John P. Jones

“ Christianity is not one religion among many; it stands alone as the soul-satisfying and soul-saving faith. The scattered lights of other faiths find here their centre, and all their prophesies find here fulfillment. The need of Christianity, by all men, is supreme. Whatever may be said in favour of other faiths we must say of them that they are, in many respects, perverted and are inadequate as a means of salvation.
And in addition to this the missionary must feel that all non-Christian peoples are in supreme need of Christ, the Saviour. ”

“ He has many such which influence him largely in his life. Much depends upon what a man regards as the Summum Bonum of life. The supreme blessing which the Hindu ever holds before his eyes, as the highest and last attainment, is union with God. Not a union of sympathy, but a metaphysical oneness with Brâhm. To lose himself entirely in the Divine Being and thus to cease having separate thought or existence, and to pass out of the turmoil and restlessness of human life into the calm of the passionless bosom of the Eternal—this, to him, is the ideal which alone is worthy of human attainment. ”

“ I wish my acquaintance with the dead should grow, that my communion with them should be spontaneous, perpetual, unceasing. I will invoke them and wait for them in my hermitage.
“What is life? Is it not a fleeting shadow, the graveyard of dead hopes, the battlefield of ghastly competitions, the playground of delusions, separations, cruel changes and disappointments? I have had enough of these. And now with the kindliest love for all, I must prepare and sanctify myself for the great Beyond, where there is solution for so many problems, and consolation for so many troubles....” ”

“ The question of administration is an exceedingly important one to every mission. How wisely are our missions organized for large economy of money and effort and for highest efficiency? Could not missions unite, for mutual counsel and wisdom, as many officers of our societies at home now do; could not missions learn more from one another in this most important respect? The annual expenditure of more than one million dollars on mission work in South India alone is in itself a large trust which requires great care and breadth of wisdom. ”

“ Let these people go out to India and live there for years to see how Hindu thought and teachings have, for three millenniums, worked out their legitimate results in the life of the teeming millions of that land. Let them observe the debasing immorality, the hollow ceremonialism, the all-pervasive ignorance and superstition which rest, like a mighty pall, upon that people and which make life mean and render noble manhood impossible. ”

“ The East is the full complement of the West. In life and thought we are only an hemisphere, and we need the East to fill up our full-orbed beauty. The mystic piety of India will correct our too practical, mundane view of things. The quiet, passive virtues which find their perfect realization in that land we must learn from them to accentuate in addition to the more aggressive and positive virtues of the West. ”

“ India has always boasted of the constancy and devotion of the beautiful Savitri to her beloved Sattyavân. After the death of her husband, she followed his soul into the spirit-world with fearless devotion and pleaded with the King of Death with so much passion and persistence for his return to life that he was finally restored to her in youthful vigour. ”

“ No country in the Orient is of greater interest to the West today than is India. It is picturesque in its life, wonderful in its history, remarkable in its present conditions and fascinating in its promise for the future.
It is a land most worthy of study both for what it has been, for what it is and for what it is to become; as the arena for the greatest conflict upon which our Faith and Civilization have ever entered ”

“ Listen to the words of an orthodox Hindu in a recent lecture delivered to his fellow Hindus:—“How can we,” he says, “be blind to the greatness, the unrivalled splendour of Jesus Christ. Behind the British Empire and all European Powers lies the single great personality—the greatest of all known to us—of Jesus Christ. He lives in Europe and America, in Asia and Africa as King and Guide and Teacher. He lives in our midst. He seeks to revivify religion in India. We owe everything, even this deep yearning towards our own ancient Hinduism, to Christianity.” ”

“ It is strange that a man whose pantheon is so crowded as that of the Hindu, and who believes in such constant divine guidance and interference, should, also, at the same time, maintain a theory of life which practically dispenses with all divine action and makes human life the product of a blind and grinding fate. Nothing is more marked as a characteristic of Hindu thought today than a possession by the people of these mutually conflicting and contradictory views of life. ”

“ Christian workers in India are learning mutual sympathy and appreciation in their work. Instead of the old jealousies, suspicions, antipathies and misunderstandings of the past, there is found a developing sense of oneness, of fellowship, of comity, amity and mutual helpfulness among the missionaries of that land. The watchword of to-day is coöperation. The distracting spectacle of a divided Christianity, of hated and mutually hating Christian sects in a heathen land is surely passing away and the dawning of the day of peace and harmony and fellowship in Christian work is upon us. ”

“ Outside of slavery there are few people who are subject to grosser injustice at the hand of men of wealth and of power than are the poor, down-trodden people of India.
Most of them are also groaning in the deepest pit of poverty. Poverty is a relative term. As compared with India, America knows absolutely no poverty. The poverty of India is crushing, over-whelming. When we remember that according to government statistics, the average income of a man for the support of his family in India is less than $1.50 a month we get a glimpse of what abject poverty means. ”

“ Thus, with no worthy ideal of life before them and no one to inspire them to better things, the wonder is that men in India have not descended to a lower level than they have. It is perhaps this very reason that has discouraged them and has led them to strive to attain unto beatitude, not by perfecting, but by destroying humanity. The renunciation and loss, rather than the realization, of self has thus become their aim and ambition. ”

“ Problems that today stir this land to its depth have no existence in India. The conservatism of India is proverbial. The Hindu people have been kept back from all progress, so that questions arising about human rights and liberty have not begun to be mooted there. The thousand problems of our land are the direct result of the emphasis which our civilization has given to human rights and individual freedom and the equality of men. India has thus far denied to the individual those rights and liberties which are deemed elementary and fundamental in the West. ”

“ The inhabitants of India are an ancient people. When thirty centuries ago our ancestors were grovelling in the lowest depths of primitive savagery, our fellow-Aryans of India were enjoying a civilization of their own, which was, in its way, unique and distinguished. Their philosophy shows testimony to their ancient glory. It may truly be said that their chief glory is to be found more in ancient than in modern times. It is a people whose progress has, in some respects, been backward rather than forward, and whose boast is rightly of what they have been rather than of what they are. ”

“ One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and sin in the human catalogue. ”

“ Her usefulness and her glory are the reflections of his pleasure and of his satisfaction in her. She has no separate existence. Apart from man, she is an absolute nonentity. And yet, within the sphere which has been granted to her, she has shone with a wonderful radiance and with a charm which reminds us often of some of Shakespeare's beautiful womanly creations.
The physical attractions of woman have always, of course, captivated the sterner sex in India, as in other lands. Her beauty is lavishly described and painted in warm colours through all Hindu literature. ”

“ If the Vedantin claims that creation is impossible, how can he at the same time believe that ideas have from time to time sprung up in the mind of Brâhm, which ideas themselves have put on illusion and appear to human ignorance as the universe? It is, to say the least, no easier for him, with his conception of Brâhm, to account for the origin of such ideas than it is for the Christian to trace the source of the material universe to an all-wise and omnipotent God. ”

“ Before the British entered India that land had never enjoyed the first taste of representative institutions. Today the query which arises in the mind of disinterested persons who know and love India is, whether political rights and liberties have not, of late years, been conferred too rapidly upon them. It should not be expected that a people who, by instinct and unbroken heritage, are the children of the worst kind of autocratic and absolute government, should acquire, in one age or century, wisdom or aptitude to rule themselves. The mass of Hindus love to be led and they follow easily. ”

“ He never thinks nor is he commanded by his religion to think, of aught but outward conformity to a moral code which is altogether inadequate to keep, direct and inspire him in life. This difficulty is, of course, enhanced when we remember that in the whole realm of Hindu life—whether it be of gods or of men—there is no one who looms up as a perfect example. It is therefore little wonder that in India today morality is at so low an ebb and that even the code which prevails there is so sadly and universally violated. ”

“ Stranger still that men in such countless millions should hang their whole destiny upon so rotten a cord—so unethical a theory—as is here involved. Why should any moral being be put through a course of discipline, or be punished, for a past of which he has no knowledge? To inflict a punishment for any conduct or thought to which the memory does not bear evidence, nor conscience furnish assent, nor the whole realm of conscious experience reveal a trace, is both unethical and in violation of the deepest laws of being. ”

“ Again; we, Christians, look forward to a complete self-realization, to a perfect manhood and a full rounded character as our ideal. The opposite ideal is the Hindu's. He seeks the loss of all that we hold best—the elimination of every ambition and desire, the eradication of all love and altruism, the cessation of all activity—good as well as evil. His ideal is not greatness and goodness of heart, but the renunciation of all that animates and inspires. To him the highest virtue in its noblest activity has no charms ”

“ But, after all we have said, or can say, of the power of woman in India, it still remains that, in no other land, has she suffered such marked disability and deeper injustice. If her goodness has shone out of her darkness, it has only served to reveal the more the sadness of her position. She bears in her condition the signs of her bondage and humiliation. The evils of the land have been attributed to her; and man too often ascribes his own degradation and sin to the curse breathed upon him by woman. ”

“ Largely separated from the world and knit together by common purpose as by all their highest ambitions, they verily become a big family whose love increases as the years multiply, and among whom the spirit of dissension can only create the deepest sorrow and greatest bitterness. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that every one who becomes a missionary should be a man of peace; should know how to live in harmony with all his brethren. He should cultivate that spirit and should aim to see eye to eye with those who are thus so intimately connected with him. ”

“ No greater mistake can be made than to think that India is either crudely or poorly governed. Owing to the great poverty of the land it is extremely difficult to maintain so costly and elaborate a régime as the present one; and many claim that for the support of so expensive a luxury the people are taxed beyond their ability and resources. The taxation imposed by a government on its people is rightly considered, both in its extent and character, as a measure of the wisdom of the State. The critics of the Indian government are prone to dwell upon the alleged injustice of its taxes. ”

“ India finds polytheism no more satisfying than it does pantheism. There is no more assurance of comfort in worshipping 330,000,000 gods, whose multitude not only bewilders but also carries in itself refutation to the claim of any one to be supreme, than there is in the yearning after an absolute, ineffable Being which cruelly evades human [pg 084] thought and definition. It is no wonder therefore that the growth of the Hindu pantheon is constant, and both follows, and bears testimony to, the craving of the human soul for a God who can satisfy its wants and realize its deepest longings. ”

“ This work of Christianity in uniting the world through brotherhood and sympathy seems wonderful to a people who are crushed and robbed by the wretched divisiveness of their own terrible caste system. They recognize also the truth and the life which Christianity presents in contrast with the debasing idolatry and the senseless, all-pervasive ceremonialism which haunt them. ”

“ There may arise a serious danger of too much individualism in a mission. A mission which does not have a policy of its own and conduct its whole work in harmony with that policy, and so control the work of each of its members as to make it fully contribute to the realization of its aims, will not attain unto the largest success in its efforts. When each missionary is given absolute independence to develop his own work on his own lines it will soon be found that whatever mission policy there may have been will be crushed out by rampant individualism. ”

“ Hindu philosophy and faith, on the other hand, unite in commanding that human endowments be starved, qualities suppressed, activity of all kinds stayed, ambition and every other desire, even the noblest and purest, quenched. All the essential elements of life itself are to be mortified that the soul may, unhampered by its own entanglement, reach that consummation which is supposed to be final. ”