receive 
 a purer faith when it has come. In his account 
 of "Blind Chang, the Manchurian Martyr," the 
 Rev. fames \\\ [nglis refers to a typical instance 
 of these sects and their relationship to Chris- 
 tianity. Speaking of Chao, a former convert in 
 Manchuria, Mr. [nglis says: — 
 
 For thirty-three years before his conversion, Chao had 
 been a prominent member of a vegetarian sect — the 
 Hun Yuen — with which Chang had also some con- 
 nection ; and as most of the early converts in that 
 district had a similar history, it is necessary to give 
 some account of this society. 
 
 This sect is said to have been founded three hundred 
 years ago, in the same reign in which the early Jesuits 
 entered China. Its teaching is a mixture of Buddhism 
 with the native religion, called Taoism. The disciples 
 of the sect are initiated with secret rites, and are 
 taught a formula which must not be uttered, or the 
 heavens will fall; it is as follows: — 
 
 "On Kun Lun Mountain, Amida Buddha, 
 Merciful Lord Buddha, come to the joyous city; 
 O Buddha, sit on the spiritual mountain." 
 The society is independent of the temples and the 
 priesthood ; it consists of laymen, who pay a salary to 
 their leaders, and even send agents to a distance to win 
 new disciples. They meet in halls attached to private 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 163 
 
 houses, which are sometimes without any idols, but the 
 common custom is to wear, suspended from the neck, 
 little bronze images of Buddha. They belong both to 
 the middle class and to the humbler ranks of the people, 
 and, as a rule, they are sincere and earnest men, seekers 
 after truth, the moral elite of the nation. Their great 
 aim, they declare, is "The Reform of the Character," 
 to which end they adopt two methods — a vegetarian 
 diet, and the reading of the books of the society. 
 These books are all in manuscript, and generally in 
 metre. I have seen a set of ten volumes, written with 
 characters half an inch long, the decorated border alone 
 costing a pound of our money. 
 
 A convert once gave me, after his baptism, a book 
 of prayers, addressed to the Goddess of Mercy. The 
 first page read thus: "O merciful Goddess, that lookest 
 on the earth, forgive me all my sins, both those com- 
 mitted before entering the society, and those committed 
 since." Was this but a cry in the dark, wrung from 
 some burdened heart in its dire need, or was it an echo 
 of the prayer of the publican in the temple, that had 
 floated by unknown ways over the spaces of Central 
 Asia? 
 
 They that seek shall find ; and many of those who 
 have found rest in the Christian Church have admitted 
 that the "secret sects" had prepared the way for the 
 coming of God's Kingdom. They had sought for the 
 light, though by tortuous paths, and there are no better 
 servants of the Cross to-day than those who formerly 
 had been sincere in their idolatry. 
 
 It is sufficiently clear that pure Confucianism Defects of 
 has not satisfied the needs of China. China's Confucianism, 
 titanic struggle to-day is to escape from the 
 political and intellectual enslavement of Confu- 
 cianism. The rise of popular Taoism and the 
 introduction of Buddhism show how inadequate 
 
164 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Confucianism was to meet the religious needs of 
 the empire. Confucianism is simply incompe- 
 tent to meet such needs. It is a denial of their 
 importance. (See Okuma, "Fifty Years of New 
 Japan." Chapter on Confucianism by Professor 
 Inouye, Vol. II, pp. 42, 64.) Its inadequacy 
 and its positive errors and defects are summarized 
 by Dr. Faber: — 
 
 1. Confucianism recognizes no relation to a living 
 God. 
 
 2. There is no distinction made between the human 
 soul and the body, nor is there any clear definition of 
 man, either from a physical or fcrom ;i psychological 
 point of view. 
 
 3. There is no explanation given why it is that some 
 men arc horn as saints and others as ordinary mortals. 
 
 4. All men arc said to possess the disposition and 
 
 strength necessary tor the attainmenl of moral perfec- 
 tion, but the contrast with the actual state remains un- 
 explained. 
 
 5. There is wanting in Confucianism a decided and 
 Serious tone in its treatment of the doctrine ot sin, for 
 with the exception of moral retribution in social life it 
 mentions no punishment for sin. 
 
 6. Confucianism is generally devoid of a deeper 
 insight into sin and evil. 
 
 7. Confucianism finds it, therefore, impossible to 
 explain death. 
 
 8. Confucianism knows no mediator, none that could 
 restore original nature in accordance with the ideal 
 which man finds in himself. 
 
 t 9. Praver and its ethical power finds no place in the 
 system of Confucius. 
 
 10. Though confidence is indeed frequently insisted 
 upon, its presupposition, viz., truthfulness in speaking, 
 is never practically urged, but rather the reverse. 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 165 
 
 ,11. Polygamy is presupposed and tolerated. 
 
 12. Pantheism is sanctioned. 
 
 13. Fortune telling, choosing of days, omens, dreams 
 and other illusions (phoenixes, etc.) are believed in. 
 
 14. Ethics are confounded with external ceremonies 
 and a precise despotic political form. 
 
 15. The position which Confucius assumed towards 
 ancient institutions is a capricious one. 
 
 16. The assertion that certain musical melodies in-l- 
 luence the morals of the people is ridiculous. 
 
 17. The influence of mere good example is exag- 
 gerated, and Confucius proves it least of all. 
 
 '" 18. In Confucianism the system of social life is 
 tyranny. Women are slaves. Children have no rights 
 in relation to their parents, whilst subjects are placed 
 in the position of children with regard to their supe- 
 riors. 
 
 19. Filial piety is exaggerated into deification of 
 parents. 
 
 20. The net result of Confucius' system, as drawn 
 by himself, is the worship of genius ; i. e., deification of 
 man. 
 
 21. There is, with the exception of ancestral worship, 
 which is devoid of any true ethical value, no clear con- 
 ception of the dogma of immortality. 
 
 22. All rewards are expected in this world, so that 
 egotism is unconsciously fostered, and if not avarice, 
 at least ambition. 
 
 23. The whole system of Confucianism offers no 
 comfort to ordinary mortals, either in life or in death. 
 
 24. The history of China shows that Confucianism 
 is incapable of effecting for the people a new birth to 
 a higher life and nobler efforts, and Confucianism is 
 now in practical life quite alloyed with Shamanistic and 
 Buddhistic ideas and practices. (Faber, "Systematical 
 Digest of the Doctrines of Confucius," pp. 124-127.) 
 
166 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 
 Contrasts In contrast with Christianity several of these 
 
 with points need additional emphasis. Chinese reli- 
 
 Ckristianity. g ion i ac k s t he ideal of unselfishness. The 
 
 Chinese begin to realize their need of a religion 
 
 which contains this ideal, and gives power for its 
 
 realization. Mr. Cornaby of Shanghai writes: — 
 
 Some influential non-Christian Chinese newspapers 
 
 have lately declared, in a series of leading articles, that 
 China has a number of ceremonial observances hut not 
 religion, and that she must L, r ct a religion somewhere if 
 she is to prosper. One article has the following words : 
 "If we read history, we find that the decadence of the 
 great nations of the past began with their religions and 
 the acceptance of low ideals. China's lack of civic 
 
 righteousness (official peculation and the like) is essen- 
 tially a religious lack. No nation can afford to do 
 without a religion; and to he strong, a nation must have 
 a religion which demands the greatest amount of unsel- 
 fishness." i Report of Commission IV, World Mission- 
 ary Conference, Ch. III.) 
 
 Chinese religion lacks also the fullness and 
 strength, of the Christian morality, and yet morals 
 is the chief glory of Confucianism. Hut with 
 inadequate conceptions both of God and of man it 
 cannot have the rich, forceful, ethical sense of 
 Christianity. "In Confucianism," writes Mr. 
 Arnold Foster, ''there is no doctrine of a divine 
 love, nor any thought of a God who is love. 
 There is a lack of sympathy with the poor, the 
 outcast and the erring. There is no doctrine of 
 faith as an objective movement of the soul; no 
 realization of the weakness of man's will and of 
 moral bias; no expectation of high moral char- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 167 
 
 acter in ordinary men; and learning, not conver- 
 sion's the road to virtue. Sins of the heart, too, 
 such as pride, are lightly regarded. In all these, 
 and in many other directions, there must be a 
 reaction in favor of Christianity." (Report of 
 Commission IV, World Missionary Conference, 
 Ch. III.) 
 
 Confucianism knew the Golden Rule in a neg- The Golde: 
 ative and passive form, quite different from the Rule, 
 positive and active form in which Christianity 
 knows it. "What you do not like when done to 
 yourself, do not do to others," said Confucius. 
 And this negative form allowed the doctrine of 
 retaliation. "What do you say," asked a dis- 
 ciple, "concerning the principle that injury 
 should be recompensed with kindness?" The 
 master said, "With what then will you recom- 
 pense kindness ? Recompense injury with justice, 
 and recompense kindness with kindness.''* 
 "There is no spirit of forgiveness here," says 
 Professor Douglas; "it is the stern law of an eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Of the man 
 who returns good for evil he speaks with con- 
 tempt, as a cowardly creature who is 'careful of 
 his person.' Far from checking the spirit of 
 revenge, he inculcates it as a duty under certain 
 circumstances." "What course is to be pur- 
 sued," asked Tsze-hea, "in the case of the mur- 
 der of a father or a mother?" "The son," said 
 the Sage, "must sleep upon a mattress of grass, 
 with his shield for his pillow; he must decline to 
 
168 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 take office ; he must not live under the same 
 heaven with his slayer. When he meets him in 
 the market place, or the court, he must have his 
 weapon ready to strike him." (Douglas, "Con- 
 fucianism and Taoism," p. 144 f . ) 
 Woman. And just as in the case of every non-Christian 
 
 religion, Confucianism breaks down in its atti- 
 tude toward woman. The teaching of the 
 Classics is that women arc as different in nature 
 from man as earth is from heaven, that they are 
 separate not only in bodily form, but in the very 
 essence of nature; that though women are 
 regarded as human beings, they are of a lower 
 state than men ami can never attain to full 
 equality with men; that women are to be kept 
 under the power of men and not allowed any will 
 of their own; that women cannot have any hap- 
 piness of their own, — they have to live and work 
 for men ; that only as the mother of a son, and 
 especially of the continuator of the direct line of 
 a family, can a woman escape from her degrada- 
 tion and become to a degree equal to her hus- 
 band, but then only in household affairs, es- 
 pecially of the female department and in the 
 ancestral hall, and that woman is bound to the 
 same laws of existence even in the other world. 
 She belongs to the same husband and is depend- 
 ent for her happiness on the sacrifices offered 
 by her descendants. (Faber, "The Status of 
 Women in China," p. 12.) Seven causes of 
 divorce are recognized, — barrenness, lascivious- 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 169 
 
 ness, jealousy, talkativeness, thievery, disobedi- 
 ence to her husband's parents, or leprosy; but a 
 woman cannot be put away whose parents are not 
 living to receive her back again. Parties can 
 separate on mutual disagreement, but the code 
 does not regulate the alimony; and a husband is 
 liable to punishment if he retain a wife convicted 
 of adultery. If a wife merely elopes she can be 
 sold by her husband, but if she marry while 
 absent she is to be strangled. If the husband be 
 absent three years a woman must state her case to 
 the magistrates before presuming to remarry. 
 (Williams, "The Middle Kingdom," Vol. I, p. 
 794.) Marriage is highly respected in China, 
 and the career of the late Dowager Empress shows 
 what influence women can exert, but it is true 
 that "Confucius has nothing to say of the duties 
 of husband and wife, and the later writers supply 
 the deficiency only in part." (Knox, "The De- 
 velopment of Religion in Japan," p. 158.) 
 
 At every point where Confucianism is weak Inferiority 
 Christianity is strong, and it has already shown of Confucian- 
 by the service it has rendered China what it can 19m to Chrw- 
 do which Confucianism has failed to do. As Sir iani y ' 
 Alexander Simpson, Prof. Alexander Macalister 
 and Mr. Francis William Fox said in a report 
 which they made to the China Missions Emer- 
 gency Committee in Great Britain in 1907: — 
 
 Whilst the ancient ethics of China, which were at a 
 later date collected and compiled by Confucius, have 
 undoubtedly exercised for centuries a most beneficent 
 
170 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 and potent influence on the lives of Chinese and the 
 Chinese nation ; vet these ethics have altogether lacked 
 that dynamic power to mold their character and uplift 
 effectually their ideas and surroundings, which Chris- 
 tianity alone of all religious beliefs of the world seems 
 able to accomplish. Christianity lias brought to the 
 Chinese the knowledge of a supreme God of the Uni- 
 verse, who is the Heavenly Father of all men; of a 
 Redeemer and Saviour; of sin and sinfulness; it has 
 taught thorn that all the inhabitants of earth — men, 
 women, and children -are alike equal in the sight of 
 God, and are members of one world-wide brotherhood; 
 that they have souls needing salvation, and that the 
 position of women must be placed on the same basis ;l s 
 that of men. It has further revealed to them the joys 
 and blessingsand the sweetness of the Christian's home, 
 and the power to live purer ami truer lives; it has in- 
 troduced into China a weekly day of rest, an institution 
 previously unknown; it has developed in a marvelous 
 way education and tin- press; it has advocated the un- 
 binding of the Crippled feet of its women, and is thus 
 likely to bring about the early emancipation from ter- 
 rible sufferings and disabilities of neatly one-half the 
 
 nous population of that vast empire; it has intro- 
 duced new medical methods and skill, which already 
 are lessening the untold bodily suffering- of its people; 
 it has established hospitals and dispensaries, and in- 
 stitutions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, and le 
 Its representatives have denounced the improper use of 
 opium, as well as the existing opium trade, and have 
 
 ted the Chinese in their effo pe from the 
 
 thraldom of the opium habit. Such are some of the 
 great and many blessings which Christianity has already 
 conferred upon China and its people. 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 171 
 
 Each need of Confucianism is in reality a Points of 
 point of contact with Christianity, but there are Contact be- 
 also great Confucian principles which are in ac- tween Con- 
 cord with Christian teaching. Dr. Faber has u cianlsm an 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 summarized these as follows: — 
 
 1. Divine Providence over human affairs and visita- 
 tion of human sin are acknowledged. 
 
 2. An invisible world above and around this material 
 life is firmly believed in. 
 
 3. Moral law is positively set forth as binding 
 equally on men and spirits. 
 
 4. Prayer is offered in public calamities as well as 
 for private needs, in the belief that it is heard and an- 
 swered by spiritual powers. 
 
 5. Sacrifices are regarded as necessary to come into 
 closer contact with the spiritual world. 
 
 6. Miracles are believed in as the natural efficacy of 
 spirits. 
 
 7. Moral duty is taught, and its obligation in the five 
 human relations. 
 
 8. Cultivation of the moral character is regarded as 
 the basis for the successful carrying out of the social 
 duties. 
 
 9. Virtue is valued above riches and honor. 
 
 10. In case of failure in political and social life, 
 moral self-culture and practice of humanity are to be 
 attended to even more carefully than before. 
 
 11. Sincerity and truth are shown to be the only basis 
 for self culture and the reform of the world. 
 
 12. The Golden Rule is proclaimed as the principle 
 of moral conduct among our fellow men. 
 
 13. Every ruler should carry out a benevolent gov- 
 ernment for the benefit of the people. (Faber, "China 
 in the Light of History," pp. 57-59.) 
 
172 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The two great features of Chinese life are filial 
 piety and ethical propriety. Both of these fur- 
 nish points of close contact with Christianity. 
 Chang Chih Tung, the great Chinese viceroy in 
 his book, bearing in its English translation the 
 title "China's Only Hope," recognized the 
 common ground in filial piety, though his knowl- 
 edge of our Western view was not exact. "In 
 the Mosaic Decalogue," he says, "the duty of 
 honoring one's parents is placed next to that* of 
 worshiping Heaven, and foreigners also put on 
 mourning for deceased parents and wear black 
 bands as the badge. Although they have no 
 such things as ancestral halls, and tablets of 
 deceased relatives, in lieu of these they place the 
 photographs of their dead parents and brothers 
 on the tables in their houses and make offerings 
 to them. And while they make no sacrifices at 
 the tombs of their ancestors, they repair their 
 graves and plant flowers upon them as an act of 
 worship. It will be seen, then, that Western 
 people also hold, in common with us, the relation 
 of Father and Son." ("China's Only Hope, " p. 
 45 f.) 
 
 And in the strong moral sense of Confucianism 
 and Christianity there is a common meeting 
 ground. Chinese religion has never sheltered 
 what was immoral. It is a "remarkable trait of 
 Chinese idolatry," as S. Wells Williams pointed 
 out, "that there is no deification of sensuality, 
 which, in the name of religion, could shield and 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 173 
 
 countenance those licentious rites and orgies that 
 enervated the minds of worshipers and polluted 
 their hearts in so many other pagan countries. 
 No Aphrodite or La^sjvmi occurs in the list of 
 Chinese goddesses; no weeping for Thammuz; 
 no exposure in the temple of Mylitta or obscene 
 rites of the Durga-puja, have ever been required 
 or sanctioned by Chinese priests; no nautch girls 
 as in Indian temples, or courtesans as at Corinth, 
 are kept in their sacred buildings. Their specu- 
 lations upon the dual powers of the yin and yang 
 have never degenerated into the vile worship of 
 the linga and yoni of the Hindus, or of Amun- 
 kem, as pictured on the ruins of Thebes. 
 Although they are a licentious people in word 
 and deed, the Chinese have not endeavored to 
 lead the votaries of pleasure, falsely so called, 
 further down the road of ruin, by making its path 
 lie through a temple and trying to sanctify its 
 acts by putting them under the protection of a 
 goddess. Nor does their mythology teem with 
 disgusting relations of the amours of their deities; 
 on the contrary, like the Romanists, they exalt 
 and deify chastity and seclusion as a means of 
 bringing the soul and body nearer to the highest 
 excellence. Vice is, in a great degree, kept out 
 of sight, as well as out of religion." (Williams, 
 "The Middle Kingdom," Vol. II, p. 192 f.) 
 
 That vice has been kept out of the religion is 
 not evidence that virtue is in the life, but the fact 
 arrays religion on the side of morality and opens 
 
174 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the mind of China to a faith which presents a 
 loftier and richer moral ideal and at the same 
 time offers the spiritual dynamic which is 
 required to embody the ideal in life. 
 
 The Confucian scheme called for the superior 
 man and on the superior man built the righteous 
 and peaceful state. Christianity alone presents to 
 Confucianism the perfect ideal of the superior 
 man. Christianity alone can produce the man. 
 Christianity alone can fulfill the Confucianist 
 dream of the orderly government by gathering 
 "All under Heaven" into the Kingdom of God. 
 
 BIBLE READINGS 
 Third chapter of Hebrews. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Arc the Chinese a religious or an irreligious people? 
 What was China's primitive religion? 
 
 What is Animism? What is the message of Chris- 
 tianity to the Animistic peoples? 
 
 Narrate the life of Confucius. 
 What was the character of Confucius? His influence? 
 
 Was Confucius a believer in God or an agnostic? 
 
 Should Christianity recognize ancestor worship? 
 
 Give illustrations of the teachings of the Confucian 
 Classics. 
 
 Who was Mencius? What was his character? His 
 doctrine? 
 
 Describe the origins of Taoism. The character of 
 its founder. 
 
 What is Taoism to-day? 
 
Korea — Interior and Exterior of Devil House 
 
ANIMISM, CONFUCIANISM 176 
 
 What are the defects of Confucianism ? 
 What are the contrasts between Confucianism ana 
 Christianity? 
 
 What are the points of contact? 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Nassau, "Fetichism in West Africa," Scribner, 1904. 
 
 Warneck, "The Living Christ and Dying Heathen- 
 ism," Re veil, 1909. 
 
 De Groot, "The Religion of the Chinese," Mac- 
 millan, 1910. 
 
 Ross, "Original Religion of China," Revell, 1909. 
 
 Douglas, "Confucianism and Taoism," Gorham, 
 1889. 
 
 Legge, "The Religions of China," Scribner, 1881. 
 
 Legge, "Life and Teachings of Confucius," Paul, 
 Kegan, Trench & Trubner, 1887. 
 
 Legge, "Life and Teachings of Mencius, " Paul, 
 Kegan, Trench & Trubner, 1875. 
 
 Du Bose, "Dragon, Image and Demon," Presby- 
 terian Committee of Publication, 1899. 
 
 Nevius, "China and the Chinese," Presbyterian 
 Board of Publication, 1882. 
 
 Parker, "China and Religion," Dutton, 1905. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Mohammedanism is the only one of the great Tte 
 religions of the world which is younger than Youngest 
 Christianity. The development of Hinduism or . 
 
 Religion. 
 
 began four thousand years ago. Buddhism and 
 Confucianism originated six centuries before 
 Christ. Mohammed came six centuries after- 
 wards. His religion accordingly claims to 
 supersede Christianity, just as Christianity 
 claims to supersede all that came before it. And 
 Mohammedanism makes this claim explicitly. 
 Christianity knew nothing of Hinduism and 
 Buddhism and Confucianism when it set forth its 
 universal character. It claimed the devotion of 
 all men, not on the ground of a specific super- 
 session of each religion held by men, but on the 
 ground of its own universal and sufficient prin- 
 ciple. But Mohammedanism came as the spe- 
 cific and declared supersession of Christianity. 
 In presenting Christianity to Mohammedans, 
 accordingly, we are presenting that which is 
 already known, or is supposed to be known, and 
 which is already judged and superseded. This 
 fact makes the missionary problem among 
 Mohammedans unique. 
 
180 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Diverse 
 Judgments of 
 Mohammed. 
 
 It also accounts for the diverse judgments 
 which have been entertained of Mohammed and 
 Mohammedanism. It was not unnatural that the 
 Christian view of both the Arabian teacher and 
 his religion should be unfavorable and even bitter. 
 Dante placed him in his ninth circle in the 
 ''Inferno," amongthe sowers of religious discord. 
 Genebrard, a famous Roman Catholic controver- 
 sialist, says of him and his Arabic Koran, "Mo- 
 hammed was a beast, and only knew a language 
 that was suited to his bestial condition." Alex- 
 ander Ross, in translating a French version of the 
 Koran into English, with some other rough 
 speech, calls him "the great Arabian impostor." 
 Tli is was the view of Dean Prideaux also, and 
 of Charles Wesley in his hymn: — 
 "The smoke of the infernal cave 
 
 Which half the Christian world o'erspread, 
 Disperse, Thou Heavenly Light, and save 
 
 The soul 8 by that impostor led — 
 That Arab thief, a- Satan bold, 
 Who quite destroyed Thine Asian fold." 
 (Bosworth Smith, ''Mohammed and Mohammed- 
 anism," pp. G6-71.) And even Sale in his "Pre- 
 liminary Discourse" to the translation of the 
 Koran, while recognizing that Mohammed's 
 4 ''original design of bringing the pagan Arabs to 
 the knowledge of the true God was certainly 
 noble, and highly to be commended," still 
 declares, "It is scarce to be doubted but that 
 Mohammed had a violent desire of being reckoned 
 an extraordinary person, which he could attain 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 181 
 
 to by no means more effectually than by pretend- 
 ing to be a messenger sent from God, to inform 
 mankind of His will." (Sale, "Preliminary 
 Discourse," p. 30 f.) 
 
 These severe judgments are much modified in 
 our day, however. The weakness and evil of 
 Mohammedanism is more clearly seen than ever 
 before; but a comparative estimate of Moham- 
 med's character and work in the light of his own 
 times, and a comparative judgment of his religion 
 in view of the civilization from which it sprang 
 and of the effects which it produced and of the 
 type of Christianity which alone it touched, 
 while deepening our conviction of the inadequacy 
 and the positive iniquity of Mohammedanism, 
 have enabled us also to appreciate both its real 
 influence and the problem which its success 
 presents. "There must be more said about him 
 still," F. D. Maurice wrote of Mohammed's 
 influence to Charles Kingsley. "The middle 
 ages turn more upon him, and were more saved 
 from perdition through him, than I had at all 
 imagined till I came to think more of them. 
 There would have been no belief in Christ, if 
 there had not been that broad, fierce assertion of 
 an absolute God, — let Newman say what he 
 likes. . . . What he calls the Anti-Christ was 
 the divine means of saving the Catholic Church 
 from atheism." ("Life of F. D. Maurice," 
 Vol. II, p. 239.) And the problem which Mo- 
 hammedanism presents is expressed in the words 
 
182 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Mohammed's 
 Place in 
 Mohammed- 
 anism. 
 
 of a Moslem, quoted in Browne's, "A Year 
 Among the Persians" (p. 305): "When a man 
 arises amongst a people, untaught and unsup- 
 ported, yet speaking a word which causes empires 
 to change, hierarchies to fall, and thousands to 
 die willingly in obedience to it, that is a proof 
 absolute and positive that the word spoken is from 
 God. This is the proof to which we point in 
 support of our religion. " 
 
 The central Eact and problem of Mohammed- 
 anism is Mohammed himself. His religion is 
 related to him, and lie to it, in a sense which is 
 true of no other religion except Christianity. 
 Hinduism neither originated with a man, nor is 
 it identified with any one personality. Buddhism 
 came from one historic individual but, in his 
 own view, the faith which Gautama taught was 
 a way independent of him, and he was neither 
 God nor a representative of God. Confucius 
 was merely the teacher of truths, not the founder 
 of a religion, nor the leader of a political order. 
 lie was a moral and political philosopher, and 
 not a prophet. But Mohammed's faith embraced 
 two articles which were inseparable: "There is 
 no god but God. and Mohammed is the prophet 
 of God." Historically the religion sprang from 
 Mohammed, and its creed coupled Mohammed's 
 name indissolubly to God's. As Al-Ghazali, a 
 distinguished Moslem theologian, writes, "Neither 
 is the faith according to His will complete by 
 the testimony to the Unity alone, — that is, by 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 183 
 
 simply saying, 'There is but one God,' — without 
 the addition of the further testimony to the 
 Apostle, — that is, the statement, 'Mohammed is 
 the apostle of God.'" (Sell, "The Faith of 
 Islam," p. 11.) And to the personality of the 
 prophet we are driven to understand alike the 
 origin and the nature of the faith. "If I might 
 for a moment separate those elements that in 
 reality never appear except in combination, I 
 should say," writes Kuenen, "Islam is in a high 
 degree, and far more than most other religions, 
 the product not of the time or of the people, but 
 of the personality of its founder." (Hibbert 
 Lectures, p. 23.) And ever since its acceptance 
 by the Arabian people, the religion of Moham- 
 medanism has centered in Mohammed. His 
 example and his teaching and his spirit have 
 been the ideals of Islam. Mohammed has not 
 been, as Christ was, the revelation of God; but 
 his word about God has been the authoritative 
 word, and his life and character have been the 
 standard of what God accepts in man. 
 
 Mohammed was born in Mecca on August 27th, Life of 
 in the year of our Lord 570. At the time of his Mohammed, 
 birth the government of Mecca was vested in a 
 decemvirate, of which his grandfather was chief. 
 The boy's father died before his birth, and his 
 mother when he was six years old. His grand- 
 father cared for him, however, and showed great 
 tenderness toward the child. When he was 
 nine, upon his grandfather's death, he passed into 
 
184 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the care of his uncle. Fond of solitude, he spent 
 many hours in the mighty lonesomeness of the 
 desert. And in the deserts all the great mono- 
 theistic faiths have been born. He studied the 
 signs of God about him. His later teachings 
 show how deep upon his imagination the rolling 
 thunders of the Meccan hills and the forked 
 lightnings of the desert skies had pressed the 
 sense of the great, strong God. The life of the 
 people was to him as an open book, and he knew 
 all their homely ways; but education in the con- 
 ventional sense he had none. The "Unlearned 
 Prophet" was his title. In early manhood he 
 made two journeys to Syria, and the degraded 
 condition of Christianity there at that time 
 offered him no solution of the problems on which 
 he brooded, the problem of his own unsatisfied 
 soul, and the problem of the idolatry and moral 
 degradation of his people. All these years he 
 seems to have lived a quiet and upright life. At 
 the age of twenty-five he married Khadijah, a 
 wealthy widow, fifteen years his senior. This 
 marriage gave him affluence instead of indigence, 
 and was in every way a happy and helpful 
 relationship. For fifteen years he lived on in 
 Mecca in the respect and good will of his towns- 
 folk, by whom he was called "The Trusty," still 
 meditating on his deep problems. When about 
 the age of forty what the Moslems regard as his 
 call came to him, in one vision and then in 
 others, in which Gabriel appeared to him and 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 185 
 
 spoke to him the commission of God. At first he 
 shrank from it, feared that he was losing his 
 mind, and even thought of casting himself down 
 some friendly precipice to gain rest from the 
 ceaseless anguish of his soul, but Khadijah be- 
 lieved in him, the divine commission grew clear 
 to him, and out from the long years of quiet 
 meditation and peaceful ease, he passed to the 
 turbulent cares of a prophet of monotheism to an 
 idolatrous people, and of the head of a nation 
 fused into unity by the idea of subjugating the 
 world. 
 
 The first believers in his teaching and in his First 
 mission as tfye prophet of God were his wife and Believers, 
 his cousin Ali, and a few of the ablest and most 
 respected men of Mecca, like Abu Bakr, Hamza 
 and Omar. Persecution soon arose, however, 
 and some of his disciples were sent off to Abys- 
 sinia. There one of the exiled Moslems* gave an 
 account of what the new faith had meant to 
 them: "O king, we were plunged in the depth 
 of ignorance and barbarism; we adored idols; we 
 lived in unchastity ; we ate dead bodies, and we 
 spoke abominations ; we disregarded every feeling 
 
 *The name Moslem "meant naturally 'traitor,' and when the 
 new sect came to be lampooned, it provided the satirists with a 
 witticism. Mohammed showed some want of humor in adopting it, 
 but displayed great | ingenuity in giving it an honorable meaning; 
 whereas it ordinarily signified one who handed over his friends to 
 their enemies, it was glorified into meaning one who handed over his 
 person to God; and though, like Christian, it may conceivably have 
 been first invented by enemies of the sect whom it designated, divine 
 authority was presently adduced for the statement that Abraham coined 
 the name." (Margoliouth, " Mohammed," p. 116 f.) 
 
186 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 of humanity and the duties of hospitality and 
 neighborhood; we knew no law but that of the 
 strong, when God raised among us a man of 
 whose birth, truthfulness, honesty, and purity we 
 were aware ; and he called us to the Unity of 
 God, and taught us not to associate anything with 
 Him; he forbade us the worship of idols; and 
 enjoined us to speak the truth, to be faithful to 
 our trusts, to be merciful and to regard the rights 
 of neighbors; he forbade us to speak evil of 
 women, or to eat the substance of orphans; he 
 ordered us to fly from vices, and to abstain from 
 evil: to offer prayers, to render alms, to observe 
 the East. We have believed in him; we accept 
 his teachings and his injunctions to worship God, 
 and not to associate anything with Him." (Syed 
 Ali, "Islam," p. 39 f.) There is no reason to 
 disbelieve that this was the first fresh character of 
 the new faith. Mohammed himself remained in 
 Mecca until, after seeking in vain a peaceful 
 home in Tayef, a neighboring city to Mecca, he 
 fled on July Hi. 622, with Abu Bakr, to Medina, 
 two hundred and fifty miles north of Mecca, to 
 which most of his other disciples had already 
 gone. This flight is the Ilegira, the year from 
 which the Mohammedans date all the events of 
 their history. 
 r , . • Medina was thenceforth Mohammed's home 
 
 Change in 
 
 Mohammed's until his death in June, 632. During these ten 
 
 Character. years there came great changes in Mohammed's 
 
 own life and character and in the character of 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 187 
 
 Islam. So long as Khadijah lived, Mohammed 
 was loyal to her as his one and truly beloved 
 wife, but with her death and his settlement and 
 increasing success 'in Medina, he married wife 
 after wife, until he had taken eleven full wives, 
 and he had beside a number of concubines or 
 slave girls. No apologies can gloss over the sen- 
 suality revealed by Mohammed during these ten 
 years. Ayesha, his favorite wife, whom he 
 married when she was nine years old, used to 
 say, "The Prophet loved three things — women, 
 scents and food; he had his heart's desire of the 
 two first, but not of the last." It is true that he 
 lived among degrading customs, but his own life 
 with Khadijah shows that there were also whole- 
 some and worthy marriage relationships, and 
 around him were many families undefiled by the 
 gross polygamy which henceforth characterized 
 him. Moreover, in this matter he violated his 
 own teaching, and the requirements which he 
 laid upon others. They, as we shall see, were 
 limited to four wives, while he took eleven. He 
 justified himself in this by issuing chapters of the 
 Koran divinely warranting his indulgence. "O 
 Prophet," are the words which he declared God 
 had spoken to him, "we have allowed thee thy 
 wives whom thou hast dowered, and the slaves 
 whom thy right hand possesseth . . . and any 
 believing woman who hath given herself up to 
 the Prophet, if the Prophet desireth towed her, — 
 a privilege for thee above the rest of the Faith- 
 
18S THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 ful." Some disgraceful incidents were connected 
 with his many amours, and high minded Moham- 
 medans have had to apologize for their Prophet. 
 In moral character he fell far below Buddha, and 
 he is not to be mentioned in this regard with the 
 great prophets of Israel who preceded him by 
 many centuries, but whom he claimed to super- 
 sede. Instead of, like Christ, offering a moral 
 ideal to his followers, Mohammed is to them a 
 moral warning. (See Koelle, "Mohammed and 
 Mohammedanism," pp. 487-509; Ameer Ali 
 Syed, "The Spirit of Islam," pp. 193-198.) 
 Use of It was after reaching Medina, also, that 
 
 Force. Mohammed began to use force in the- spread of 
 
 his religion, and to introduce the idea of plunder 
 and conquest. (Rouse, ''Tracts for Moham- 
 medan-." p. GG.) At Meeea he had been with- 
 out power which he could use, and his sole 
 mission had been that of a religious reformer. 
 But now at Medina his church became a state, he 
 unhesitatingly began to use violence and the 
 sword, and he poisoned the purity of religious 
 motive by the lust of plunder. The traditions of 
 Arabia and the environment and principles of the 
 new faith readily explain these facts, but they do 
 not justify them, and the facts themselves show 
 the inferiority and inadequacy of Islam. Mo- 
 hammed as soon as possible, acting as chief 
 magistrate of Medina and as head of Islam, 
 opened hostilities against the people of Mecca. 
 The Mecca caravans to Syria had to traverse 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 189 
 
 routes where they could be intercepted from 
 Medina. Mohammed set out to attack one of 
 these caravans on the seacoast route. The cara- 
 van escaped, but a battle was fought at Badr 
 between Mohammed and an army sent from Mecca 
 to protect the caravan from the threatened attack. 
 This victory and the booty secured were the begin- 
 ning of the relentless policy of conquest of Islam. 
 (Sell, "The Battles of Badr and of Uhud," p. 43 
 f.) Then began also Islam's policy of mingled 
 mercy and pitiless cruelty. The prisoners taken 
 at Badr were handcuffed and marched with the 
 army returning to Medina. On the way two 
 were ordered to be executed. One ventured to 
 ask why he was dealt with more . rigorously than 
 the rest. "Because, " replied Mohammed, "of 
 thine enmity to God and His Prophet." "And 
 my little girl," cried the captive, in bitterness of 
 soul, "who will take care of her?" "Hell fire," 
 answered the Prophet, as the victim was hewn to 
 the ground. "Wretch and persecutor!" he con- 
 tinued; "scorner of God, of His Prophet, and of 
 His word; I thank the Lord, who hath comforted 
 mine eyes by thy death." (Muir, "Mahomet 
 and Islam," p. 100.) Individuals in Medina 
 who troubled him he removed without qualms. 
 A woman named Alma at Medina disbelieved in 
 him and wrote poems against him. An assassin 
 crept into her apartment at night, removed a 
 suckling babe from her breast and transfixed her 
 to her couch with his sword. "Next morning, 
 
190 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 in the Mosque at prayer, Omar acquainted Mo- 
 hammed (who was aware of the design) with 
 what he had done, and asked whether there was 
 any cause for apprehension. 'None whatever,' 
 replied the Prophet; f a couple of goats will 
 hardly knock their heads together for it.' Then 
 turning to the bystanders, he remarked, 'Behold 
 a man that hath assisted the Lord and His 
 Prophet.'" (Muir, ''Mahomet and Islam," p. 
 103 f. ) A few weeks later, annoyed by another 
 unbeliever, Mohammed exclaimed to those about 
 him, "Who will rid us of this pestilent fellow?" 
 A faithful friend shortly after fell upon the 
 troubler as he slept. Some months after this Mo- 
 hammed prayed aloud of another whom he dis- 
 liked, "O Lord, rid me of the son of Ashraf in 
 whatsoever way Thou wilt. " And then prompted 
 his followers to murder by asking, "Who will 
 ease me of this pestilent fellow, for he troubleth 
 me.'" '"Here am I," said Mohammed son of 
 Maslama, "I will slay him." With four others, 
 he attacked him treacherously, and brought his 
 head to the Prophet at the gateway of the 
 Mosque. "Welcome." he exclaimed; "for I see 
 that your faces beam with victory." "And 
 thine too!" they added, as they cast the ghastly 
 head of their victim at his feet. (Muir, '"Ma- 
 homet and Islam," p. 107.) 
 
 Mohammed now dealt with the Jewish tribes 
 round about with relentless severity, seeking 
 pretexts for their extermination or exile. He also 
 
Persia — Group of Dervishes 
 
MO II A MMEDANISM 191 
 
 waged war against the Arab tribes in the interior, 
 and, eight years after the Hegira, returned with 
 an army of ten thousand and conquered Mecca. 
 
 All this career of war and bloodshed, however, 
 was rilled also with clemency and kindness. It 
 was against unbelievers and adversaries that the 
 Prophet displayed hostility and vindictiveness. 
 The acceptance of Islam made a man at once 
 his brother and his friend. In the development 
 of Islam now, but especially later, it became 
 necessary to devise working arrangements con- 
 cerning the case of peoples who fell within the 
 territory or authority of Islam, but who would 
 not accept the religion. There was often good 
 will and fairness shown in these relations, but 
 this was the exception and not the rule, and both 
 in Mohammed's lifetime and afterwards, the 
 pressure of persecution and oppression upon all 
 unbelievers was almost crushing. 
 
 These developments of Mohammed's character 
 and methods at Medina, following naturally upon 
 his religious success and the position of political 
 authority which he of necessity took up, were 
 accompanied by interesting developments in his 
 religious teaching. At Mecca and when he first 
 came to Medina, when he still hoped to win the 
 Jewish tribes, the sections of the Koran which he 
 gave out were full of Christian and Jewish 
 elements, but these elements grew less and less, 
 although the growing Koran still preserved all 
 that was good in the new faith. At first in 
 Medina Mohammed prayed toward Jerusalem. 
 
Infl 
 
 uencc. 
 
 192 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 But he turned soon to Mecca and thenceforward 
 his religion faced back towards its semi-pagan 
 and Ishmaelitic elements. Nevertheless the truly 
 religious fervor of the faith glowed with a great 
 burning, and when Mohammed died on June 8, 
 632, the new force which he had introduced had 
 remolded Arabia, and begun to affect the whole 
 Eastern world. 
 Mohammed's Ameer Ali, Syed, representing the best type of 
 Modern Mohammedan, sums up the Moslem view 
 of the Prophet's influence: — 
 
 Thus disappeared from the scene one of the greatest, 
 if not in very truth the greatest, of God's servants, who 
 have lived and worked for the good of mankind. He 
 found the bulk of his own people sunk in the grossest 
 fetichism, decimated by tribal feuds, addicted to infan- 
 ticide and the worst forms of pagan practices. Here 
 and there individuals had broken away from the old 
 cults, but were still groping in darkness in search of 
 the road to truth and salvation, unsatisfied spirits to 
 whom neither Judaism nor Christianity brought any 
 solution to the enigmas of life. 
 
 In less than a decade he not only stamped out the 
 pagan ways and habits which held the heart of Arabia, 
 but infused into his folk a new life, imparted to them a 
 new conception of duty, of moral responsibilities of 
 which they had been wholly devoid before. The benef- 
 icence of his work was not confined to his own 
 countrymen. His words revived the religious spirit of 
 surrounding nations, whose moral abasement was 
 equally deplorable. (Ameer Ali, Syed, "Islam," p. 
 51 f . ) " 
 
 This estimate regards as accomplished what 
 Abu Bakr and Omar had to do as the first Khali fs 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 193 
 
 or successors of Mohammed. But the task was 
 already done in germ. As Professor Margoliouth 
 says, "His political work was not left half 
 finished at his death; he had founded an empire 
 with a religious and a political capital; he had 
 made a nation of a loose agglomeration of tribes. 
 He had given them a rallying point in their 
 common religion, and therein discovered a bond 
 more permanent than a dynasty. The old faiths 
 which had survived so long in secluded Arabia 
 had been given their death blow; some of their 
 practice was indeed taken over unaltered, but the 
 old names were utterly destroyed. l Though 
 Mohammed is dead, yet is Mohammed's God not 
 dead.' " (Margoliouth, "Mohammed," p. 471 
 
 t) 
 
 On no problem in human character has there Tke Problem 
 been, perhaps, more dispute than on the character of Motam- 
 of Mohammed. Was he a good man or a bad me< * s Cbar- 
 man, a prophet or an impostor? The Rev. G. A. 
 Lefroy, Bishop of Lahore, a true Christian mis- 
 sionary and a lover of the Mohammedan peoples, 
 has set forth what we must hold to be the true 
 answer : — 
 
 I believe Mohammed to have been, especially in the 
 beginning of his career, an earnest man, genuinely 
 seeking after truth with, in large measure, pure 
 motives, and free from personal aims. I believe that 
 he saw truths far grander and deeper than those which 
 most of his countrymen saw, and that he labored hard 
 and long, amid every discouragement and often at the 
 risk of his life, to bring home to his people the knowl- 
 
194 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 edge of these truths and to redeem them from the gross 
 idolatry, the infanticide, and the many social and 
 religious evils in which they were sunk. I have no 
 doubt that he believed he had a real mission of God, 
 and I believe he was right in thinking so, and that, 
 at any rate at one part of his life, the spirit of God 
 was working strongly within him, and calling him to 
 a great work. But I believe that with the access of 
 power there came a fatal lowering of aims, and of the 
 tone of his own life, till — from regarding himself so 
 long as the mouthpiece of God — he permitted himself 
 first to disregard his conscience, and then to take that 
 last and awful step, in which also he is not alone among 
 those whom God has called to noble aims and high 
 privileges, of identifying the voice of God with the 
 
 prompting even of his lower nature, and claiming the 
 divine authority for that which he ought to have 
 repelled as, what it indeed was, the very tempting of 
 
 the evil one himself. (" Mahomedanism, Its Strength 
 
 and Weakness," p. 21. i 
 Was According to the standards of goodness pre- 
 
 Mohammed a vailing in Arabia in the seventh century, Mo- 
 Prophct? hammed was a truly good and noble man. He 
 
 was guilty of bloodshed and sensuality, but these 
 were common Arabian vices. Pie was in the 
 conditions of his time a righteous man. Measured 
 by the character of Christ he was pitiable and vile. 
 As to his teaching, he saw and taught some great 
 truths. Those who believed on his word were 
 led forward into a far nobler thought of God than 
 they had ever had before. It was an inadequate 
 thought of God, but it was great and splendid, 
 and so far as it was true, the man who saw it and 
 spoke it was teaching the truth of God. But as 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 195 
 
 prophet in the sense that Isaiah or Paul were 
 prophets, as pure spiritual teachers representing 
 the highest moral ideals, or even more in the 
 sense that Christ was a Prophet, a prophet Mo- 
 hammed was not. The moral and intellectual 
 and spiritual limitations of his message show that 
 he bore no such commission as the prophets of 
 Israel, or the apostles of Christ. Whatever moral 
 superiority and prophetic authority Mohammed 
 had were relative, in comparison wholly with the 
 Arabian life about him. They were not absolute 
 or ideal. In so far as they have been made so by 
 Islam they have been a shackle and a shame to 
 humanity. 
 
 And, now, we must ask what was the religion Motammed- 
 which Mohammed founded, and which is held anism. 
 to-day by two hundred million of our fellow 
 creatures ? With Mohammed it was at the outset 
 the acceptance of the fundamental declaration, 
 "There is no god but God and Mohammed is the 
 prophet of God," but its theology and ritual soon 
 outgrew the single affirmation with which it began. 
 We can gain a general view of the faith by con- 
 sidering its foundations, its doctrines and its prac- 
 tical duties. (See Sell, "The Faith of Islam.") 
 
 1. The foundations of Islam are four, the The Founda- 
 Koran, the Sunnat, Ijma and Qias. tions of Islam. 
 
 The first and main foundation is the Koran. Tke Koran. 
 The word Koran is derived from the Arabic word 
 to read. For this Bible of Mohammedanism the 
 Moslems have the loftiest veneration. It is held 
 
106 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 by them to have existed uncreated from eternity, 
 resting on a great table of fabulous size, from 
 which it was brought down as needed by Gabriel, 
 who gave it to Mohammed phrase by phrase and 
 word by word. Mohammed in admitting that he 
 worked no miracles, appealed instead to the 
 Koran, which he claimed as a unique and per- 
 petual miracle. And it has been so regarded by 
 Moslems. 
 
 So sacred is the text supposed to be that only the 
 Companions of the Prophet are deemed worthy of being 
 commentators on it. The work of learned divines since 
 
 then has been to learn the Koran by heart and to master 
 the traditions, with the writings of the earliest com- 
 mentators thereon. The revelation itself is never made 
 a subject of investigation or tried by the ordinary 
 rules of criticism. If only the Isnad, or chain of 
 authorities for any interpretation, is good, that inter- 
 pretation is unhesitatingly accepted as the correct one. 
 It is a fundamental article of belief that no other book 
 in the world can possibly approach near to it in thought 
 or expression. It deals with positive precepts, rather 
 than with principles. Its decrees are held to be bind- 
 ing, not in the spirit merely, but in the very letter, on 
 all men, at all times and under every circumstance 
 of life. This follows as a natural consequence from 
 the belief in its eternal nature. (Sell, "The Faith of 
 Islam," p. 6 t) 
 
 While held to be an eternal, uncreated book, 
 the Koran nevertheless is made up of a long 
 series of Mohammed's utterances in the form of 
 revelations from God, uttered by God in the first 
 person plural ; and these revelations, so far from 
 being eternal, often contradict one another, later 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 197 
 
 ones abrogating earlier ones ; they are full of 
 legends learned secondhand from Rabbinic 
 traditions of the Jews, or from apocryphal Chris- 
 tian books; and when chronologically arranged, 
 their connection with the successive incidents and 
 problems of Mohammed's life makes them almost 
 autobiographical. Ameer Ali, Syed, frankly 
 concedes the influence of contemporary thought 
 upon Mohammed's mind: — 
 
 There is no doubt that in the Suras of the intermediate 
 period, before the mind of the teacher had attained the 
 full development of religious consciousness, and when 
 it was necessary to formulate in language intelligible 
 to the common folk of the desert, the realistic descrip- 
 tions of heaven and hell, borrowed from the floating 
 fancies of Zoroastrianism, Sabianism and the Talmudic 
 Jew, attract the attention as a side picture, and then 
 comes the real essence — the adoration of God in 
 humility and love. The hooris are creatures of Zo- 
 roastrian origin, so is paradise (in Persian "firdaus"), 
 whilst hell, in the severity of its punishment, is Tal- 
 mudic. ("Spirit of Islam," p. 235 f. Quoted in Gold- 
 sack, "The Origins of the Qur'an, " p. 10 f. ) 
 
 A single breath of true criticism destroys the 
 Moslem idea of an eternal Koran. But the 
 obvious use of the revelations by Mohammed to 
 provide for crises which arose, is destructive not 
 only of the idea of an uncreated book, but also of 
 the claim of the book as a true revelation from 
 God. (See Sell, "Historical Development of the 
 Quran.") When his wives complained with 
 good reason of his irregularities, he silenced them 
 by a regulation allowing him conjugal excesses 
 which he had himself proscribed as unlawful, 
 
198 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 When he wished to marry the wife of his adopted 
 son, a form of marriage forbidden by his own 
 law, he issued a revelation from God encouraging 
 him to the transgression. It is wonderful that 
 the faith of his followers bore the strain. It not 
 only bore it, but it also elevated the revelations 
 into the very eternal being of God. 
 
 After Mohammed's death the revelations which 
 were scattered about were collected. Subse- 
 quently an authorized edition was prepared and 
 all others were destroyed, and the uncreated, un- 
 translatable miracle of the Koran was passed 
 down to us. The true Moslem still deems it the 
 book of all books, holding a theory of literal 
 inspiration and absolute authority regarding it, 
 and seeing in it a truly heavenly beauty. The 
 Western mind has usually taken an unfavorable 
 view of it. Nevertheless the Koran is a wonder- 
 ful book, with many passages of noble truth, and 
 of great beauty, preserved even in our translations 
 of what the Moslems regard as its miraculous 
 • Arabic. 
 Sunnat, Ijma The other foundations of Islam are the Sunnat, 
 
 and Qias. Ijma and Qias. The Sunnat is "the basis of 
 
 religious faith and practice, which is founded on 
 traditional accounts of the sayings and acts of 
 Mohammed." In all that he did and said Mos- 
 lems hold that Mohammed was supernaturally 
 guided. It is this which makes his moral ex- 
 ample so dangerous. And the contention that 
 Mohammed did not himself claim this authority 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 199 
 
 cannot be upheld. "He who loves not my Sun- 
 nat (z. e., my command or example) is not my 
 follower." This was his own word, and a 
 learned theologian of Islam has stated the essence 
 of religion to consist of three things: "first, to 
 follow the Prophet in morals and in acts ; 
 secondly, to eat only lawful food; thirdly, to be 
 sincere in all actions." (Sell, "The Faith of 
 Islam," p. 15.) There are six books of these 
 Traditions and every accepted act or word of Mo- 
 hammed's in them is a law as binding upon the 
 Moslem as the word or example of Christ is upon 
 Christians. The third foundation of the Faith is 
 called Ijma, a word meaning collected. It means 
 technically the general consent of the leading 
 theologians, but pre-eminently it is a collection 
 of the opinions of the Companions, the men who 
 knew Mohammed. Qias is the fourth foundation. 
 It means the reasoning of the learned with regard 
 to the teaching of the three other foundations. 
 
 These four foundations are regarded by Mos- The 
 lems as forming a perfect basis of religion and Foundations a 
 polity. "They secure the permanence of the Shackle Upon 
 system, but they repress an intelligent growth." 
 No nation can advance around whose intellectual 
 and political life the coils of these antiquated 
 authorities are wound. "The jurists of Persia, 
 it seems, are against constitutionalism," said 
 Isma'il Hakki Effendi, one of the best known 
 Mohammedan preachers in Constantinople, in a 
 sermon in 1909. "Those rascals have always 
 
200 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 been on the side of autocracy. A group of the 
 Persian Ulema belonging to the royalists are 
 clamoring for despotic government. . . . And 
 the jurists solemnly declare that this is not their 
 own ruling but that of the canon law of Moham- 
 medanism. . . . According to the false notions 
 of the Persian Ulema, Islam does not permit of 
 constitutionalism, but is an absolute monarchy! 
 Oh, reverent jurists, there is no religion, no code 
 which advocates constitutionalism as strongly as 
 does Islam." ("Moslem Sermon-." "Hibbert 
 Journal," April. L910, p. 658.) Our hearts re- 
 joice with the preacher in his deliverance. 
 Nevertheless the Persian priests are right. Islam 
 can live under constitutionalism, but it will not be 
 the Islam of Mohammed and the Khalifs and of 
 the fourteen centuries of consistenl Mohammedan 
 absolutism. 
 ~, ~ 2. The doctrine of Islam. The Kalima is the 
 
 1 he Doctrine 
 
 of Islam. simple creed of Islam: "There is no god but God 
 
 and Mohammed is the Apostle of God," but this 
 includes a- indispensable the acceptance of God, 
 Angels, Books, Prophets, the Resurrection and 
 Day of Judgment, and the Predestination of good 
 and evil. 
 
 ~, x/r , The central merit of Mohammedanism was its 
 
 1 he Moslem 
 
 Idea of God. uncompromising assertion of the unity and sov- 
 ereigns of God. Men must surrender to Him. 
 Hence the name of Islam, by which Mohammedan- 
 ism is known, — surrender. The Koran is full of 
 the noble proclamation of this truth of God's single 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 201 
 
 supremacy: "God, there is no God but He, the 
 living, the eternal; slumber doth not overtake 
 Him, neither sleep ; to Him belongeth all that is 
 in heaven and in earth. Who is he that can in- 
 tercede with Him but with His own permission? 
 He knoweth that which is past and that which is 
 to come unto them, and they cannot comprehend 
 any of His knowledge but so far as He pleaseth. 
 His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and 
 the upholding of both is no burden unto Him. 
 He is the lofty and the great." 
 
 Mohammed did not discover monotheism. 
 From the Jews and from the Hanifs, a con- 
 temporary theistic sect, from many currents of 
 thought and from the unified testimony of Nature 
 in the desert, he knew of the one God. The 
 great fact, however, was that the sense of this 
 one God and of His government of men became 
 the overwhelming conviction of Mohammed's 
 soul, and lifted him into a consciousness of 
 mission which bore him out into his wonderful 
 career. In the midst of timid and wrangling men 
 and nations sunk in practical atheism, and godless 
 Jews and idolatrous Christians, he stood forth as 
 one who knew God and was not afraid: — 
 
 He it is who shows you the lightning for fear and 
 hope ; and He brings up the heavy clouds. And the 
 thunder celebrates His praise, and the angels too, for 
 fear of Him. And he sends the thunder clap and over- 
 takes therewith whom He will. Yet they wrangle about 
 God ! But He is strong in might. 
 
202 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Your God is one God ; there is no God but He, the 
 Merciful, the Compassionate. Verily in the creation 
 of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of 
 night and day, and in the ship that runneth in the sea 
 with that which profits man, and in what water God 
 sends down from heaven and quickens therewith the 
 earth after its death, and spreads abroad therein all 
 kinds of cattle, and in the shifting of the winds, and in 
 the clouds that are pressed into service betwixt heaven 
 and earth, are sign- to people who can understand. 
 
 The Moslem idea of God, however, has lacked 
 from the outset elements without which it is both 
 false and unfruitful. The essential attributes of 
 God in Islam are Lite, Knowledge, Power, Will, 
 Hearing, Seeing, Speech. The Koran contains 
 ninety-nine name- of God, and these are of course 
 attributes, but the seven named are the primary 
 and essential ones. And they fail to include, 
 and this is the defect of the whole Moslem doctrine 
 of God, the fatherhood of God, the attribute of 
 love, and the principle of ethical justice, while 
 the conceptions which are included in the Mos- 
 lem view are inharmonious among themselves. 
 (Zwemer, ''The Moslem Doctrine of God"; 
 Gairdner, "The Muslim Idea of God"; Gold- 
 sack. "God in Islam"; Zwemer, "Islam," p. 86 
 f; Rice. "Crusaders of the Twentieth Century, " 
 pp. 231-239.) God is ''the Absolute, the Un- 
 conditioned, the Xot-responsible to men, the Ir- 
 resistible in will and power, the Unbegotten and 
 Unbegetting, the All-sufficient, who needs neither 
 the world nor the men whom He has created." 
 (Gairdner, "The Muslim Idea of God," p. 12.) 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 203 
 
 The Moslem conception of God, as Dr. Wash- 
 burn says, "is that of an absolute oriental 
 monarch, and His unlimited power to do what 
 He pleases makes entire submission to His will 
 the first, most prominent duty. The name which 
 they give to their religion implies that. It is 
 Islam, which means submission or resignation. 
 ("Parliament of Religions," Vol. I, pp. 569, 
 570.) And Palgrave, whose knowledge and 
 judgment were reliable, says of the Moslem 
 idea: — 
 
 God is one in the totality of omnipotent and omni- 
 present action which acknowledges no rule, standard, or 
 limits, save one sole and absolute will. He himself, 
 sterile in His inaccessible height, neither loving nor 
 enjoying aught save his own and self-measured decree, 
 without son, companion, or councillor, is no less barren 
 for Himself than for His creatures ; and His own bar- 
 renness and lone egoism in Himself is the cause and 
 rule of His indifferent and unregarding despotism 
 around. 
 
 There was far more in Mohammed's idea than 
 this, and this idea, inadequate as it was, bred a 
 certain great manhood in those who held it, but 
 it contained no elements of fellowship or of life. 
 It was in its very nature alien and antagonistic 
 to the central Christian ideal of God as father. 
 
 The Moslem creed includes an elaborate faith Angels, Books, 
 in Angels, many of whom are named and their Prophets, 
 duties designated, and in genii or jinns, beings 
 created of fire long before man, and in sacred 
 Books of which there are one hundred and four 
 
204 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 in all, sent down through Gabriel to the prophets, 
 — to Adam ten, to Seth fifty, to Enoch thirty, to 
 Abraham ten, to Moses the Tamat or Pentateuch, 
 to David the Psalms, to Jesus the Injil or Gospel, 
 to Mohammed the final and superseding book, 
 the Koran, which, as Al Berkevi says, "is to be 
 followed till the day of judgment. It can neither 
 be abrogated nor changed." Regarding the belief 
 in Prophets, Al Berkevi says: — 
 
 It is necessary to confess that God has sent prophets; 
 that Adam is the first of the prophets and the father of 
 all men; that Mohammed is the last of the prophets; 
 that between Adam and Mohammed there were a great 
 number of prophets ; that Mohammed is the most ex- 
 cellent of all and that his people are the best of all 
 people-; that each of the preceding prophets was sent 
 to a special people, some with books, some without, 
 hut that Mohammed was sent to all men and also to the 
 genii; that his law will remain until the end of the 
 world. (Sell, "The Faith of Islam," p. 150.) 
 
 Resurrection, Then will come the Resurrection and the Judg- 
 Judgment and m ent,of which the Koran and the Moslem writers 
 Hearen. ^ yQ y [ y [ L \ pictures (Sale, "Preliminary Dis- 
 
 course, " Section IV. pp. 59-80), culminating in 
 the familiar descriptions of Paradise, which Ameer 
 Ali interprets figuratively, but which the general 
 and orthodox opinion has always received in the 
 obvious and literal acceptance. 
 
 But for him who dreadeth the tribunal of his Lord, 
 are prepared two gardens. Planted with shady trees. 
 In each of them shall be two fountains flowing. In 
 each of them shall there be of every fruit two kinds. 
 They shall repose on couches, the linings whereof shaU 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 205 
 
 be of thick silk interwoven with gold ; and the fruit of 
 the two gardens shall be near at hand together. Therein 
 shall receive them beauteous damsels, refraining their 
 eyes from beholding any besides their spouses, whom 
 no man shall have deflowered before them, neither any 
 jinn. Having complexions like rubies and pearls. 
 Shall the reward of good works be any other than good? 
 And besides these there shall be two other gardens. Of 
 a dark green. In each of them shall be two fountains 
 pouring forth plenty of water. In each of them shall 
 be fruits, and palm trees and pomegranates. Therein 
 shall be agreeable and beauteous damsels. Having fine 
 black eyes ; and kept in pavilions from public view. 
 Whom no man shall have deflowered, before their des- 
 tined spouses, nor any jinn. Therein shall they delight 
 themselves, lying on green cushions and beautiful car- 
 pets. Blessed be the name of thy Lord possessed of 
 glory and honor. (Koran, Sura LV, 41-78.) 
 
 The remaining dogma of the Mohammedan Predestina- 
 confession is predestination. Some quotations tion. 
 from the Koran and the Traditions, which it must 
 be remembered are in Moslem eyes as valid as 
 the Koran, will suffice to represent the Moslem 
 doctrine. "The Prophet said, Verily, the first 
 thing which God created was the pen. And He 
 said to it, write. It said, what shall I write? 
 He said, write down the divine decrees (qadar) ; 
 and it wrote down all that was and all that will 
 be to eternity. " "And God has created you and 
 what ye do." "Every man's fate (lit., bird) 
 have we fastened on his neck." "He leads 
 astray whom He will, and guides whom He 
 will." "The plague is a punishment . . . and 
 when it arrives at any place where you are, do 
 
206 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 not flee away from it." " Verily God most high 
 has ordained five things on each of His servants 
 from His creation: his appointed time, his 
 actions, his dwelling place, his travels and his 
 subsistence." Little wonder that, with such a 
 creed, the Companions of the Prophet should ask 
 in bewilderment, "What use, then, of our 
 striving at all?" To which Mohammed made the 
 rejoinder, '"When God creates* any servant for 
 heaven, lie causes him to go in the way of those 
 destined for heaven, until he dies, after which 
 He takes him to heaven. And when He creates 
 any servant for the fire of hell, then lie causes 
 him to go in the way of those destined for hell 
 until his death, after which He takes him to 
 hell!" 
 
 The moving finger writes; and, having writ, 
 Moves on; nor all your piety or wit 
 
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
 \ ir all your tears wash out a word of it. 
 
 What Omar Khayyam puts in his cynical verse, 
 Al Berkevi candidly concedes: "It is necessary 
 to confess that good and evil take place by the 
 predestination and predetermination of God, that 
 all that has been and all that will be was decreed 
 in eternity, and written on the preserved table ; 
 that the faith of the believer, the piety of the pious 
 and good actions are foreseen, willed, predestined, 
 decreed by the writing on the preserved table ; 
 produced and approved by God; that the unbelief 
 of the unbeliever, the impiety of the impious and 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 207 
 
 bad actions come to pass with the foreknowledge, 
 will, predestination and decree of God, but not 
 with His satisfaction and approval. Should any 
 ask why God willeth and produceth evil, we can 
 only reply that He may have wise ends in view 
 which we cannot comprehend." (Sell, "The 
 Faith of Islam," p. 173.) 
 
 It cannot be charged that this hopeless doctrine 
 of an iron predestinarianism affected the freedom 
 of movement of Mohammed and the Khalifs who 
 succeeded him. It did not. On the other hand, 
 it gave them such a resistless courage and undy- 
 ing purpose as neither man nor nature could sub- 
 due. But when the first vivid enthusiasm 
 subsided, then the inevitable poison of the doctrine 
 began to work its effects. "Before thou and I 
 were thought of," writes the poet Farzi, "our 
 free will was taken from our hands ; be without 
 cares, for the Maker of both worlds settled our 
 affairs long before we were made." In personal 
 morals Omar Khayyam draws out the consequence 
 of Mohammed's doctrines: — 
 
 The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes, 
 
 But Right or Left, as strikes the Player goes ; 
 And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field, 
 
 He knows about it all — -He knows — He knows ! 
 
 With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead, 
 
 And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed ; 
 Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote 
 
 What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read. 
 
 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
 And who with Eden didst devise the Snake ; 
 
 For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
 Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give — and take! 
 
208 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 And as to national life, Sell's judgment is too 
 temperate: "It is this dark fatalism which, what- 
 ever the Koran may teach on the subject, is the 
 ruling principle in all Moslem communities. It 
 is this which makes all Mohammedan nations 
 decay. Careless of self-improvement, heedless 
 of the need of progress, the Moslem nations, still 
 independent, arc in all that relates to the higher 
 aspects of intellectual and civilized life, far 
 behind the nations of the West." 
 Five 3. The practical duties of Islam are five. (1) 
 
 Practical The recital of the Kalima or confession of faith 
 
 Duties. j n t j lc s ] lnrt form already given, or in the longer 
 
 form, such as, "I testify that there is no deity 
 but God, 1 testify to His unity and that He has 
 no partner; I testify that Mohammed is His 
 servant and Hi- messenger." The short con- 
 Ee8Sion embodies the very spirit of Islam. "It 
 has led everywhere the march of its armies, it 
 has rung for twelve centuries in the morning air 
 from its minarets, it has been passed from lip to 
 lip. as no other word has ever been passed, by 
 thousands of millions of the human race." 
 
 (2) Namaz, or the five stated periods of prayer, 
 preceded by the specified ablutions with water, 
 or under certain circumstances, with sand. Unless 
 these ablutions are made with absolute precision 
 and the prayer offered with perfect observance 
 of the ritual, the whole supplication is futile. 
 The hours are before sunrise, when noon is past, 
 midway between noon and sunset, a few minutes 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 209 
 
 after sunset, and between sunset and midnight. 
 They must all be in Arabic. A Moslem was 
 excommunicated in India for saying that the 
 prayers might be in Hindustani. In spite of 
 their fatalism, one might say all the more by 
 reason of it, the Moslems believe in prayer, and 
 they pray with an openness and sincerity which 
 puts to shame many Christian peoples. 
 
 (3) Roza, the thirty days fast of Ramazan, the 
 month in the Moslem calendar in which the 
 Koran was sent down to be man's guidance. No 
 part of Mohammedanism gives clearer evidence 
 of the sincerity and earnestness of Islam than this 
 fast. The Moslem calendar is not solar, as ours 
 is, and Ramazan sometimes falls in the summer. 
 Yet for the whole of this month, even in the hot- 
 test weather, all Moslems must abstain from all 
 food and all liquid from sunrise to sunset. There 
 is, of course, great indulgence at night, and rich 
 Moslems simply reverse night and day, sleeping 
 during the day, but the poor cannot do this, and 
 the pious spend the month in studying the Koran 
 and in prayer. 
 
 (4) Zakat, or almsgiving. Every Moslem of 
 full age must give a proportion of his wealth each 
 year to alms. Two and a half per cent is the 
 common percentage required, but of the produce 
 of land naturally watered one-tenth is due. The 
 Zakat may not be given for building mosques, or 
 for personal expenses or to set a slave free, or to 
 parents or children, or to wife or husband, or to 
 a slave. It must be given as bona fide alms. 
 
210 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The duty is much evaded, but the principle of 
 almsgiving is inground in Moslems. 
 
 (5) The Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. The 
 pilgrimage must be made by every free Moham- 
 medan who is sound in body and of full age, when 
 he has sufficient means to pay his expenses, after 
 duly providing for the support of his household 
 till his return. If death overtake a man before 
 he has made the pilgrimage, he is accounted a 
 sinner. This pilgrimage was an ancient Arabian 
 institution which Mohammed took over as a uni- 
 fying element in his religion. A small minority 
 of the Mohammedans of the world have ever 
 made the Hajj. Those who have done so are 
 exalted persons in their communities. The con- 
 ditions under which the pilgrimage has been 
 made, the unhygienic conditions in Mecca, the 
 common drinking from the well Zem-zem, the 
 common kissing of the black stone in the Kaabah, 
 the temple at Mecca, and the debauchery of many 
 of the pilgrim caravans, have made Mecca a great 
 danger center, but the religious fervor of the 
 rites of the Hajj and the unifying influence of 
 this central gathering of the Faithful, have justi- 
 fied it even in the minds of Moslem Modernists. 
 The Spread or These were the foundations, the doctrines and 
 Mohammed- the duties of the great religious force which 
 amsm. gathered in Arabia in the seventh century and, 
 
 with its battle cry "Allah Akhbar, " "God is 
 great," and its brief but mighty creed, "There 
 is no god but God, and Mohammed is the Apostle 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 211 
 
 of God," moved out upon the world. Already in 
 Mohammed's life three embassies had been sent 
 to Heraclius, the Emperor of the Greeks, and to 
 the Chosroes Dynasty of Persia to summon them 
 to Islam, and by the time of the Prophet's death 
 his power was paramount through Arabia. 
 Much remained to be done, however, even in his 
 own land, and Abu Bakr, who succeeded him as 
 Khalif, or head of Islam, and who was a just and 
 simple man, showed great ability in solidifying 
 the Moslem power in Arabia, as well as in ex- 
 tending it abroad. The latter was indeed the 
 chief method by which he effected the former. 
 The seeds of tragedy in the new faith bore fruit 
 in the violent deaths of the three Khalif s who 
 succeeded Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali, and 
 never from its origin until to-day has Islam 
 known unity and peace, but never during all these 
 centuries has it ceased to spread. Its victorious 
 arms were carried into Persia, Syria and Egypt, 
 and then across Africa into Spain and France 
 until Charles Martel stopped its westward march 
 between Poitiers and Tours in 732, and across 
 Asia Minor and the Hellespont into Eastern 
 Europe until John Sobieski halted it at Vienna 
 in 1683; across Persia into Central Asia and 
 India, where it holds its own to-day with more of 
 its followers under the British King than it has 
 under any Moslem governor; across the roof of 
 the world the new faith passed into China, 
 where there are over five million Mohammedans ; 
 
212 THE LIGHT OP THE WORLD 
 
 around the Southern Seas it swept to the East 
 Indies and beyond; and lastly, because the 
 movement is yet going on, it spread southward 
 and is spreading- still among the tribes of the 
 great heart of Africa. Its impetuous spirit at the 
 outset bade fair to cany it wherever a warrior 
 could walk or ride his horse. "Great God," 
 said Akbah as he spurred his horse ^nto the waves 
 of the Atlantic, after victoriously crossing the 
 entire north of Africa, "if my course were not 
 6topped In- this sea. I would still go on to the un- 
 known kingdom of the West, preaching the unity 
 of Thv holy name, and putting to the sword the 
 rebellious nations who worship any other gods 
 than Thee." (Dods, '•Mohammed, Buddha and 
 Christ," p. 102. See Haines "Islam as a Mis- 
 sionary Religion. ") 
 Schism. This widespread development of Moham- 
 
 medanism has not come, however, without deep- 
 reaching internal schisms. These existed in 
 tammed's time and they multiplied after his 
 death. There were political rivalries and theo- 
 logical divisions, and Mohammed's prediction 
 has c«;me true. "The Magians are divided into 
 seventy sects, " say the Mohammedans, "the Jews 
 into seventy-one, the Christians into seventy-two, 
 and the Moslems into seventy-three, as Moham- 
 med had foretold." The first great breach in 
 Islam arose out of civil war between Ali, the 
 fourth Khalif. and his rival, Muavia. Ali and 
 his two sons were killed, and to this day are 
 
MO HA MMEDA NISM 213 
 
 regarded by the Shi ah sect as their great heroes 
 and martyrs, while they look upon the Sunnis, or 
 orthodox Moslems, as scarcely closer to them than 
 Christians. The Persian Mohammedans and 
 some of the Moslems of India are Shiahs. The 
 Shiahs reject the first three Khalifs as usurpers 
 of Ali's place; they even prefer Ali to Moham- 
 med, or at lea^st esteem them equal; they charge 
 the Sunnis with corrupting the Koran and reject 
 the Sunnat or Traditions as apocryphal and 
 unworthy of credit. (Sale, "Preliminary Dis- 
 course, " Sec. VIII.) The central and charac- 
 teristic belief of the Shiahs is their faith regard- 
 ing the Imam. The Shiahs hold that "the Imam 
 is the successor of the Prophet, adorned with all 
 the qualities which he possessed, wiser than the 
 most learned men of the age, holier than the most 
 pious; free from all sin, original and active. His 
 authority is the authority of God." His body is 
 so pure and delicate as to cast no shadow. He is 
 the supreme pontiff, the vicar of God on earth. 
 "The Koran, the infallible book, is plussed by 
 the Imam, the infallible man." (Sell's "Faith 
 of Islam, pp. 76, 78.) 
 
 On this doctrine of the Imam the Shiahs are di- Tne Bab and 
 vided into two parties. We speak of them because Benaisim. 
 they also serve to explain modern history and the 
 movement of Christianity in Asia and Africa. 
 The Imamites reckoning Ali as the first, believe 
 in twelve Imams, the last of whom, Abul Kasim, 
 is still alive, though concealed, and bears the 
 
214 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 name of Al Mahdi, "the guided." The Ismai- 
 lians believe that since the sixth Imam, the Imams 
 have been concealed. The Imam is in existence 
 now, but concealed. There are always those who 
 say, ''Next year the Mahdi will appear." There 
 is fine soil in this belief for a crop of disturbances 
 and small fanaticisms of which we have not seen 
 the last. It explains many things about Moslem 
 lands, and makes movements like the Mahdi 
 movement in the Soudan and modern Ba^Um— 
 intelligible. The founder of Bab ism. Mirza Ali 
 Mohammed, the Bab, was the son of a Shiraz 
 grocer, born in 1819 or 1820. HI is manifestation 
 as a prophet was in 1844 at Bushire. His name 
 of Bab, or gate, signified his claim to be the one 
 through whom alone knowledge of the twelfth 
 Imam Mahdi could be attained. His pretensions 
 grew apace and lie soon advanced himself as the 
 Mahdi, then as .« Incarnation of the Prophet, 
 then as a Revel&cion or Incarnation of God Him- 
 self. The Bab was shot at Tabriz in 1850, and 
 the Babis, his followers, removed to Bagdad. 
 Thence the Turkish Government removed them 
 to Constantinople and then to Adrianople in 1866. 
 One of them. Mirza Hussein Ali, or Beha, an- 
 nounced himself as the Mahdi whom the Bab 
 had foretold. This led to a dissension and bloody 
 schism, ending in the permanent division of the 
 Babis, with two prophets. Beha at Acre, and his 
 vounger brother at Cyprus, where the British 
 Government pensioned him. The influence of 
 Beha prevailed and the Babis became Behais, 
 
MO HA MME DANISM 215 
 
 The movement is very active in Persia and in 
 modified forms has found its way to the West. 
 The present head is Abbas Effendi, the son of 
 Beha, who is a man of piety and religious ear- 
 nestness. 
 
 Behaism represents a revolt against the tyranny 
 and fanaticism of the Koran and the laxity 
 of Moslem practice, though allowing wine 
 drinking and other leniencies. The Bab advo- 
 cated also the removal of the veil by women, the 
 disestablishment of the harem, and war against 
 mendicancy. Doctrinely the Beha movement 
 displaces Mohammed and the Koran, and regards 
 God as a spiritual essence and not a person. In 
 Persia Behaism is a mixture of Mohammedanism, 
 Sufiism and Universalism. In the West it takes 
 various forms. Mr. Kheiralla was for a time the 
 spokesman of the view that Beha was the incar- 
 nation of God the Father. (Kheiralla, "Beha 
 Ullah, the Glory of God.") Abbas Effendi, 
 however, claims to be no more than a man, the 
 teacher of the principle of religious unity, and 
 those who have visited him at Acre have come 
 away with a high regard for him. The utterances 
 of Behaism which are making appeal in America 
 now are well illustrated by such quotations as 
 these from "Hidden Words," published from 
 "The Supreme Pen" of Beha, by the Behai 
 Publishing Society of Chicago: — 
 
 IN THE NAME OF THE MIGHTY SPEAKER! 
 
 O ye possessors of intelligence and hearing, the first 
 melody of the Beloved is : O nightingale of Significance. 
 
216 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 seek no refuge save in the rose garden of significances! 
 O messenger of the Solomon of Love, dwell not but in 
 the Sheba of the Beloved! O phoenix of Immortality, 
 choose no abode except in the Mount of Faithfulness! 
 This is thy station if thou art soaring to the Placeless 
 on the wings of Life. 
 
 O PEOPLE OF THE DELECTABLE PARADISE! 
 Let the people of Certainly know that a new Garden 
 has appeared near the Rizwan in the Open Court of 
 Holiness, and that all the people of the Heights, and the 
 temples of the Exalted Heaven, arc around it. There- 
 fore endeavor to reach that Station, and discover the 
 truths of the mystery of Love from its red tulips, and 
 unveil abundant knowledge of the Oneness from its 
 eternal fruits. Radiant are the eyes of him who has 
 entered therein with trust. 
 
 To make any impress upon the Western mind 
 Behaism will have to draw much nearer to reality. 
 Sufiism and Of the many other developments in Islam, the 
 
 Wahaiusm. two most important were Suliism and Wahabism. 
 The former is the mystical reaction from the 
 mechanical conception of God. It was, as Dr. 
 Shedd savs, "a protest against the exclusiveness 
 of Islam, its literalism, its legalism, and the bare 
 transcendence of its conception of God. It em- 
 phasizes over against these the truth of all reli- 
 gions (one God manifesting himself in many 
 ways), the mystical interpretation of sacred books, 
 the spiritualizing of the law, and even its prac- 
 tical abrogation for those who reach a certain 
 height of spiritual culture, and the divine in- 
 dwelling in the prophets, in the Imams, and even 
 in lesser leaders." (Report of Commission IV, 
 World Missionary Conference, Ch. V.) 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 217 
 
 Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat are the utterances of 
 the Persian reaction from this reaction. After 
 the fatalism and pantheism of Islam and Sufiism, 
 there were left only such sensual pleasures as life 
 might hold: — 
 
 There was a door to which I found no key ; 
 There was a veil past which I could not see : 
 
 Some little talk of Me and Thee 
 There seemed — and then no more of Thee and Me. 
 One moment in annihilation's waste, 
 One moment, of the well of life to taste — 
 
 The stars are setting and the Caravan 
 Starts for the dawn of nothing — oh, make haste ! 
 Ah, fill the cup : what boots it to repeat 
 How Time is slipping underneath our feet: 
 Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday, 
 Why fret about them if To-day be sweet. 
 
 The Wahabis are Mohammedan Puritans. 
 They reject Ijma after the death of the Compan- 
 ions of the Prophet, hold to the right of private 
 judgment of the Koran and the Traditions, call 
 themselves "Unitarians" and denounce all others 
 as polytheists, reject all saint worship even at 
 Mohammed's tomb at Medina, renounce rosaries 
 for the repetition of the ninety-nine names of 
 God, and at one time in their history, toward the 
 close of the eighteenth century, seemed about to 
 subdue and reform the whole Moslem world, 
 restoring the order of the primitive days. 
 (Hughes, "Dictionary of Islam." Art. "Wahabi," 
 pp. 659-662.) Besides these divisions of Islam 
 there are many others. Mohammedanism is very 
 far, accordingly, from being the unity that is 
 
218 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 often supposed. "In no part of the world," says 
 Palgrave, "is there more of secret division, 
 aversion, misbelief (taking Mohammedanism as 
 our standard) and unbelief, than in those very 
 lands which to a superficial survey seem absolutely 
 identified in the one common creed of the Quran 
 and its author." (Palgrave, "Arabia," Vol. 1, 
 p. 10.) 
 Moral Effects These are not the only lamentable moral effects 
 of MoKam- of Islam. Religions, like men, must be judged 
 medanism. foy their fruits, and the fruits of Mohammedanism 
 condemn the tree which bear them. It is some- 
 times said that Mohammedanism is unjustly 
 judged when tested in this way, that it was a 
 great advance upon the conditions which preceded 
 it in Arabia, and that for certain races and stages 
 of human development it is, if not ideally better 
 than Christianity, yet more practically suitable. 
 To this it is to be replied, first, that while Mo- 
 hammedanism may have improved conditions in 
 Arabia, there is room for difference of opinion: 
 secondly, that the conditions it introduced, if 
 better than those which preceded them, stopped 
 any further progress, as they stop it now wherever 
 they come to prevail ; and thirdly, that the ethical 
 and social ideals of Mohammedanism are inade- 
 quate and injurious. 
 Dia { t The moral code of Islam and its clean mono- 
 
 Improve theism represented an immense advance on the 
 
 Arabia? conditions prevalent in Arabia when it arose. 
 
 The great vices of the Arabs were revenge, 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 219 
 
 drunkenness, gambling, infanticide, polygamy 
 and divorce, insecurity of property, and fetish 
 worship and idolatry. Mohammed dealt with 
 all these, establishing order and justice and se- 
 curity, and prohibiting all evils save polygamy, 
 which he limited, and divorce. It seems fair to 
 accept the traditional view that the conditions 
 which he introduced were better than those which 
 had prevailed. But the evidence against this 
 view is heavy. "Fresnel has shown that the pre- 
 Islamic Arabs were on a higher moral plane 
 than the Arabs after their conversion of Islam; 
 and Perron contrasts the freedom and the legal 
 status of woman prior to Mohammed with her 
 servile condition under Islam." (Zwemer, "Is- 
 lam," p. 3.) As to women's position, also, Rob- 
 ertson Smith says, "It is very remarkable that, in 
 spite'of Mohammed'shumane ordinances, theplace 
 of women in the family, and in society, has steadily 
 declined under his law. In ancient Arabia we 
 find many proofs that women moved more freely 
 and asserted themselves more strongly than in the 
 modern East. The Arabs themselves recognized 
 that the position of woman had fallen, and it con- 
 tinued still to fall under Islam." ("Kinship and 
 Marriage in Early Arabia," pp. 100-104.) And 
 Sir William Muir says in his Life of Moham- 
 med, "I do not hesitate to say that the wife was 
 possessed of more freedom and exercised a greater, 
 healthier and more legitimate influence under the 
 pre-existing institutions of Arabia" than under 
 
220 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The Petrify- 
 ing Influence 
 of Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
 Mohammedanism. The relations of Mohammed 
 and Khadijah, when Mohammed was only a 
 monotheistic Arab in Mecca, were far nobler than 
 the Prophet's relations to his ten wives and four 
 concubines at Medina. 
 
 Even if the conditions introduced by Islam 
 were better for the Arabia of the seventh centurv 
 than the conditions it had previously known, the 
 weakness and curse of the system lies in its erec- 
 tion of these conditions which were imposed 
 upon seventh century Arabia into universal and 
 eternal institutions. As Stobart says, "While 
 forming a correct judgment of the moral condi- 
 tion of Arabia at the time when he arose, and 
 estimating at their true value the benefits he con- 
 ferred, we must not neglect to keep before our 
 eyes the clear distinction which exists between 
 evil and degrading practices, which are open to 
 reform, and an imperfect, if not vicious law, in- 
 tended to be the permanent standard of good and 
 evil. The former can be successfullv attacked by 
 the influence of better example, and will dis- 
 appear before a truer and higher civilization; 
 but an evil code of ethics, enjoined by the 
 national faith, and accepted, by its appeal to a 
 divine origin, as the final and irrevocable standard 
 of morality, presents an insuperable barrier to 
 the regeneration and progress of a nation. Yet 
 such is the position which the Koran has taken." 
 (Stobart, "Islam and Its Founder," p. 229.) 
 Mohammedanism has bound Arabia and it binds 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 221 
 
 every Mohammedan people to a political and 
 social order and to ethical ideals which, even 
 supposing them to have been well adapted to the 
 time which originated them, are now fourteen 
 centuries out of date. It is this thought which 
 prompts Lord Houghton's verse: — 
 ', So while the world rolls on from change to change, 
 
 And realms of thought expand, 
 The Letter stands without expanse or range, 
 
 Stiff as a dead man's hand. 
 
 In consequence, wherever Mohammedanism has 
 gone it has advanced the people whom it has 
 vanquished to the level of seventh century 
 Arabian civilization, but here or a little beyond 
 here where races were strong, or a little short of 
 here where races were weak, it has left its fol- 
 lowers. Further progress has been permanently 
 estoppedexcept at the price of infidelity to Islam. 
 It has possessed no power of assimilation or 
 transformation. (Shedd, ' 'Islam and the Oriental 
 Churches," p. 88). 
 
 It is the Mohammedan religion itself that is the 
 chief cause of political sterility and degradation. 
 It has made and in making has unmade the char- 
 acter of good people. "The fact is," says a 
 thoughtful writer on Persia, "that Islam has 
 ruined Persia; and it is not fair to the real char- 
 acter of the people to underrate the effect that 
 their religion has produced on them. ' ' (Malcolm, 
 "Five Years in a Persian Town," p. 112.) 
 
222 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Moham- 
 medanism 
 Morally 
 Defective. 
 Polygamy. 
 
 And Islam itself is to be held responsible 
 because its ethical and social ideals are inade- 
 quate and injurious. The single case of its con- 
 ceptions and legislation with regard to woman 
 will suffice for illustration. It allowed limited 
 polygamy, unlimited concubinage, and practically 
 unlimited divorce. These are the provisions of 
 the Koran : — 
 
 And if ye fear that ye shall not act with equity 
 towards orphans of the female sex. take in marriage of 
 such other women as please you, two, or three, or 
 four, and not more. But if ye fear that ye cannot act 
 equitably towards so many, marry one only, or the 
 slaves which ye shall have acquired. 
 
 And who abstain from the carnal knowledge of 
 women other than their wives, or the slaves which their 
 right hands possess (for as to them they shall be blame- 
 less ; but whoever coveteth any women besides these, 
 they are transgressors.) 
 
 Ye may divorce your wives twice; and then either 
 retain them with humanity, or dismiss them with 
 kindness. But it is not lawful for you to take away 
 anything of what ye have given them, unless both fear 
 that they cannot observe the ordinances of God. And 
 if ye fear that they cannot observe the ordinances of 
 God, it shall be no crime in either of them on account 
 of that for which the wife shall redeem herself. These 
 are the ordinances of God; therefore transgress them 
 not; for whoever transgresseth the ordinances of God, 
 they are unjust doers. But if the husband divorce her a 
 third time, she shall not be lawful for him again, until 
 she marry another husband. But if he also divorce her, 
 it shall be no crime in them, if they return to each 
 other, if they think they can observe the ordinances of 
 God; and these are the ordinances o"f God, he declareth 
 them to people of understanding. 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 223 
 
 Ameer Ali, Syed, represents the modern atti- 
 tude of Moslem thought toward these pro- 
 visions: — 
 
 Women, to whom most of the older systems assigned 
 a very inferior position in relation to the stronger sex, 
 obtained in Islam the place God meant them to occupy 
 in the economy of creation. The right of possessing 
 property, of dealing with what was their own, of exer- 
 cising all the privileges and powers which belonged to 
 them as sentient beings, were accorded to them equally 
 with the other sex. Marriage made no difference in 
 their status or capacity. And a Mussulman wife became 
 as competent to hold property and make dispositions 
 as a single woman. Nor were they denied a share in 
 the patrimony of their parents or kinsfolk in favor of 
 their male relations. Marriage was declared "to be an 
 institution ordained for the protection of society, and 
 in order that human beings may guard themselves from 
 foulness and unchastity." 
 
 Polygamy was recognized as lawful among all the 
 nations of antiquity ; and its practice had received the 
 sanction of the holy personages of Judaism. As among 
 the Kulin Brahmins, the Pagan Arabs put no limit on 
 the number of wives a man might have. In certain 
 stages of development polygamy is not an evil. The 
 Arabian Prophet, with a true conception of the social 
 and moral conditions and necessities of the age and the 
 people, dealt with the question in a manner which har- 
 monizes with the most advanced standard, and at the 
 same time meets the needs and requirements of the least 
 progressed. 
 
 A Mussulman is allowed to marry one, two, three or 
 four wives, provided he can deal with all of them "with 
 equity." If that be not possible he can marry but one. 
 
 Many of the best minds of Islam have perceived in 
 this rule a virtual prohibition of polygamy. The moral 
 effect of the institution on Mussulman society as a whole 
 
224 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 can hardly be ignored ; it has prevented the growth in 
 Mussulman countries, untainted by foreign social ideas, 
 of that class whose existence is alike an outrage on our 
 humanity and a disgrace to civilization. Considering 
 how the profession of the hetairai, honored among 
 some nations, despised among others, but tolerated by 
 most, has flourished through all ages, it is no small 
 credit to the Arabian Teacher that it was so effectually 
 stopped in Islam. 
 
 As in the Jewish system, option was given to the 
 husband to dissolve tbe marriage tie. At the same 
 time, the act was pronounced to be "the most abom- 
 inable in the sight of the Lord." (Ameer Ali, Syed, 
 "Islam," pp. 29-31.) 
 
 On the other hand must be set the terrible facts 
 of the actual conditions prevalent under Islam. 
 There is prostitution there as we know it in the 
 West, and the whole lot of woman is, though with 
 many noble and worthy exceptions, a degraded 
 lot. Of polygamy Sir William Muir says: — 
 
 Polygamy, with the barbarous institution of servile 
 concubinage, is the worm at the root of Islam — the 
 secret of its decadence. By it the purity and virtue of 
 the family tie are touched; the tone and vigor of the 
 dominant classes are sapped; the body politic becomes 
 weak and languid, excepting for intrigue; and the state 
 itself too often crumbles to pieces, the prey of a doubt- 
 ful and contested succession. Offspring born by the 
 slave to her proper lord and master is legitimate, and, 
 as such, shares in the inheritance; but the provision, 
 praiseworthy in itself, affords but an additional ground 
 for division in the house. 
 
 Of concubinage Stanley Lane Poole testifies: — 
 It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of 
 concubines that Mohammed made an irretrievable mis- 
 take. The condition of the female slave in the East is 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 225 
 
 indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her 
 master, who can do what he pleases with her and her 
 companions ; for the Moslem is not restricted in the 
 number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. 
 The female white slave is kept solely for the master's 
 sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, 
 and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck 
 of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if 
 she bear a son to her tyrant ; but even then he is at 
 liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, 
 though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as 
 the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one 
 cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he 
 suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations 
 in the taking of slaves. The Moslem soldier was 
 allowed to do as he pleased with any "infidel" woman 
 he might meet with in his victorious march. When one 
 thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and 
 daughters, who must have suffered shame and dishonor 
 by this license, he cannot find words to express his 
 horror. And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on 
 the Moslem character, nay, on the whole character of 
 Eastern life. 
 
 And of the seclusion of women Keene, in "The 
 Turks in India," says: — 
 
 All Zenana life must be bad for men at all stages of 
 their existence. In youth, it must be ruin to be petted 
 and spoiled by a company of submissive slave girls. In • 
 manhood, it is no less an evil that when a man enters 
 into private life, his affections should be put up to 
 auction among foolish, fond competitors, full of mutual 
 jealousies and slanders. We are not left entirely to 
 conjecture as to the effect of female influence in home 
 life, when it is exerted under those unenlightened and 
 demoralizing conditions. That is, plainly, an element 
 lying at the root of all the most important features that 
 differentiate progress from stagnation. 
 
226 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Divorce. But worst of all, perhaps, in its actual effects, 
 
 is the liberty of divorce. Most Moslems are too 
 poor to have more than one wife at a time, but 
 the facility of divorce has made consecutive 
 polygamy so easy and common that it, rather 
 than honorable monogamy, sets the tone to Moslem 
 life. Hasan, the son of Ali, was called the 
 Divorcer because he divorced his wives seventy 
 times. There are theoretical safeguards around 
 the right of divorce, but they are ineffectual. 
 The Moslem ideal of woman is inadequate and 
 injurious. 
 
 Intolerance. This i 1 1 ust rat i on would suffice, but we must 
 
 add to it the Moslem ideal of tolerance and free- 
 dom. Islam has devised working arrangements 
 which have made life under Mohammedanism 
 endurable, but barely endurable for non-Moslem 
 peoples. The idea of religious equality before 
 the law is alien to the system. (Shedd, "Islam 
 and the - Oriental Churches, " pp. 134-137.) It 
 offered men Islam or tribute or death. It started 
 outJ:o convert the world and to do it by force. It 
 is true that at the beginning, when it was weak 
 and Mohammed was still the religious teacher 
 rather than the political chief, the note of tol- 
 erance was in Islam, as the early chapters of the 
 Koran indicate: — 
 
 Let there be no compulsion in religion. 
 
 Verily they who believe (Moslems) and they who 
 
 follow the Jewish religion and the Christians and the 
 
 Sabians — whosoever of these believeth in God and the 
 
 last day and doeth that which is right, shall have their 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 227 
 
 reward with their Lord : fear shall not come upon them, 
 neither shall they be grieved. 
 
 Dispute not, unless in kindliest sort, with the people 
 of the Book (Christians). 
 
 But as success came and power grew, a differ- 
 ent tone came into Islam. New revelations in the 
 Koran abrogated the earlier ones. 
 
 Whoso desireth any other religion than Islam it shall 
 not be accepted of him and in the next world he shall 
 be of those who perish. 
 
 O ye who believe, take not the Jews and Christians 
 as your friends. 
 
 And when the months wherein ye are not allowed to 
 attack them shall be past, kill the idolaters wheresoever 
 ye shall find them, and take them prisoners, and besiege 
 them, and lay wait for them in every convenient place. 
 But if they shall repent, and observe the appointed 
 times of prayer, and pay the legal alms, dismiss them 
 freely ; for God is gracious and merciful. 
 
 O prophet, wage war against the unbelievers and the 
 hypocrites, and be severe unto them, for their dwelling 
 shall be hell ; an unhappy journey shall it be thither. 
 
 When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their 
 heads, until ye have made a great slaughter among 
 them ; and bind them in bonds : and either give them a 
 free dismission afterwards or exact a ransom ; until the 
 war shall have laid down its arms. 
 
 Whatever abatements need to be made from the 
 severity of these passages in judging the actual 
 attitude of Islam, it remains true that it has been 
 and is the most intolerant of all religions. It is 
 the one religion with which apostacy has meant 
 and still means death, wherever the power is in 
 its hands. It cannot allow, save under coercion 
 from without, the freedom that is essential to 
 
228 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 faith. As a high Turkish official told Dr. Barton 
 in reply to the question, "How about liberty for 
 the Mohammedan to become a Christian?" — 
 "That is an impossibility in the nature of the 
 case. When one has once accepted Islam and 
 become a follower of the Prophet he cannot 
 change. There is no power on earth that can 
 change him. Whatever he may say or claim 
 cannot alter the fact that he is a Moslem still and 
 must always be such. It is, therefore, an absurd- 
 ity to sav that a Moslem has the privilege of 
 changing his religion, for to do so is beyond his 
 power." (Barton, "Daybreak in Turkey," p. 
 256 f.) 
 Otter There are radical defects in the ethical and 
 
 Defects. social principles of Islam. The taint of pagan- 
 
 ism which was in the system dowered it with the 
 law of social unprogression. There was no con- 
 ception in it of the permanency of the moral law. 
 (Malcolm, "Five Years in a Persian Town," p. 
 82.) The Prophet's whole idea of revelation 
 was arbitrary and non-ethical. God was strong. 
 His will was above His goodness. Love did not 
 rule His will. It was enough that He willed. 
 The want of a consuming sense of holiness in God 
 left ethics without the sense of sin. In the 
 Mishkat we are told: — 
 
 The Prophet said, "Verily a certain servant (of God) 
 committed a grievous sin and said, O my Lord, I have 
 sinned ; forgive it. His Lord said, Doth my servant 
 know that he hatha Lord who forgives the sins and also 
 punishes. I have forgiven my servant. Afterwards 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 229 
 
 he delayed as God wished, and then again he sinned 
 a grievous sin and said, O my Lord, I have sinned 
 grievously ; forgive it. He said, Doth my servant know 
 that he hath a Lord who forgives the sins and also 
 punishes ; I have forgiven my servant. Then he delayed 
 as God wished and again sinned grievously and said, O 
 Lord, I have sinned grievously again ; forgive it for me. 
 Then He said, Doth my servant know that he hath a 
 Lord who forgives the sins and punishes them ; I have 
 forgiven my servant ; therefore let him do what he 
 likes!" 
 
 Here, then, we are brought face to face with Contrast 
 the contrasts between Islam and Christianity. Between 
 The fundamental contrast is in their conception ^ 3 ^ m anc * 
 of God. Mohammed saw and emphasized a few ris iam y ' 
 of the true attributes of God, but his God was a 
 ruler, a sovereign, not a Father. His religion, 
 accordingly, made no provision for the soul's 
 need of fellowship with God. (Grant, "Reli- 
 gions of the World, " p. 30.) He did not realize 
 the holiness of God. The whole conception of 
 ethical character was strange to him. There was 
 in him, accordingly, none of the moral splendor, 
 the ethical righteousness of the Hebrew prophets, 
 far less of the apostles of Christianity. The 
 Mohammedan idea of God, moreover, really 
 separated him from man and the world. That 
 was why on one hand Sufiism arose to satisfy 
 with its pantheism the hunger of the soul for God, 
 and on the other hand it accounted for Moslem 
 agnosticism and the cynical atheism of Omar 
 Khayyam, This ideal of God, furthermore ? made 
 
230 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the conceptions of incarnation and atonement 
 impossible in Islam. ("Religions of the Mission 
 Fields," "Mohammedanism," p. 256 f. ) The 
 new religion did proclaim a real brotherhood and 
 the noble equalities of Mohammedanism have been 
 a great reality and are a great reproach to the caste 
 spirit, whether in Hinduism or in Christian 
 society. But Islam knew no real human brother- 
 hood. It was a fellowship in Islam, which 
 utterly denied the truth of human unity, of one 
 common world family of God. Two prayers 
 illustrate the fundamental difference between 
 Moslems and Christians at this point: — 
 
 Prayer of Christians for Moslems, used on Good 
 Friday at Church: "O merciful God, have mercy 
 on all Mohammedans, and take from them all 
 ignorance, hardness of heart and contempt of Thy 
 Word ; and fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy 
 flock that they may be saved among the remnant of 
 the true Israelites. and be made one fold under one 
 Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 
 
 Prayer of Moslems for Christians, used every 
 Friday in the Mosques: "God, make their wives 
 widows and their children orphans, and give their 
 possessions to be a possession of the followers of 
 Islam. Amen." 
 
 Mohammedanism was and is a religion of pre- 
 cepts and precedents, and not of living principles. 
 Its conception of all revelation is mechanical. 
 ("Methods of Mission Work Among Moslems," 
 p. 196 f.) Christ refused to bind men with 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 231 
 
 prescriptions. His method was to give men 
 principles which they were to apply, to pour a 
 new life into their veins which would make them 
 sons of God and lead them to render to Him and 
 to their brothers the service of sons and not of 
 slaves. Here alone we find an adequate and ever 
 separating contrast between the two religions: — 
 
 While as the life blood fills the growing form, 
 
 The Spirit Christ has shed 
 Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm, 
 
 More felt than heard or read. 
 
 And, therefore, 'though ancestral sympathies, 
 
 And closest ties of race, 
 May guard Mohammed's precepts and decrees 
 
 Through many a tract of space ; 
 
 Yet in the end the tight-drawn line must break, 
 
 The sapless tree must fall, 
 Nor let the form one time did well to take 
 
 Be tyrant over all. 
 
 The whole wonderful contrast appears when 
 we set Mohammed over against Christ and lay 
 down the religion which centers in Christ upon 
 Islam. As Mr. Bosworth Smith declares, who is 
 saying the best that can be said for Moham- 
 medanism: — 
 
 The religion of Christ contains whole fields of 
 morality and whole realms of thought which are all but 
 outside the religion of Mohammed. It opens humility, 
 purity of heart, forgiveness of injuries, sacrifice of self 
 to man's moral nature; it gives scope for toleration, 
 development, boundless progress to his mind ; its motive 
 power is stronger, even as a friend is better than a king, 
 and love higher than obedience- Its realized ideals in 
 
232 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the various paths of human greatness have been more 
 commanding, more many-sided, more holy, as Averroes 
 is below Newton, Harun below Alfred, and AH below 
 St. Paul. Finally, the ideal life of all is far more 
 elevating, far more majestic, far more inspiring, even 
 as the life of the founder of Mohammedanism is below 
 the life of the Founder of Christianity. And when I 
 speak of the ideal life of Mohammedanism I must not 
 be misunderstood. There is in Mohammedanism no 
 ideal life in the true sense of the word, for Moham- 
 med's character was admitted by himself to be a weak 
 and erring one. It was disfigured by at least one huge 
 moral blemish; and exactly in so far as his life has, 
 in spite of his earnest and reiterated protestations, been 
 made an example to be followed, has that vice been 
 perpetuated. But in Christianity the case is different. 
 The word-, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" 
 forced from the mouth of Him who was meek and 
 lowly of heart, by the wickedness of those who, priding 
 themselves on being Abraham's children, never did the 
 works of Abraham, are a definite challenge to the 
 world. That challenge has been for nineteen centuries 
 before the eyes of unfriendly, as well as of believing 
 readers, and it has never yet been fairly met ; and at 
 this moment, by the confession of friend and foe alike, 
 the character of Jesus of Nazareth stands alone in its 
 spotless puritv and its unapproachable majesty. We 
 have each of us probably at some period of our lives 
 tried hard to penetrate to the inmost meaning of some 
 one of Christ's short and weighty utterances, — 
 "Those jewels, five words long, 
 
 Which on the stretched forefinger of all time 
 
 Sparkle forever." 
 
 But is there one of us who can say there is no more 
 
 behind? Is there one thoughtful person among us who 
 
 has ever studied the character of Christ, and has not, 
 
 in spite of ever-recurring difficulties and doubts, once 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 233 
 
 and again burst into the centurion's exclamation, 
 "Truly this was the Son of God"? 
 
 Nor are the methods of drawing near to God the 
 same in the two religions. The Mussulman gains a 
 knowledge of God — he can hardly be said to approach 
 Him — by listening to the lofty message of God's 
 Prophet. The Christian believes that he approaches 
 God by a process which, however difficult it may be to 
 define, yet has had a real meaning to Christ's servants, 
 and has embodied itself in countless types of Christian 
 character — that mysterious something which St. Paul 
 calls a "union with Christ." "Ye are dead, and your 
 life is hid with Christ in God." (Smith, "Mohammed 
 and Mohammedanism," pp. 247-249.) 
 
 But if Mohammedanism and Christianity are Points of 
 thus widely separated, they have also more points Contact, 
 of contact than any other religions. Mohammed 
 speaks of the Bible and of Christ, of the Jewish 
 inheritance and of the Christian faith. His reli- 
 gion supersedes all these, but nevertheless it 
 rests upon them, and the three features of its 
 relationship to Christianity afford our chief 
 points of contrast and difficulty, but also our 
 chief points of contact and hope. "(&) Islam 
 recognizes the genuineness of the Christian 
 revelation, (b) Islam assumes a definite position 
 with reference to Christianity, (c) Islam contains 
 in its very foundation a misrepresentation of 
 Christianity." 
 
 (a) The Koran endorses the revelation of the 
 Old and New Testaments. To be sure, it de- 
 clares that these Scriptures have been corrupted, 
 and that we do not now have the original and 
 
234 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 reliable books. But here is one common meeting 
 place. 
 
 (b) And Mohammed "raised and answered the 
 claim of Christ. He assigned to Him His place 
 and titles, one of the greatest prophets, the Spirit 
 of God and the Word of God. He claimed that 
 there had been but one true faith from the be- 
 ginning preached by all the great prophets, one 
 in essence though differing in form. But he 
 denied to Christ the title of the Son of God, and 
 with this denial placed Him on a level with 
 Abraham and Moses and Mohammed himself. 
 He also denied to Christianity the claim to be the 
 final religion. This assumption of a definite 
 position is a chief reason why Mohammedanism 
 has been the hardest of all faiths to dislodge. It 
 is a common law of human nature that it is diffi- 
 cult to induce men to reconsider a position once 
 assumed. In this case the difficulty is increased 
 by the fact that apparently so much is conceded. 
 Every true Moslem is ready to yield to Christ 
 high honor and to ascribe to Him lofty titles, and 
 this is a great obstacle to giving the complete 
 allegiance which Christ demands." ("Methods 
 of Mission Work Among Moslems," p. 195.) 
 The Moslems assert the Virgin birth of Christ 
 and His entire and unique sinlessness, which 
 Mohammed never claimed for himself; they deny 
 the crucifixion and resurrection, but affirm the 
 ascension of Christ into heaven, and they believe 
 in His second coming, but only to prepare for a 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 235 
 
 great Mohammedan revival. And the Koran 
 itself calls Him both the Spirit of God and the 
 Word of God. (Goldsack, " Christ in Islam.") 
 Mohammedans admit all this, and here we have 
 another common meeting ground. Must they not 
 some day see that they must admit more regard- 
 ing Jesus, the one sinless Prophet of Islam? 
 
 (c) i\nd in the third place, the view of Chris- 
 tianity which lies at the base of Islam, and which 
 led Mohammed to repudiate it, was a false view. 
 He had never met the Christianity of Christ and 
 the Apostles. The Koran shows what a travesty 
 of the Gospel had come to him. The Trinity 
 which he rejected was a trinity consisting of the 
 Father, the Son and the Virgin Mary. When 
 "we inquire into Mohammed's rejection of 
 Christianity, we find that he never had anything 
 but the most perverted idea of what Christianity 
 really was. The Christianity which he rejected 
 was of a very debased type, half polytheistic in 
 its theology, superstitious in its worship, and 
 with a sacred history encrusted with puerile 
 legends. He had evidently never read the New 
 Testament, and his conception of Christ is 
 largely derived from the Apocryphal Gospels. 
 It is not, therefore, historically just to say that 
 Mohammed rejected Christ. Supposing that 
 to-day there were to arise a great religious genius 
 among the peoples of the Congo; suppose that 
 all he knew of Jesus Christ was what he could 
 learn from those representatives of His who con- 
 
236 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 doned the policy of King Leopold, would it be 
 just to say of the religion that he founded that it 
 rejected Christianity? Nor can we say that this 
 is a matter of mere historical interest. Our 
 judgment on the point must inevitably condition 
 our whole attitude to the religion. For in truth 
 the Moslem rejection of Christianity to-day rests 
 upon that fatal understanding of what Christianity 
 is which is revealed in the Koran. From this it 
 follows that all the forces of modern historical 
 science and criticism are fighting for us, for they 
 arc fighting Eor the removal of that ignorance. 
 The impact of the modern world upon Islam 
 must sooner or later break up that age-long 
 delusion. We cannot, of course, maintain that 
 there are not within Islam powerful forces of evil 
 which are entrenched behind this misunderstand- 
 ing, and which will remain when it has been 
 destroyed. Still, here is the vulnerable point, — a 
 point which is not found in other religions. 
 Meantime it remains tragically true that had the 
 Church of Syria been faithful to its Master the 
 reproach of Islam had never lain upon Christen- 
 dom. The thought has sombre consequences. It 
 may be that in the Africa, the China, and the 
 India of to-day new religions are maturing which 
 inlike manner will be 'anti-Christian,' and stand 
 in future centuries a barrier in the way of the 
 winning of the world." (Report of Commission 
 IV, World Missionary Conference, Ch. VII.) 
 
 Here is the revelation of our duty — to correct 
 in love and penitence the misrepresentation of 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 237 
 
 Christianity made to Arabia fourteen hundred 
 years ago, and to represent Christianity in truth 
 to the eager, searching, fast changing mind of the 
 non-Christian peoples of to-day. 
 
 But can we ever hope to recover what was Will 
 lost? Is Islam to abide in the world as the per- Christianity 
 manent reproach of a false Christianity ? Let two Ever Prevail? 
 parables answer. 
 
 The first is a story narrated recently by a col- 
 onel in the Turkish army: — 
 
 A thoughtful Turk, some thirty years ago, studied 
 with a holy teacher of great learning in the city of 
 Adana. After his course of training, he was sent by 
 his teacher to Aintab to labor there. He found the 
 place hard and the ignorant people dead to higher 
 things. In considerable discouragement he returned to 
 Adana to the presence of his venerable teacher. He 
 related his difficulties and told how dead the city was, 
 and ended with the statement, "Aintaby diriltmek Haz- 
 ret-i-Isya makhsonssdyr" — "Only Jesus Himself can 
 bring Aintab to life." The reply of his teacher was, 
 "You must go back to Aintab, and there yoti must be a 
 Jesus." He came, and has recalled the tens of thou- 
 sands to a living practice of the glorious faith of Islam. 
 
 The second is the well known incident in the 
 Moslem conquest of Damascus. When Khalid 
 took the city in 635, after a prolonged siege: — 
 
 One half of the wealth of the city passed to the con- 
 querors, and a tax was levied on the inhabitants who 
 did not become Moslems. The churches were divided, 
 one-half being given to Moslems and the other half being 
 left to the Christians. The Cathedral was arranged in 
 two parts. In one Christian worship was still carried 
 on, in the other that of Islam was conducted. This 
 
238 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 curious arrangement was continued for about fifty 
 years, when the Christian Congregation was ejected and 
 the whole building was used for Mohammedan worship. 
 All that was specially Christian in the ornaments and 
 decoration of the church was now removed; but over 
 the lintel of a door, long since closed, words, which still 
 remain, were left untouched, a silent prophecy of what 
 Damascus will vet see. The verse is taken from the 
 Septuagint version of Psalm cxlv. 13, with the addition 
 of the words "O Christ." It reads thus: "Thy King- 
 dom, O Christ, is a kingdom of all ages; and thy do- 
 minion is from generation to generation." For twelve 
 centuries and more the sound of Christian worship has 
 not been heard in what was once the Cathedral of St. 
 John the Baptist. (Sell, "The Four Rightly Guided 
 Khalifas," p. 20 f.) 
 
 But on its walls still stands the ancient and 
 prophetic word. 
 
 BIBLE READING 
 
 Tenth chapter of Romans. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 What have been the varying estimates of Moham- 
 med's character? 
 
 What is the difference between Mohammed's place 
 in Mohammedanism and Christ's place in Christianity? 
 
 Give some account of the life of Mohammed. 
 
 Did his character change after reaching Medina and 
 attaining success? 
 
 Did Mohammed use violence, and has Mohammedan- 
 ism relied on the sword or profited by the use of force? 
 
 What is your judgment of Mohammed's character 
 and influence? Was he a prophet? 
 
Syria — Mohammedans at Prayer 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 239 
 
 What are the foundations of Islam? Wherein is the 
 Moslem idea of the Koran different from the Christian 
 idea of the Bible? 
 
 What are the merits and defects of the Moslem idea 
 of God ? 
 
 What are the other main doctrines of Islam? Are 
 they Christian? Describe the five practical duties of 
 Islam. 
 
 Give some account of the spread of Mohammedan- 
 ism. How far does it now extend in the world? 
 
 Give some account of its schisms, and especially of 
 Behaism and Sufiism. 
 
 What have been the moral, social and political effects 
 of Mohammedanism? 
 
 What have been its greatest defects? 
 
 Point out the points of contrast and contact between 
 Mohammedanism and Christianity. 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Dods, "Mohammed, Buddha and Christ," Hodder &T 
 Stoughton, 1893. 
 
 Stobart, "Islam and its Founder," Society for Pro- 
 moting Christian Knowledge, 1877. 
 
 Muir, "The Life of Mahomet," Smith, Elder & Co., 
 1877. 
 
 Margoliouth, "Mohammed," Putnam & Son, 1905. 
 
 Sale, "The Koran," Warne & Co., 1891. W 
 
 Sell, "The Faith of Islam," Trubner & Co., 1896. 
 
 Zwemer, "Islam, a Challenge to Faith," Student Vol- 
 unteer Movement, 1907. 
 
 Gairdner, "The Reproach of Islam," British Young 
 People's Missionary Movement, 1909. 
 
 Haines, "Islam as a Missionary Religion," Society for 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1889. 
 
 Smith, "Mohammed and Mohammedanism," J. Mur- 
 ray, 1889. 
 
240 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Ameer Ali, Syed, "Islam," Archibald Constable & Co., 
 
 1906. 
 Shedd, "Islam and the Oriental Churches," Westminster 
 
 Press, 1904. 
 Wherry, "Islam and Christianity in the Far East," 
 
 Revell, 1907. 
 Malcolm, "Five Years in a Persian Town," E. P. 
 
 Dutton & Co., 1905. 
 Rice, "Crusaders of the Twentieth Century," Church 
 
 Missionary Society, 1910. 
 Macdonald, "Religious Life and Attitude in Islam," 
 
 Chicago University Press, 1909. 
 Van Sommer and Zwemer, "Our Moslem Sisters," 
 
 Revell, 1907. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WHAT THE CHRISTIANS OF ASIA THINK 
 OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WHAT THE CHRISTIANS OF ASIA THINK OF THE 
 NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 
 
 There are no men whose estimate of the non- ^ ^ e j uc jg ment 
 Christian religions and whose judgment on the of Most 
 questions involved in comparative religion are of Value on 
 more interest than the Christian men of Asia. Comparative 
 Many of them grew up in the older religions, or 
 in Islam, and after comparing their religions with 
 Christianity, not in any mere academic way, but 
 as a matter of life and death, came over into the 
 Christian faith. That change involved sacrifices 
 which only the most careful consideration and the 
 surest convictions on the issues involved could 
 support. It is true that the judgments of men 
 who have passed through such a radical expe- 
 rience are likely to be fearless and direct with 
 regard to those things which they have found 
 inadequate or untrue. But any qualifications on 
 account of their severity toward rejected positions 
 which may need to be made, are not as great as 
 the qualifications called for in our consideration 
 of the results of the theoretical study of compara- 
 tive religion by Western scholars, who have 
 lacked the contact with reality possessed by the 
 Christians of Asia. When all things have been 
 
244 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 taken into consideration, it remains true that no 
 opinions regarding the non-Christian religions 
 are more significant than those of the men who 
 have personally known both these religions and 
 Christianity, and in their own life and experience 
 have fairly and honestly compared them. 
 
 And even where the Christians of Asia have 
 not come out from the non-Christian religions, 
 but have grown up in the Christian Church in 
 the second, third or fourth generation of the new 
 churches which are rising wjth accelerating 
 rapidity all over Asia, their judgment is valuable 
 and interesting. They see the non-Christian 
 religions at first hand, in their actual fruitage as 
 well as in their ancient philosophy. They are 
 obliged to maintain their faith and to propagate 
 it, not in an atmosphere predominantly or nom- 
 inally Christian, but in the face of shrewd dis- 
 putations, or solid inertia, or critical scrutiny 
 both of profession and practice. What they 
 believe about Christianity they must be able to 
 vindicate against all that their neighbors of other 
 religions can say and are saying daily to them, 
 and what they believe about the other religions 
 they believe not because some one tells it to them 
 or they read it in books, but because they see it 
 and hear it daily. The problem of comparative 
 religion to them is not a problem for detached 
 occasional study. So far as the Christian spirit 
 is eager and alive in them, the questions raised 
 in the comparison of religions are their daily 
 breath. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 245 
 
 Accordingly, as bearing on the question of the Testimony 
 true character of the non-Christian religions and Sought, 
 of the relation of Christianity to these religions, 
 a series of questions was sent by the writer to 
 some of the leading Christian men in Asia. The 
 questions which were asked included the 
 following: — 
 
 1. Are the non-Christian religions or faiths 
 really "religions" or "faiths" in the same sense 
 in which these words are applied to Christianity? 
 
 2. What are the radical and essential differences 
 between Christianity and the non-Christian 
 religions? 
 
 3. How should Christianity be presented to the 
 non-Christian peoples? 
 
 4. Should the emphasis be laid upon the points 
 which Christianity has in common with the non- 
 Christian religions, or should these be made 
 merely the starting point in the effort to show 
 what Christianity alone offers? 
 
 5. Are the elements which Christianity has in 
 common with other religions as numerous and 
 extensive as is sometimes supposed, or are there 
 fundamental differences of principle which makes 
 these points of contact apparent rather than real? 
 
 6. What should be the proper attitude of Chris- 
 tian preachers and teachers and of organized 
 Christianity in Asia to the non-Christian reli- 
 gions ? 
 
 7. How far has Christianity as yet actually 
 touched the life and thought of any Asiatic land? 
 
246 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Mr. Meredith Townsend, in "Asia and Europe," 
 holds that Asia seems condemned by some fiat of 
 arrest; that while capable of being moved by self- 
 generated ideas, she seems to be inaccessible to 
 new forces from without ; that "something radical, 
 something unalterable and indestructible divides 
 the Asiatic from the European. . . . They are 
 fenced off from each other by an invisible, 
 impalpable but impassable wall," ("Asia and 
 Europe," pp. 36, 50, 150), and that Christianity 
 cannot hope, accordingly, to displace the non- 
 Christian religions and to penetrate the life of the 
 non-Christian world. What do you think of this 
 view ? 
 
 8. Is there such a racial chasm between the 
 East and the West, or is the common talk about 
 such a chasm groundless? Are there not many 
 Orientals and Occidentals who understand each 
 other, and who have more in common than either 
 Orientals or Occidentals have among themselves? 
 
 9. Is the Christianity, not of the Church nor 
 of the West, but of the New Testament, the final 
 and absolute religion for man, or is it to be 
 modified by contact with the non-Christian 
 religions? 
 
 Competent Answers to these questions were received from 
 
 Witnesses. Japan from Bishop Honda of the Methodist 
 
 Church, President K. Ibuka of the Meiji Gakuin, 
 
 Mr. Kozaki, ex-president of the Doshisha, Mr. 
 
 Ebina, one of the ablest leaders of the "advanced" 
 
. ASIA 1 S O WN OPINION 247 
 
 school, Mr. Uemura, editor of the "Fukuin 
 Shimpo, " president of a Japanese theological 
 school and one of the leading preachers in Japan, 
 and Justice Watanabe, head of the judiciary in 
 Korea; from Korea from Dr. Philip Jaisohn, one' 
 of the early Christian leaders there, now resident 
 in the United States, and from Pastor S. C. Kil 
 of Pyeng Yang; from China from two pastors in 
 Che-Kiang Province, and from Mr. Tsen, one of 
 Bishop Root's trusted clergy at Gan King; from 
 India from Prof. N. C. Mukerji of Allahabad, 
 formerly a Brahman and one of the most thought- 
 ful Christian men in northern India, and from 
 Professor Siraj ud Din of Lahore, a prominent 
 convert from Mohammedanism. It would have 
 been easy to increase the list, but these men were 
 notably representative. 
 
 It will suffice simply to present the views of 
 these correspondents, prefixing the name and 
 country of each, and supplementing their views 
 on one or two points by the addition of several 
 opinions from Christians in India who have come 
 over from Islam. 
 
 1. Are the non-Christian religions or faiths Are the non- 
 really "religions" or "faiths" in the same sense Christian 
 in which these words are applied to Christianity? R e h^ ons 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 If by religion is meant a personal relationship be- 
 tween God and man, the non-Christian religions of 
 Japan are not religions in the same sense as Christianity. 
 
 Religions ? 
 
248 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Ibtika, Japan: — 
 
 It all depends upon the definition of the term reli- 
 gion. If by religion is meant, as it is very often done, 
 the communion of man with God, or the selt-surrender 
 of the soul to God, that would exclude Buddhism, be- 
 cause Buddhism has no God. But in the broader sense 
 of the term. Buddhism is a religion as well as Islam or 
 Christianity. But if you mean by it the true or abso- 
 lute form of religion, the term could be applied only to 
 Christianity. 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 Confucianism can hardly be described as a religion at 
 all. Shintoism and Buddhism are not theistic ; and 
 while Shintoists and Buddhists offer prayers, they have 
 little or no sense of moral responsibility to the objects 
 of their worship. 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 The eastern part of Asia has really no religion in the 
 same sense in which the word is used with Christianity. 
 The upper or educated class profess Confucianism, which 
 is really a moral philosophy rather than a religion. 
 The uneducated believe in superstitions of various forms, 
 which can hardly be called religions. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 You can call them "teachings" (kyo), but not "Way 
 or Road" (To). A "teaching" has no power to 
 
 change men's minds. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 In the Eastern countries religion really means teach- 
 ing, and worship is of a later growth, or a corruption 
 or adaptation from the natural or popular religious 
 practices. Faith, in ethnic religions, is no more than a 
 philosophical idea, and not a statement of facts based 
 on divine revelation or trust in the Divine. 
 
 Che-Kiang- Pastors, China: — 
 
 The "world religions" are not religions in the true 
 sense, and are only useful for the present life, for they 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 240 
 
 come from men. The teachings of Jesus are from 
 heaven, and how can they be just the same as human 
 teachings? 
 
 While the world religions are religious, they lack the 
 reality of the salvation of Jesus. 
 
 Muker ji, India: — 
 
 In India to-day religion — I am speaking of Hindus 
 particularly — is largely ceremonialism, and the spiritual 
 intuitions of the people are in a dormant state and have 
 to be developed to make religion a personal relationship 
 with a living Creator. The philosophic system supply 
 its votaries with a species of religious culture which 
 cannot meet the above description of religion. The 
 nearest approach to religion in the Christian sense is 
 made, in Hinduism, by its Bhakti. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 (a) The other two Semitic Religions or Faiths, viz., 
 the Jewish and the Mohammedan, are religions or faiths 
 more or less in the same sense as Christianity. 
 
 (b) But the non-Semitic religions are not : (1) The 
 Semitic religions present God as a personal God, where- 
 as the non-Semitic religions present God, if at all, as an 
 immanent, pervading spirit. (2) The element of Faith 
 is foremost in the Christian religion and also more or 
 less in Judaism and Mohammedanism, but in the non- 
 Semitic religions it is quite secondary. 
 
 2. What are the radical and essential differ- Christianity 
 ences between Christianity and the non-Christian Radically 
 
 religions? Unlike Otter 
 
 -T7- i • T Religions. 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 The radical and essential differences between Chris- 
 tianity and the non-Christian religions of Japan are 
 these : — 
 
 1. In a sense it may be said that the non-Christian 
 religions have in them certain elements which may be 
 
250 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 regarded as coming from God ; but in Christianity God 
 reveals Himself with a clearness, a fullness and a 
 directness which makes it quite unique. The old dis- 
 tinction often made is true: in Christianity, God is seek- 
 ing men; in the non-Christian religions, man is seeking 
 God. 
 
 2. In the non-Christian religions, the truths as to 
 God, man and immortality are only dimly perceived and 
 set forth; in Christianity they are "brought to light." 
 
 3. While the word salvation is used by both Shin- 
 toists and Buddhists, what is meant is very different 
 from what is meant by it as it is used by Christians. In 
 Christianity, salvation means deliverance from sin and 
 its consequences and all that flows from fellowship with 
 God in Christ. In Shintoism, salvation means chiefly 
 deliverance from the power of evil spirits; and in Bud- 
 dhism, deliverance from the ills supposedly inherent in 
 conscious existence. This will serve also to illustrate 
 the care to be taken not to be misled by the use of 
 words; and the same caution is applicable to isolated 
 passages in Shinto and Buddhist writings. 
 
 4. Christianity meets both the religious and the 
 ethical needs of man; and it does so perfectly. The 
 non-Christian religions of Japan meet those needs very 
 imperfectly, and it is a significant fact that each may be 
 said in general to occupy a field of its own. I write 
 very briefly, but in brief this is true. Shintoism as a 
 religion has to do with the supernatural chiefly in its 
 relations to the things of this life. Accordingly, when 
 a child is born it is taken to a Shinto temple (never to a 
 Buddhist one) and is committed for protection and 
 guidance in life to a Shinto god. Buddhism, on the 
 other hand, has to do chiefly with the future, with exist- 
 ence beyond the grave. That is why the Buddhist 
 temples are so generally frequented by the old. They 
 visit them in preparation for death; to pray for salva- 
 tion (the salvation of Buddhism) in the future. (It is 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 251 
 
 only since 1873, when the government separated Shin- 
 toism and Buddhism as religions, that funerals have 
 been conducted by Shinto priests.) Confucianism, as 
 you know, confines itself to rules for individual and social 
 conduct ; and as to the supernatural, is purely agnostic. 
 Under the Tokugawa regime, this fact (that Shintoism, 
 Buddhism and Confucianism occupy different fields, and 
 that no one of them alone is sufficient) was officially 
 recognized ; and the attempt was made to combine them. 
 Families were required to be connected with both Shinto 
 and Buddhist temples ; and the instruction in ethics was 
 to be Confucian. It frequently happens also that one 
 who in all his thinking is a Confucianist will have in 
 his house both Shinto and Buddhist shrines. From this 
 it will be seen that (to say nothing more) the non- 
 Christian religions of Japan form a piece of curious 
 patchwork ; and that this fact alone radically differenti- 
 ates them from the Christianity of Christ and the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 Buddhism, in its philosophical form, is either pan- 
 theistic or atheistic and, in its popular form, polythe- 
 istic, while Christianity is theistic from beginning to 
 end. The Buddhistic idea of man, also, is radically 
 different from that of Christianity. The transmigration 
 of the soul is one of its essential ideas of man, with all 
 it implies. So are the conceptions of sin "and future 
 life. It would not be difficult to mention other points 
 of difference. But the fundamental difference between 
 Buddhism and Christianity, I think, is this, — Buddhism 
 is a system of metaphysical and ethical ideas and prin- 
 ciples. According to Christianity, God has an eternal 
 purpose which he is carrying out. To carry this out he 
 has in fact manifested Himself in history. In His in- 
 carnation, the cross, the redemption, the ascension of 
 Christ, He has entered into union with man, met the 
 problem of sin, raised man to a new life. The believer 
 
252 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 enters into union with God in Christ, and so will have 
 a share in the eternal glory. There is nothing like that 
 in Buddhism. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 The non-Christian religions are ethnic and therefore 
 imperfect; Christianity is a religion for man as man, 
 and is perfect. The non-Christian religions have come 
 to be rather systems of philosophy or ethics ; Chris- 
 tianity is a life. As a life it enters humanity; and is a 
 power progressively delivering humanity from igno- 
 rance, superstition, sin and its consequences, and bring- 
 ing it more and more to the mind of Christ. The non- 
 Christian religions belong rather to the past and have 
 finished their work. That work Christianity completes; 
 and to it belong the present and the future. 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 The radical and essential differences between Chris- 
 tianity and the non-Christian religions of Japan are 
 these: (1) The non-Christian religions are pantheistic 
 or polytheistic. (2) They have in them practically 
 nothing that corresponds'to the revelation of God in 
 Christ. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 In a word, the difference between the perfect and the 
 imperfect, the complete and the defective. The non- 
 Christian religions see in a mirror darkly and dis- 
 tortedly; in Christianity life and immortality are 
 brought to light. 
 
 Watanabe, Japan: — 
 
 The radical difference between Christianity and non- 
 Christian religions seems to consist in their principal 
 objects of worship. I do not think that there is any 
 religion which interprets our God Jehovah as clearly 
 and perfectly as does Christianity. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 25b" 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 To speak in general, the great difference between 
 Christianity and non-Christian religions is that in the 
 one religion and oolitics are distinct or rather that 
 Christianity is the more predominant in the life of the 
 Christian, whereas in the other, Erastianism. The one is 
 active, growing, developing, philosophical, ideal yet 
 equally practical, stimulating; the other inactive, 
 stationary, too philosophical and idealistic and abstract 
 and false to be practicable. The fossilized ideas or 
 religion may be galvanized at times, but cannot be a 
 continuous force for good, hence easily corruptible. 
 
 Che-Kiang Pastors, China: — 
 
 The religion of Jesus, being from heaven, has saving 
 grace for body and soul, proclaiming redemption from 
 sin and eternal happiness. This constitutes the great 
 difference between it and the world religions. 
 
 The religion of Jesus has power in itself, and when it 
 finds a lodgment in the heart of a believer, he is enabled 
 to take pleasure in the will of God. 
 
 The emphasis is put by Christianity on atonement for 
 sin and redemption, while other religions put the 
 emphasis on meritorious conduct. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 Christianity offers redemption from sin, the salva- 
 tion of the soul, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and 
 regeneration — the giving of a new life. Other religions 
 teach good conduct but are lacking in these essentials. 
 
 Mukerji, India: — 
 
 It is very difficult to point out the essential differ- 
 ences between Hinduism and Christianity, as the former 
 is not a system but a congeries of beliefs with many 
 strands in it, — such as Vedic, Philosophic, and Puranic 
 Hinduism, — each having its distinctive doctrines. The 
 only doctrine that may be said to be common to all 
 
254 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 these divisions is Karma and Transmigration. The 
 essential differences are most apparent in Philosophic 
 Hinduism. The root ideas here are totally different 
 from Christianity. God is impersonal, the end of man 
 is absorption in the Divine; sin is an illusion. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 (a) As regards the Semitic Religions: (1) Judaism 
 is not Moses, nor Mohammedanism Mohammed, in the 
 sense that Christianity is Christ. (2) Law came through 
 Moses and we may add (with due reverence to the 
 prophets of the Old Testament) also through Moham- 
 med, but Grace came through Jesus Christ. (3) Both 
 Judaism and Mohammedanism emphasize God as Power 
 as distinguished from Love. Hence the Cross is God as 
 weakness to the Jew and the Mohammedan, but God as 
 power to the regenerated soul. (4) Judaism has a 
 Supernatural basis ; Christianity is Supernatural through 
 and through. Mohammedanism admits the Supernatural 
 in its record ot history, but in its Logical sequence 
 approaches the Natural or the purely Rational. 
 
 (b) As regards the non-Semitic Religions: (1) They 
 emphasize God as Wisdom (or rather human wisdom) 
 rather than Faith. They are, according to their popular 
 acceptation, nothing but systems of ritualism and 
 according to their highest interpretation primarily 
 systems of philosophy (I am keeping chiefly Hinduism 
 in view) rather than religions of Life. They are pre- 
 eminently theoretical rather than practical. They appeal 
 primarily to the Intellect, whereas Christianity appeals 
 in the first instance to the Will. Hence the Cro 
 foolishness to the Greek and the Hindu, whereas it is 
 God as wisdom to the believer. (2) The absence of the 
 idea of God as personality in the non-Semitic religions 
 has alreadv been referred to. 
 
Japan — An Idol Procession 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 255 
 
 3. How should Christianity be presented to How 
 the non-Christian peoples? Present 
 
 Tsen, China:— Christianity 
 
 to non- 
 Christianity should be presented to the non-Christian ^, . . . 
 n ■.. , r. „ Christians? 
 
 peoples not as at flat contradiction or at defiance to all 
 
 the religions already in existence, but as acknowledging 
 and approving all the good that is in them. And that, 
 while perfect in itself, Christianity seeks to perfect all 
 that they are trying to do to reveal to them the mys- 
 teries of God which they are seeking after and soothe 
 their hearts. That the Christian religion is a religion 
 of mercy, of the only God and of salvation by Jesus 
 Christ only ; meeting all the social, moral and spiritual 
 wants and longings of all ages and climes, healing all 
 ''groans" and giving hold to all the gropings after Truth 
 and Good, and yea, God. 
 
 Che-Kiang Pastors, China: — 
 
 Start with what men already believe, and slowly lead 
 through into the truth. 
 
 Aim first of all to bring men to an appreciation of 
 their own sin and then present the offer of salvation 
 through Christ. 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 In presenting Christianity to non-Christian people, I 
 believe the teachings of Jesus inspired in the New Test- 
 ament should be taught first and emphasized. Of 
 course, the missionary must not only teach them by 
 words, but he must impress them with his Christlike 
 life in private, as well as public. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 As offering redemption from sin and everlasting life. 
 In order to arouse to a sense of sin and to acceptance of 
 salvation. As showing that this is a condemned world. 
 There is no power in presenting anything else. This it 
 is which has had power in winning all the Korean 
 Christians. 
 
256 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Should Dif- 
 ferences or 
 Resemblance 
 be 
 Emphasized ? 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 The stereotyped, but, all the same, the right answer 
 to this question is : Not by sermons, not by preaching 
 only, but by Life. One must live Christ. The head 
 has been reached in many cases but not the heart. The 
 experience of converts to Christianity bears out the 
 truth that it was something in the life of a Christian 
 teacher or preacher, or friend or acquaintance, that led 
 them to accept Christ. 
 
 4. Most of the correspondents merged the 
 third question in the fourth. Should the em- 
 phasis be laid upon the points which Christianity 
 has in common with the non-Christian religions, 
 or should these be made merely the starting point 
 in the effort to show what Christianity alone 
 offers? 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 In presenting Christianity to the Japanese, emphasis 
 should be laid upon the truths distinctive of it, rather 
 than upon those which it holds in common with Shin- 
 toism, Buddhism and Confucianism. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 The points which the non-Christian religions of 
 Japan have in common with Christianity should be 
 taken merely as starting points. My own endeavor is 
 to show that Christianity fulfills the truths contained in 
 the non-Christian religions; and I am careful to note 
 both the resemblances and the differences. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 The truths which the non-Christian religions of 
 Japan have in common with Christianity should be 
 taken only as stepping stones to what is clearer and 
 higher in Christianity. The example to follow is Paul 
 on Mars Hill. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 257 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 In presenting Christianity to Shintoists, Buddhists 
 and Confucianists, the points in common should be 
 taken simply as starting points from which to lead to 
 the distinctive truths of Christianity. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 In presenting Christianity to non-Christian people 
 who know little or nothing about it, it is eminently wise 
 to find some points which the Christian and non-Chris- 
 tian hold in common. An experienced preacher in- 
 stinctively seeks such points, especially when he stands 
 before a prejudiced or hostile audience. But that 
 should be only the starting point in the effort to show 
 how different Christianity is from all that they have 
 believed or been taught. If the chief object were to 
 bring out the essential oneness of Christianity with 
 other religions, it would be hardly worth while to send 
 missionaries to non-Christian lands. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 The things in common should be made as the start- 
 ing point, the emphasis should be laid on the mercy of 
 God, the Heavenly Father, and salvation from sin by 
 Jesus Christ. At the same time, though there are many 
 points in common, theirs are but fragmentary or defi- 
 cient, or even a semblance of the truth, and need to be 
 purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The ethnic reli- 
 gions and heathen philosophies have their work and 
 worth in the building of the Temple of God and Christ 
 comes to be its Headstone, yea its completion. 
 
 Che-Kiang Pastors, China: — 
 
 Of course you should point out the features in which 
 Christianity and other religions agree, but the more 
 important thing is to emphasize the points of difference. 
 The preacher should put the emphasis on the points of 
 difference between Christianity and the world religions, 
 so as to cause the hearer to compare the true and the 
 false and discover the difference. 
 
258 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 I believe the missionary should point out strongly the 
 differences between Christianity and other religions 
 rather than to lay emphasis on the points which may 
 exist in common with them. All religions or moral 
 philosophies have some points in common, but com- 
 paratively in minor points, with Christianity. The 
 fundamental or cardinal principle of Christianity is the 
 belief of Jesus as the only Saviour of the world, through 
 whom alone we can reach our God and His Kingdom. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — ■ 
 
 There is no power in presenting the common 
 points, — one should preach the distinctive doctrines of 
 the salvation of the soul and redemption from sin. One 
 should teach the Scriptures, not the sayings of Confu- 
 cius. The truths which the people do not know from 
 the non-Christian religions are what bring power and 
 inspiration. However, one can often teach of sin by 
 reference to the fact that they have not obeyed even the 
 moral teachings of Confucius. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 That the unsympathetic attitude of the preachers of 
 Christianity towards the followers of other religions is 
 certainly un-Christian, in so far as it shows lack of love, 
 is clear. But, on the other hand, there is also danger 
 of making too much of the points of resemblance 
 between the Christian and the non-Christian faiths. 
 There is fear of degenerating into a spirit of compro- 
 mise (as is evident in the case of many professed 
 ibelievers) and finally accepting an unscriptural and 
 centirely irrational eclecticism. There is danger of 
 ;losing sight of the fact that Fulfillment and Exclusive- 
 ness are both fundamental attributes of Christianity. 
 "While Christ is the fulfillment of the desire of all 
 nations, He is also exclusively so. "No man knoweth 
 who the Father is but the Son and he to whom the Son 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 259 
 
 will reveal Him. (Matt. xi. 27.) We should take the 
 resemblances only as a starting point/ hut ever empha- 
 size the peculiarities and excellences of the truth 1 in' 
 Christ, and carefully avoid giving- people the- impression ' 
 that there is truth in other religions evert" asSve-' find' it 1 
 in Christianity. 
 
 5. Are the elements which Christianity has in Are tke- 
 common with other religions as numerous and Differences' 
 extensive as is sometimes supposed, or are there Fundamental, 
 fundamental differences of principle which make 
 these points of contact apparent rather than real? 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 The points in common between Christianity and the 
 non-Christian religions of Japan are less numerous than 
 is supposed by some ; and many of them are more 
 apparent than real. That this is so, and must be so, is 
 evident when one considers that no one of these non- 
 Christian religions is theistic, and that their ethical 
 teaching is utilitarian rather than religious in its princi- 
 ples and sanctions. 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 There is a tendency among Western scholars to put 
 too much stress upon the resemblances of Christianity to 
 non-Christian religions. The points in common are not 
 so numerous as is supposed by some ; and the differ- 
 ences are so fundamental that the resemblances are 
 often more apparent than real. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 There are many points of resemblance, for the non- 
 Christian religions recognize the existence of something 
 supernatural, .and that this something is closely related 
 to man. But the differences are numerous and funda- 
 mental. To illustrate very briefly : — 
 
 (1) Shintoism. In Japan bands of pilgrims are often 
 seen on their way to sacred places. The word for pil- 
 
260 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 grimage means wayfaring worship ; and each pilgrim 
 bears written on his hat the words, "Two going to- 
 gether" (*. e., the pilgrim and the pilgrim's god). In 
 the old Shintoism, the idea of sin as an offense against 
 God is prominent. (The word for sin is composed of 
 two words; one means disquietude, and the other self. 
 Such a word has in it the ideas of personal responsi- 
 bility, a troubled conscience, guilt. Evidence of the 
 same kind appears in Shinto prayers.) Still it must be 
 said that even in the old and purer Shintoism sin is 
 conceived of rather as ceremonial defilement. One is 
 reminded of the Jewish conceptions of sin which the 
 prophets condemned. If Shintoism had followed its 
 true bent it might have approached the deeper convic- 
 tion of sin as moral evil ; and therefore, from that point 
 of view, there are occasions when the Christian preacher 
 may properly call upon the Japanese to seek out the old 
 ways. But the true development of Shintoism was 
 checked and set back by the invasion of Buddhism and 
 Confucianism. Still even in the Shintoism of to-day 
 there is a strong element of reverence. (Yet even this 
 statement must be qualified, because it is a reverence 
 whose roots are fed rather by the aesthetic than by the 
 ethical. I 
 
 (2) Buddhism. The philosophy underlying Buddhism 
 k pantheistic ; and this of necessity differentiates it 
 fundamentally from Christianity. The world is full of 
 sorrow and suffering, with ignorance for their cause; 
 but the sense of sin in Buddhism as moral evil is very 
 feeble, and there is little or no feeling of personal 
 responsibility to God. Man is groping for a way of 
 escape from the ills of life. Yet there are in Buddhism 
 striking resemblances to Christian truths. At times 
 pantheism retreats into the background. Amida and the 
 goddess Kwannon are both conceived of as personal ; 
 and they are both abundant in mercy and ready to save. 
 But if the resemblances are striking, no less are the 
 differences. The salvation is not a salvation from sin. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 261 
 
 One could not say of Amida, And if ye call on Amida 
 as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth 
 according to each man's work, pass the time of your 
 sojourning in fear. The mercy of Kwannon is the 
 mercy of motherliness, a motherliness too indulgent 
 ever to punish. Neither Amida nor Kwannon could 
 say, Be ye holy ; for I am holy. And what must never 
 be forgotten is this : Amida and Kwannon are purely 
 subjective creations ; mere apotheoses of what is craved 
 after by the heart of Buddhism. In Christ we have the 
 objective revelation in history of the holiness and love 
 of God. Amida and Kwannon are only cries for light ; 
 Christ is the Light of the World. 
 
 (3) Confucianism. Properly speaking, Confucianism 
 is not a religion. Religiously considered, it is thorough- 
 going agnosticism ; ethically considered, it is equally 
 thoroughgoing utilitarianism. If a Confucianist is 
 religious, it is not because of his Confucianism but in 
 spite of it. There are Confucianists who are also 
 Shintoists ; and there are Christians who are also Con- 
 fucianists. But Confucianism as Confucianism is secu- 
 larism. It boasts that it is practical ; and it is practical, 
 — so practical that it quenches the desire and atrophies 
 the mind for the higher things. It does not seek the 
 things that are above. It minds earthly things, and 
 finds its kingdom of heaven in politics. The Con- 
 fucianist may, and often does, have a vague conscious- 
 ness of the Great Companion ; but it is because he is a 
 man, not because he is a Confucianist. The American 
 Confucius was Benjamin Franklin; and Poor Richard 
 without the Sermon on the Mount, year in and year out 
 for line upon line and precept upon precept, would 
 make America another China. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the Confucianist is more 
 receptive of Christianity than the Buddhist ; and refer- 
 ence is made to the progress of Christianity in Tosa as 
 compared with its progress in the parts of Japan where 
 Buddhist is dominant. But Satsuma and Choshu, which 
 
262 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 united with Tosa in the Restoration, were quite as 
 strongly Confucian as Tosa; and yet there has been in 
 them no corresponding progress of Christianity. On 
 the other hand, Christianity has made good progress in 
 Nagoya, which is a center of Buddhism. The notable 
 progress in Tosa is due to two causes combined. The 
 people were open minded, progressive and ready to 
 receive the things of the West; and in the beginning of 
 the gospel in Tosa a little group of men of influence 
 accepted Christianity in sincerity and truth. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 The points in common are numerous and extensive; 
 and there are also fundamental differences. To illus- 
 trate : — 
 
 (1) In Shintoism, especially in the tenets of the 
 Kurozumi Sect, God is conceived of as a father and 
 men as his children. There is a life eternal which is 
 thought of as divine. But it should be said that its 
 conception of God, while clearly not deistic, does not 
 distinguish sharply between theism and pantheism. 
 
 (2) As to Buddhism : Philosophically the Jodo Sect 
 may properly be described as pantheistic ; but in fact it 
 regards Amida as a person. While it recognizes other 
 Buddhas, Amida is supreme — the Buddha of Buddhas; 
 and may be worshiped to the exclusion of all others. 
 To this extent, therefore, it may be said to be non- 
 polytheistic. The Jodo Sect teaches also that human 
 nature is depraved, and that man cannot save himself. 
 He can be saved only through the mercy and merits of 
 Amida. To this, however, it should be added that 
 while Christianity lays stress upon sin in its relation to 
 righteousness, in Jodoism stress is laid rather upon 
 suffering as the effect of the transgression of eternal 
 law. In Jodoism it may also be fairly said that there is 
 no sense of personal responsibility to a personal God. 
 
 The teaching of the Zen Sect is radically different. 
 According to its tenets, the original nature of man is 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 263 
 
 truth and goodness ; and the duty of man is to return to 
 that original nature. This return is accomplished by 
 contemplation and discipline. 
 
 The Shingon Sect is purely pantheistic. Every man 
 in essence is Buddha. 
 
 From this it will be seen that the Buddhist Sects are 
 widely separated among themselves. But all Buddhists 
 claim that fundamentally all the sects are in harmony. 
 
 (3) As to Confucianism : If the essential element in 
 religion is a personal relation between man and a per- 
 sonal God, it may be said in general that Confucianism 
 is not a religion; though there are Confucianists who 
 worship a personal God and are deeply religious. But 
 Confucianism has its foundation in the moral order of 
 the universe ; and its end is the establishment of what 
 may be compared to the Kingdom of God upon earth. 
 It therefore lays emphasis upon the ethical rather than 
 upon the more strictly religious ; and its teachings 
 should be compared with the ethical rather than with 
 the religious elements in Christianity. 
 
 As a rule the Confucian mind is much more easy of 
 access to Christianity than the Buddhist mind ; and the 
 explanation is that Confucianism is far more ethical 
 than Buddhism. The Confucianist honors righteous- 
 ness ; the Buddhist is far more given to seeking an 
 excuse for unrighteousness. A standing proof of the 
 greater accessibility of Christianity to the Confucius 
 mind is to be found in the progress of Christianity in 
 such Prefectures as Kochi, Okayama and Gumma, as 
 compared with its progress on the West coast where 
 Buddhism has long been predominant. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 In Japan, I think, the question chiefly relates to Bud- 
 dhism, because all will agree that there is very little 
 likeness between Christianity and Shinto or Confu- 
 cianism, unless it be in the case of Shinto the emphasis 
 laid upon the purity of heart, and in the case of Con- 
 
264 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 fucianism the great importance attached to benevolence 
 and justice. But these teachings are rather common to 
 all ethical systems or religions, so that they cease to be 
 points in common between any two particular religions. 
 
 Now to come back to Buddhism, it is certainly true 
 that there are some striking resemblances between Bud- 
 dhism and Christianity, especially Latin Christianity. 
 When I was in Rome some years ago and went with my 
 friend, Bishop Honda, to see the great cathedral of St. 
 Peter's, as soon as we entered it I said, Why this is just 
 like a Buddhist temple. Not only the shrines, the 
 images, the candles, the incense and the priests chant- 
 ing their prayers and the people bowing before the 
 images, but the whole atmosphere very strongly 
 reminded me of the Buddhist temple and its ritual in 
 Japan. In fact I did not for the moment feel as though 
 I were in a Christian place of worship. 
 
 I could also cite a number of striking resemblances 
 between the legend of Gautama and the life of Christ, 
 which are well known to all scholars. But numerous 
 and striking as they are, these resemblances are resem- 
 blances only. There are fundamental differences which 
 make these two religions essentially different. For 
 instance, Buddhism knows nothing about the Creator 
 of the Universe nor of the Father in heaven. They 
 have different manifestations or personifications like the 
 goddess of mercy and the god of the immovable, but a 
 personal God in the Christian sense of the word is 
 entirely foreign to Buddhism. Consequently, the Bud- 
 dhist conception of sin is very different from that of 
 Christianity. There is no idea of transgressing the holy 
 law of God. Hence, there is no atonement, no cross in 
 Buddhism. It is only a process of enlightenment, 
 awakening to one's true self, whatever that may be. 
 
 It is true that one of the Buddhist sects teaches some- 
 thing like salvation by faith, — faith in Amida Buddha ; 
 and the followers of this sect say that there is no essen- 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 265 
 
 tial difference between their religion and Christianity, 
 which is still in its imperfect stage of evolution, etc. 
 But Buddhist scholars are generally agreed that the 
 Shin sect is not true Buddhism. Salvation by faith in 
 Amida is quite foreign to the teaching of Sakya-muni. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 The sparks of the same truth are in all religions, 
 Christian or those that base on ethics and philosophy. 
 The points of community are, if any, on the moral 
 side. But at the foundation of all resemblances there 
 is this essential difference, that all ethnic religions 
 ultimately aim for self, whereas the religion of Christ, 
 like Christ, ultimately aims for atonement of self, or 
 better humanity, with God, by Christ. 
 
 Che-Kiang Pastors, China: — 
 
 Although there are points of similarity, yet the 
 similarity is confined chiefly to the merely human ideas. 
 In reality the likeness is largely a seeming likeness 
 between things which are actually different. 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 I believe there are many religions other than Chris- 
 tianity that expound the same or similar moral prin- 
 ciples as the Christian churches. In fact, some accept 
 the Old Testament in its entirety as the inspired truth, 
 but that alone does not make them Christian. The 
 foundation of Christianity is the New Testament, which 
 distinguishes it from all other religions. The belief in, 
 and obedience of, the Ten Commandments or the 
 Golden Rule alone is not sufficient to classify a man as 
 a Christian. He must believe Jesus as his only Saviour 
 before he can be called a Christian. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 Rules of conduct are often the same, but the motive 
 is different, fear being the main motive. Salvation by 
 good works is the teaching of non-Christian religions. 
 
266' THE LIGHT OF TH£ WORLD 
 
 The Proper 
 Attitude of 
 Christianity 
 Toward 
 the non- 
 Christian 
 Religions. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 They are not as numerous as' they are sometimes 
 made out, especially with the non-Semitic religions, and 
 even between Christianity and Mohammedanism there 
 are fundamental differences. 
 
 6. What should be the proper attitude of 
 Christian preachers and teachers and of organized 
 Christianity in Asia to the non-Christian reli- 
 gions? Two of the correspondents, Justice 
 VVatanabe and Professor Mukerji, combined their 
 answers to several of the questions, and their very 
 thoughtful and interesting opinions are set forth 
 under this sixth question. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 In general, I should say the attitude should be always 
 friendly and kindly, but firm; that is to say, while, as 
 ■fellow countrymen, we will willingly co-operate in our 
 efforts to elevate the morality and civic virtues of the 
 people, we should firmly hold our position as Christians 
 and by every legitimate means try to convince them of 
 the truth of Christianity. More than one attempt has 
 been made to form a sort of alliance between Buddhists 
 and Christians. But I have never favored it nor have 
 they amounted to anything. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 The attitude of Christian preachers and teachers 
 toward the non-Christian religions of Japan should 
 be benevolently belligerent, sympathetically suppressive. 
 
 There are missionaries who anticipate a development 
 of Christian theology in Japan peculiar to Japan. That 
 there will be such a development is not unlikely; but 
 it will not be accelerated or aided by an attempt on the 
 part of missionaries to accommodate themselves or 
 their teachings to the non-Christian religions. They 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 267 
 
 will best serve the cause of Christian theology in Japan 
 by being themselves ; by teaching the Christianity which 
 they hold as they themselves hold it; and by allowing 
 Christian theology to develop historically and naturally. 
 Christian missionaries are not called upon to play the 
 part of either mediators or eclectics. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 What is true in the non-Christian religions should, 
 be willingly recognized ; and the effort made to lead the 
 mind up to what is higher and better in Christianity. 
 The attitude of Christianity should be that of an elder 
 to a younger brother. 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 There are elements of truth in the non-Christian 
 religions of Japan, and the Christian teacher should 
 approach them in the spirit of charity. But he should 
 be firm in his adherence to the truths that are peculiar 
 to Christianity. In referring to Judaism, Christ said, "I 
 am not come to destroy but to fulfill." As far as may 
 be possible, the Christian teacher in Japan should be 
 guided by His example. 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 The Christian preacher and teacher should be respect- 
 ful in his attitude towards the non-Christian religions, 
 but careful not to compromise the distinctive truths of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 In order to be true to their belief and their profes- 
 sion, the Christian teachers should point out intelli- 
 gently and truthfully the falsity or errors of other 
 religions to those whom they desire to convert, but at 
 the same time offensive attack on other religions is liable 
 to cau.se more harm than good. Therefore, a mission- 
 ary vom&t be a trained diplomat as well as a faithful 
 servant oi the Churgh., 
 
268 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 Avoid disputings and contention. Be friendly and 
 courteous and bear witness by good works and love in 
 the teaching of truth as truth, and not as arguments for 
 the intellectual victory over an antagonist. Rely upon 
 the application of the truth by the Holy Spirit, without 
 argument and dispute. Refer to one's own past experi- 
 ence in becoming enlightened as to the error of former 
 belief and as to the truth of Christianity. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 The proper attitude to the non-Christian religions in 
 Asia should be to have all sympathy with them. Give 
 full recognition to the good that is in them; show, if 
 necessary, their wants, defects and corruptions 7 duly 
 honor their founders and leaders; help along, if possible 
 and necessary, and wisely, the pure charity they do or 
 attempt. 
 
 Che-Kiang Pastors, China: — 
 
 Show the unreliableness of the world religions, but 
 present the truth sympathetically so as not to embarrass 
 or anger the hearer. 
 
 Watanabe, Japan: — 
 
 With regard to the question whether it is advisable to 
 dwell at length on points in common between Chris- 
 tianity and other religions — whether a great deal of this 
 community is not apparent rather than real — and 
 whether real religious progress is not made by a 
 process of triumphant absorption, I am inclined to 
 think that the Japanese adage, "Everybody regards his 
 own deity as most holy" (it corresponds to the Western 
 proverb, "Everyone thinks his own geese swans"), 
 seems to be a pertinent observation. 
 
 As we Christians believe that Christianity is a divine 
 revelation from the Creator of the universe and is the 
 only religion of the world, so Buddhists believe in their 
 creed. We firmly believe in Christ's own words that 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 269 
 
 He is the only Son of God ; Buddhists have as deep a 
 faith in Sakya's proud declaration, "Throughout heaven 
 and earth I alone am holy." 
 
 The teachings of Confucius may not properly be 
 called a religion in the true sense of the word, but from 
 ancient times they have exercised influences in China 
 and Japan amounting almost to that emanating from a 
 religion. Confucius says, "Study of heresy begets 
 nothing but harm, " and Confucians naturally want to 
 exclude all teachings but those of Confucius. There 
 is a famous work dealing with the matter entitled 
 "Bukkotsu Hyo" (Japanese pronunciation), and written 
 by a Chinese literary man of the Tang Dynasty. I 
 presume that a similar view is held by adherents of 
 all other religions. 
 
 Therefore, if there were a people possessed of no 
 religious faith at all, he who desired to preach a certain 
 religion to them would not need to dwell upon points 
 of harmony of that religion with others, nor upon those 
 in which they differed. He can at once adopt an atti- 
 tude of triumphant absorption in his intercourse with 
 them. When, however, he wants to inspire a foreign 
 faith into a people already possessed of one faith or 
 other, it will not be enough for him merely to preach 
 his own faith alone. 
 
 I may illustrate this fact with a supposititious law- 
 suit. Let us suppose that the plaintiff in an action 
 insists upon some theory while the defendant maintains 
 another, both being equally desirous of a victory. Let 
 us further suppose that the judge in charge of the case 
 thinks that both theories are untenable and has made 
 up his mind that his own theory must be produced in 
 order to do justice to their claims and bring them on 
 good terms again. With this end in view, the judge 
 would surely only lay himself open to disappointment 
 did he merely set forth his own theory and naively 
 counsel the litigants to readjust their differences on the 
 
270 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 basis of his theory. For each of the litigants is equally 
 confident that his own assertion is correct, and would 
 refuse to do as bidden. Then what is done by the judge 
 before pronouncing his decision? Will he not point 
 out in what respect the theories of the litigants agree, 
 in what respect they disagree, what points of the theory 
 maintained by the plaintiff are just for such and such a 
 reason, what points of the theory of the defendant are 
 unreasonable because of such and such a case, and 
 therefore that what they ought to do is such and such a 
 thing? If he did so, the litigants would probably accept 
 his ruling. 
 
 On the contrary, if the judge abruptly gave a dog- 
 matic judgment and stated that whether the litigants 
 were disposed to obey his dictum or not his own 
 opinion was such as he had given, the difference would 
 not be readjusted. The result would be not only mis- 
 fortune to the litigants but also fai.'ure for the judge in 
 his efforts. Are not religious matters similar to the case 
 above mentioned? 
 
 I do not think that Christianity can be revealed to 
 non-Christians in any better way than by showing it in 
 its true and sound form. I believe that it will be of no 
 use wantonly to decorate it with human intellect. There 
 are some people who insist that Christianity ought to be 
 nationalized in the country Christians are desirous of 
 evangelizing, but I think that such an opinion is not 
 sound. 
 
 I deem it poor preaching to place too much stress 
 upon details of Christian doctrines, and incidentally 
 render people unable to catch the fundamental and 
 indispensable spirit of our religion. I think we find the 
 spirit of this principle clearly set forth by Christ in St. 
 Mark, Chapter 2d, Verse 27. ... I see no necessity to 
 dwell continually upon points in common between Chris- 
 tianity and non-Christian religions. 
 
 Salvation is the life of Christianity; the so-called 
 redemption of the world of Buddhism appears also to be 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 271 
 
 its life. I cannot readily enumerate the points in com- 
 mon between Christianity and other religions, but I do 
 not think it is safe to say that there is no fundamental 
 community of principle, but only an apparent one. . . . 
 It is most important for Christians to hold impartial 
 views towards non-Christian religions. 
 
 Mukerji, India: — 
 
 The Christian preacher, if he has a gospel to preach, 
 must believe in the absolute character of Christianity, 
 and not that it is merely one of many religions. But at 
 the same time, if there is a providential order of the 
 world and its history not meaningless, then Christianity 
 must have a satisfying answer to the question of its 
 relationship to the other religions; it cannot be an 
 isolated phenomenon in the history of religions. This 
 relationship is not one of similarities only, or of differ- 
 ences only, but one of development. Belief in the 
 former takes away from the uniqueness of Christianity, 
 and belief in the latter militates against the unity of 
 history. But the theory of development preserves both 
 these traits for Christianity. Christianity, by th« way, 
 has nothing to fear from the new Science of Religions; 
 a truly scientific study of it will only discover the 
 uniqueness of Christianity. Sometimes a difference is 
 sought to be made out in Christian work between the 
 method of development and that of contrasts — the 
 pointing out of differences. But it is an artificial one, 
 the latter being included in the former, as all develop- 
 ment is the bringing out of something new. A prima 
 facie case for this difference may indeed be made out 
 from the present partiality on the part of the upholders 
 of the method of development to the emphasizing of 
 similarities as against differences. But this is not at all 
 surprising, as we always find progress in history to be a 
 swinging between extremes — and the pendulum has 
 indeed at the present moment swung to the former 
 extreme, that of emphasizing similarities. 
 
272 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 For this, however, there are ample historical reasons. 
 In the first flush of Western culture in Eastern lands, 
 everything Eastern was decried and nothing good was 
 found in them ; the good and the bad being blent in 
 one common condemnation. But soon the inevitable 
 reaction came with the birth of nationalism in Eastern 
 lands ; and Christianity herself helped it on by putting 
 the non-Christian faiths on their mettle, by making 
 them slough off the bad and throwing them more and 
 more on the really sound in their religious life. People 
 began asking themselves the question, can a self-respect- 
 ing nation cut itself off entirely from its past and dis- 
 card its religious inheritance altogether? Has the past 
 no meaning for us, but is only a madman's tale full of 
 sound and fury signifying nothing? It was to meet 
 such a mood as this that the method of development 
 came into vogue in Christian work, replacing the old 
 method of wholesale abuse and supercilious criticism. 
 One aspect of this method — that of pointing out sim- 
 ilarities — might have been over-emphasized by now, but 
 the method as such cannot be said to be invalidated by 
 it, but always shall retain its place and use. For the 
 mood which this method is meant to meet is no capri- 
 cious mood, but an eminently just one. God is the 
 Father of us all, — though of the Jew first and the 
 Gentile afterwards, — and has not left His people at any 
 time and anywhere without witness. He has been in 
 the history of all nations, though He especially chose 
 the Jews for His Revelation and was in a special sense 
 in their history. The greai apostle to the Gentiles 
 recognized this fact, thus setting his seal to the method. 
 When speaking to the Athenians he appealed to a poet 
 of theirs for vindication of Christian doctrine. And are 
 we forcing things when we read a wider application than 
 was meant at the time in the Master's words, "I came 
 not to destroy but to fulfill," and think that there must 
 have been many among the seers and prophets of non- 
 

 ASIA'S OWN OPINION 273 
 
 Christian religions who must have looked forward, as 
 longingly as those in the real line of prophetical suc- 
 cession, to the days of Him who is the desire of the 
 nations? "For he that doeth truth cometh to the light, 
 that his deeds may be made manifest that they are 
 wrought in God." 
 
 But the method of development, as we said, is not a 
 mere emphasizing of similarities only. It includes 
 pointing out of differences also; for in proceeding from 
 a lower to a higher form, much that is old is left behind 
 and much that is new absorbed. And here comes the 
 place for criticism — the method of contrasts. The 
 Apostle Paul, the first to use the method of develop- 
 ment, is again our example in this. While seeking to 
 find a foothold for the doctrines of Christianity in the 
 national Scriptures of the people, he hesitated not to 
 criticise whatever was un-Christian in them; e. g., see 
 Acts xiv. 15; xvii. 24; xix. 19. Criticism can also 
 serve the purpose of pointing out the differences in 
 agreements, as in the Hindu and Christian doctrines of 
 Incarnation. But criticism, if it is not to be misunder- 
 stood, should be of doctrines only. Any criticism, by 
 foreigners particularly, of the personal character of the 
 religious heroes or of the social institutions of a coun- 
 try, or disparaging contrasts of these with those of the 
 West, will be fatal and defeat the preacher's object. 
 
 Christianity is the fulfillment of all religions. This 
 means that it is both similar and dissimilar to other 
 religions, and no one of the methods — that of pointing 
 out similarities and of differences — ought to be used 
 exclusively of the other. 
 
 Even where a truth is in common, it is to be found in 
 a fuller and richer form in Christianity. It may be 
 further added that in proportion as religion gets to be 
 identified with philosophy and so separated from life, as 
 in the case of Vedantism in India, the points of contact 
 with Christianity grow less. In such a case a person 
 
274 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 has reasoned himself out of his natural beliefs, as to 
 God, man, sin, etc., and so is intellectually farther 
 from Christianity than one who believes in his spiritual 
 intuitions. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 Our attitude must be reverential and sympathetic, and 
 at the same time determinedly exclusive, giving full 
 credit to the dictates of individual conscience and dis- 
 tinguishing between those people who, having perceived 
 the truth in Christianity, with a set purpose oppose this 
 truth, and those who oppose it because they do not 
 understand it. We must most religiously avoid indulg- 
 ing in the spirit of exultation, glorying, triumph, 
 victory over the defects in other religions and particu- 
 larly the sins of their followers. 
 
 We may supplement the evidence of these cor- 
 respondents at this point by the testimony of Dr. 
 Imad ud Din, the most notable convert from 
 Mohammedanism in India, and of other converts 
 quoted by Dr. H. Martyn Clark. Dr. Imad ud 
 Din tells us: "I found nothing in Mohammedan- 
 ism from which an unprejudiced man might in 
 his heart derive true hope and real comfort, 
 though 1 searched for it earnestly in the Koran, 
 the Traditions, and also in Sufiism. Rites, cere- 
 monies, and theories I found in abundance, but 
 not the slightest spiritual benefit does a man get . 
 by acting on them. He remains fast held in the 
 grip of darkness and death. ... I discovered 
 that the religion of Mohammed is not of God, 
 and that the Mohammedans have been deceived, 
 and are lying in error; and that salvation is 
 surely to be found in the Christian religion." 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 275 
 
 It must be recognized that this is the general 
 attitude of Christians who had been Moham- 
 medans or Hindus, or believers in some other 
 faith. As Dr. H. Martyn Clark says: — 
 
 The unanimity of all converts from Islam concerning 
 that religion is emphatic and startling. "Earthly, sen- 
 sual, devilish," is invariably in effect their deliverance. 
 Not one of them has ever found it aught else but an 
 evil and debasing thing. They have not felt the genial 
 influences or vitalizing power of any of the truths it is 
 supposed to contain. The statement that it has such 
 truths is in itself a revelation to them, and when they 
 hear such have been discovered to exist, their answer 
 to that and other theories now rather the fashion con- 
 cerning Islam, is a pitying smile, and a "Well! Well! 
 It was our faith and that of our fathers before us ; we 
 do not know of these things, nor have we so found it." 
 As for its being a help towards God and good, it has 
 been their sorest hindrance in the way of life. It has 
 made the acceptance of Christian truth all the more 
 difficult, and the Christian life infinitely harder. One 
 of the best native pastors said: "After many years of 
 Christianity the poison of Mohammedanism still works 
 in our muscles and makes us weak. " They err who think 
 Islam a development, an advance from a lower to a 
 higher plane. It is in reality a retrogression, a degen- 
 eration from a higher to a lower state. I took one 
 convert to task for his unbridled speech. His reply 
 was: "My father, you can afford to speak kindly of the 
 thing. You were never steeped to the lips in that mire 
 as I have been. Were it not for God's mercy, where 
 would I be now?" (From the "Church Missionary 
 Intelligencer," November, 1894: "Some Results of the 
 Late Mohammedan Controversy," by Dr. H. Martyn 
 Clark, p. 814 ff. ) 
 
276 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Has 
 
 Christianity 
 Penetrated 
 the Asiatic 
 Mind? Can 
 It Do So? 
 
 There are converts who take a different atti- 
 tude. A friend writes from India of a Christian 
 layman, once a Mohammedan, who is now a 
 great champion of Christianity as against the 
 Moslem religion propaganda, and who says: — 
 
 I have been proving the sublimity of the Christian 
 religion and endeavoring to show that the Christian 
 counterpart of everything good in doctrine and morality 
 in Islam is always superior, and that Mohammedanism, 
 even at its highest, is only the next best, and that from 
 a true Koranic point of view the religion of the gospels 
 is open to no question whatever. It is rather the goal 
 to which all the religions of the world aspire to reach. 
 My conception of Islam is more optimistic. I despair 
 of the Islam which obtains more among the so-called 
 Orthodox, and it is only these whose weakness I would 
 expose. The Islam of the Koran, with its Asian Christ- 
 ology, is a fine amalgam of Indiaism and Christianity. 
 It is the Nazarene form of Christianity, confounded with 
 certain social and religious prejudices of the time and 
 the country, and can be very rightly regarded "rather 
 as a heresy than as an alien faith," but not more 
 heretical than so many ancient and modern ones. 
 
 7. How far has Christianity as yet actually 
 touched the life and thought of any Asiatic land? 
 Mr. Meredith Townsend, in "Asia and Europe, " 
 holds that Asia seems condemned by some fiat of 
 arrest; that while capable of being moved by self- 
 generated ideas, she seems to be inaccessible to 
 new forces from without; that "something radi- 
 cal, something unalterable and indestructible 
 divides the Asiatic from the European. . . . 
 They are fenced off from each other by an invis- 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 277 
 
 ible, impalpable but impassable wall" ("Asia 
 and Europe," pp. 36, 50, 150), and that Chris- 
 tianity cannot hope, accordingly, to displace the 
 non-Christian religions and to penetrate the life 
 of the non-Christian world. What do you think 
 of this view? 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 How anyone who knows anything of the history of 
 Japan during the last fifty years can hold that "Asia is 
 practically inaccessible to new principles" I cannot 
 understand. To mention only one out of many things, 
 the entire system of education in Japan, from the 
 primary school to the university, is the education of the 
 West ; and, through the primary school, education in 
 Japan is compulsory. If Japan accepts ,the education of 
 the West, why should it be inaccessible to Christianity? 
 And in fact it is not inaccessible. No one can read the 
 newspapers, the current literature, even the novelj of 
 to-day, without seeing and feeling that Christianity is 
 already in Japan as a recognized and steadily increasing 
 influence. In a recent issue of the Jiji Shimpo (one of 
 the most influential newspapers in Japan) the editor 
 said, "While as yet the number of converts to Chris- 
 tianity is not very great, Christian ethical ideas and the 
 Christian world-view are widely spread among the 
 people." To which it may be added that die steady 
 growth of national churches is an effect without a cause, 
 if Christianity has not entered the life of Japan. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 In Japan at least it is not true that Christianity can- 
 not hope to penetrate the life of the people. Already 
 Christian ethics are widely, almost universally, recog- 
 nized as the highest ethical standard. To refer to one 
 particular, the Christian teaching regarding sexual 
 purity has profoundly impressed the Japanese mind, 
 
278 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 To a marked degree both Shintoism and Buddhism have 
 been influenced by Christian ideas. Buddha is more and 
 more conceived of as personal. The teaching concern- 
 ing Nirvana is becoming colored with the teaching 
 regarding the Kingdom of God. The duty of making 
 this present world a paradise is now taught. The spirit 
 of optimism is displacing the spirit of pessimism. The 
 practical methods of Christianity are beginning to be 
 imitated. Services are held on Sundays and prayer 
 meetings are held. I almost feel like saying that in a 
 real sense Buddhism is becoming leavened with Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 Nothing is clearer than that in many ways Chris- 
 tianity is already entering the life of Japan. In speak- 
 ing to intelligent people the Christian preacher now 
 seldom even refers to the folly of idol worship. 
 Formerly, in speaking of God, it was commonly nec- 
 essary to dwell upon his unity and spirituality; now, at 
 least among those of some education, the word God has 
 come itself to carry with it this conception of his 
 nature. Far more than used to be the case, one may 
 address men much as unconverted men are addressed in 
 America or England. The reading of foreign literature 
 has done much to make Christian ideas familiar; and 
 has awakened in many a real interest in Christian books. 
 Many who are not Christians read Christian sermons 
 and understand them. It may interest you to know that 
 Robertson and Beecher are favorites among the Shinto 
 and Buddhist priests. Buddha is not only more and 
 more thought of as personal by Buddhist teachers, — he 
 is so described by them in their teaching. The pessi- 
 mistic view of life is giving way to one that is more 
 optimistic. Shinto and Buddhist priests officiate at 
 weddings, a thing new under the sun. There are Bud- 
 dhist Sunday schools, and Buddhist hymns sung, and 
 the melody of organs. They have also borrowed the 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 279 
 
 Taikyo Dendo (sometimes translated Forward Move- 
 ment). But besides all these things, all of which are 
 significant and some deeply so, there are the Christian 
 churches, some of them more than thirty years old, 
 many of them financially independent, and occupying 
 all the most important centers in the empire. This 
 then is the present situation. There are the Christian 
 churches recognized by all as a constantly growing 
 force ; and around the churches there is a far larger 
 body— ten times as-large and more — interested in Chris- 
 tianity, and consciously or unconsciously moving 
 towards it. To say that Christianity cannot penetrate 
 the life of Japan is to contradict what to anyone with 
 eyes to see is a perfectly plain fact. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 Meredith Townsend, it does seem to me, is entirely 
 wrong in his statement. Does not the political "history 
 of Japan for the past forty years show that the Japanese 
 are not altogether "inaccessible to new principles?" 
 Does not history also show that Christianity has some- 
 what "penetrated the life" of some Japanese? Was not 
 Neesima a Christian? Does Meredith Townsend forget 
 the fact that three hundred years ago hundreds of 
 Japanese Christians, men, women and even children, 
 suffered martyrdom, when they were given a free choice 
 between death and the denial of their Saviour? What 
 more could you ask of them? As for me, I have no 
 need for their martyrdom in proof of their faithfulness 
 to their Master. I have stood by the deathbed of more 
 than one Japanese Christian and witnessed such calm 
 triumphant death that left not a particle of doubt in my 
 mind as to their living faith in Christ. 
 
 Watanabe, Japan: — 
 
 I am convinced that Christianity has already pro- 
 duced no small effect on the lives of Asiatics, especially 
 of Japanese. Chinese are naturally not versatile, not 
 only in religions but in all other matters, and they wilj 
 
280 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 require a great deal of time in order to adopt new 
 principles. I doubt, however, whether Mr. Meredith 
 Townsend did not go a little too far when he declared 
 that Christianity cannot hope to penetrate the life 
 of Asia. 
 
 It is with very much regret that I have to admit that 
 from the numerical point of view Japanese Christians 
 cannot claim to any high consideration. There are 
 many reasons why Christianity has not more adherents 
 in Japan than it has at present. Historically, Chris- 
 tianity had to suffer from a national prohibition until 
 about half a century ago, and there are some Japanese 
 who, not knowing its doctrines at all, have an almost 
 instinctive dislike of Christianity; some look upon it as 
 opposed to our state form ; and others, though fairly 
 well informed that Christianity is an excellent religion, 
 are ashamed to accept the gospels and will not follow it. 
 These conditions are apparently not peculiar to Japanese 
 alone. 
 
 Even among non-Christians, however, that Chris- 
 tianity is an excellent religion is often recognized, and 
 they are being involuntarily influenced by Christian life 
 in no small degree. For example, there are now indi- 
 cations that people in Japan will not keep concubines 
 openly as of old ; they have come to pay more regard to 
 family peace, and the vicious habit of supposing hard 
 drinking and lewdness essential qualifications of a hero 
 and a great man is gradually decaying. It is worthy of 
 note that charitable enterprises under Christian manage- 
 ment are being assisted by willing hands ever increasing 
 in number. We may well regard all this as a boon 
 coming from advanced civilization, but it also arises 
 partly from Christian influences. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 Mr. Townsend does not understand Asia. The 
 influence already exerted upon Korea, Japan and China 
 is simply tremendous, and the most thoughtful scholars 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 281 
 
 all recognize it, and more and more are saying that 
 there can be no real deep, lasting reform without 
 Christianity. The whole people here realize that it has 
 been a blessing to them. 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 In answer to your further inquiries as to how far 
 Christianity has actually touched the life of any Asiatic 
 country, I wish to call your attention to one fact which 
 demonstrates what Christianity has done in Asia. The 
 fact I have in mind is the treatment of the Russians 
 captured by the Japanese during the recent war. Japan 
 is not as yet called a Christian nation, but she acted in 
 a most Christian-like manner during the war towards 
 her unfortunate adversaries. To what may we attribute 
 this humane act on the part of Japan? I believe it was 
 the influence of Christianity which prompted her to be 
 so kind and generous to her fallen foes. There is much 
 room left in Japan for improvement, but whenever she 
 does things the right way we ought to give her due 
 credit. 
 
 I do not agree with Mr. Meredith Townsend in his 
 view as to the inability of Christianity to penetrate the 
 non-Christian world. There are abundant proofs that it 
 has already penetrated these regions and it will continue 
 to do so. Soon after the recent calamity in Sicily, 
 Japan sent $50,000 to Italy, and even poor Korea sent 
 her mite for the unfortunate victims in far away Sicily. 
 These things indicate' that Christianity has quietly and 
 unknowingly leavened the hearts of people throughout 
 the world. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 I know that Chinese life is greatly touched by Chris- 
 tianity directly and indirectly. The decisive actions of 
 the nation in the suppression of opium smoking and of 
 footbinding of women are directly and almost entirely 
 through Christian efforts. A public sentiment has long 
 
282 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 been prepared to render the two actions possible. Anti- 
 opium movement is as old as the Protestant missions 
 or the opium trade itself. Though there had been anti- 
 footbinding edicts since the present dynasty, Mrs. 
 Little's endeavors since about 1895 are really the first 
 that were proved effective, at first among the Christians 
 and then followed by non-Christian women. There are 
 non-Christians, men and women, that form societies to 
 fight this evil custom. At present the "natural foot" 
 has become prevalent and fashionable. Our Christian 
 Sabbath has been adopted as holidays all over the 
 empire. It began to be printed on Chinese calendars 
 along with other superstitions about fourteen years ago. 
 Our hospitals and other charitable works have been 
 much appreciated and followed. All that is connected 
 with idol worship is decidedly declining. A Taoist 
 priest told me himself of the decaying of Taoism. 
 Most of the modern reforms were begun by mission- 
 aries, by their institutions, their books or through 
 scholars who got into some connection with them, 
 though they became widespread or generally desired 
 when China was wakened by her foreign wars and her 
 foreign students returned. The galvanization of the 
 scholastic (or higher) Buddhism by those reformers, the 
 new and increased Confucian worship, the elevation of 
 Confucius to a degree almost equal to the Chinese 
 regard of heaven, while there are other causes for them, 
 are due to a good extent to a reaction against the pro- 
 gressive Christianity. 
 
 Mukerji, India: — 
 
 Mr. Townsend represents the views of Anglo-Indians 
 whose interest it is to make out Asiatic people to be 
 quite different from Europeans, and so retard their 
 progress towards representative government and national 
 independence. 
 
 To speak for India only, Christianity has already 
 revolutionized the thought and leavened the life of the 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 283 
 
 country. Much of the unrest in the land to-day could 
 be traced to it. Religion is shifting from its pantheistic 
 position to theism ; it has come to be social instead of 
 merely self-regarding; the spirit of brotherhood and 
 Christian liberty is gaining ground in social matters, 
 and the former conception of morals as relative is 
 giving way to a belief in its absolute character. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 In the sense of the acceptance of Christ as a Saviour, 
 no land as such has been touched. There are only 
 individuals, and their number is small. Wholesale 
 baptisms are sometimes administered with very little 
 teaching, or true conversion, simply in the hope that 
 the children of those converts will be true Christians. 
 
 As regards the leavening of the non-Christian reli- 
 gions, there is no doubt that several Asiatic lands, 
 including India, have been touched. As an evidence 
 we might mention marked and extensive movements in 
 India, within the non-Christian religions, incorporating 
 the ideals of Christianity, e. g. : — 
 
 (1) The Arya Samaj, with its teaching about mono- 
 theism. 
 
 (2) The Brahmo Samaj — Universal brotherhood of 
 man, and the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 (3) Sir Sayid Ahmad's Sect, called Naturalists 
 (quasi-deists or deists), with its emphasis on monogamy, 
 and condemnation of divorce and of extreme purdah as 
 practiced in Islamic countries. 
 
 (4) Mirza of Kadian's Sect, with its teaching about 
 "The Masil-i-Masih" (/. e., the Mirza was like Christ) 
 and "the Holy Ghost" — and that men should either 
 deny the supernatural ascension of our Saviour or 
 acknowledge the superiority of His religion. 
 
 (5) A class of Mohammedans (including Mohammed 
 Hasan Amrohi, a translator and commentator of the 
 Koran) who accept the Christian Scriptures as they are 
 to be the word of God. 
 
284 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 (6) Finally mention might be made of Mohammed 
 Igbal, Ph.D., Professor of the Lahore Government 
 College, who, in a pamphlet on the Unity of God, 
 acknowledges the deep meaning in the Christian Trinity 
 and the doctrine of the atonement. 
 
 Is Humanity 8. Is there such a racial chasm between East 
 
 Two or One? and West as is represented, or is the common 
 talk about such a chasm groundless? Are there 
 not many Orientals and Occidentals who under- 
 stand each other and who- have more in common 
 than either Orientals or Occidentals have among 
 themselves ? 
 
 Honda, Japan: — 
 
 There are differences between the East and the West, 
 but it is a very extreme statement to say that there is 
 something like a chasm between them. There are many 
 Japanese and foreigners who enter into each others 
 feelings, understand each other perfectly, and have 
 been close personal friends for years. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 There is no racial chasm ; and the old feeling of 
 antagonism is a thing of the past. There are differ- 
 ences, but they are disappearing, and they will dis- 
 appear altogether as Japan and the West come closer 
 together socially. 
 
 Watanabe, Japan: — 
 
 I believe that the common talk of racial chasm 
 between East and West is no fiction. I am disposed to 
 think that such a chasm, if it does exist, owes its exist- 
 ence more to Occidentals than to Orientals. Such 
 racial chasm between Christians, however, is very nar- 
 row, and I am glad to note signs that the homely 
 clause "all men are brothers" is gradually becoming a 
 fact among them. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 285 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 There is no racial chasm between the East and the 
 West. More and more the Japanese are entering into 
 the feelings and looking at things from the point of 
 view of the West; rejoicing with those that rejoice and 
 weeping with those that weep. 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 There are differences between the East and the West, 
 and there are differences between the nations of Europe, 
 but certainly it is true that Japan and the West are 
 drawing closer together. This could not be true if there 
 were a "chasm" between them. So far as individuals 
 are concerned, there are many Japanese and Americans 
 who think of each other only as old friends. 
 
 Ibuka, Japan: — 
 
 Everybody will admit that there are differences 
 between the East and the West. Not only are their 
 language, customs and their modes of thinking differ- 
 ent ; they are different in their traits of character. And 
 these are the things which first strike the eye of the 
 tourist. Pretty much everything here seems to begin in 
 the reverse order or be upside down ; for instance, in 
 one's address you have first the city, then the ward, 
 then the street, then the number, then the family name 
 and the given name last. How strange ! What a queer 
 people ! They could never understand us. Their mind 
 must work differently from ours. So they gather, so 
 they write ; and the report spreads over the world. 
 This is the -tourist's view of Orientals. But all those 
 Americans or Europeans who have lived here long 
 enough and have studied- the language and the history 
 of the people, and have come in close contact with them, 
 will readily admit that after all at the bottom they are 
 very much like themselves. The difference is only skin 
 deep. 
 
286 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Jaisohn, Korea: — 
 
 There is no question as to racial differences. The 
 inhabitants of every country have their peculiar char- 
 acteristics and even the people of the different sections 
 in the same country entertain different ideas and possess 
 different emotions. But one fact we must always 
 remember, and that is we all belong to one human race. 
 We are only different in the minor details. The races 
 of man living apart in far distant parts of the globe 
 naturally do not understand one another, and what one 
 says or does may appear queer to the other. But if they 
 were both brought up and educated in the same manner, 
 I believe they would say or do about the same way and 
 in the same manner, unless one is endowed with more 
 natural gifts than the other. I believe the leavening 
 influence of Christianity and the constant increase of 
 facilities for travel and communication will eliminate 
 the apparent chasm which exists between the different 
 races. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 There is no such chasm. How could there be such 
 between Christians? There is a far greater separation 
 between Japanese and Koreans than between Koreans 
 and Westerners, and the Koreans express themselves far 
 more readily and trust themselves more fully to 
 Westerners than to Japanese. 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 Yes, there is a natural chasm between Orientals and 
 Occidentals in the ways of living and in the ways of 
 thinking, but it is not at all an impassable one, imposs- 
 ible to be healed up by constant intercommunication. 
 For man is a spiritual and ethical being. When the 
 hearts are right, the outward things matter nothing. 
 There are cases of the greatest friendship between Occi- 
 dentals and Orientals. And it seems to me the success 
 of the missionary work is in direct proportion to the 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 287 
 
 degree of the mutual understanding and spiritual rela- 
 tion between the foreign and native workers. 
 
 Mukerji, India: — 
 
 There is a racial chasm between the East and the 
 West, and the part of wisdom is to recognize it and not 
 slur it over. Perfect understanding can exist only 
 between equals, and so long as the East continues in her 
 present condition of political subjection to the West, 
 things will not be materially improved. 
 
 Siraj iid Din, India: — 
 
 No one but a superficial observer of things, and no 
 one who understands human nature and the real signif- 
 icance and depths of humanity, can for a moment 
 assert that there is an impassable gulf between the 
 East and the West. The visible chasm is due, to a large 
 extent, to the providential but temporary relation 
 between the ruling Anglo-Saxon race and the subject 
 people. 
 
 One touch of nature is enough to make the whole 
 world akin ! But here there is exceedingly more than a 
 touch of nature. There is the common ground of the 
 entire depth of man's moral and spiritual nature. 
 Therefore no one but he whose mental vision cannot go 
 deeper than the skin, would seriously make an assertion 
 like that. 
 
 Yes, I know, from personal observation, of cases 
 where there has been more real intimacy and true fel- 
 lowship between a European or an American and an 
 Indian than between two Europeans or Americans. 
 
 9. Is the Christianity, not of the Church nor i 3 Chris- 
 of the West, but of the New Testament, the final tianity in 
 and absolute religion for men, or is it to be modi- Need of 
 fied by contact with the non-Christian religions? Correction or 
 
 Enrichment 
 
 Ibuka, Japan:— by the non- 
 
 This is a most important and interesting question. Christian 
 It will be admitted at once by all Christians that the Religions? 
 
288 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Christianity of the New Testament, or the Christianity 
 as Christ taught it, is the final religion of man, and that 
 it is not to be modified or improved upon by coming 
 into contact with any other religions. But the real 
 question is whether the truth taught by Jesus has been 
 already apprehended in all its fullness by the different 
 races and nations which have come under its influence. 
 We all know that there are different types of Chris- 
 tianity, and that the Greek type of Christianity differs 
 from that of the Latin and that that again differs from 
 the Teutonic. We all know also that one type is 
 superior to another in some respects, and inferior to it 
 in others, each contributing something towards the 
 realization of the ideal. Now the question before us is, 
 Has the Japanese nation with its history and character- 
 istics something really to contribute, so that in the 
 course of time there will be a distinct type of Chris- 
 tianity, even what may be called the Japanese type? 
 This is a question which it seems to me history alone 
 can answer. It is easy enough in regard to the external 
 forms of Christianity to predict that they will be 
 different — indeed they already are to some extent — 
 from those developed in the West ; e. g., the forms of 
 church government, worship, etc. But it is extremely 
 difficult to forecast whether the Japanese mind will have 
 something (not of course any new truth, but a deeper 
 apprehension of the truth, new insight into the truth, 
 and the new emphasis put upon it) to contribute toward 
 the full-orbed realization of Christianity. If it is des- 
 tined to do so, I think it will be along the ethical or 
 practical lines rather than the theological or meta- 
 physical. Japan has produced no Plato or Aristotle; 
 and whether the Church is going to have its Origen or 
 Augustine is altogether problematical. A short time 
 ago I was asked whether we were going to have a Jap- 
 anese theology ; and my reply was, before we could 
 have Japanese theology we must have Japanese theo- 
 logians. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 289 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 If by Christianity is meant the religious conscious- 
 ness of Christ, then Christianity is the final religion. 
 But it seems to me that that consciousness is a thing of 
 growing apprehension ; not perfectly apprehended by 
 the Apostles themselves, and after now nearly two 
 thousand years not even yet so apprehended. But I 
 think that in the future it will come to be perfectly 
 apprehended, and will be the final religion for man. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 The Christianity of the New Testament is the final 
 religion of man; neither to be modified nor supple- 
 mented by contact with the non-Christian religions. 
 
 But Christ is greater than any thought regarding 
 Him. He is always coming. In a true sense He is still 
 an undiscovered country. In Him are all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge hidden ; and in the contact of 
 Christianity with the thought of the Orient some of the 
 things of Christ will be brought into a clearer light 
 than ever before, and the nations will walk in that light. 
 
 In the thought of Japan, for example, there is a one- 
 ness — a solidarity — in both the family and the state that 
 is not present to the thought of the West. That deep 
 sense of oneness will easily extend from the family and 
 the state to the race ; and it will give to the incarnation 
 and the vicarious atonement a new depth, a new reason- 
 ableness, a new hold upon the mind. As never before, 
 they will be seen to be the wisdom and power of God ; 
 and with the new light there will flow from them a new 
 river of life. It is often said that the incarnation and 
 the vicarious atonement are peculiarly foreign to the 
 Japanese mind. Apparently that is so, but only appar- 
 ently. The future will show that in reality the opposite 
 is true. My own belief is that Christian theology in 
 Japan has before it a development that will be a real 
 contribution to Christian thought; but it will not be by 
 borrowing from the non-Christian religions or by 
 accommodating itself to them. 
 
290 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Honda, Japan:- — 
 
 It may be that the Japanese mind will find in Chris- 
 tianity certain elements to which it will be drawn with 
 peculiar power, and to which it will give an emphasis 
 of its own; though just what those elements are is not 
 yet evident. But that the essentials of Christianity will 
 be modified or supplemented by contact with the non- 
 Christian religions is unlikely, and any such result 
 would be a loss and not a gain. 
 
 Watanabe, Japan: — 
 
 According to our conviction, there is no religion in 
 the world of to-day better than Christianity, but Chris- 
 tianity in its present form cannot possibly claim to have 
 perfectly discovered Christ's genuine nature. We 
 believe that there will come a time when Christianity 
 will reveal Christ better than in these days. We are 
 unable, however, to predict in what way or by what 
 process that evolution will be attained. 
 
 Kil, Korea: — 
 
 The final perfect religion, because no man, however 
 gifted, can add anything to the Scriptures, and no com- 
 bination is satisfactory. The Korean Christians resent 
 the preaching which is not Scriptural but merely philo- 
 sophical or historical, saying that such is not "preach- 
 ing" (kang-to) but "lecturing" (yun-sul). 
 
 Tsen, China: — 
 
 The Christian religion, pure and simple, is one left 
 on earth by Christ, the Son of God, all in principle and 
 not in any kind of detail. And yet it is all perfect and 
 final, but just as an infant is a perfect, well-formed 
 human being. The infant has to take food in material 
 form, plant food or animal food, to convert the same 
 into the child, to make them part of it. So has Chris- 
 tianity to take in, reform, convert, yea sanctify all the 
 good customs, rites, conceptions, morals and doctrines 
 of all other religions, or originated from them. When 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 291 
 
 that which is perfect is come, that which is in part — 
 knowledge of God and truth — shall be done away in the 
 gradual process of assimilation and perfection. 
 
 Mukerji, India: — 
 
 The questioner has in view, I believe, the loose talk 
 of Western and Eastern Christianity, and the like. The 
 method of presenting Christianity will doubtless change 
 with the country and the times, but not the body of the 
 message. The questioner is right in refusing to accept 
 anything as the norm of Christianity except the New 
 Testament Christianity. Sometimes one hears in India 
 the statements that the Gospel of John is more suited 
 to the genius of the people than that of the Synoptics. 
 Back of it is the feeling, I suspect, that salvation in 
 John is through knowledge and not the atonement, and 
 that the body of the Gospel message needs revising. 
 It will be time enough to think of such an attempt 
 when we have manufactured another Gospel. 
 
 Siraj ud Din, India: — 
 
 Yes, I believe the revelation of God as presented in 
 the New Testament to be complete and final. From 
 the contact with the East there can result no modifica- 
 tion in the sense of addition or alteration. But our 
 eyes need being opened more and more to the vision of 
 the Christ, not only the Christ who lived on this earth 
 two thousand years ago, but the eternal Christ who is 
 from the beginning, the Logos, the Creator, the true 
 Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world, the Christ who is the desire of all nations ; and 
 this enlargement of vision will surely result from an 
 Oriental-Occidental interpretation of the primarily 
 Oriental Christ. The contact between the East and the 
 West will result in the discovery of deep and philo- 
 sophic meanings in the fundamental truths of Chris- 
 tianity, such as the trinity, the atonement and the 
 incarnation. So far as these doctrines are ever going 
 to be scientifically or philosophically demonstrated, the 
 
292 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Oriental thought will mightily help this demonstration. 
 Particularly Sufiism among the Mohammedans and 
 Vedantism among the Hindus will greatly enrich and 
 expand the Occidental conception of these truths of 
 Oriental birth. In fact these truths, with their wonder- 
 ful demonstrations, already exist both in the Hindu and 
 the Mohammedan religions, buried under the mass of 
 other teachings. How they came there is perhaps as 
 mysterious and inscrutable as the nature of these sacred 
 truths, but they are there. In the contact between the 
 East and the West, the West will discover the deep 
 philosophic meaning of which the reality has been 
 divested for so long, and the East will discover the 
 reality which alone can give significance to these truths 
 so precious to the Oriental soul. 
 
 Tke It appears, accordingly, that these men, earnest 
 
 Significant and thoughtful, and as capable of judging the 
 matter as any men in the West, and with far 
 richer and more reliable material and vastly 
 better opportunities for judgment, have found 
 the non-Christian religions, which they knew at 
 first hand, to be inadequate, and Christianity to 
 be entirely adequate; that they know of no cor- 
 rections or supplements which Christianity needs 
 and can obtain from the non-Christian religions; 
 that Christianity is in their view the absolute 
 world religion, and that there are no distinctions 
 between the Oriental and Western consciousness, 
 no fixed lines of cleavage between East and West, 
 no barriers of race or temper or tradition which 
 justify separate provincial or ethnic religions, or 
 forbid the hope and the duty of effecting through 
 Christ and in Christ the unification of mankind. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 293 
 
 Such evidence, and the convincing conclusions 
 which flow from it, reveal afresh the validity and 
 the urgency of the missionary motive. These 
 correspondents realized this in their answers to 
 the further question, ''What are the missionary 
 motives which should be pressed upon the Chris- 
 tian church? " 
 
 Kozaki, Japan: — 
 
 The missionary motives to be pressed upon the 
 Christian churches are these: (1) The inadequacy of 
 the non-Christian religions to supply the religious and 
 ethical needs of man. (2) The principle of Christian 
 love. 
 
 Uemura, Japan: — 
 
 There are many familiar missionary motives that 
 may properly be pressed upon the Christian churches, 
 but there is one whose seriousness is too often lost sight 
 of. Whatever possibilities the future may disclose, life 
 out of Christ is without hope. 
 
 Ebina, Japan: — 
 
 Christianity is a religion for man; and the same 
 motives that influence a Christian to proclaim Christ in 
 America should influence him to proclaim Christ to the 
 world — to give to the world a share in the higher 
 experience that flows from the life in Christ. Asia is 
 in the twilight, and needs the Light of Life. This is the 
 spirit of Christ Himself. He says, I am the Light of 
 the World and I give my life for you. 
 
 BIBLE READING 
 
 First Chapter of Colossians. 
 
294 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Why are the judgments of Christian converts in Asia 
 as to the relation of Christianity to the non-Christian 
 religions of special value? 
 
 What is their view of the right of the non-Christian 
 religions to be called "religions?" 
 
 Do they regard Christianity as essentially different 
 from other religions? If so, on what grounds? 
 
 Upon what does the consensus of opinion think the 
 emphasis should be laid, — the resemblances or the 
 differences? 
 
 Wherein are the non-Christian religions fundamen- 
 tally unlike Christianity? 
 
 What should be our attitude in Asia toward the non- 
 Christian religions? 
 
 Has Christianity penetrated the Asiatic mind, or is it 
 futile to attempt, to convert the non-Christian peoples? 
 
 Are the East and West incapable of mutual under- 
 standing? 
 
 Is there an Oriental consciousness radically unlike 
 the Occidental consciousness? Is humanity two or one? 
 Read Kipling's "Ballad of the East and West." 
 
 Is Christianity final, or is it to be modified and 
 supplemented by the non-Christian religions? 
 
 What conclusions are to be drawn from the testimony 
 of these competent witnesses? 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Townsend, "Asia and Europe," Putnam, 1910. 
 
 Hall, "Christ and the Eastern Soul," University of 
 
 Chicago Press, 1909. 
 Hall, "Christ and the Human Race," Houghton Mifflin 
 
 Company, 1906. 
 Knox, "The Spirit of the Orient," Crowell, 1906. 
 Lyall, "Asiatic Studies," Murray, 1898-99, 
 
ASIA'S OWN OPINION 295 
 
 Jessup, "Kamil Abdul Messiah," Westminster Press, 
 
 1899. 
 Uchimura, "Diary of a Japanese Convert," Revell, 
 
 1895. 
 Hardy, "Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima," 
 
 Houghton Mifflin Company, 1891. 
 Taylor, "Pastor Hsi," China Inland Mission, 1907. 
 Yung Wing, "My Life in China and America," Holt, 
 
 1909. 
 Brown, "Father Goreh, " Longmans, 1900. 
 Dyer, "Pandita Ramabai," Revell, 1900. 
 Mozoomdar, "The Oriental Christ," George H. Ellis, 
 
 1883. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT OF 
 THE WORLD 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Such a comparison of Christianity with other The Necessity 
 
 religions as we have been making is unavoidable, and Desira- 
 
 and it is also highly desirable. It is unavoida- oility of 
 ble because the very aim of the missionary enter- °™ pa . r . 
 
 , . - „ r i i- ■ Christianity 
 
 prise is to lead the followers of other religions wit ^ other 
 to compare them with Christianity. Unless Religions, 
 they make this comparison, they will not leave 
 what is false in their old faiths and carry what 
 is true in them forward into the fuller truth of 
 Christianity, which is freedom from all falsehood 
 and fulfillment of all truth. The whole work of 
 missions is just this. It can only be done 
 through such comparative presentation of the 
 gospel as will fit it into the religious mind which 
 it finds and will build all the materials it dis- 
 covers which are capable of redemption into the 
 new national faith it is to produce. The ideal 
 of missions is to settle Christianity as an indig- 
 enous and living power in each race, absorbing 
 and glorifying all that is of worth in the past of 
 the race, purging out all dr@ss and error, and 
 relating its failures and achievements rightly to 
 the destiny for which only Christianity can pre- 
 pare it. Every element of the missionary under- 
 
300 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 taking calls for careful study of the religions 
 which Christianity is to displace. 
 
 And the support of missions at home also calls 
 for such comparative study. We are told that the 
 non-Christian religions are good enough for the 
 non-Christian nations,— better for them, indeed, 
 than Christianity would be; that in essential 
 character all religions are one, and that human 
 development, or the divine education of the races 
 of men, if we prefer to call it so, has wrought 
 out for the various peoples their own best and 
 most adequate religious life. If we are to main- 
 tain a missionary purpose in an atmosphere where 
 such views are pressed upon us, and are to be 
 prepared to win those who hold such views to 
 abandon them and to take a share in the mission- 
 ary undertaking, it can only be by such a 
 thorough study of comparative religion as will 
 candidly face all such propositions. 
 
 If Christianity had anything to fear from such 
 a comparison, this would be- an additional reason 
 for making it. For the truth has nothing to fear 
 from error or from any conflict with error. If 
 Christianity could not face such tests it could only 
 be because false elements had crept into Chris- 
 tianity which could not be too soon removed. 
 But as a matter of fact, Christianity has nothing 
 to fear and a great deal to gain. The gain will 
 not be in the addition of new treasures from the 
 non-Christian religions, but in the development 
 of its own latent treasures which include and 
 
CHRIST, THE 0NLTLIGH7 301 
 
 exceed all other good. And its fear will not be 
 of the discovery of the treasures of other reli- 
 gions. "I make no secret," says Max Muller, in 
 "The Science of Religion, " "that true Christian- 
 ity seems to me to become more and more exalted 
 the more we appreciate the treasures of truth 
 hidden in the despised religions of the world. 
 But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction 
 unless he uses honestly the same measure for all 
 religions. It would be fatal for any religion to 
 claim an exceptional treatment, most of all for 
 Christianity. Christianity enjoyed no privileges 
 and claimed no immunities when it boldly con- 
 fronted and confounded the most ancient and the 
 most powerful religions of the world. Even at 
 present it craves no mercy, and it receives no 
 mercy from those whom our missionaries have to 
 meet face to face in every part of the world ; and 
 unless our religion has ceased to be what it was, 
 its defenders should not shrink from this new 
 trial of strength, but should encourage rather than 
 depreciate the study of comparative theology. 
 
 "And let me remark this, in the very beginning, 
 that no other religion, with the exception, per- 
 haps, of early Buddhism, would have favored the 
 idea of an impartial comparison of the principal 
 religions of the world — would have tolerated our 
 science. Nearly every religion seems to adopt 
 the language of the Pharisee rather than of the 
 publican. It is Christianity alone which, as the 
 religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, 
 
802 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 of no chosen people, has taught us to respect the 
 history of humanity as a whole, to discover the 
 traces of a divine wisdom and love in the govern- 
 ment of all the races of mankind, and to recog- 
 nize, if possible, even in the lowest and crudest 
 forms of religious belief, not the work of demon- 
 iacal agencies, but something that indicates a 
 divine guidance, something that makes us per- 
 ceive, with St. Peter, 'that God is no respecter 
 of persons, but that in every nation he that 
 feareth Him and worketh righteousness is 
 accepted with Him.' " 
 
 The effect of all such comparisons, justly made, 
 will only be to make us surer of our own faith. 
 For while on grounds of our personal experience 
 we are satisfied with Christianity as the absolute 
 religion for us, we shall be far surer that it is 
 meant to be the universal religion, and we shall 
 value it the more highly as the noblest possible 
 spiritual possession, and we shall have more 
 adequate grounds for our personal faith in it, 
 when we have fairly measured it against all other 
 religions. For ''let us assume that our form of 
 religion is the highest, as indeed every one 
 thinks who sincerely believes in his religion, 
 whether he be Mohammedan or Christian, Bud- 
 dhist or Brahman, Zarathustrian or Confucian. 
 You and I are convinced that the purest and 
 most genuinely human form of religion has been 
 brought to light by the gospel. But may it not 
 be a blind faith? In the religion in which we 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 303 
 
 have been brought up, the religion of our fathers, 
 the religion of our youth, we have found con- 
 solation and strength, a light upon our path, a 
 stimulus to all that is good and great; we are 
 grateful for it, and we have learned to love it; 
 and so long as it is the source of our higher life 
 and our purest happiness we shall never forsake it. 
 "But others too have found the same in their 
 religion. And the only inference we can draw 
 from this is that our religion is the best for us, 
 and theirs for them, from different points of 
 view. Science may respect these beliefs, and 
 even recognize their relative rights, but cannot 
 allow them the validity of proofs. She desires 
 to know and account for every conviction. And 
 how can I know whether a religion is the highest 
 without comparing it with others?" (Tiele, 
 "Elements of the Science of Religion," First 
 Series, p. 53.) It is only when we have made 
 this comparison that we can appreciate the unique 
 glory of Christianity. Just as the non-Christian 
 religions only appear in their deep inadequacy 
 when contrasted with Christianity, so "Chris- 
 tianity cannot fully be understood unless viewed 
 in relation to these religions. We must know 
 what questions the human soul has been putting 
 to itself in various ages, lands, and circumstances, 
 and what are the answers it has been giving to 
 them, before we can appreciate aright the com- 
 prehensiveness and aptness of the response con- 
 tained in the gospel. Not one of the features or 
 
304 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Christianity 
 Never Sur- 
 renders Its 
 Supreme 
 Claims. 
 
 doctrines of Christianity will fail to appear in a 
 brighter light and with a diviner beauty after 
 they have been compared and contrasted with the 
 correlative features and doctrines of other reli- 
 gions." (Professor Flint, quoted in "Homiletic 
 Review," December, 1893. Article by D. S. 
 Schaff on "The Parliament of Religions and the 
 Christian Faith," p. 555.) 
 
 It scarcely needs to be said, and yet common 
 misunderstandings necessitate its saying, that in 
 measuring itself on a level with all other reli- 
 gions, Christianity does not abandon its claim to 
 be unique and absolute. "When Christianity 
 consented to have representatives sitting in the 
 Parliament on terms of equality with every other 
 religion," says a recent writer regarding the 
 Parliament of Religions in 1893, "then con- 
 sciously or unconsciously it gave up the claim of 
 being the only true and divine religion in the 
 world." (A. W. Martin in "The Unity of 
 Religions," p. 331.) Whatever opinion we may 
 hold about the Parliament of Religions, it is 
 none the less true that in every mission field 
 to-day Christianity is meeting the non-Christian 
 religions on this basis of equality. In many 
 cases, indeed, it is not admitted by them on terms 
 of equality. But never for one moment does 
 Christianity waive its claim to be "the only true 
 and divine religion in the world." It recognizes 
 truth wherever it finds it, whether in or out of 
 religions. It believes that all the world is God's 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 305 
 
 and that no nation and no soul has been out of 
 His love. But it knows that the Name which it 
 bears is the only Name given under heaven among 
 men by which they are to be saved, and that unto 
 Him shall the gathering of the nations be. It 
 makes its comparisons with other religions in 
 absolute candor and openness. But each new 
 comparison only confirms the result of all which 
 have gone before, and leaves Christianity with a 
 clearer discernment of its own unique and abso- 
 lute superiority. It vindicates afresh its effort to 
 displace all other religions, on the ground that 
 apart altogether from the evil and error which 
 are found imbedded in each of them, "when that 
 which is perfect is come, then that which is in 
 part shall be done away." 
 
 And if comparison is to be made between Nevertheless 
 Christianity and the non-Christian religions, such It Undergoes 
 as we have tried to make, and such as mission- an Absolutely 
 
 , . , , . Fair and Just 
 
 aries are making every day, and are ever inciting 
 the followers of the non-Christian religions to 
 make, this comparison must be absolutely just 
 and fair. As far as Christians are concerned, 
 this goes without saying. If it is not just and 
 fair it is not Christian, and no truly Christian 
 result can flow from it. We must not judge any 
 religion by standards and methods whose appli- 
 cation to our own religion we would resent. Let 
 us note the feeling which we have on meeting 
 with any untrue and unfair condemnation of 
 Christianity, and learn from our resentment a 
 
306 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 just attitude toward others. When Swami Abhe- 
 dananda returned to Madras from his Hindu 
 mission to America, a large public meeting wel- 
 comed him back, and in speaking to the gather- 
 ing the Swami compared the Hindu religion with 
 the other religions of the world and said, whereas 
 Hinduism taught that to manifest divinity in all 
 actions of daily life was true religion: Chris- 
 tianity and other religions insisted on people 
 believing certain set dogmas which failed to lay 
 stress on conduct. In European and American 
 countries the people donned religious garb only 
 on a particular day of the week, and went to a 
 place of worship for various purposes. For 
 instance, he said, doctors went to church on 
 Sundays to secure patients, lawyers to get clients, 
 maids to find husbands, bachelors to find wives, 
 and people in general to keep up appearances. 
 As we reject such a representation as unfair and" 
 untrue, let us first ask whether we -have ever 
 passed similar confused and unjust judgments on 
 other religions, and secondly let us ask whether 
 there was no justification in our imperfect types 
 of Christianity in the West for Abhedananda's 
 misrepresentation. For consider how much there 
 has been in the history of Christianity in the dark 
 ages, and is now in South American Christianity, 
 that the apologists for the non-Christian reli- 
 gions can retort upon us. If, as Max Muller 
 says, we ask "Was the worship of Moloch a true 
 religion when they burnt their sons and their 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 307 
 
 daughters in the fire to their gods? Was the 
 worship of Mylitta, or is the worship of Kali a 
 true religion, when within the sanctuary of their 
 temple they committed abominations that must 
 be nameless ? Was the teaching of Buddha a true 
 religion, when men were asked to believe that the 
 highest reward of virtue and mediation consisted 
 in a complete annihilation of the soul?" Then 
 the non-Christian peoples may turn and answer, 
 "Can that be a true religion which consigned 
 men of. holy innocence to the flames, because they 
 held that the Son was like unto the Father, but 
 not the same as the Father, or because they would 
 not worship the Virgin and the saints? Can 
 that be a true religion which screened the same 
 nameless crimes behind the sacred walls of mon- 
 asteries?" (Muller, "The Science of Religion," 
 p. 115.) 
 
 If we answer "No, it was not true, true Chris- 
 tianity is so-and-so," we must be prepared to 
 have them say, "Well, you must allow us also to 
 make distinctions, and if you wish Christianity 
 to be judged by its best, so you must judge our 
 religions." If we meet non-Christian objections 
 to Christianity by answers which satisfy us, we 
 must be fair in allowing similar answers, as far 
 as they can be made, in defence of what others 
 hold dear. If we explain the laws, morals, and 
 social ideals of the Hebrews, still commemo- 
 rated in our Scriptures, on principles of develop- 
 ment, we must fairly allow the same principle to 
 
&08 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 others ; and if with many of them the allowance 
 is useless because the old is still preserved side 
 by side with the new, the undeveloped beside the 
 developed, we must be generous as well as just, 
 remembering South America, and how much 
 there is still with us in Protestant Christianity 
 that is not of Christ. And if we hold the apos- 
 tolic development of the gospel message to be 
 legitimate, we must be fair in judging the 
 expansive interpretations which the non-Christian 
 faiths give of their foundations. We must make 
 all the allowances in our attitude to other reli- 
 gions which we demand of them in their attitude 
 to ours. 
 Tke Com- And we must recognize the real difficulties in 
 
 parison of the way of fair comparisons. Abhedananda 
 Religions might have been quite sincere in his judgment. 
 
 And Uchimura writes in his "Diary":— 
 
 Heathenism, like much of what passes for Chris- 
 tianity in Christendom, teaches morality, and inculcates 
 upon us the keeping of the same. It shows us the 
 way, and commands us to walk therein. No more and 
 no less. As for Juggernaut, infant-sacrifice, and so 
 forth, let us eliminate them from our account of 
 heathenism, for they are not it, — as mammon-worship, 
 and infant-killing by other methods than that of throw- 
 ing them to gavials, and other horrors and superstitions 
 of Christendom are not Christianity. Therein let us be 
 fair and forgiving in judging others. We will meet our 
 enemy in his best and strongest. . . . 
 
 It is said that the state of New York, with a popula- 
 tion of 5,000,000, produces more murderers than Japan 
 with 40,000,000 souls. General Grant's observation in 
 
 Difficult, 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 309 
 
 the latter country was that the number and state of its 
 poor were nothing compared with what he saw in his 
 own United States. London is proverbial for the mag- 
 nitude of its pauperism, and Christendom generally for 
 its gambling and drinking habits. Some of the alco- 
 holic liquors that can satisfy the appetite of these 
 people are strong enough to upset the heads of our 
 drunkards, if taken in any considerable quantity. 
 Scenes in those back streets of some of the largest cities 
 of Christendom, which no decent men dare even to look 
 into, can be described with no milder words than the 
 vilest in any language. Shameless gamblings, open-day 
 piracies, cool-blooded sacrifice of fellowmen for one's 
 own aggrandizement, are being conducted there on 
 gigantic, business-like scales. . . . 
 
 "Christendom is a beastly land." So report some of 
 my countrymen who have traveled abroad, and saw only 
 its dark half. True,- they are unfair; but as far as the 
 said beastliness goes, the impressions they have received 
 are correct. Heathendom cannot compete with Chris- 
 tendom in its beastliness as well. (Uchimura, "Diary 
 of a Japanese Convert," pp. 177, 181, 183.) 
 
 We point out in reply that Christianity does 
 not shelter or excuse these evils, and that non- 
 Christian religions do. But we are told that 
 Christianity, in the dark ages, did shelter such 
 things, and does still in South America. We 
 have our answer to this, too, but the need of 
 these answers only shows how hard the just com- 
 parison really is. 
 
 And we need to remember, also, that different Different 
 peoples have different ideals and desires ; and Standards of 
 that what seems to us a great virtue in Chris- Judgment, 
 tianity may not at once appear so to an Asiatic, 
 
310 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Mr. Townsend in "Asia and Europe" illustrates 
 this vividly, if somewhat hyperbolically : — 
 
 The truth is that the Asiatics, like the Jews, dislike 
 Christianity, see in it an ideal they do not love, a 
 promise they do not desire, and a pulverizing force 
 which must shatter their civilizations. Eternal con- 
 sciousness! That to the majority of Asiatics is not a 
 promise but a threat. The wish to be rid of conscious- 
 ness, either by annihilation or by absorption in the 
 Divine, is the strongest impulse they can feel. Though 
 Asiatic in origin, Christianity is the least Asiatic of the 
 creeds. Its acceptance would revolutionize the position 
 of woman, which is the same throughout Asia, would 
 profoundly modify all social life, and would place by 
 the side of the spiritual dogma "thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God," which every Asiatic accepts in theory, the 
 far-reaching ethical dogma, "and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self," which he regards as an intolerable burden. 
 ("Asia and Europe," p. 35.) 
 
 A Japanese paper presents another illustration 
 in giving the impressions of America brought 
 back to Japan by the deputation of Japanese 
 business men who visited America in 1909. 
 Among the things they could not admire they 
 named "pretension to respect paid to ladies," 
 "extreme respect for women," "too much 
 respect for women, " "presumptuous attitude of 
 women over men." 
 
 And back of all these differences are funda- 
 mental divergent conceptions of God ; the 
 Asiatic, except the Mohammedan, shrinking from 
 the divine personality, while the Christian view 
 finds its very life in the sense of God as personal 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 311 
 
 Father. Amid conceptions so widely divergent, 
 fair comparisons are not easy. 
 
 But the just comparison is possible when on The 
 the one hand there is a mind for all common Acknowledg- 
 truth, and on the other a fearless and honest dis- ment °* 
 cernment of true difference. In dealing with ° m 
 
 ,. . , . . Contact. 
 
 other religions in our own thought or in mis- 
 sionary effort, Christians gladly recognize all 
 that is good in them and build upon it. It is 
 surely so in all missionary effort. "The surest 
 way to bring a man to acknowledge his errors," 
 says Bishop Bloomfield, "is to give him full 
 credit for whatever he had learned of the truth." 
 "What should we think," says a keen observer 
 of the work of missions — "what should we think 
 of an engineer who, in attempting to rear a 
 lighthouse on a sandbar, should fail to acknowl- 
 edge as a godsend any chance outcropping of 
 solid rock to which he might fasten his stays?" 
 (Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions and Chris- 
 tianity," p. 20 f. ) If there were no truth to 
 build upon, the missionary task would be hope- 
 less. The absence of all truth would be evidence 
 of the incapacity of the soul of such people for 
 truth. It is not to irreligion and atheism that 
 Christianity can best be addressed. In every land 
 believers are won not so much from godlessness 
 or religious indifference, as from superstition or 
 from partial truth or from firm but inadequate 
 conviction. "Who can learn a foreign language, 
 unless he has a language of his own? We may 
 
312 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 acquire new languages from without; language 
 and what it implies must come from within. 
 The same with religion. Ask a missionary 
 whether he can efficiently preach the mysteries 
 of Christianity to people who have no idea of 
 what religion is. All he can do is to discover 
 the few germs of religion which exist even among 
 the lowest savages, though hidden, it may be, 
 beneath deep layers of rubbish ; to make them 
 grow again by tearing up the weeds that have 
 choked them, and then to wait patiently till the 
 soil in which alone the natural seeds of religion 
 can grow may become fit again to receive and to 
 nurture the seeds of a higher religion. ' ' (Muller, 
 "The Hibbert Lectures," 1878, p. 258.) 
 
 Christianity rejoices, therefore, in all that it 
 finds of earnest religious feeling or of worthy 
 religious conviction, or of moral principle. It is 
 glad to recognize the high ethical doctrine of 
 Islam regarding drunkenness, of Buddhism 
 regarding gentleness to all living things, of Con- 
 fucianism regarding filial piety, and the fervent 
 spiritual longings of Hinduism. It is prepared 
 to place the highest construction upon other 
 faiths, to contend that Mohammed's rejection of 
 Christianity must be interpreted as the rejection 
 of the debased Christianity he knew, and that 
 Buddha's atheism was the denial of the impossible 
 doctrine of God which alone was offered to him 
 (Muller, "Hibbert Lectures," 1878, p. 304), 
 and that back of much crude African feticbism 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 312 
 
 and Chinese animism there is a recognition of 
 one supreme God, the Creator of the world, after 
 whom the soul is groping. Our Lord has taught 
 us that the way to reach the best in men and to 
 win men to their best, to the ideal of God for 
 them, is to see in them the possibilities which 
 are hidden even to themselves, and to claim these 
 possibilities for them as their own. "Thou art 
 Simon," he said to the vacillating and unreliable 
 one, "Thou shalt be Rock." He saw in Simon 
 the nobility which His influence could produce, 
 and by confidence and love He made Simon that. 
 All the truth or the unwitting error, or the pos- 
 sibility of nobility that Christianity can discover 
 in the religious longings of other peoples, or the 
 answers which they have found to such longings, 
 Christianity will seek out and use, knowing that 
 they are humanity's testimony to the need of the 
 world for Him who is the Light of the World 
 and the Desire of the Nations. 
 
 Comparison, however, calls for the discern- Tne Discern- 
 ment of difference as well as of resemblance, ment of dif- 
 "If, " says Jevons, "the student of the science of * erences - 
 religion directs his attention primarily to the dis- 
 covery of resemblances between religions which 
 at first sight bear not more resemblance to one 
 another than Greek did to the Celtic tongues, . . . 
 there is still another aspect of the truth, and it is 
 that between things which resemble one another 
 there are also differences. And the jury of the 
 world will ultimately demand to know the truth 
 
314 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 and the whole truth. . . . For the purposes of 
 fair comparison not only must the resemblances, 
 which the comparative method of science dwells 
 on, be taken into account, but the differences 
 also must be weighed. . . . For the practical 
 purposes of the missionary it is important to begin 
 with the resemblances; and on grounds of logic 
 and of theory, the resemblances must be first 
 established, if the importance, — nay, the decisive 
 value, — of the differences is to go home to the 
 hearts and minds of the missionary's hearers. 
 The resemblances are there and are to be studied 
 ultimately in order to bring out the differences 
 and make them stand forth so plainly as to make 
 choice between the higher form of religion and 
 the lower easy, simply because the difference is 
 so manifest." (Jevons, "Introduction to the 
 Study of Comparative Religion," pp. 21, 22.) 
 
 The differences are as radical and far reaching 
 as the agreements. An able missionary to Mo- 
 hammedans writes in a letter: — 
 
 The effort of Moslems, if they are friendly, is usually 
 to show that the two faiths are practically identical, and 
 that consequently there is no superiority on the side of 
 Christianity. It is an advantage, of course, to find com- 
 mon ground, and the more common ground one can 
 honestly discover the better, provided that one goes 
 beyond the common ground to that which is not com- 
 mon. In this it has seemed to me better to allow not 
 merely what the individual presents, but all that can 
 with any sort of propriety be claimed by Islam ; that is, 
 in other words, framing one's argument so as to meet 
 the strongest case that can be set up by the Moslem, 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 315 
 
 whether that case is actually presented or not. How- 
 ever, allowing all that can with any propriety be allowed 
 in the way of common ground, there is always the 
 opportunity to go on and show how the two faiths 
 differ. I do not believe that there is a single doctrine 
 in which the teachings of the two religions are really 
 identical. In admitting identity, the great danger is 
 that the truth of Christianity should be minimized. For 
 example, forgiveness by free grace is fundamental to 
 both religions; but in Islam the basis is God's absolute 
 will, and in Christianity it is His justice and righteous- 
 ness manifested in the atonement. To stop at the 
 common. ground will give the impression that there is 
 no difference, and that in Christianity forgiveness is an 
 act of God's absolute will. One needs also to discrimi- 
 nate in the use of language and not to use terms which 
 imply what he does not wish to imply. The uselessness, 
 and sometimes worse than uselessness, of casual con- 
 versation on religious and moral topics is in the fact 
 that almost inevitably platitudes are indulged in which 
 give the impression of an agreement, which is in reality 
 specious and deceptive. 
 
 And if a knowledge of the difference between 
 Christianity and the non-Christian religions, as 
 well as of the resemblances, is necessary for the 
 missionary, it is necessary for Christians at home. 
 The intensity of their desire to give Christianity 
 to all the world will depend upon the strength and 
 intelligence of their conviction that the world 
 needs Christianity, and can have in Christ what it 
 can never have through Ram or Krishna, or Buddha 
 or Mohammed, or in any non-Christian religion. 
 If there are no points of difference between 
 Christianity and the non-Christian religions, or 
 
316 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 if the points of difference are unimportant, there 
 is no need of foreign missions. It is the radical 
 significance of these points of difference that 
 justifies all that the missionary enterprise has cost 
 and is still to cost. It is what the non-Christian 
 people do not have that we are to give them. 
 We are among them because we believe that 
 Christianity is unique and indispensable and that 
 there is all the difference between it and other 
 religions that there is between Christ and other 
 men. We are to make this difference an attrac- 
 tion and appeal, and not a repulsion and offense; 
 but we are not to obscure it. The difference is 
 the whole issue. 
 Different It is at this point that the missionary unbelief 
 
 Opinions as to f t ne day meets us and denies the existence of 
 ,Jn e . at . lon any such fundamental difference or of any such 
 
 of Christian- . . ,™ - 
 
 . t Oth uniqueness or superiority on the part ot Chris- 
 Religions, tianity as entitles it to claim supremacy over all 
 
 mankind. 
 "EachReli- Some take the view that in different ages and 
 
 gion Best for a t different stages of personal and national de- 
 ts wn ^ velopment, men have different religious needs 
 
 Adherents. . . ., . .... in i 
 
 and that a diversity of religions must be allowed 
 for in order to cover these varying conditions of 
 human society and of the human mind. "Who, 
 if he is honest toward himself, " asks Max Muller, 
 "could say that the religion of his manhood was 
 the same as that of his childhood, or the religion 
 of his old age the same as the religion of his man- 
 hood? The question, therefore, is not whether 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 317 
 
 there exist these great differences of religion in 
 the different stages of each life, and in the dif- 
 ferent ranks of society, but whether we shall 
 frankly recognize the fact, as the ancient Brah- 
 mans recognized it, and try to determine accord- 
 ingly our position, not only toward those who 
 use the same words in religion which we use, 
 though with greatly varying meanings, but also 
 toward those who do not even use the same 
 words?" (Max Muller, "Hibbert Lectures," 
 1878, p. 367.) And in "The Science of Reli- 
 gion" the same writer says, "I feel convinced 
 that the more we know of them (i. e., the ancient 
 religions of mankind) the more we shall see that 
 there is not one which is entirely false; nay, that 
 in one sense every religion was a true religion, 
 being the only religion that was possible at the 
 time, which was compatible with the language, 
 the thoughts, and the sentiments of each genera- 
 tion, which was appropriate to the age of the 
 world." ("The Science of Religion," p. 115.) 
 We must, therefore, it is claimed, make allow- 
 ances for other religions and their points of view 
 and judge them relatively and not absolutely. "I 
 maintain," says Muller, "that each phase of life 
 must be judged by itself. Savages have their 
 own vices, but they also have their own virtues. 
 If the negro could write a black book against 
 the white man, we should miss in it few of the 
 crimes which we think peculiar to the savage. 
 The truth is that the morality of the negro and 
 
818 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 the white man cannot be compared, because their 
 views of life are totally different." ("Hibbert 
 Lectures," 1878, p. 77.) 
 
 So judged, Islam or Buddhism may be the best 
 religion for a people at a certain stage in its de- 
 velopment; nay, may be the only possible reli- 
 gion. And the application of the principle to 
 individuals can hardly be resisted, so that as one 
 of the best known professors in the Imperial 
 University in Tokyo put it, "as there are differ- 
 ent sorts of tea, so there are different kinds of 
 religion and each man chooses according to his 
 taste." Nor are men to be reproached for not 
 breaking with religions divinely suited to their 
 own age and people, especially when statesmen 
 from Christian nations advise them against it: 
 Lord Curzon, for example, speaking to the Mo- 
 hammedan students in Aligarh College, and say- 
 ing, "Adhere to your own religion, which has in 
 it the ingredients of great nobility and profound 
 truth." ("Makhzan i Masihi," June 15, 1901.) 
 This view of the providential basis of each reli- 
 gion, and of its adequacy for its own age and race, 
 need not theoretically cut the missionary nerve, 
 for ages and racial conditions change, and this age 
 and the world situation which we confront may 
 require that Christianity be made the one religion 
 of all; but as a matter of fact, those who hold this 
 view think that tolerance and charity are the great 
 words, and that they leave no room for the prose- 
 lytism of foreign missions. This is not the view 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 319 
 
 of those who are trying to make the Christian 
 religion the religion of all mankind, and to win 
 the followers of all other religions to become fol- 
 lowers of Christ. 
 
 The matter is put somewhat differently by "AllRelig- 
 others, who hold that fundamentally all religions ion Essential- 
 are alike. The essential question is one not of * y ^ ne ' k° w ~ 
 
 d. • i , e t- uTi. • • i j i.* ■>■> ever Different 
 
 lgions but o± religion. It is indeed certain, _ „ . 
 
 fe fe Religions 
 
 said the heads of the six Buddhist sects united in ^ a g e « 
 the " Great Japan Buddhists' Union," in a letter 
 addressed in 1900 to "Our revered ecclesiastical 
 brethren" throughout the world, "that the forms 
 of religion in the world are manifold. But it is 
 equally certain that in spite of the dissimilarity 
 of religions in their tenets, as well as in rites, — in 
 short, in their external organization, — the funda- 
 mental principles embodied in what we regard as 
 the higher classes of religion, to say nothing of 
 those which still remain undeveloped, are in all 
 cases essentially, if not entirely, analogous." "I 
 care little for external forms," said Professor 
 Kume in his account of Shintoism, "and doubt 
 whether there are any essential differences be- 
 tween any of the religions of the world." "In 
 this country," said the "New York Post," in an 
 account of the visit to America in 1905 of the 
 Hon. P. Ramanathan, solicitor general of Cey- 
 lon, "interest in Mr. Ramanathan may center 
 upon the fact that he has struck out for himself a 
 new line of thought and effort for the unification 
 of Eastern and Western ideals — the establishment 
 
320 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 of the fundamental identity of the religious sys- 
 tems of the East and the West." (The "New 
 York Evening Post," July 22, 1905.) There 
 is left on this basis no warrant for the effort on 
 the part of one religion to displace or supersede 
 or absorb another. Each one has as good claim 
 to supremacy as the rest. The recognition of 
 essential unity or of the balance of things equally 
 good is what is demanded of us. We may let a 
 Hindu paper answer this view for us before we 
 take it up in more detail. Commenting upon 
 Dr. Barrows' position in his Haskell Lectures in 
 India, the "Indian Social Reformer," of Madras, 
 remarked : — 
 
 It has, we see, been made a point against Dr. Barrows 
 that he claims a position for Christianity superior to 
 that of any other religion. We are, of course, not pre- 
 pared to concede that claim. But we never expected 
 that Dr. Barrows would condescend to waive that claim 
 for his own faith, and if he had done so, we, for one, 
 should not have very much cared to listen to what he 
 has to say. 
 
 And we regard as the outcome of sheer intellectual 
 indolence and pusillanimity, the opinion which is fash- 
 ionable now-a-days that one conviction, one faith, is as 
 good as another. We regard this easy-going fashion of 
 mind as fraught with the greatest danger to the future 
 of this country. For it means isolation ; it spells death. 
 The vice, wherever and in whatever form it prevails, is 
 the child of pure selfishness. 
 
 The religion of the future will no doubt have affinities 
 with each of the existing religions, just as the human 
 race has affinities with the anthropoid apes. We, there- 
 fore, welcome Dr. Barrows' statement of the claims of 
 his faith. If they are exaggerated or imaginary, they 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGH1 321 
 
 will go to the wall of their own accord. If they are 
 real, on the other hand, it may so happen that some 
 courageous souls that have been seeking the light and 
 have not found it, may be impressed with them and may 
 be led to transform themselves into the receptacles of a 
 greatness such as an exalted religious idea alone can 
 bestow. We invite our friends to give their unbiased 
 hearing to Dr. Barrows. To be afraid of being con- 
 verted to his views is cowardice. No man who is afraid 
 of having to relinquish his prepossessions need call 
 himself a religious man or a lover of truth. (Quoted 
 in Introduction to Barrows Lectures, 1896-1897, "Chris- 
 tianity the World Religion," p. xvi. f. ) 
 
 Still another way of putting the matter is in "EactReli- 
 the words of a Hindu correspondent of "The gion a Way 
 Epiphany," in Calcutta, that "Christianity is not to God. 
 the only way revealed by God, but Hinduism is 
 also the way to God." In a remarkable sermon 
 on Hinduism, preached in the Scotch Kirk in 
 Allahabad, February 20, 1876, Dr. Kellogg stated 
 this view and answered it: — 
 
 It is a very common opinion in our day, that all 
 religions are of God ; that all contain somewhat of 
 divine truth, with a greater or less admixture of human 
 error. While it is not pretended that all religions are 
 ferse equally good, it is often argued that they may be 
 so relatively to the peoples who hold them; and that as 
 one may reach a city from several different directions, 
 by as many different roads, so may those who in every 
 religion sincerely worship God as they apprehend Him 
 to be, attain to whatever of blessedness a future life 
 may have in store. Those who think and talk after this 
 fashion usually assume that in fundamental matters 
 there is not so much difference in various religions as 
 theologians try to make out, and that the differences 
 
322 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 which do exist pertain not to the essence, but to the 
 form ; not to the necessary, but to the accidental in 
 religion. Hence it is argued that it is a gross breach 
 of charity for us to assume that Hindus and others 
 have not the true knowledge of God as well as our- 
 selves, and that it is a foolish superstition which attrib- 
 utes divine inspiration to Moses and Paul, while deny- 
 ing a similar inspiration to Sakya Muni, Gautama, or 
 Kapila. And, it is again argued, quite correctly, if 
 these premises be granted, that we might spend our 
 time and money better than in seeking to persuade 
 Hindus and others to abandon the ancestral faith 
 which God has given to their race for an alien religion, 
 however good that alien faith may be. 
 
 But all this talk and all such arguments rest upon an 
 assumption which is utterly false. It is not true that 
 the differences, e. g., between Hinduism and Christianity, 
 are merely superficial and accidental. They respect, not 
 accidentals, but essentials. They are of such a sort that 
 ;f one religion gives a true account of God, the other 
 gives a false account of Him. The God of the Hindus 
 is not the God of the Christian. The salvation which 
 the Hindu seeks is not the salvation which we seek. 
 It is a salvation from personal existence, and not a 
 salvation from sin ; and the ways prescribed for the 
 attainment of this supreme good are as opposed as are 
 the objects sought. Grant, if you please, that the city 
 has different gates, and many avenues conduct men to 
 it; still, if that city lie in the south, we shall never 
 reach it by traveling northeast. Contradictories cannot 
 both be true. And in regard to- the most fundamental 
 matters, Hinduism contradicts, not merely Christianity, 
 but all natural religion as well. (Kellogg, "Hin- 
 duism," p. 4 f. ) 
 
 The four points which Dr. Kellogg selected 
 as illustrating the fundamental divergent positions 
 of Christianity and Hinduism were (1) the per- 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 323 
 
 sonality of God, (2) the existence, separate and 
 distinct from God, of man, the world and all 
 things therein, (3) the freedom of the will, (4) 
 the trustworthiness of our consciousness as to our 
 own personality and the reality of the external 
 world, Christianity affirming and Hinduism deny- 
 ing each of these four fundamental truths. And 
 what more fundamental and essential difference 
 could there be than that between pure Buddhism 
 and Christianity over the existence of God? 
 "The fact cannot be disputed away," says Max 
 Muller, "that the religion of Buddha was from 
 the beginning purely atheistic." ("The Science 
 of Religion," p. 52.) If there is not a radical 
 distinction between theism and atheism, between 
 God and the denial of God, what distinctions are 
 possible? Black becomes white, yes becomes no, 
 in a world where pure Buddhism and Christianity 
 are viewed as essentially alike. How can a religion 
 which annihilates God be a way to God? 
 
 One other common way of regarding the world "The Final 
 religions is the view of those who would combine Religion tote 
 them, — who regard the great task of our day, as a Symphony 
 Mr. Ranade told Dr. Fairbairn in India, to be ° . . 
 
 .Religions. 
 
 a work of fusion." Some, like Max Muller, 
 picture the union in architectural metaphor: — 
 
 The science of religion, which at present is but a 
 desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfillment and 
 a plenteous harvest. 
 
 When that time of harvest has come, when the 
 deepest foundations of all the religions of the world 
 
324 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 have been laid free and restored, who knows but that 
 those very foundations may serve once more, like the 
 catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, 
 as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed 
 they may belong, long for something better, purer, 
 older and truer than what they can find in the statutable 
 sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which 
 their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt 
 to put away childish things, call them genealogies, 
 legends, miracles or oracles, but who cannot part with 
 the childlike faith of their heart. 
 
 Though leaving much behind of what is worshiped or 
 preached in Hindu temples, in Buddhist viharas, in 
 Mohammedan mosques, in Jewish synagogues, and 
 Christian churches, each believer may bring down with 
 him into that quiet crypt what he values most — his own 
 pearl of great price: the Hindu his innate disbelief in 
 this world, his unhesitating belief in another world ; 
 the Buddhist his perception of an eternal law, his sub- 
 mission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohamme- 
 dan, if nothing else, at least his sobriety; the Jew his 
 clinging, through good and evil days, to the One God, 
 who loveth righteousness, and whose name is "I am"; 
 the Christian, that which is better than all, if those 
 who doubt it would only try it — our love of God, call 
 Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the im- 
 mortal, the Father, the highest Self, above all, and 
 through all, and in all, — manifested in our love of man, 
 our loving of the living, our love of the dead, our living 
 and undying love. 
 
 That crypt, though as yet but small and dark, is 
 visited even now by those few who shun the noise of 
 many voices, the glare of many lights, the conflict of 
 many opinions. Who knows but that in time it will 
 grow wider and brighter, and that the Crypt of the Past 
 may become the Church of the Future. ("Hibbert 
 Lectures," p. 377 f.) 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 325 
 
 Some, like Castelar, express the unity in more 
 varied figure. "Do not," said he, "separate the 
 various revelations of truth, for together they 
 form that invisible atmosphere which is called 
 the human spirit. The prophets did not speak in 
 Judea alone, they drank not only the waters of 
 the Jordan and the Euphrates ; but they spoke 
 also in India, and they' drank also the waters of 
 the Ganges. The Egyptian sorcerers, the Magi 
 of Babylon and the Dualists of Persia all con- 
 tributed to the great Idea, which is like sap, like 
 blood, like light, like electricity, like the juices 
 of the earth, like the gases of the air, like the 
 fluids of the universe. The Idea recognizes 
 neither nations, sects nor churches ; it passes from 
 pagoda to pyramid, from pyramid to synagogue, 
 from synagogue to basilica, from basilica to cathe- 
 dral, from cathedral to tribune, with a course 
 like that of the lightning. The way for Chris- 
 tianity was prepared by the verses of Isaiah and 
 the dialogues of Plato, and every human family 
 has contributed its contingent to the universal 
 revelation." (Article in "The Independent," 
 May 31, 1894, by Emilio Castelar, "The Parlia- 
 ment of Religions in America.") 
 
 Still others dream of symphonizing the world's 
 religions. "Each one of the seven great religions 
 that exists in the world to-day," says a recent 
 book, "has its particular note, and the harmonious 
 blending of the notes gives us a genuine symphony 
 of religions. Listen to each one of the notes 
 
326 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 that each of these seven religions sounds." And 
 what are the notes? From Hinduism the note of 
 spirit, absolutely abrogating the idea that there 
 is any such thing as "dead" matter, "brute" 
 matter, because "the whole world of matter is 
 thrilling, throbbing, pulsing with divine energy 
 and divine meaning"; from Buddhism, the note 
 of "renunciation"; from Zoroastrianism, the 
 note of conflict and victory; from Confucianism, 
 the note of order; from Judaism, the note of 
 righteousness ; from Mohammedanism, the note 
 of submission; from Christianity, the note of 
 love. Or, the writer goes on, the figure may be 
 changed and all the religions of the world likened 
 to separate prismatic colors which are to be 
 blended in the "pure white ray of universal 
 religion. ' ' That religion — the same writer 
 changes the metaphors once more — "can only 
 come slowly, gradually, spontaneously by an 
 organic, evolutionary process, — each one of the 
 great extant religions dying a sectarian death in 
 order that it may survive in spiritual substance." 
 (A. W. Martin, in "The Unity of Religions, " p. 
 333 f.) 
 
 As we have already seen, Christianity seeks 
 and rejoices in all the truth it can find anywhere, 
 but its joy is not in the discovery of truth that is 
 new to it. All the truth of the other religions 
 it already knows. These "notes," so far as they 
 are true, are all in Christianity. It is the sym- 
 phony. No other religion strikes any single note 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 327 
 
 as truly as it is already struck in Christianity. It 
 is already the pure white light of the universal 
 religion. The truth of other religions will be 
 absorbed in it, but they cannot make it. And 
 Christianity is already the temple. No other 
 ■ religion can supply arches or columns which the 
 temple does not already possess. The glory of 
 the temple will only be full when all nations 
 bring their honor into it, but this will be only 
 the perfect use of a temple already perfect; not 
 the enlargement of a building that awaits any 
 stones unhewn by the hands of Christ. 
 
 But if we may not take any of these views of What are 
 the non-Christian religions in their relation to We to 
 Christianity, if we are to hold the missionary Think of 
 view that Christ is the sole and sufficient teacher _. e ? on ~ 
 
 . Christian 
 
 and Saviour of mankind, and that Christianity is Regions? 
 the final and absolute religion, then what are we 
 to think of the non-Christian religions? Are 
 they the work of the evil one, misleading men 
 from their true allegiance, or are they part of the 
 divine education of humanity, leading men on 
 to the fuller light? Are they schoolmasters to 
 bring men to Christ? Thinking of them 
 as systems, with error and falsehood wrought in 
 with truth, and of this error and falsehood as 
 working out the inevitable and terrible effects 
 which must always follow the sanctification of 
 what is false and wrong, some students of com- 
 parative religion have seen in the non-Christian 
 religions the handiwork of evil. "It cannot be, " 
 
328 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 says Mr. Tisdall, "that the same tree has pro- 
 duced the abominations associated with the wor- 
 ship of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Mylitta, Cybele, 
 Ashtoreth, on the one hand, and Christianity, 
 purity and lofty conception of the Divine on the 
 other. To believe that the vile idea of phallic 
 worship, so all but universal in the Gentile 
 world, is due to the same source whence sprang 
 the conception of the Holy God of Israel, is 
 possible only to the perverted intellect. ' ' (Tisdall, 
 "Comparative Religion," p. 69.) 
 
 "It is quite popular in some circles," says 
 Bishop Thoburn, "and is supposed by many to 
 savor of learning and philosophy, to scout the old 
 Christian idea that all the great religions of the 
 world except Christianity are the offspring of the 
 devil, and to hold in its place the preposterous 
 view that they were all originated and developed 
 by God Himself; that they all have been, and still 
 are, serving their purpose, each in its own sphere, 
 in the education of the human race, and all 
 jointly contributing to what might be called the 
 religious evolution of mankind. For one, I con- 
 fess to a little impatience with this kind of so- 
 called philosophy. I have no more respect for 
 Mohammedanism as a system than for Mormon- 
 ism. I do not believe that God had any more to 
 do with the foundation of the one system than of 
 the other, nor do I believe that He was in any way 
 more responsible for the origin and development 
 of Brahminism or Buddhism than for the origin 
 
CHRIST, THE ONI Y LIGHT 329 
 
 of the worship of Baal, or the sacred animals of 
 Egypt. It is simply nonsense to talk in this way 
 with the facts of the religious life of the race 
 spread out before us as they are. That God has 
 had much to do in guiding, restraining, and 
 oftentimes resisting, the progress of these various 
 systems, everyone will admit who believes in the 
 divine administration of the government of this 
 world; but to make the Judge of all the earth 
 responsible for sin, and folly, and error, and 
 falsehood, and injustice, and iniquity in a thou- 
 sand forms, is a kind of philosophy which intel- 
 ligent Christians can well afford to discard." 
 (Thoburn, "Missionary Addresses," "The Moral 
 State of the Heathen," p. 78 f.) 
 
 These are the judgments forced upon men who 
 have given their lives for the non-Christian 
 peoples, when they look at the evils which are an 
 integral part of the non-Christian religions as 
 systems. But when these same men turn to the 
 good which they see about them, they are quick 
 to recognize that as of God. All that we find, 
 in whatever ethnic faith, that evinces any long- 
 ing for communion between man and his Maker, 
 every noble sentiment of poet or philosopher, 
 every instinct which leads men to look above and 
 beyond the grave, is welcome as a sign that God's 
 grace was all the time working in men's hearts, 
 that, though feebly and amid many fearful mis- 
 takes, some portion of the race — every one, in 
 whatever tribe or nation, who sought God — was 
 
330 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 receiving a divinely imparted education. (Tis- 
 dall, "Comparative Religion," p. 86.) 
 
 When we take the truth of Christianity as an 
 hypothesis. Mr. Tisdall adds, all becomes plain. 
 "We see that false ideas are perversions of true 
 ones, evil practices corruptions of good. We 
 perceive light shining amidst the gloom. Even 
 the abominations of human sacrifice, and the 
 cannibal rites too often associated with it, are 
 seen to have a great truth underlying them." 
 (P. 123.) The gloom itself is proof of light and 
 a call to the light. 
 The View of And it is just because missionaries do believe 
 the Edinburgh so surely in the absoluteness of Christianity, and 
 Missionary are so c j ear t } iat none f the evil of the world can 
 be of God, that they are able to deal in love with 
 what is false and imperfect and to see and exalt 
 whatever they find of good. We cannot do better 
 than try to take up their attitude as it is described 
 in the Report of the World Missionary Confer- 
 ence at Edinburgh, of the Commission on "The 
 Missionary Message in Relation to Non-Christian 
 Religions." In summing up the remarkable 
 body of evidence gathered from missionaries 
 dealing with all the non-Christian religions, the 
 Report says: — 
 
 There are two very notable points in that evidence 
 which may be noticed in this place. The first of these 
 is the practically universal testimony that the true atti- 
 tude of the Christian missionary to the non-Christian 
 religions should be one of true understanding and, as 
 far as possible, of sympathy. That there are elements 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 331 
 
 in all these religions which lie outside the possibility of 
 sympathy is, of course, recognized, and that in some 
 forms of religion the evil is appalling is also clear. 
 But nothing is more remarkable than the agreement that 
 the true method is that of knowledge and charity, that 
 the missionary should seek for the nobler elements 
 in the non-Christian religions and use them as steps to 
 higher things; that, in fact, all these religions, without 
 exception, disclose elemental needs of the human soul 
 which Christianity alone can satisfy, and that in their 
 higher forms they plainly manifest the working of the 
 Spirit of God. On all hands the merely polemic and 
 iconoclastic attitude is condemned as radically unwise 
 and unjust. 
 
 But, along with this generous recognition of all that 
 is true and good in these religions, there goes also the 
 universal and emphatic witness to the absoluteness of 
 the Christian faith. Superficial criticism might say that 
 these two attitudes are incompatible, that if Christianity 
 alone is true and final, all other religions must be false, 
 and that as falsehoods they should be denounced as 
 such. 
 
 Against that criticism we may, in the first place, set 
 the massive fact that the great weight of evidence before 
 us shows that these witnesses do not feel this contra- 
 diction. 
 
 Deeper consideration of the facts indeed leads us to 
 the conviction that it is precisely because of the strength 
 of their conviction as to the absoluteness of Christianity 
 that our correspondents find it possible to take this 
 more generous view of the non-Christian religions. 
 They know that in Christ they have what meets the 
 whole range of human need, and therefore they value 
 all that reveals that need, however imperfect the revela- 
 tion may be. 
 
 This very charity and tolerance, on the other hand, 
 makes more impressive the agreement as to the abso- 
 
332 THE LTGH7 OF THE WORLD 
 
 luteness and finality of Christ. Nowhere is the slightest 
 support found for the idea that Christianity is only one 
 religion among others, or that all religions are simply 
 dfferent ways of seeking the one Father, and are there- 
 fore equally pleasing in His sight. One massive con- 
 viction animates the whole evidence that Jesus Christ 
 fulfills and supersedes all other religions, and that the 
 day is approaching when to Him every knee shall bow 
 and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory 
 of God the Father. 
 
 Christianity But if we are to attain this position and to go 
 
 tke Final and out from these studies with a firmer motive and a 
 
 Absolute larger purpose, we must look fairly at some of the 
 
 e igion. conclusions of this comparison of the world's 
 
 religions which bear on the claim of Christianity 
 
 to be the final and absolute religion of the world. 
 
 The Only 1- In the first place it is a significant fact that 
 
 Religion Ex- Christianity is the only religion which is trying 
 
 employing ^ Q ma ke good its claim to universalism. None 
 
 of the non-Christian religions is making any real 
 
 Universality. 
 
 effort to do so. Mohammedanism is spreading 
 in Africa and India, but it makes no effort of any 
 significance to convert America or Europe or 
 Japan. The bounds of Confucianism are con- 
 tracting. Shintoism has withdrawn from the 
 lists as a religion, and claims now only the place 
 of a court ceremonial and a burial rite. Zoroas- 
 trianism, one of the worthiest of the ancient 
 religions, has almost vanished in the land of its 
 origin, and numbers comparatively few adherents 
 in India. Hinduism is geographically limited, 
 save as a philosophy, by its principle of caste, and 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 333 
 
 Buddhism is rejected in Japan by the very men 
 who might succeed in propagating it elsewhere. 
 But Christianity is moving out over all the earth 
 with steadily increasing power, with ever mul- 
 tiplying agencies, with ever enlarged devotion, 
 and with open and undiscourageable purpose to 
 conquer the world. And not less significant 
 than the fact of Christianity's missionary purpose, 
 is the method of it. With no trust in secular 
 support, in spite of all slanders which charge 
 otherwise, with purely moral agencies and with 
 fair comparison of its treasures with anything 
 that the world can offer, Christianity goes fear- 
 lessly forth to deal with all the life and thought 
 of man and to solve his problems and meet his 
 needs in the name and strength of God. One 
 single illustration may suffice to show the differ- 
 ence between its competence and philosophic 
 candor and the incompetence and partial plead- 
 ing of the other religions. It concerns the fun- 
 damental question as to what are the tests of a 
 revelation. This is the answer of the Catechism 
 of the Arya Samaj, representing the purest exist- 
 ing form of Vedic religion: — 
 
 1. It should not conflict with the natural laws. 
 
 2. It ought to comprise precepts which are conform- 
 able to the divine attributes. 
 
 . 3. It contains the germs of all the true sciences. 
 
 4. It should be communicated as soon as the world 
 comes into existence. 
 
 5. The divine commandments it contains must not be 
 contradictory to one another. 
 
334 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 6. It should not instruct us to believe in a mediator, 
 saviour or prophet who pretends to secure for us heaven 
 or hell. 
 
 7. It must be inspired in the language which is not 
 spoken in any country lying on the surface of the earth. 
 
 8. It embraces no historical and biographical events. 
 
 9. It should be compatible with true sciences and its 
 principles should stand to reason. 
 
 10. It does not sanction the killing of animated 
 beings. 
 
 Compare this with the answer of the Christian 
 philosopher meeting Hinduism with the Christian 
 message: — 
 
 1. What is the idea of God revealed and what power 
 has that idea had upon individual and social life? 
 
 2. What is the character of those who have assisted 
 in propagating the revelation? 
 
 3. What is the progressive character of the religion 
 based on the revelation? Has it shown itself capable of 
 keeping pace with the advance of civilization? 
 
 4. What is the character of its founder as revealer, 
 and inspirer and redeemer of men? 
 
 5. What is the spiritual effect of the revelation 
 upon those who sincerely act upon it? 
 
 (From Lecture of Prof. George T. Ladd on "Revela- 
 tion and Inspiration," delivered in Madras, February, 
 1900. ) 
 
 Christianity alone possesses credentials to 
 absolutism and finality which it can present and 
 is presenting to the world. 
 Its Unique 2. At the root of all things is the idea of God. 
 
 and Superior Here all religions meet to be judged. "The 
 Idea of God. truth and the good inherent in all forms of reli- 
 gion is that, in all, man seeks after God. The 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 335 
 
 finality of Christianity lies in the fact that it re- 
 veals the God for whom man seeks." (Jevons, 
 "Introduction to the Study of Comparative Reli- 
 gion," p. 258.) The best that can be said of any 
 non-Christian religion is that it is seeking for 
 that which Christianity possesses, — the true and 
 perfect God. "The conception of God," says 
 Dr. William Newton Clarke, "with which Chris- 
 tianity addresses the world, is the best that man 
 can form or entertain." If it is asked, "What is 
 that excellence in Christianity by virtue of which 
 it is entitled to be a missionary religion and de- 
 serves to be received by all men?" — the answer 
 is: — 
 
 Christianity is entitled to be a missionary religion and 
 to displace all other religions, because of its God. 
 
 There are many glories in the religion of Jesus 
 Christ, and it can do many services for men ; but its 
 crowning glory, or rather the sum of all its glory, is its 
 God. Christianity has such a conception of God as no 
 other religion has attained; and, what is more, it pro- 
 claims and brings to pass such an experience of God as 
 humanity has never elsewhere known. It is in this that 
 we find that superiority which entitles Christianity to 
 offer itself to all mankind. 
 
 It is necessary to tell in few words what this God is 
 who is the glory of Christianity and the ground of its 
 boldness in missionary advances, — this God so infinitely 
 excellent that all men may well afford to forget all their 
 own religions, if they may but know Him. The God of 
 Christianity is one, the sole source, Lord and end of all. 
 He is holy, having in Himself the character that is the 
 worthy standard for all beings. He is love, reaching 
 out to save the world from sin and fill it with His own 
 goodness. He is wise, knowing how to accomplish 
 
336 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 His heart's desire. He is Father in heart, looking upon 
 His creatures as His own, and seeking their welfare. 
 All this truth concerning Himself He has made known 
 in Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world, in Whom His 
 redemptive will has found expression, and His saving 
 love has come forth to mankind. . . . 
 
 Set over against this conception of God the 
 views which we have seen that the non-Christian 
 religions take of Him, and it does not need to be 
 shown that the religion of the Christian God 
 has supreme rights among men. 
 
 A religion that can proclaim such a God, and pro- 
 claim Him on the ground of experience, is adapted to 
 all men, and is worthy of all acceptation. Since Chris- 
 tianity is the religion of such a God, Christianity 
 deserves possession of the world. It has the right to 
 offer itself boldly to all men, and to displace all other 
 religions, for no other religion offers what it brings. It 
 is the best that the world contains. Because of its 
 doctrine and experience of the perfect God, it is the 
 best that the world can contain. Its contents can be 
 unfolded and better known, but they cannot be essen- 
 tially improved upon. At heart, Christianity is simply 
 the revelation of the perfect God, doing the work of 
 perfect love and holiness for His creatures, and trans- 
 forming men into His own likeness so that they will do 
 the works of love and holiness towards their fellows. 
 Than this nothing can be better. Therefore, Christianity 
 has full right to be a missionary religion, and Christians 
 are called to be a missionary people. (Clarke, "A 
 Study of Christian Missions," pp. 10, 11, 19.) 
 Its Ricknesa ^* From its unique and adequate conception of 
 
 God, it follows that Christianity has a message 
 to the world which is full of notes which the 
 non-Christian religions do not and cannot possess. 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 337 
 
 Even ideas which some of these religions share 
 with Christianity, such as "belief in an after life, 
 in the difference between right and wrong, and 
 that the latter deserves punishment; in the need 
 of an atonement for sin; in the efficacy of prayer; 
 in the universal presence of spiritual powers of 
 some kind" (Tisdall, "Comparative Religion, " 
 p. 91) ; belief in the sovereignty of God, in the 
 immanence of God, in the transitoriness and 
 vanity of this earthly life on one hand, and in 
 the infinite significance of this life and the sacred- 
 ness of the human order on the other, — have a 
 relationship and a significance in Christianity, 
 with its perfect God, which makes them totally 
 different from the conceptions of other religions. 
 And beside these, Christianity has a whole world 
 of conceptions of its own, — the fatherhood of 
 God, the brotherhood of man, redemption, the 
 incarnation of a personal God, atonement, char- 
 acter, service, fellowship. And "Christianity 
 alone of the religions of the world teaches that 
 self-sacrifice is the way to life eternal." 
 (Dennis, "The Message of Christianity," p. 28; 
 Jevons, "Introduction to the Study of Compara- 
 tive Religion," p. 69.) Some of these ideas are 
 so great and so distinctive that they must be 
 looked at separately. 
 
 4. In its conception of sin, in its provision its Conception 
 for sin's forgiveness and defeat, and in its ideal of Sin and 
 of salvation and the free offer of its salvation to Salvation, 
 every man, Christianity is unique and satisfying. 
 
338 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Christianity sees sin as the supreme evil in the 
 world, it regards it as a want of conformity to the 
 perfect will of God, or as transgression of His 
 perfect law; it teaches that sin is not a matter of 
 act only, but also of thought and desire and will, — 
 a taint in the nature; it insists that God is not 
 responsible for it or for any evil; it emphasizes 
 the guilt and horror of it, and the deadly con- 
 sequences both for time and for eternity, and it 
 opens to man a way of full forgiveness and of 
 clean victory. In contrast with this view, Mo- 
 hammedanism teaches that sin is only the wilful 
 violation of God's law; sins of ignorance it does 
 not recognize; its doctrine of God's sovereignty 
 fixes the responsibility for sin on God and dis- 
 solves the sense of guilt, and it denies the evil 
 taint of sin in human nature. In Hinduism sin 
 as opposition to the will of a personal God is 
 inconceivable; it is the inevitable result of the 
 acts of a previous state of being; it is evil, because 
 all existence and all action, good as well as bad, 
 are evil, and it is illusion, as all things are illu- 
 sion. In pure Buddhism there can be no sin in 
 our sense of the word, because there is no God ; 
 sin there means "thirst, " "desire," and what 
 Buddhism seeks to escape is not the evil of life 
 only, but life itself; and its conception of the sins 
 that impede, while including much that is im- 
 moral, does not include all, and does include 
 much on the other hand that has no immoral 
 character at all. Confucianism makes no mention 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 339 
 
 of man's relation to God, and totally lacks all 
 conception of sin. In one word, Christianity is 
 the only religion in the world which clearly 
 diagnoses the disease of humanity and discovers 
 what it is that needs to be healed and that 
 attempts permanently and radically to deal with 
 it. 
 
 And so, also, Christianity alone knows what 
 the salvation is which men require, and makes 
 provision for it. In Christianity salvation is sal- 
 vation from the power and the presence of sin, 
 as well as from its guilt and shame. Its end is 
 holy character and loving service. It is available 
 for men here and now. In the Mohammedan 
 conception salvation consists in deliverance from 
 punishment, and deliverance not by redemption 
 and the sacrifice of love, but by God's absolute 
 sovereignty. The Hindu idea of salvation is to 
 escape from the sufferings incident to life, to be 
 liberated from personal, conscious existence, and 
 this liberation is to be won by the way of knowl- 
 edge, knowledge being the recognition of the 
 soul's essential identity with Brahma, the imper- 
 sonal God, or by the way of devotion, devotion 
 being not faith in a God who works for the soul, 
 but the maintenance by the soul of a saving 
 attitude of mind toward the deity chosen to be 
 worshiped. This is actual Hinduism, not the 
 nobler doctrine of the Vedas. In Buddhism sal- 
 vation is the extinction of existence. Indeed, 
 there is no soul recognized by pure Buddhism, 
 
340 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 History, 
 
 Progress and 
 
 Spiritual 
 
 Freedom. 
 
 There is only the Karma, or character, which 
 survives, and every man must work out his own 
 Karma unaided.. "By one's self," it is written 
 in the Dhammapada, "the evil is done; by one's 
 self one suffers; by one's self evil is left undone; 
 by one's self one is purified. Lo, no man can 
 purify another." The best Northern Buddhism, 
 as we have seen, draws nearest to Christianity in 
 its conception of a salvation by faith in Amitaba 
 Buddha, but even here the salvation is release 
 from the necessity of continued rebirths, not a 
 creation of new character for human service in 
 divine loyalty. Confucianism has no doctrine of 
 salvation. The Chinese soul has had to turn, in 
 the attempt to satisfy its needs, to other teachers. 
 In its ideal and offer of salvation Christianity 
 stands alone. (Kellogg, "Comparative Reli- 
 gion," Ch. IV, V.) 
 
 5. Christianity is the only religion which is at 
 once historical, progressive and spiritually free. 
 Therefore, it is the only religion which can 
 claim universal dominion. Each religion of the 
 world has filled a place in history, but Moham- 
 medanism is the only one whose historical facts 
 are essential to it, and as Bishop Westcott says, — 
 
 Christianity is historical not simply in the sense in 
 which, for example, Mohammedanism is historical, 
 because the facts connected with the origin and growth 
 of this religion, with the personalty and life of the 
 Founder, with the experience and growth of His doc- 
 trine, can be traced in documents which are adequate 
 to assure belief; but in a far different sense also. It is 
 historical in its antecedents, in its realization, in itself; 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 341 
 
 it is historical as crowning a long period of religious 
 training which was accomplished under the influence of 
 divine facts ; it is historical as brought out in all its 
 fullness from age to age in an outward society by the 
 action of the Spirit of God ; but above all, and most 
 characteristically, it is historical because the revelation 
 which it brings is of life and in life. The history of 
 Christ is the Gospel in its light and in its power. His 
 teaching is Himself, and nothing apart from Himself; 
 what He is and what He does. The earliest creed — the 
 creed of baptism — is the affirmation of facts which 
 include all doctrine. 
 
 Dogmatic systems may change, and have changed so 
 far as they reflect transitory phases of speculative 
 thought, but the- primitive gospel is unchangeable as it 
 is inexhaustible. There can be no addition to it. It 
 contains in itself all that will be slowly wrought out in 
 thought and deed until the consummation. 
 
 In this sense, Christianity is the only historical reli- 
 gion. The message which it proclaims is wholly unique. 
 Christ said, I am — not I declare, or I lay open, or I 
 point to, but I am — the Way, the Truth and the Life. 
 (Westcott, "Religious Thought in the West," p. 346 f.) 
 
 And Christianity is the only progressive reli- 
 gion. Northern Buddhism has progressed by a 
 change which has completely altered its character 
 from that of Southern Buddhism, but the Japanese 
 people, who have carried it farthest, no longer 
 regard it as capable of adaptation to the needs of 
 a progressive society. Confucianism is by its 
 very principle unprogressive. It is an appeal to 
 ancient precedents. Of Mohammedanism and 
 Hinduism, let two competent witnesses speak. 
 Of Mohammedanism, Professor Kuenen: — 
 
 Islam was destined, after a very brief period of 
 growth and development, to stereotype itself once for 
 
342 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 all and assume its unalterable shape. Succeeding gener- 
 ations, and nations with other mental equipment, might 
 add to it from their own stores, and might attempt to 
 modify and expand its rigid form. Only for a time, 
 and indeed only in appearance, could these attempts 
 succeed. Almost as old as Islam itself and destined to 
 last as long, there stood and there stand immovable the 
 Koran and the Tradition. The better they were fitted 
 partly to inspire and partly to subdue Mohammed's 
 fellow countrymen, and so in the first period to work 
 marvels, the more uncompromisingly do they bar the 
 way to the realization of their own ideal — the spread of 
 Islam amongst all the children of men. True univer- 
 salism is" to Islam, in virtue of its very origin, unattain- 
 able. (Kuenen, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 54.) 
 
 And of Hinduism, Dr. Hume: — 
 
 If, as we believe, Christianity is the fullest interpre- 
 tation of universal religion which has yet been made, 
 and if it is a growing religion in which there is room 
 for all fuller knowledge that may come to mankind, 
 and is one which adapts itself to various races and 
 individuals according to their individual and varying 
 needs, then Christianity, as now developing and to be 
 developed hereafter, will become the religion of India 
 and of the world. Prof. E. W. Hopkins, successor of 
 Prof. W. D. Whitney of Yale, after visits to India and 
 after exceptional study of the religions of India, thus 
 speaks in his book on "The Religions of India": "In 
 her own religions there is no hope for India, and her 
 best minds have renounced them. The body of Hin- 
 duism is corrupt, its soul is evil. As for Brahmanism — 
 the Brahmanism that produced the Upanishads — the 
 spirit is departed and the form that remains is dead." 
 (Hume, "Missions from the Modern View," p. 189.) 
 
 And so, also, in Christianity alone is there 
 spiritual freedom. In Indian pantheism, Chinese 
 
CHRIST, THE ONL Y LIGHT 343 
 
 polytheism, or the Buddhist predestinarianism of 
 Karma, there can be no personal spiritual free- 
 dom. Can there be in Islam? If it is not there, 
 it is nowhere outside of Christianity. Let another 
 competent witness answer. Professor Macdonald 
 first quotes the Moslem theologian, Al-Ghazzali, 
 who is commenting on the Koran: — 
 
 He whom Allah wills to guide, he opens his breast to 
 Islam ; and he whom he wills to lead astray, he narrows 
 his breast. He is the guider aright and the leader 
 astray ; he does what he wills, and decides what he 
 wishes ;. there is no opposer of his decision and no 
 repeller of his decree. He created the Garden and 
 created for it a people, then used them in obedience ; 
 and he created the Fire, and created for it a people, 
 then used them in rebellion ; and he informed his 
 creation of the sign of the people of the Garden and of 
 the sign of the people of the Fire; then said, "The pure 
 are in pleasure and the impure are in Jahim" ("blazing 
 fire," i.e., hell.) Then he said, as has been handed 
 down from the Prophet, "These are in the Garden, and 
 I care not; and these are in the Fire, and I care not." 
 So he is Allah Most High, the King, the Reality; "He 
 is not asked concerning what he does ; but they are 
 asked." 
 
 And then Professor Macdonald adds : — 
 This is the end of the whole matter, and to this must 
 return the vision of the Moslem mystic and the ecstasy 
 of the Moslem saint: the dreams of a lover and a 
 beloved, and the groanings and travailings of creation. 
 Whenever the devout life, with its spiritual aspirations 
 and fervent longings, touches the scheme of Moslem 
 theology, it must thus bend and break. For it, within 
 Islam itself, there is no place. (Macdonald, "Religious 
 Attitude and Life in Islam/' p. 300 f.) 
 

 344 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Because it is founded in historic facts and 
 dowered with reality, because it is expansive to 
 all the need and movement of life, and because it 
 is free and the fountain of that true freedom 
 wherewith only the Son can make men free, 
 Christianity is the only religion adapted to 
 universal dominion. 
 Its Ethical 6. The ethical uniqueness of Christianity 
 
 Uniqueness. entitles it to absorb and displace all other reli- 
 gions. It alone makes the moral character of 
 God the central and transcendent thing. Judged 
 by its God, no other gods are really good. It 
 alone presents a perfect ethical ideal for the 
 individual and it alone possesses a social ethic 
 adequate for a true national life and for a world 
 society. It is pre-eminently the ethical religion. 
 All its values are moral values. All the best life 
 of Christian lands is an effort to embody the 
 Christian ethics in life, and those ethics shelter 
 absolutely none of the evil of Christian lands. 
 ''There is hardly a more trustworthy sign and a 
 safer criterion of the civilization of a people," 
 says the anthropologist Waitz, "than the degree 
 in which the demands of a pure morality are 
 supported by their religion and are interwoven 
 with their religious life." And this is the true 
 test of religions also. Do they supply men with 
 perfect moral ideals? Do they condemn evil and 
 refuse to allow evil to shelter itself under reli- 
 gious sanction? On one or both of these issues 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLT LIGHT 345 
 
 every non-Christian religion breaks down. There 
 is much worthy moral teaching in each of the 
 non-Christian religions, but the Koran enjoined 
 the enslavement of the women and children of 
 unbelievers conquered in battle, and authorized 
 unlimited concubinage, and its sanction of polyg- 
 amy cannot be defended as in the interest of 
 morality. "Polygamy," said Dr. Henry H. 
 Jessup, "has not diminished licentiousness among 
 Mohammedans." (Jessup, "The Mohammedan 
 Missionary Problem," p. 46 f. ) Even in the 
 Vedas there are passages which are morally de- 
 barred from publication. "I dare not give and 
 you dare not print," wrote the Rev. S. Williams, 
 "the ipsissima verba of an English version of the 
 original Yajar Veda Mantras." ("Indian Evan- 
 gelical Review," January, 1891.) In the Bhag- 
 avata Purana the character of the god Krishna is 
 distinguished by licentiousness. And worst of 
 all in the Hindu ethics, even in the Bhagavad- 
 gita, it is taught that actions in themselves do 
 not defile one, if only they are performed in the 
 state of mind enjoined in the poem. While 
 Buddhist and Confucianist ethics are deficient 
 in active benevolence and human service. "Be ye 
 perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect," is a 
 conception peculiar to Christianity. 
 
 And when we turn to the social aspects of j tg gocxal 
 comparative ethics, we see with equal clearness Superiority, 
 the uniqueness of Christianity. Jevons points 
 
346 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 out one element of this superiority of Christianity 
 over all other religions: — 
 
 What differentiates Christianity from other ethical 
 religions, and from other forms of monotheism, is that 
 in them religion appears as ancillary to morality, and 
 imposes penalties and rewards with a view to enforce or 
 encourage morality. In them, at their highest, the love 
 of man is for his fellow man, and usually for himself. 
 Christianity alone makes love of God to be the true 
 basis and the only end of society, both that whereby 
 personality exists and the end in which it seeks its 
 realization. Therein the Christian theory of society 
 differs from all others. Not merely does it hold that 
 man cannot make himself better without making society 
 better, that development of personality cannot be 
 effected without a corresponding development of 
 society. But it holds that such moral development and 
 improvement of the individual and of society can find 
 no rational basis, and has no rational end, save in the 
 love of God. (Jevons, "Introduction to the Study of 
 Comparative Religion," p. 260.) 
 
 But the precise form of Christianity's social 
 superiority to other religions is less significant 
 than the great fact that the ethics of religions 
 like Brahmanism and Buddhism are not social at 
 all. "At the best, " says Hobhouse, "the Brah- 
 manic view of life is pessimistic and its highest 
 ideal is the sage who, having performed his 
 duties, has emancipated himself from human 
 relations and entered into the spiritual kingdom 
 of the god within his breast. It contains no 
 message of comfort for the sufferer, of love, of 
 forgiveness, of humility. Still less does it pro- 
 claim an ideal of social justice. It leaves us with 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 347 
 
 the picture of the emaciated hermit dreaming, in 
 the trance of semi-starvation, of himself as one 
 with the center of things, — a God self-created by 
 his own afflicted brain." (Hobhouse, ' 'Morals 
 in Evolution," Vol. II, p. 105.) And of Bud- 
 dhism Menzies says: — 
 
 This religion is not a social force, it aims not at a 
 kingdom of God to be built up by the united efforts of 
 multitudes of the faithful, but only at saving individual 
 souls, which in the act of being saved are removed 
 beyond all activity and all contact with the world. 
 Buddhism, therefore, is not a power which makes 
 actively for civilization. It is a powerful agent for the 
 taming of passion and the prevention of vagrant and 
 lawless desires ; it tends, therefore, towards peace. But 
 it offers no stimulus to the realization of the riches 
 which are given to man in his own nature ; it checks 
 rather than fosters enterprise; it favors a full con- 
 formity to rule rather than the free cultivation of 
 various gifts. Its ideal is to empty life of everything 
 active and positive, rather than to concentrate energy 
 on a strong purpose. It does not train the affections to 
 virtuous and harmonious action, but denies to them all 
 action and consigns them to extinction. (Menzies, 
 "History of Religion," p. 379.) 
 
 The more rigorous our comparison of Chris- 
 tianity in its moral ideals and its moral power 
 with other religions, even with the most generous 
 possible interpretation of the non-Christian faiths, 
 the more clearly does their need appear, and with 
 it the sole sufficiency of Christ to meet it. 
 
 Dr. Barrows, in his closing lecture in India, 
 said: — 
 
 The world needs the Christian religion. India needs 
 Christ. I speak with some confidence on this point. 
 
348 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 In the providence of God, I have given time during the 
 best years of my life to the examination of this ques- 
 tion, and I have had opportunities such as few other 
 men ever had of seeing and knowing the best side of the 
 ethnic religions. I count as my friends Parsees and 
 Hindus, Buddhists and Confucianists, Shintoists, Jains 
 and Mohammedans. I know what they say about them- 
 selves. I have looked at their religions on the ideal 
 side as well as the practical, and I know this, that the 
 very best which is in them, the very best which these 
 well-meaning men have shown to us, is often a reflex 
 from Christianity, and that what they lack, and the lack 
 is very serious, is what the Christian gospel alone can 
 impart; and I know that beneath the shining examples 
 of the elect few in the non-Christian world there is a 
 vast area of idolatry, and pollution, and unrest, and 
 superstition, and cruelty, which can never be healed 
 by the forces which are found in the non-Christian 
 systems. Recognizing to the full the brighter side of 
 so-called heathenism, rejoicing that the light has been 
 shining everywhere, and that foreshadowings of the 
 evangelic truths are discoverable among the nations, I 
 yet see that in Christ only is there full salvation for the 
 individual and for society. (Barrows, "Christianity 
 the World Religion," p. 158.) 
 
 7. The social uniqueness of Christianity sets 
 it in a class apart from the other religions. Its 
 ethics, as just pointed out, are socially superior. 
 The superiority of Christianity in this regard 
 needs separate emphasis. It is the one religion 
 of brotherhood, asserting the unity of humanity. 
 Hinduism denies human unity by its caste, Con- 
 fucianism by its pride, Mohammedanism by its 
 bigotry. Kuenen disputes the common idea that 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 349 
 
 Buddhism repudiated caste and taught equality, 
 and he quotes the opinion of Oldenberg: — 
 
 We can understand how in our times Buddha should 
 have had the role assigned to him of a social reformer 
 who broke the oppressive chains of caste and won a 
 place for the poor and humble in the spiritual kingdom 
 which he founded. But if anyone would really sketch 
 the work of Buddha, he must, for truth's sake, dis- 
 tinctly deny that the glory of any such deed, under 
 whatever form it may be conceived, really belongs to 
 him. (Kuenen, "Hibbert Lectures," 1882, p. 246 f.) 
 
 And Christianity is the one religion which has Tne Place of 
 taught the equality of woman with man, produced tte Child in 
 the unique institution of the Christian home, and "stiamty. 
 set the child as a matter of social and religious 
 principle in the first place. We cannot overstate 
 the significance of the religious test afforded in a 
 comparative study of the place of the child in the 
 world religions. Christianity is the only religion 
 that makes anything of the childhood of its 
 Founder. The other religions of the world 
 either have nothing to say about the childhood of 
 their founders, or preserve only a few insignifi- 
 cant traditions. And Christianity is the only 
 religion that takes any particular account of the 
 children themselves. The gospels are full of 
 stories of Jesus' miracles in behalf of children, 
 and of his love and tenderness toward children. 
 The other religions are concerned with adults. 
 Their message is a message for adults. Chris- 
 tianity is the only religion which prescribes the 
 spirit of childhood as important. Christianity, 
 
350 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 indeed, makes it essential. No one can enter the 
 kingdom of heaven who will not do so as a little 
 child. Tradition says that Lao-tsze, the founder 
 of Taoism, was born as an old man, and all the 
 other religions demand as conditions of salvation 
 what is inconsistent with, or far beyond the spirit 
 of, childhood. 
 
 These are radical distinctions. How radical 
 they are is seen in the consequences of the atti- 
 tude of the different religions toward child char- 
 acter and child life. From the beginning 
 Christianity has had a tender solicitude for the 
 child. Schools and orphanages and homes were 
 its immediate products, and all over the world 
 to-day the first anxiety of the Christian Church is 
 for the child. By loving rites the child is recog- 
 nized in its infancy as having a place in the 
 Christian institution, and its nurture and care 
 are the chief concern of the church. "To child- 
 ren," as Uhlhorn says in "The Conflict of Chris- 
 tianity with Heathenism," "the gospel first gave 
 their rights. They, too, in antiquity were beyond 
 the pale of the laws. A father could dispose of 
 his children at will. If he did not wish to rear 
 them, he could abandon or kill them. The law 
 of the Twelve Tables expressly awarded to him 
 this right. Plato and Aristotle approved of 
 parents' abandoning weak and sickly children 
 whom they were unable to support, or who could 
 not be of use to the state. Whoever picked up 
 a child who had been deserted could dispose of 
 it and treat it as a slave. The father's power 
 
CHRIST, THE ONL Y LIGHT 351 
 
 over his children was limitless; life and death 
 were at his disposal. Christianity, on the con- 
 trary, taught parents that their children were a 
 gift from God, a pledge entrusted to them, for 
 which they were responsible to Him. It spoke 
 not merely of the duties of children, but also of 
 the duties of parents; and since it invested these, 
 as representatives of God, with something of His 
 majesty and honor, it appointed to them the lofty 
 task of educating their baptized offspring as chil- 
 dren of God, and for His kingdom. The exposi- 
 tion of children was looked upon by Christians 
 as plainly unlawful, — it was regarded and treated 
 as murder. And, though paternal authority was 
 highly esteemed, there could no longer be any 
 claim to an unconditional right over children 
 after men had learned to look upon them as God's 
 property. 
 
 The one fact of polygamy alone is enough to 
 indicate how widely different the place of chil- 
 dren in the non-Christian religions must be from 
 their place in Christianity. Polygamy makes a 
 pure and loving home life impossible, and it 
 begets an atmosphere in which right education 
 in character is an impossibility. And all the 
 non-Christian religions are polygamous, or, by 
 the practice of concubinage, practically polyg- 
 amous. 
 
 Under all the non-Christian religions the girls Heathenism's 
 suffer. The preservation of the male line is the Contempt for 
 great essential, and often polygamy and concu- Girls. 
 
352 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 binage are practiced simply to secure male off- 
 spring, the woman and the girl being of little 
 account save as they belong to the process. 
 "One of the deepest convictions in the mind of 
 the Arab," says Dr. Jessup, "is that any man is 
 immeasurably superior to any woman, — that 
 women are fit only to be despised. The rejoic- 
 ing over the birth of a son is matched by the 
 grief with which a daughter is received into the 
 world. In Kesrawan, a district of Mount Lebanon 
 near Beyrout, the Arab women have a proverb, 
 'The threshold weeps forty days when a girl is 
 born.' " In China daughters are not counted. If 
 a man is asked how many children he has, he 
 will reply with the number of his sons. A 
 pagan Chinese woman, speaking upon the subject 
 of daughters, remarked, "A daughter is a trouble- 
 some and expensive thing anyway. Not only 
 has she to be fed but there is all the trouble of 
 binding her feet, and of getting her betrothed, 
 and of making up her wedding garments, and 
 even after she is married off she must have pres- 
 ents made to her when she has children. Really, 
 it is no wonder that so many baby girls have been 
 slain at their birth." "A boy," declares a 
 common Chinese saying, "is worth ten times 
 as much as a girl." "If a girl does no harm," 
 declares another, "it is enough; you cannot 
 expect her to be either useful or good." The 
 Chinese contempt for girls rests upon a religious 
 basis. The great religious conception in China 
 
CHRIST, THE ONL T LIGHT 353 
 
 is the idea of ancestral worship. The happiness 
 of the soul in the world beyond depends upon 
 the maintenance of reverence and care for the 
 spirits by living male descendants. Daughters 
 are useless to the spirits of the dead. In India 
 "the position of women is shown to be inferior 
 to that of men from the hour of their birth. As 
 soon as a boy is born a horn made of a shell is 
 blown, to tell the neighbors the good news, but 
 when a daughter is born there is no sound of 
 rejoicing. When a son is born, friends come to 
 congratulate the father, but when he has a little 
 girl, if friends come at all, it is to show their 
 sympathy with the family. For a son religious 
 ceremonies are performed. Mothers with sons 
 are regarded as the favorites of the gods, but 
 mothers with daughters only are thought to be 
 accursed. And the Hindu religion permits a 
 man to marry a second wife, if within seven 
 years of marriage he has no son, although he 
 may have daughters." 
 
 It is this contempt for girls that has led to Infanticide, 
 infanticide. "Of the prevalence of infanticide 
 in China," says Dr. W. A. P. Martin, "there is 
 unhappily no room for doubt. The question is 
 set at rest by the testimony of the people them- 
 selves. Among their moral tracts dissuading 
 from vice and crime a conspicuous place is filled 
 by a class called 'Dissuasives from Drowning 
 Daughters.' Official proclamations may often 
 be seen posted on gates and walls forbidding the 
 
354 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 practice." Dr. Abeel gave it as his verdict, 
 after repeated investigation in the vicinity of 
 Amoy, that the ''number destroyed varies exceed- 
 ingly in different places, the extremes extending 
 from seventy and eighty per cent to ten per cent, 
 and the average proportion destroyed in all these 
 places amounting to nearly four-tenths, or exactly 
 thirty-nine per cent. In seventeen of forty towns 
 and villages [visited] my informants declare that 
 one-half or more are deprived of existence at 
 birth." Of India it is declared by sober author- 
 ities that the murder of female children, whether 
 by the direct employment of homicidal means or 
 by the more inhuman and not less certain meas- 
 ures of exposure to privation and neglect, has for 
 ages been the chief and most characteristic crime 
 of six-sevenths of the inhabitants of British India. 
 In spite of the prohibition of infanticide by the 
 British Government, there have been officially 
 reported in fifteen years 12,542 cases of infanti- 
 cide, and "this number," Dr. Dennis says, 
 ''represents only a small proportion of the total." 
 In Africa the birth of twin children among 
 almost all the races is regarded with superstitious 
 horror. ''The birth of twins," says Mrs. Hill 
 of Western Equatorial Africa, "is considered a 
 great curse, and the woman that has twins is dis- 
 graced for life afterwards, and she is compelled 
 to throw the twins into the wood, where they are 
 left to die. In a town five miles distant from 
 where we were there are five hundred infants 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 355 
 
 annually sacrificed; they are murdered by hun- 
 dreds, and left to die in the way which I have 
 stated." 
 
 And even when children are loved and cared 
 for they are exposed under the non-Christian 
 faiths to far greater perils of disease and want 
 than under Christianity. Christianity produces 
 plenty. It leads to cleanliness and -earnest 
 thought about others, so that children receive 
 under Christianity a care entirely unknown under 
 the non-Christian religions. Thus a woman 
 missionary from Korea writes: "Kim Si has a 
 son, rather a 'ne'er do weel' I'm afraid, as the 
 sons of rich and indulgent mothers may easily 
 become in other places than Korea. But he has 
 a girl wife of seventeen, and now they have a 
 fine baby boy four months old. She is a dear 
 little mother, and idolizes her baby, but, like 
 all Korean mothers, she does fearful and wonder- 
 ful things to him. But she and Kim Si have 
 both been among the missionaries enough to 
 realize that there are things to do for babies that 
 they never have dreamed of, wonderful garments 
 of which they know neither the form nor the 
 name, and ways by which the baby can have a 
 bath even in winter and not meet its death. She 
 came into my room one evening, and as I sat on 
 my cot she crouched at my feet, and with her 
 hands clasped in my lap, her soft eyes looking 
 into mine with the most wistful longing, she 
 asked me question after question as to how she 
 
356 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 might best care for her baby, and train him to be 
 a useful man. Poor little woman! Her heart 
 was full of eager desire to do the very best for 
 her little one. She knew that there were things 
 that might be done to make him well and happy 
 and good, but as to what and how she knew 
 nothing at all. You mothers at home who sur- 
 round .your babies with every good thing that 
 love and intelligent care can provide, don't forget 
 to offer a prayer sometimes for these mothers in 
 Korea who only know that they have been lead- 
 ing their children in the darkness, and are now 
 eagerly trying to follow each ray of light. After 
 a talk on the care of children given by one of our 
 ladies here in a city class one evening, a sweet, 
 sad-faced woman came to me, and said, 'I have 
 lost three babies all because I did not know these 
 things I have heard to-night, but when my new 
 little one comes I believe I can keep it.' And I 
 have no doubt it was literally true." 
 Child The curse of child marriage in India is 
 
 Marriage. enjoined by the Hindu religion. The census of 
 1891 in India gives the following returns of early 
 marriage: — 
 
 Under 4 years of age, males . . 6.945 
 
 " " " females . 258,760 
 
 From 5 to 9 years, males . . 690,803 
 
 " " " females . . 2,201,404 
 
 " 10 to 14 years, males . . 2,342,433 
 
 " " " females . . 6,016,759 
 
 Mr. Justice Moothsowami Tver recently said, 
 ' 'According to custom now obtaining, a Brahman 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 357 
 
 girl is bound to marry, for fear of social degrada- 
 tion, before she attains maturity. Marriage is of 
 the nature of a sacrament which no Brahman is 
 at liberty to neglect without forfeiting his caste." 
 He shows that the Smritis, or Things heard from 
 God, "declare it to be a duty of a father to 
 bestow his daughter in marriage before she attains 
 her maturity." "A father should try his*best to 
 perform the marriage of his daughter from the 
 fourth year of her age upward, till before the 
 completion of the tenth year." 
 
 And it will not do for the apologists for Hin- 
 duism to say that child marriages are only 
 betrothals and not real marriages. Often they 
 are only betrothals, but in innumerable cases 
 little girls are actually married, with the inevita- 
 ble consequence of untold suffering and pain. 
 Facts could be cited from medical testimony. 
 And the curse of child marriage has associated 
 with it the curse of child widowhood. In 1891 
 there were 14,000 widows under five years of 
 age. Nearly every fifth woman in India is a 
 widow, held in contempt as unclean and an 
 object of suspicion as hated by the gods. 
 
 In Buddhist lands, such as Japan and Siam, 
 the child's lot is happier than under the other 
 non-Christian religions. A boy is more wel- 
 come than a girl, but the girl is welcomed and 
 counted as she may not be in India and China. 
 But however just and kind her treatment here, 
 no girl or woman, as such, can be saved or attain 
 
358 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 The Unique 
 Book of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Nirvana at last. She must be born in the wheel 
 of transmigration as a man. The lot of the child 
 is not unhappy, however, in these lands, but it 
 is bound by the common superstitions, and from 
 the earliest years goes to worship the idols and to 
 propitiate the spirits. 
 
 But whether the child is welcomed and cared 
 for by parental love or not — and wherever in the 
 world there are mother hearts there will surely be 
 mother's love — the fact remains that none of the 
 religions of the world, except Christianity, takes 
 any special account of the child, or have any 
 word for him or about him. Only Christ took a 
 little child and set him in the midst. Only Christ 
 was a little child, and this has made all the 
 difference in the world to children. 
 
 Aye, sure the babe is in his cradle blest 
 Since God himself a baby deigned to be, 
 
 And slept upon a mortal mother's breast, 
 And bathed in baby tears his deity. 
 
 8. The Bible is unique among the sacred books 
 of the world. The fourth of Dr. Barrows' Haskell 
 Lectures in India was on "The Universal Book." 
 In a farewell address in New York he summarized 
 his whole line of argument, and two glowing 
 paragraphs will suffice to indicate both his own 
 enthusiastic faith and the ground for it: — 
 
 How narrow and poor, in comparison, has been the 
 ministry of other sacred books! How limited to 
 national areas ! Much of the best modern poetry, 
 where the beauty depends so much on the artistic 
 expression, cannot be successfully put into most other 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 359 
 
 tongues, but the poetry of the Psalter, for example, is 
 primarily in the thought, and thought can go every- 
 where. Expert scholars inform us that the bibles of 
 other peoples, when translated into the English, are as 
 variant from the original form and melody as can well 
 be imagined. The Mohammedan deems it a sacrilege 
 for the Koran to talk in infidel tongues ; the very words 
 which the Prophet dictated and which his scribes wrote 
 down on palm leaves and shoulder blades, must be 
 learned in the Arabic and repeated in the original. We 
 are convinced that there is no life-giving power in such 
 mummeries. An intelligent world is not to be put to 
 confusion by superstitions. But the Bible, entering as 
 life and truth, justifies its claims by what it has wrought 
 for the savage and civilized races of men. It has lifted 
 the mind and transformed the life, enlarged the horizon, 
 and given to human darkness the bright atmosphere of 
 celestial worlds. To the ancient Greek, the knowledge 
 of the Old Testament and the New brought fresh con- 
 stellations to his sensitive and ever-expanding intelli- 
 gence ; and, surveying the effects which the Bible has 
 wrought on some modern peoples like Japan, ambitious 
 to get out of the primitive stages of civilization, one 
 writer, using a thoroughly modern metaphor, tells us 
 that "the translation of the Bible is like building a rail- 
 road through the national intellect." 
 
 A book which contains the Gospel of John, which 
 Schaff called "the most important literary production 
 ever written by man," and whose third chapter is better 
 fitted to improve the morals and lift the hopes of man- 
 kind than many a hundredweight of Brahmanic and 
 Buddhistic literature ; a book which has given to man- 
 kind all the pure and strong and vigorous monotheism 
 now prevailing in our race, among nations as diverse as 
 those who dwell in Scotland and those who dwell in 
 Arabia ; a book whose prolonged history was a manifest 
 prophecy of the Messiah, culminating in the matchless 
 
360 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 person and teachings of Jesus Christ, and through 
 whose record there runs, by the side of human sin, the 
 current of a divine redemption ; a book which opens 
 with creation's story, written long before the birth of 
 science and conformed to that theory of development 
 from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the 
 higher, which science now wears as its most lustrous 
 crown; a book which deals with those stories of the 
 earth's origin and of the earth's destruction by a deluge 
 in such a way as to demonstrate its moral superiority 
 above the other traditions and accounts which have 
 been left us; a book which has furnished in its psalms, 
 written more than twenty-five hundred years ago, the 
 one devotional volume most acceptable to the enlight- 
 ened nations of to-day, — those psalms on which John 
 Bright declared he would be content to stake the ques- 
 tion whether there is or there is not a Divine revela- 
 tion ; a book which has furnished mankind the authority 
 for that Sabbath of rest, without which civilization 
 would rapidly sink into physical decay and moral bar- 
 barism ; a book which, through its claiming insistence 
 on righteousness, its doctrine of retribution, and its 
 disclosure of the Christ, opposes the degrading and 
 downward tendencies of sin, and is lifting great portions 
 of our race into a better manhood, and which carries on 
 the forefront of its gospel the priceless truth of immor- 
 tality, making our earth in spite of its sorrows and 
 transgressions the suburb and gateway of celestial life, 
 shines so pre-eminently that it is only with an extreme 
 of courtesy that we can bring it in comparison with 
 other sacred writings. ("Homiletic Review," May, 
 1896, p. 399.) 
 Tne Only 9. Christianity is worthy to become the one 
 
 Religion Tkat re ligion of the world, because it is the only reli- 
 gion that can be made the world's religion; the 
 only religion which belongs to every race, but 
 
 . Life, 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 361 
 
 exclusively to none, — which has no narrowing 
 ethnic limitations, which is adaptive to all the 
 life of humanity and capable of inspiring and 
 guiding all the progress of mankind. In a true 
 sense, as Richard Rothe said, i( Christianity is 
 the most mutable of all things. This is its 
 glory." It quickens men to ceaseless effort and 
 growth, and as they change and expand and 
 advance Christianity seems to alter with them. 
 What it is doing is simply to give men a larger 
 experience of its own transforming power. 
 
 In every land where Christianity prevails, an influence 
 connected with religion is at work, which makes for 
 the emancipation and elevation of the human person, 
 and for the awakening of the manifold energies of 
 human nature. This, as we saw, is the immediate and 
 native tendency of the religion of Jesus ; it opens the 
 prison doors to them that are bound ; it communicates 
 by its inner encouragement an energy which makes the 
 infirm forget their weaknesses ; it fills the heart with 
 hope and opens up new views of what man can do and 
 can become. It is this that makes it the one truly 
 universal religion. Islam, it is true, has also proved its 
 power to live in many lands, and Buddhism has spread 
 over half of Asia. But Buddhism is not a full religion, — 
 it does not tend to action but to passivity, and affords 
 no help to progress. Islam, on the other hand, is a 
 yoke rather than an inspiration ; it is inwardly hostile 
 to freedom, and is incapable of aiding in higher moral 
 development. Christianity has a message to which men 
 become always more willing to respond as they rise in 
 the scale of civilization ; it has proved its power to 
 enter into the lives of various nations, and to adapt 
 itself to their circumstances and guide their aspirations 
 without humiliating them. A religion which identifies 
 
362 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 itself, as Christianity does, with the cause of freedom 
 in every land, and tends to unite all men in one great 
 brotherhood under the loving God who is the Father 
 of all alike, is surely the desire of all nations, and is 
 destined to be the faith of all mankind. (Menzies, "The 
 History of Religion," p. 423.) 
 
 And Christianity alone possesses this trans- 
 forming and adaptive power because it alone is 
 life. We have been comparing it as Christianity 
 and as a religion with the non-Christian religions, 
 but as a matter of fact these terms conceal the 
 very issue. We cannot compare things that are 
 incommensurable, and the life in Christ is not a 
 system. The term Christianity does not occur in 
 the New Testament. Jesus never uses the word 
 religion. It occurs in the New Testament only 
 half a dozen times. Christianity is a term which 
 stands in the same class with Judaism, Buddhism, 
 Hinduism, but Jesus did not mean to add a new 
 and rival religious system. He did not say, "I 
 am come that they might have Christianity." 
 John did not say, "He that hath Christianity hath 
 life." Paul did not say, "Believe in Christianity 
 and thou shalt be saved." The living Christ and 
 life in Christ filled the thought of the disciples, 
 and the great word of Christ Himself was life. 
 This is the fundamental, radical and utterly 
 divisive distinction. "Christianity is more and 
 higher than Heathenism," says Uchimura in his 
 "Diary." "It is Heathenism plus Life. By it 
 alone the law-keeping becomes a possibility. It 
 is the Spirit of the Law. It of all religions 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 363 
 
 works from inside. It is what Heathenism has 
 been searching and groping after with much 
 weeping. It not only shows us the good, but it 
 makes us good, by taking us right at once to the 
 Eternal Goodness Himself. It provides us not 
 only with the Way, but with the Life as well; 
 with the Rail as well as with the Engine. I am 
 yet to be taught by ' Comparative Religion' of 
 some other religion that does likewise. " ("Diary 
 of a Japanese Convert," p. 179.) 
 
 10. Christianity is the final and absolute reli- Christianity 
 gion, because it contains all the good and truth the one Ful- 
 that can be found in any other religion, and tillment and 
 presents it to men in its divine fullness, while ° mp . 
 
 *- rlumanity. 
 
 other religions have none but partial good; be- 
 cause it is free from the evils which are found in 
 all other religions, and because it alone can satisfy 
 all the needs of the human heart and of the human 
 race. We are glad to find any outreach after 
 truth in other religions which shows that the 
 hearts of those who hold it are made for that truth 
 and capable of receiving it in its perfect form in 
 Christianity. "The glory of Christianity," said 
 Professor Jowett, "is not to be as unlike other 
 religions as possible, but to be their perfection 
 and fulfillment." That is true of their good, but 
 Christianity does glory in its freedom from all 
 their falsehood and error. Christianity is final, 
 because there is no good beyond it and no evil in 
 it, and because it cleanses and crowns all the life 
 and thought of man. It is the end of all men's 
 
364 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 quest. "I maintain," says Tiele, "that the 
 appearance of Christianity inaugurated an en- 
 tirely new epoch in the development of religion; 
 that all the streams of the religious life of man, 
 once separate, unite in it; and that religious 
 development will henceforth consist in an ever 
 higher realization of the principles of that reli- 
 gion." (Tiele, "Elements of the Science of 
 Religion," First Series, p. 212.) And Chris- 
 tianity is absolute as well as final; that is, it fills 
 the field. There can be nothing higher or better. 
 There can be nothing else in the same class. 
 
 Bishop Westcott said: — 
 
 A perfect religion— a religion which offers a complete 
 satisfaction to the religious wants of man — must (to 
 repeat briefly what has been said) be able to meet the 
 religious wants of the individual, the society, the race, 
 in the complete course of their development and in the 
 manifold intensity of each separate human faculty. 
 
 This being so, I contend that the faith in Christ, 
 born, crucified, risen, ascended, forms the basis of this 
 perfect religion ; that it is able, in virtue of its essential 
 character, to bring peace in view of the problems of 
 life under every variety of circumstance and character — 
 to illuminate, to develop, and to inspire every human 
 faculty. My contention rests upon the recognition of 
 the two marks by which Christianity is distinguished 
 from every other religion. It is absolute and it is 
 historical. 
 
 On the one side, Christianity is not confined by any 
 limits of place, or time, or faculty, or object. It 
 reaches to the whole sum of being and to the whole of 
 each separate existence. On the other side, it offers its 
 revelation in facts which are an actual part of human 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT 365 
 
 experience, so that the peculiar teaching which it brings 
 as to the nature and relations of God and man and the 
 world is simply the interpretation of events in the life 
 of men and in the life of One who was truly Man. It 
 is not a theory, a splendid guess, but a proclamation of 
 facts. 
 
 These, I repeat, are its original, its unalterable 
 claims. Christianity is absolute. It claims, as it was 
 set forth by the Apostles, though the grandeur of the 
 claim was soon obscured, to reach all men, all time, all 
 creation ; it claims to effect the perfection no less than 
 the redemption of finite being; it claims to bring a per- 
 fect unity of humanity without destroying the person- 
 ality of any one man ; it claims to deal with all that is 
 external as well as with all that is internal, with matter 
 as well as with spirit, with the physical universe as well 
 as with the moral universe; it claims to realize a 
 re-creation co-extensive with creation ; it claims to 
 present Him who was the Maker of the world, as the 
 Heir of all things ; it claims to complete the cycle of 
 existence, and show how all things come from God and 
 go to God. (Westcott, "Religious Thought in the 
 West," p. 345 f.) 
 
 As absolute, it must displace all that is partial The Faith 
 or false. It must conquer the world. The that ia to 
 people who have it must be a missionary people. ^<»quertiie 
 
 mi i i i -i t ■ i World. 
 
 lhis is the solemn duty with which we are 
 charged by our personal experience of the treasure 
 that is in Christ, and this is the solemn duty with 
 which any true comparison of Christianity with 
 the world religions confronts us. Alike from the 
 look within and from the look without we arise 
 with a clear understanding of the missionary 
 character of the religion that bears the name of 
 
366 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Christ. The attitude of that religion is "not one 
 of compromise, but one of conflict and of con- 
 quest. It proposes to displace the other religions. 
 The claim of Jeremiah is the claim of Chris- 
 tianity, — 'The gods that have not made the 
 heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the 
 earth and from under the heavens. ' The sur- 
 vival of the Creator, joyfully foreseen, is the 
 ground of its confidence and its endeavor. 
 Christianity thus undertakes a long and laborious 
 campaign, in which it must experience various 
 fortunes and learn patience from trials and delays; 
 but the true state of the case must not be for- 
 gotten, namely, that Christianity sets out for 
 victory. The intention to conquer is character- 
 istic of the gospel. This was the aim of its 
 youth when it went forth among the religions 
 that then surrounded it, and with this aim it must 
 enter any field in which old religions are encum- 
 bering the religious nature of man. It cannot 
 conquer except in love, but in love it intends to 
 conquer. It means to fill the world." It must 
 do so in order that the Nations may have their 
 Desire and the World its Light. 
 
 BIBLE READING 
 
 Third Chapter of Ephesian>. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Is it desirable or necessary to compare Christianity 
 with other religions? 
 
CHRIST, THE ONLY LIGHT S67 
 
 On what terms is the comparison to be made? Are 
 these terms easy or possible? 
 
 Are resemblances or differences to be chiefly empha- 
 sized in the comparison of religions? 
 
 What different views are taken of the relation of 
 Christianity to other religions? 
 
 Are the non-Christian religions efforts of God to 
 reach men or efforts of men to reach God? Is the evil 
 in these religions from God? 
 
 On what grounds can Christianity be declared to be 
 the final and absolute religion? 
 
 Describe the superiority of the Christian conception 
 of God. 
 
 Compare the Christian and non-Christian ideas of 
 sin and salvation. 
 
 Describe the peculiar place of the historical element 
 in Christianity and also its unique spirit of life and 
 progress. 
 
 State the elements of Christianity's ethical superiority. 
 
 Compare the influence of the various religions upon 
 child life. 
 
 What are the grounds for claiming a unique place for 
 the Bible? 
 
 What is the fundamental difference between Chris- 
 tianity and all other religions? 
 
 SELECTED REFERENCE BOOKS 
 
 Jevons, "Introduction to the Study of Comparative 
 
 Religion," Macmillan, 1908. 
 Kellogg, "A Handbook of Comparative Religion," 
 
 Westminster Press, 1899. 
 Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions and Christianity," 
 
 Scribner, 1892. 
 Grant, "The Religions of the World," Revell, 1898. 
 Menzies, "History of Religion," Scribner, 1895. 
 Kuenen, "Hibbert Lectures," Scribner, 1882. 
 
368 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 Tiele, "Elements of the Science of Religion," Scribner, 
 
 1897-1899. 
 Muller, "The Science of Religion," Scribner, 1887. 
 Muller, "Hibbert Lectures," Longmans, Green & Co., 
 
 1878. 
 Barrows, "The Christian Conquest of Asia," Scribner, 
 
 1899. 
 Barrows, "Christianity, the World Religion," A. C. 
 
 McClurg & Co., 1897. 
 Warneck, "Modern Missions and Culture," W. B. 
 
 Mershon, 1888. 
 Hall, "The Universal Elements of the Christian Reli- 
 gion," Re veil, 1905. 
 Tenney, "Contrasts in Social Progress," Longmans, 
 
 Green & Co., 1907. 
 Knox, "The Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the 
 
 Christian Religion," Scribner, 1903. 
 Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," 
 
 Revell, 1897. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbas Effendi, 215. 
 
 Abeel, 345. 
 
 Abhedananda, 306, 308. 
 
 Abu Bakr, 185 f, 192, 211. 
 
 Abul Kasim, 213. 
 
 Akbah, 212. 
 
 Al Berkevi, 204, 206. 
 
 Al-Ghazali, 182, 343. 
 
 Ali, 212. 
 
 Alma, 189. 
 
 Ameer Ali, Sjed, 192, 197, 
 223 
 
 Amid'a, 115, 261. 
 
 Andrews, C. F., viii. 
 
 Animism, 123; the primitive 
 religion of China, 126 ff; 
 the religion of primitive 
 races, 128 ; a religion of 
 fear, 129 f ; and of spirit- 
 ual poverty, 131 f. 
 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 63 f, 78. 
 
 Arya Samaj, 35 ff, 333. 
 
 Ashvagosha, 100. 
 
 Asoka, 74. 
 
 Ayesha, 187. 
 
 Bab, 214. 
 
 Baroda, Gaekwar of,43f,45f. 
 
 Barrows, J. H., 320, 347, 
 358 ff. 
 
 Barton, J. L., 228. 
 
 Beha, 214 ff. 
 
 Besant, Mrs. Annie, 18 f, 21. 
 
 Bhagavad-gita 8, 11 f, 14, 51. 
 
 Bloomfield, Bishop, 311. 
 
 Brahmic Covenant, 30 f. 
 
 Brahmo Sabha, 29. 
 
 Brahmo Samaj, 30 ff. 
 
 Brenton, 128. 
 
 Browne, "A Year Among 
 the Persians," 182. 
 
 Buddhism, resemblance to 
 Christianity, 63 ; wide ac- 
 ceptance, 63, f ; is it a re- 
 ligion? 65 ff; origin of, 
 67 f; relation to Hindu- 
 ism, 68 f ; founder, 69 ff ; 
 spread of, 73 ff; sacred 
 books, 75 f; doctrine of, 
 77 f ; atheism of, 79 f; no 
 soul in, 80 f; ethics of, 
 86 f; caste in, 87 f; ten 
 commandments, 88 f ; sins 
 
 and duties, 89 f ; its ethics 
 unsocial, 93 f; weak- 
 nesses, 94 f ; development 
 and division, 96 ff; in 
 China, 101 f ; in Japan, 103 
 ff; contrasts with Chris- 
 tianity, 109 f; contacts 
 with Christianity, 114 f. 
 Buddhist Catechism, 79 f, 
 81 f, 84 f, 110. 
 
 Caldwell, Bishop, on the 
 character of Indian peo- 
 ple, 5; on the Bhagavad- 
 gita, 13 ; on popular 
 Hinduism, 41 f. 
 
 Cameron, 129. 
 
 Caste, 43 ff, 87 f. 
 
 Castelar, 325. 
 
 Chaitanya, 26. 
 
 Chamberlain, Jacob, 7. 
 
 Chang Chih Tung, 172. 
 
 China Missions Emergency 
 Committee, 169. 
 
 Chinese people, primitive 
 religion of, 126, 134; re- 
 ligiousness of, 124 f. 
 
 Chinese sects, 162. 
 
 Chao, 162 f. 
 
 Christianity, influence on 
 Hinduism, 38 ff ; contrasts 
 with Hinduism, 52 ff; 
 contacts with Hinduism, 
 54 ff; contrasts with Bud- 
 dhism, 109 f ; contacts 
 with Buddhism, 113 f; a 
 message of joy to Ani- 
 mistic people, 133; con- 
 trasts with Confucianism, 
 166-169 ; contacts with 
 Confucianism, 171- 
 174; contrasts with Mo- 
 hammedanism, 2 2 9-2 33; 
 contacts with Mohamme- 
 danism, 233-237 ; compar- 
 ison with other religions, 
 299-313; differences fun- 
 damental, 313 ff ; the final 
 and absolute religion, 
 332-366. 
 
 Clark, H. Martyn, 274 f. 
 
 Clarke, William Newton, 
 335, 366. 
 
370 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Comparative religion, ne- 
 cessity of study of, 299. 
 
 Confucianism, 102 ; agnosti- 
 cism of, 123; founder, 135 
 ff; the Classics, 145 ff, 
 150 ff; state worship, 147; 
 filial piety, 148; its char- 
 acter essentially political, 
 148 f; defects of, 163 ff ; 
 contrasts with Christian- 
 ity, 166-170; inferiority to 
 Christianity, 169; contacts 
 with Christianity, 171-174. 
 
 Confucius, life of, 135 ff ; 
 character, 139 f; his be- 
 lief in heaven, 143 f; in- 
 fluence, 141 f. 
 
 Copleston, 112. 
 
 Cornabv, 166. 
 
 Curzon, Lord, 318. 
 
 Dahlke, Paul, 93 f. 
 
 "Daily Hindu," 21. 
 
 Dante, 180. 
 
 Datta, Dr., 19. 
 
 Debenrenath Tagore, 30. 
 
 DeGroot, 126 ff. 
 
 Dennis, J. S., 354. 
 
 Dhammapada, 340. 
 
 Dilger, 57. 
 
 Douglas, 159, 167. 
 
 Ebina, 247, 252, 256, 262, 
 267, 277, 285, 289, 293. 
 
 Edinburgh Conference, Re- 
 port of Commission IV, 
 41, 55 ff, 116 f, 235 f, 330 1. 
 
 Eitel, on Buddhism, 74 f, 
 77, 85 f, 112 f, 114. 
 
 Ellinwood, F. F., 311. 
 
 "Epiphany," 49, 321. 
 
 Faber, Ernst, 124, 143, 145, 
 149, 164 f, 171. 
 
 Fairbairn, 124, 323. 
 
 Farquhar, 13, 57. 
 
 Farzi, 207. 
 
 Flint, 47, 303 f. 
 
 Foster, Arnold, 166. 
 
 Fox, Francis William, 169. 
 
 Fresnel, 219. 
 
 Gautama, 68, 69 ff; renun- 
 ciation, 70 ; enlighten- 
 ment, 72; doctrine, 77 ff; 
 ethics of, 87, 92 f. 
 
 Genebrard, 180. 
 
 Gibson, 161. 
 
 Goreh, Nehemiah, 9. 
 
 "Great Japan Buddhists' 
 
 Union," 319. 
 Griswold, 9. 
 Gungram, 52. 
 Guru Prasad Sen, 43. 
 
 Hail, J. E., 95. 
 
 Haji, 210. 
 
 Haldar, Sukumar, 6, 20. 
 
 Hall, Charles Cuthbert, 40. 
 
 Hanifs, 201. 
 
 Hill, Mrs., 354. 
 
 Hinayana, 96, 99. 
 
 Hinduism, character of its 
 gods, 50 f; character of 
 priesthood, 22; complex- 
 ity, 3; contact with 
 Christianity, 54 ff; con- 
 trast with Christianity, 52 
 ff; deficiencies of, 43-54; 
 good in, 6 f ; insufficiency 
 of, 41 f; philosophic, 15 
 ff; popular, 19 ff, 23; 
 present day character, 15; 
 reformed, 25-41; reform 
 of, due to Christianity, 38 
 f, sacred books, 7 ff. 
 
 ••Hindu, The," 22. 
 
 Hobhouse, 346. 
 
 Honda, Bishop, 246, 248, 
 257, 259, 267, 284, 290. 
 
 Hopkins, Professor, 9, 54. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, 221, 231. 
 
 Hume, R. E., 342. 
 
 Ibuka, K., 116, 246, 248, 
 251, 257, 263, 266, 279, 
 
 285, 287. 
 
 Ijma, 199. 
 
 Imad ud Din, 274. 
 
 Imam, 213 f. 
 
 Imbrie, William, 116. 
 
 Indian people, noble quali- 
 ties of, 4. 
 
 "Indian Social Reformer," 
 320. 
 
 Inglis, James W., 162. 
 
 Isma'il Hakki Effendi, 199. 
 
 Iwahashi, 113. 
 
 Jainism, 69. 
 
INDEX 
 
 371 
 
 Jaisohn, 247 f, 255, 258, 
 
 265, 267, 281, 286. 
 Jessup, H. H., 345, 352. 
 Jevons, 313 f, 335, 345 f. 
 Johnson, Archdeacon, 129. 
 Jowett, 363. 
 
 Kabir, 25 f. 
 
 Kalima, 208. 
 
 Karma, 83 f. 
 
 Kajastha Samachar, 15. 
 
 Keene, 225. 
 
 Kellogg, S. H., 321. 
 
 Ke Loo, 123. 
 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, 32 ff. 
 
 Khalid, 237. 
 
 Kheiralla, 215. 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, 39. 
 
 Kil, 247 f, 253, 255, 258, 
 
 265, 268, 280, 286, 290. 
 Kingslev, Charles, 181. 
 Koran, 195ff, 222, 226f, 233. 
 Kozaki, 246 f, 249, 256, 259, 
 
 267, 277, 285, 293. 
 Krishna, 6, 11 f, 51 f, 345. 
 Kuenen, 183, 341 f, 348. 
 Kume, Professor, 106. 
 
 Ladd, George T., 334. 
 Lao-tsze, 157-162, 350. 
 Lefroy, Bishop, 193. 
 Legge, 135, 145, 159. 
 Lloyd, A., 116. 
 Lucas, Bernard, 59. 
 
 Macalister, Professor Alex- 
 ander, 169. 
 
 Macdonald, 343. 
 
 Macnicol, 56. 
 
 Madhava Rao, 38. 
 
 Mahayana, 96, 99 f. 
 
 Malcolm, Napier, 221. 
 
 Margoliouth, 193. 
 
 Martel, Charles, 211. 
 
 Martin, A. W., 304, 325 f. 
 
 Martin, W. A. P., 115, 353. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 181. 
 
 Mencius, 150, 153 ff. 
 
 Menzies, 347. 
 
 Mishkat, 228. 
 
 Mohammed, diverse judg- 
 ments of, 180 f; place in 
 Mohammedanism, 18 2; 
 life of, 183 ff; the Hegira, 
 
 186; use of force, 189 f; 
 influence, 192 f; problem 
 of his character, 193 ff. 
 
 Mohammedanism, the 
 youngest world religion, 
 179; supersedes Christi- 
 anity, 179; place of Mo- 
 hammed in, 182 ; first 
 believers, 185 ; use of force, 
 188 ff; foundations of, 
 195-200 ; doctrines of, 200- 
 208 ; practical duties of, 
 208-210; spread of, 210 f ; 
 schism, 212 ff; moral 
 effects, 218 f; petrifying 
 influence, 220 f; morally 
 defective, 222-229; intol- 
 erance, 226 ; contrasts 
 with Christianity, 229-233 ; 
 contacts with Christi- 
 anity, 233-237. 
 
 Monier Williams, on the 
 character of Indian peo- 
 ple, 6; on the Upanishads, 
 10; on popular Hinduism, 
 23; on Ram Mohun Roy, 
 27; on Buddhism, 68, 76, 
 110 f. 
 
 Moothsowami Tyer, 356. 
 
 Moslem, 185. 
 
 Muavia, 212. 
 
 Muir, Sir William, 219, 224. 
 
 Mukerji, 247, 249, 253, 271, 
 282, 287, 291. 
 
 Muller, Max, on good in 
 ethnic religions, 7; on 
 the Upanishads, 10 ; on 
 comparative religion, 301, 
 306 f, 311 f, 318 f, 323. 
 
 Namaz, 208. 
 
 Nassau, R. H., 128 f, 131 f. 
 
 Nanak, 26. 
 
 Naryan Sheshadri, 49. 
 
 Nevius, J. L., 142. 
 
 Nirvana, 82 f, 85. 
 
 Northern Buddhism, 97 f. 
 
 Okuma, 104, 109. 
 Oldenberg, 349. 
 Omar, 190, 192, 211, 217, 229. 
 Omar Khayyam, 206, 207. 
 
 Palgrave, 218. 
 
372 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pantheism, 47. 
 
 Parliament of Religions, 304. 
 
 Poole, Stanley Lane, 224. 
 
 "Press, The Seoul," 108. 
 
 Prideaux, Dean, 180. 
 
 Pung Kwang Yu, 125, 141, 
 
 146. 
 Qias, 199. 
 
 Ramakrishna Paramahansa, 
 
 18. 
 Ramanathan, 319. 
 Ram Chundra, 14. 
 Ram Mohun Roy, 27 ff, 50. 
 Ranade, 323. 
 "Reis and Rawer," 21. 
 Rhys Davids, "64 f. 
 Richard, Timothy, 101. 
 Robinson, Canon C. II., 94. 
 Ross, Alexander, 180. 
 Rothe, Richard, 361. 
 Roza, 209. 
 
 Saktism, 23. 
 
 Sale, 180. 
 Sangha, 73, 90 f. 
 Saradananda, 17. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 9. 
 
 Sell, 208. 
 
 Shaku Soven, 113. 
 
 Shedd, W." A., 216. 
 
 Shiahs, 213. 
 
 Shintoism, 104 f, 259. 
 
 Simpson, Sir Alexander, 
 169. 
 
 Si raj ud Din. 247, 249, 254, 
 256, 258, 266, 274, 283, 
 287, 291. 
 
 Siva, 19. 
 
 Slater, on Christian influ- 
 ence on Hinduism, 39 f; 
 on insufficiency of Hin- 
 duism, 42; on the Bhaga- 
 vad-gita, 11; on Vedant- 
 ism, 11, 16. 
 
 Smith, Bosworth, 231 ff. 
 
 Smith, Robertson, 219. 
 
 Sobieski, John, 211. 
 
 Steinthal, F. W., 58. 
 
 Stobart, 220. 
 
 Subhadra Bhikshu, 79. 
 
 Sufiism, 216. 
 
 Sunnat, 198. 
 
 Sunnis, 213. 
 
 Tai-ping rebels, 103. 
 Takakusu, 104. 
 Tantras, 23. 
 Taoism, 157-162. 
 Tao Teh King, 159. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 89. 
 Thoburn, Bishop, 328. 
 Tibetan Buddhism, 97 f. 
 Tiele, 303 f, 364. 
 "Times, The Japan," 108. 
 Tisdall, St. Clair, 328, 330. 
 Townsend, Meredith, 246, 
 
 276 ff, 310. 
 Transmigration, 79. 
 Tsen, 247 f, 253, 255, 257, 
 
 265, 268, 281, 286, 290. 
 Tsuzuki, 106. 
 
 Tylor, 128. 
 
 Uchimura, Kanzo, 108, 117, 
 
 308 f, 362. 
 Uemura, 247, 252, 256, 259, 
 
 266, 278, 284, 289, 293. 
 Uhlhorn, 350. 
 Upanishads, 9 f, 21 f, 3. 
 I'paka, 72. 
 
 Vaishnava Movement, 26 f. 
 
 Varuna, 9. 
 
 Vedantism, 11, 13, 15 ff. 
 
 Vedas, 7 f, 35, 37. 
 
 Vishnu, 19, 20, 25 t. 
 
 Vivakananda, 17 f, 23 f, 48. 
 
 Wahabism, 216 f. 
 
 Waitz, 344. 
 
 Warneck, 128, 130. 
 
 Washburn, 203. 
 
 Watanabe, Justice, 247, 252, 
 
 268, 279, 284, 290. 
 Wesley, Charles, 180. 
 Westcott, Bishop, 340, 364 f. 
 Wiiliams, S., 345. 
 Williams, S. Wells, 172 f. 
 Woman, in Buddhism, 87, 
 
 95; in Christianity, 349 ff; 
 
 in Confucianism, 168 f; 
 
 in Hinduism, 45 f, 356; in 
 
 Mohammedanism, 219, 222 
 
 ff. 
 Yasodhara, 70. 
 Zakat, 209. 
 
The Series of United Study Books can be ordered 
 from the Women's Boards of Foreign Missions, 
 or from the headquarters of the Central Com- 
 mittee on the United Study of Missions, West 
 Medford, Mass. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Price, in paper, with postage, 35 cents 
 In cloth, postpaid, 57 cents 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF MISSIONS 
 
 (Via Christi) By LOUISE M. HODGKINS 
 
 "Clear, accurate, and comprehensive. . . . This series . . . 
 will be one of the best contributions to mission literature ever 
 made. ' ' — Congregationalist. 
 
 INDIA 
 
 (Lux Christi) By CAROLINE A. MASON 
 
 "Invaluable and almost indispensable as a guide-book for the 
 study of a great and interesting subject." — C. E. ScHAFFERin 
 The Reformed Church Review. 
 
 CHINA 
 
 (Rex Christus) By ARTHUR H. SMITH 
 
 "A well-informed and valuable sketch on a large subject." — 
 Scotsman. 
 
 JAPAN 
 
 (Dux Christus) By WILLIAM ELLIOTT GRIFFIS 
 
 "It is a model of what such a manual should be — systematic, 
 well-proportioned, highly suggestive, and, above all, read- 
 able." — Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 AFRICA 
 
 (Christus Liberator) By ELLEN C. PARSONS 
 
 " It is difficult to imagine how a better book for its intended 
 purpose could have been prepared." — New York Observer. 
 
The Series of United Study Books — Continued 
 
 THE ISLAND WORLD OF THE PACIFIC 
 
 (Christus Redemptor) By HELEN B. MONTGOMERY 
 
 "For text-book purposes this volume is, on its special subject, 
 quite the best with which we are acquainted." — Christian 
 World. 
 
 MISSIONS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 (Gloria Christi) By ANNA R. B. LINDSAY 
 
 A summing up of progress made in non-Christian lands. 
 
 THE NEARER AND FARTHER EAST 
 
 Outline Studies of Moslem Islands, and of Siam, Burma, and 
 Korea. 
 
 By SAMUEL M. ZWEMER, F.R.G.S., and 
 ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN, D.D. 
 " Precisely the kind of book a minister should have in order 
 to give his people information abundant and reliable for his 
 mission concerts, his collections, and for his own stimula- 
 tion." — Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 THE GOSPEL IN LATIN LANDS 
 
 Outline Studies of Protestant Work in the Latin Countries of 
 Europe and America. 
 
 By FRANCIS E. CLARK, D.D., LL.D., and 
 
 HARRIET A. CLARK 
 "A valuable book, comprising in a small compass data to 
 which the ordinary student has had access." — Religious 
 Telescope. 
 
 WESTERN WOMEN IN EASTERN LANDS 
 
 By HELEN BARRETT MONTGOMERY 
 
 Author of "The Island World of the Pacific." 
 
 Note. — Complete sets of the volumes now ready can be purchased 
 in the new library binding of blue and gold, with gilt top, the set 
 of ten volumes in a cloth box at $7.00 net, carriage extra. 
 
i-tb 15 1912 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: April 2005 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724) 779-21 1 1 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 FEB 15 1922 
 
IS 
 
 BBi 
 
 
 SB 
 
 ■ - ' •' 
 
 
 
 ,\ >,,""■'■ -. ,H 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 088 402 9-