John Nicol Farquhar

“ In the same way, if we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out, we must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of injustice to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore, grant to the perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most perfect injustice: and we must concede to him, that while committing the grossest acts of injustice, he has won himself the highest reputation for justice ”

“ He shared with others the idea that the world was on the verge of the dawning of a new day, a day of renewed justice and peace; but he had an idea of his own, that of a great personality, a man of high moral character, specially endowed by the gods for his great task as leader and ruler of the new time. Scarcely less prominent is his idea of the nobler race of men that shall spring up in the new era. It is no picture merely of good government such as Augustus gave the world that we have here; but a prophecy of the moral regeneration of mankind under the influence of a divinely prepared leader. ”

“ He is Plato’s just man; He utters from His own self-consciousness such things as the author of the Gītā imagined an incarnate god would say; He gives Himself up to death, in sheer love, as a sacrifice for sin, thus fulfilling the deepest needs of man, as expressed by the old Hebrew seer; and He is the only human being whom men of every race and clime can heartily admire and unhesitatingly imitate. Nor is this all: many other convergent lines of thought might be suggested, in the light of which Jesus stands out as the ideal of our common humanity and the fountain of the love of God. ”

“ Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece. The older philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his attention to practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted human reason; but unlike them, he aimed not at a display of intellectual dexterity but at reaching the actual basis of human morality, society and politics. Human conduct was the sole subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence the definite, practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in the closest possible relation to life and to the problems of the time. ”

“ Had Krishna uttered these doctrines on the famous battlefield, we should inevitably have found references to them in the literature produced during the following centuries. But where in the Brāhmanas do we find any of the leading ideas of the Gītā? Even if men had disbelieved Krishna, his claim to be God incarnate would at least have drawn out a protest; but in no single Brāhmana or early Upanishad is there the slightest hint of anything of the kind. So far from there being any corroboration of the great myth in early literature, there is the clearest proof that it is false. ”

“ The one duty of which the best spirits in Israel were conscious throughout the history of the people was faithfulness to Jehovah. Indeed the whole consciousness of the race might be summed up in two phrases: Jehovah is the God of Israel, and, Israel is the people of Jehovah. War, government, philosophy, art might be for other peoples: Israel’s one duty was to serve her God, religion the sole activity of her spirit. ”

“ Now we found from our study of Virgil’s prophecy that he believed that a new age was just about to open. Like other thinking men of his day, he felt that the civilization under which he lived was played out, that new life was needed, new morals and a fresh organization of society. He believed that in the new age the leader and king would be a great Roman, and that under him the world would be transformed. ”

“ Here is physical life on a gigantic scale. Let readers think, next, of the extraordinary advances made during the nineteenth century in every province of natural science, from mathematics and physics up through the biological sciences to psychology and the science of religion, the swift upward progress made in literary, historical and philosophical method, and the innumerable inventions that have been produced for facilitating every form of human activity. Are not these facts evidence of an amazing store of intellectual vitality in the society of the West? ”

“ Scarcely less impressive is the evidence furnished by the reception of the Gītā by Hindu readers: not the greatest of the Upanishads, neither the Chāndogya nor the Katha, has had one quarter of the influence exercised by this late poem; and the secret undoubtedly is to be found in the attraction of the man-god Krishna. How many generations of pious readers have found in the story of the life and teaching of the incarnate god something to which their deepest and most persistent religious instincts have responded! How many to-day turn to Krishna in their trials and troubles! ”

“ But space will not allow us even to outline the achievements of that incomparable age in the various provinces of human culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy.
The general advance of intelligence, education and culture in Greece produced the only result possible in communities whose religion was a traditional polytheism and whose morality rested merely on custom and proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both religious and ethical, broke in like a flood. Tradition and custom could not withstand the corrosive influences of fresh thought fed by deepening experience and widening science. ”

“ Human society is never stagnant; development in one direction or another is constant; so that in the course of a few centuries changes, both numerous and noticeable, take place everywhere. Thus the Europe of the middle ages differs very markedly from the Europe of to-day. Yet the one is the direct outcome of the other. On the other hand, the civilizations of Greece and Rome, although we owe them an incalculable debt, are marked off from modern civilization by differences which can only be spoken of as essential. ”

“ Then its influence on educated India has been and still is without a rival. Everybody praises the Upanishads, but very few read them; here and there one finds a student who turns the pages of a Sūtra or looks into Sankara or Rāmānuja, but the most are content to believe without seeing. The Gītā, on the other hand, is read and loved by every educated man. Nor is there any need to apologize for this partiality: the Divine Song is the loveliest flower in the garden of Sanskrit literature.
For the Western mind also the poem has many attractions. ”

“ There can be no doubt that among the influences which have produced Neo-Hinduism, Christianity is one of the most potent, if not the chief. This is peculiarly evident in the case of the Neo-Krishna literature we are discussing. In 1899 the Bengal Librarian wrote, “There is no denying the fact that all this revolution in the religious belief of the educated Hindu has been brought about as much by the dissemination of Christian thought by Missionaries as by the study of Hindu scriptures; for Christian influence is plainly detectable in many of the Hindu publications of the year.” ”

“ He spent his whole time in conversation with individuals, proceeding always by question and answer, thus compelling his companion to think for himself. His extraordinary intellectual skill and the loftiness and simplicity of his character drew all the best intellects of Athens around him. But what gives him his unchallenged supremacy in the history of Greek thought is the fact, that in his hands the sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay everywhere, proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities which men had feared for. ”

“ Many a man who had found the endless formulæ and the showy ceremonial of the sacrifice a serious hindrance to real religion, sought refuge from the noise and distraction of the popular cult in the lonely silence of forest or desert. To run over the sacrifice in one’s own mind, they reasoned, was as acceptable to the gods as to kill the horse or to pour the ghee upon the altar fire. But they soon reached the further position, that for the man who has attained TRUE KNOWLEDGE sacrifice is altogether unnecessary. ”

“ For it is not any single element that has been added externally to ancient life so as to produce modern society; it is rather a subtle spirit, which has modified all thinking, altered the values of things, produced organic changes in government and society, and recreated art and literature. ”

“ The differences between ancient and modern religion are very extraordinary in many ways. For the present we need only note the one far-reaching distinction, that to the 43ancients religion was a political duty, which the citizen was bound to fulfil, and a civic privilege, which only those in whose veins ran the sacred blood of the community could share; [171] while modern religion is the loftiest activity of the human spirit, as far transcending the narrow limits of the State as it does the petty distinctions of race and blood. ”

“ The Greeks and Romans had a great system of cycles and ages, not unlike the Hindu Kalpas and Manvantaras. One cycle follows another, the beginning of each being marked by the sun, moon and stars all occupying their original positions. The Roman phrase for cycle is “great year.” Each great year is subdivided into “months,” that is ages. The first age of each great year is the golden, when Saturn reigns, and a divine race of men occupies the earth; the last is the iron age, when Apollo reigns, and men are sinful. ”

“ Thus the Brāhmanas were composed while Vedic Sanskrit was still the language of the Indo-Aryans. Now Pānini’s grammar deals with classical Sanskrit, not the Vedic speech. He deals with many points of Vedic grammar, it is true, but he deals with them as exceptions; his subject is classical Sanskrit. He laid down the law, which has ruled Sanskrit throughout the centuries since his day. Thus he arose at a time, when the language of the Brāhmanas had become archaic, and modern Sanskrit had taken its place. ”

“ Think also of the buoyancy, the hope, the youthful delight in action, the glance into the future, which characterize the progressive peoples of Europe and America. Colonization, on the other hand, exploration, missions, world-wide commerce, domination over other races, whether you call them bad or good, are incontestable proofs of energy, physical, moral and intellectual. ”

“ Unasked the earth shall shower upon thee, sweet boy, thy first baby gifts, the gadding ivy with the fox-glove, and lily-bean entwined with smiling bear’s-foot. The goats shall bring home uncalled their milk-filled udders ”

“ Neo-Krishnaism, then, is one result of the operation of that potent spirit whereby India has become conscious of her unity, and her sons have been roused to a vigorous defence of all that they have inherited from the past. This rise of the national spirit, though it may be troublesome in small matters to the rulers of India, is undoubtedly the last and greatest justification of English rule ”

“ He feeds the hungry, breathes hope into the downcast, lifts up the enfeebled patient, helps the helpless. But while every form of suffering and sorrow appeals to His compassion, His heart is set on winning the souls of men. So we find Him preaching in the synagogue and by the sea, on the 51mountain-side and in the busy street, now stirring vast crowds, now dealing with an individual, and again pouring His rich teaching into the ears of the chosen Twelve. ”

“ The subject of the whole teaching of Jesus was the Kingdom of God. He held that God had been working from the very beginning for the winning of man to Himself, and that especially among His own people Israel He had shown His hand. They had not only come to know Him as the God of righteousness whose law was holiness; they had enjoyed His love; they had experienced His mercy and His power to redeem. But 54with the coming of Jesus Himself a new era of the world had opened: [212] God was now drawing near to all men, in a new relationship of love and mercy, with the purpose of saving them. ”

“ What can be the explanation of this extraordinary attitude to such an event?—The basis of it is the solemn declaration, which Paul makes in the Epistle, and which he says he made to his converts first of all, that ON THE CROSS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS. [261] The crucifixion, as a bare event in history, is but an act of wicked folly on the part of the rulers of Judæa; but, viewed from the standpoint of morality and religion, it is a divine act of world-wide significance. In the blood of Christ a new covenant had been made between God and man. ”

“ Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of the unjust, or from the justice of the just, but let us suppose each to be perfect in his own line of conduct. First of all then, the unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do. ”

“ Modern education is in form and method Greek; but the results it produces are altogether new; first, because it carries the modern spirit within the ancient forms, and secondly, because modern men regard education as part of the birthright of every human being. Moral ideals show very important differences, chiefly in the direction of the elevation of humility, meekness, sympathy, forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary advance in the conception of the right of individual freedom. In ancient times the individual citizen had no rights as against the State ”

“ The prophet knows that God’s ends will be worked out, that through Israel Jehovah’s name will be carried to the ends of the earth; he also sees as clearly that the nation as a nation is unfit for this lofty duty; so he recognises that the Servant who shall do this work will be found within the people. Whether he identified the Servant of Jehovah in this narrower sense with the small group of really God-fearing men who formed the soul of Israel in his own day, or whether he thought of an individual to be specially prepared for the task by Jehovah, we do not know. ”

“ But beyond this general influence, which cannot fail to be noticed by anyone who will take the trouble to read the volumes, it is, we believe, perfectly plain that the very ideas which have given birth to the literature are the result of Christian influence. A distinct taste for such books as the Gospels has sprung up; and men have come to feel the need of a perfect character, such as Christ’s is, for daily contemplation 71and imitation. The Neo-Krishna movement endeavours to supply these needs from within Hinduism, offering the Gītā instead of the Gospels, and Krishna instead of Christ. ”