Hindu

“ The Hindu has evolved philosophies on the enigmas of life, and sin, and pain, and death, which have for ages been the solace and guide of the myriad inhabitants of India, and he has attained heights of self-abnegation and austerity in the pursuit of his religious ideals which would have made the Christian ascetics of the early centuries of our era envious. Religion has been to them a pervading force which has coloured the most commonplace acts of daily life. ”

“ In whatever direction he turned his steps, the zeal of Hindu devotion met his view, while every where the religion of the Hindus gave him the strongest idea of the wild extravagance which superstition is capable of producing, or the acute sufferings which religious fortitude is equal to sustain. Every where he found new reason to observe, how perfectly the human mind could bend its plastic powers to those restraints, which the law of society, the prejudices of country, or the institutes of religion, imposed. ”

“ Is the intellectual history of India nothing but the longest page in that unwritten chapter of the world's history—the history of human error? If not, if truth is still to be gleaned from the recesses of Hindu philosophy, where and how can we find it? What is in fact the real place of Hindu philosophy in the history of Science? ”

“ There is nothing in the life of a Hindu devotee, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing or travelling, which is not religiously prescribed both as to time and method. And utterly regardless of the significance of these rites or the appropriateness of them to his life, he deems their observance as essential to his salvation and finds in their daily keeping the highest satisfaction and completest assurance of his spiritual progress.
The Hindu is no rationalist in his religion. ”

“ Thus as we look at the Hindu from the various standpoints of life and character we see how strange a compound he is, and how unlike the man of the West at nearly all points in our examination. He is preëminently weak where we are strong, and he manifests strength where we seem to need it most. His religion has developed within him traits and tendencies which, through these many centuries, have wonderfully wrought in his life and character, and have largely made him what he is today. ”

“ He who will write the history if Hindu asceticism, from its first appearance in the Vedic Theology to its most complete development in the Buddhistic philosophy, will earn a title to the gratitude of India. ”

“ The secret of a true Hindu's character lies in the subordination of his knowledge of European sciences and learning, of his wealth, position, and name, to that one principal theme which is inborn in every Hindu child — the spirituality and purity of the race. ”

“ They exhibit the genuine form of a Hindu community, formed of the most discordant materials, and combining the most extraordinary contrasts of moral nature, unconquerable adherence to native opinions and usages, with servile submission to any foreign yoke or unbelieving priesthood, ready to suffer martyrdom for the most petty observances of their professed faith ”

“ Now the Hindu Religion, as contained in the Vedas and the Smritis, is nothing but a mass of sacrificial, social, political and sanitary rules and regulations, all mixed up. What is called Religion by the Hindus is nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibitions. Religion, in the sense of spiritual principles, truly universal, applicable to all races, to all countries, to all times, is not to be found in them, and if it is, it does not form the governing part of a Hindu's life. ”

“ In regard to India, therefore, you must not look only into her condition today, but travel back in imagination thousand of years, and see what she was in ancient times of primitive Hindu simplicity and purity. Even in the earliest books of the Hindus, the Vedas, which must be regarded as the earliest record of Aryan faith – even in them you find glimpses of high moral and religious truths which are unmistakable – not duly formed and organised religious thought, but the crude instincts and aspirations of the human mind in the state of religious infancy, seeking the Deity. ”

“ So, to the ordinary Hindu, especially to him to whom the way of meditation in the wilderness seems impossible, ceremonialism becomes a matter of supreme concern. No other religion has furnished to its followers a more elaborate and pervasive system of observances than this. These rites exercise their influence upon the mind and are wielding today a most potent influence upon Hindu character. A man may think nothing of, nor have any ambition to attain unto, the spiritual aspect of his faith ”

“ The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising — not in believing, but in being and becoming. ”

“ The hobby of the Hindu is not Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, or any other form of ism known to the western world; his interest does not lie in Hinduism, Buddhism, or Sikhism. His passion is for religion. “He loves not a religion; he lives for religion.” It was his love of religion which an old English missionary found among the inhabitants of a small village in Northern India. ”

“ It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. ”

“ The Hindu conception of a religious life as a life of sacrificial offerings and penances, or of ecstasies, or of asceticism, or of sacred study, stands over against the British ideal of religion in daily life and in practical philanthropies. To the Hindu, the religious mood is that of ecstatic whole-hearted devotion ”

“ I understand you to say that it is your idea that, in teaching Christianity, the wisest way for the missionary to begin is not by showing them that Christ despised the ancestral faith of the Hindus, but by pointing out all the truth which the Hindu religion has in common with Christianity, and thus leading the mind of the Hindu from his own belief, which has in it much of good, as far as morality is concerned, and many spiritual truths as well, up to the highest revelation, which is that of Christ? ”

“ How many from its happy and heaven-blessed shores will go away into outer darkness, as despisers of the mercy of God, when the poor Hindu of Krishna-gherry and his brethren ascend to rejoice and praise forever before the throne of God. ”

“ Whatever one may say about Hindu thought and philosophy as a basis of conduct, that people have been living for many centuries in the dense fog of ignorance, superstition and ceremonialism; and their life has been unworthy and debased because it rested upon nothing. ”

“ In fact, the resemblance between the Hindu and Christian religion is so remarkable that some scholars think the Hindu was taken from the Christian. It is more probable that it was of greater antiquity, and that the similarity between them springs from the seed of all truth and all Nature implanted in man by God. Indian and Christian both teach regeneration. In the Indian creed, as soon as the soul is touched with the love of divine things it is supposed to drop its life of sin and become "new born." ”

“ The Hindu now is in his stronghold; custom, the custom of their fathers, is to them immutable law; but from this you drive him, and force him to acknowledge that the example of his ancestors is no excuse for wrong-doing, and then you seek to make him feel the weight of sin, that he may turn to Christ as a Saviour of sinners. ”

“ The Hindu is supposed to be, of all creatures on earth, the most generous, the most kind-hearted, the most gentle, the most sympathetic, and the most unselfish. After living for nearly seven years in India, I must tell you that the reverse of this is true.... ”

“ The definition which would cover the Hindu of the modern times is that he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within the same limits, believe in God, respect the cow, and cremate the dead. ”

“ The most profound salutation that a Hindu can make, and one that denotes absolute devotion of a man’s whole body to the service of another, is one with the eight members: the members on which Hindus make religious marks,— the two hands, the chest, the forehead, the two eyes, the throat, and the middle of the back. ”

“ The Hindu Devotee is a genuine product of his religion, wrought out during thirty centuries on its native heath. He stands before us as a distinct type whose characteristics differentiate him from the followers of any other religion. ”

“ The Hindu And The Native Christian—A Study. During the many centuries of its history and working in India Hinduism has had ample opportunity to produce its own type of religious devotee, one who is thoroughly representative of its teaching and life. This type abounds in India today and is a faithful reflection of that faith. We shall now endeavour to study that living embodiment of Hinduism. In one respect it will be but another way of studying the faith itself—perhaps the best of all methods of studying a religion, for it is thus presented in life and action. ”

“ It is, however, a remarkable tribute to the power of caste and to the unheroic character of Hindu reformers, that, of the myriad reforms and protests against Brahmanism which have bristled throughout the centuries, only one—Buddhism—has stood apart in persistent isolation, and has maintained a separate identity and usefulness through more than two millenniums. Of all these protesting creeds, it alone has had sufficient masculine power and moral earnestness permanently to impress itself upon the world as a great religion. ”

“ The first thing in the morning on awaking the Hindu turns to the East and prays to his Sun-god, then to the river to cleanse himself and perform his ablutions, asking his god to keep him from all temptation, all sin in taste, touch, word, thought or deed. ”

“ Similar instances might be given from other parts of India. A Hindu who has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move, would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the social scale to that from which he has been banished. ”

“ Hindu philosophy is in many respects as good a discipline as Plato or Aristotle, and, Christian though he was, he was familiar with the boldest conceptions of the world, as found in the six systems of Hindu philosophy, and he could argue with great subtlety and accuracy on any of the old problems of the human mind. ”

“ Here, too, has the study of Hindu Philosophy been barren of results. Natives who have fitted themselves for the work by that wider culture which a complete acquaintance with European science alone can impart, are in a position peculiarly suited for giving to Hindu Philosophy its proper position in the history of human achievements. ”

“ That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. ”

“ Hindus are honest, truthful, and straightforward. Foreign travelers have visited other lands during various historical periods, but nowhere else were they so singularly impressed by the integrity of the people as in India. But we are not obliged to look into ancient histories to establish the Hindu’s honesty and love for truth. Go to-day into any town of India. ”

“ From this brief account of the age given by way of introduction, the reader will have some idea of the intellectual activity of this most brilliant period of Hindu civilization. Religious rights and duties were laid down lucidly and concisely for householders; civil and criminal laws were compiled; phonetics, metre, and grammar were dealt with with scientific accuracy; geometry and mathematics were cultivated; mental philosophy and logic were studied and developed with marvellous success; and a noble religion was proclaimed which is now the faith of a third of the human race. ”

“ A knowledge of their sympathies cannot be of less importance than that of their antipathies. And this knowledge is indispensable [pg 072] to the Christian worker in India as it gives a new and a most direct way of approach to the Hindu heart, and a fresh and all-potent argument with them in behalf of Christianity. ”

“ It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search of a new world. ”

“ A careful perusal of the Hindu stories impressed upon the young in the course of an Anglo-Saxon Mother’s many trials will produce in most minds trained in philosophic thought a profound conviction that neither Hindu philosophy nor Hindu morality is suitable for inculcation in this country. ”

“ Equally striking is the contrast between Christianity and Hinduism as to the attributes of God. According to the former, he is omnipresent; omnipotent; possessed of every excellence—holiness, justice, goodness, truth. According to the chief Hindu philosophy, the Supreme is devoid of attributes—devoid of consciousness. According to the popular conception, when the Supreme becomes conscious he is developed into three gods, who possess respectively the qualities of truth, passion, and darkness.
[Pg 61] "God is a Spirit." "God is light." "God is Conception of God.love." ”