Hindus

“ 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. ”

“ And while admitting that the Hindus were deficient in many of those manly virtues and practical achievements which we value most, I wished to point out that there was another sphere of intellectual activity in which the Hindus excelled—the meditative and transcendent—and that here we might learn from them some lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or to despise. ”

“ India’s contributions to the world’s study of philosophy, science, religion, and social organization are legion. While the continent of Europe was still in a state of barbarism, the Hindus invented the sciences of grammar, arithmetic, and astronomy. They were already masters of a perfect alphabet, of a polished language, and of the most complete systems of law and social ethics that the world has ever seen. When the forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon races roamed in forests with painted bodies, the Hindus had an extensive literature, an established religion, and a developed civilization. ”

“ At the present day over two hundred million Hindus are familiar in varying degrees with the legendary themes and traditional beliefs which the ancient forest sages and poets of India invested with much beautiful symbolism, and used as mediums for speculative thought and profound spiritual teachings. The sacred books of India are to the Hindus what the Bible is to Christians. Those who read them, or hear them read, are believed to be assured of prosperity in this world and of salvation in the next. ”

“ There is nothing more sublime in the literature of the ancient Hindus than the passages in which they fervently recorded their hope and faith that the disembodied soul, purified from all stains and all sins, will at last be received in the Universal Soul, even as light mingles with light. ”

“ Educated Hindus, as we shall see, are employing some of these very parallels to buttress Hinduism. Far be it from me, however, to depreciate the labours of scholars and earlier missionaries who have thus established links between Hindus and Christians, and have thus at least brought Christ into the Hindu's presence. To Indian Christians also such reasoning has often been a strength, furnishing as it were a new justification of their baptism into Christianity; for looking back they can perceive the finger of Hinduism itself pointing the way. ”

“ Every effort of this kind which shall emphasize to Hindus the harmony of Christian truth and the best thinking of our age and shall reveal to them Christ as the Redeemer and Exemplar of our race and as the only “Name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved,” is to be cordially welcomed among God's best forces for India's redemption. ”

“ This stone-worship among the Hindus seems a survival of a rite belonging originally to a low civilization, probably a rite of the rude indigenes of the land, whose religion, largely incorporated into the religion of the Aryan invaders, has contributed so much to form the Hinduism of to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hindus understand real asceticism perfectly well, and revere it as a subjugation of the flesh; and if the missionary and his wife carried out the ascetic life as Hindus understand it, lived in a hut, half or wholly naked, sought no food but what was given them, and suffered daily some visible physical pain, they might stir up the reverence which Hindus pay to those who are palpably superior to human needs. ”

“ On the whole, however, when we survey the history of India, and compare it with that of Western Asia, we may say that although the Hindus are perhaps the most intensely religious people in the world, Hinduism has never been, like Christianity, Islam, and to some extent Buddhism, a religion established by the State. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The false belief of the Hindus is undermined by degrees; and here and there a word fitly spoken, or a tract given, is made the means of leading some precious soul to the cross, or of raising up a preacher of the gospel to labour among his countrymen. Blessed are they that sow beside all waters! ”

“ He attributes a great deal of this to one particular missionary, but also to education. It was quite clear that, when once the Hindus allowed their boys to be so thoroughly well instructed as they are at the Hindu College, they must see through the horrible absurdities of their own religion, and then, though a single Hindu who loses his caste can hardly withstand the persecution of his countrymen—in short, can hardly live—yet if any number change their religion, they become a refuge to each other, and make the conversion of more much easier. ”

“ The Hindus evolved for themselves the idea of a God that was omnipotent and all-merciful, of a human soul that was part of the Universal soul and must be pure, of a life that has the divine spark in it and must be boundless and consecrated to the service of all. ”

“ Hence, too, we not only tolerate, but we Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedans, worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross of the Christians, knowing that all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of them marking a stage of progress. ”

“ A rough classification of the theological belief of the Hindus of the present day would be—the multitude are polytheists; the new-educated are monotheists; the brahmanically educated are professed pantheists. Rough as it is, we must keep the classification before us in trying to estimate the influence upon the Indian mind of the Christian idea of God. From that fundamental classification let us try to understand the Hindu position more fully.
No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. ”

“ Thus at least nine-tenths of the people of South India are, first of all, demonolaters, and secondly, but a long way behind, are Hindus. And yet a great many people in the West think of these people as the pure worshippers of the highest type of the Brahmanical faith! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I maintain that, to know Hinduism, is to feel a deep sympathy with the people who have inherited it as their faith, and to desire to bring to them the Gospel of life and of salvation in Christ Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese, who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. ”

“ India, Progress and Condition, Blue Book presented to Parliament, 1873, p. 99. “It is asserted (but the assertion must be taken with reserve) that it is a mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not proselytizing. Any number of outsiders, so long as they do not interfere with established castes, can form a new caste, and call themselves Hindus, and the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who submit to and pay them.” ”

“ These are some of the religious movements among the Hindus which have been in part aroused by their contact with the English, and facilitated by the peace and order which we have preserved in India during the last century. The reformers I have mentioned, and others besides, have infused new vitality into a religion which had long lain torpid; and if such men have arisen in the just immediate past, we may well expect that as great and greater will appear in the future to purify the religious life of the people. ”

“ In the dim remote past to which the Vedas introduce us, we find the Hindus a religious, a very religious, people. There is no indication of any period when they could be called secularists. Their religious views and practices have changed, there has been an evolving process; the connection may be traced, and we see the result in the Puranic system of our day. Has this movement been forward, or backward? Has the fittest survived and the weak and useless perished? ”

“ The Hindus belong to a race of mankind which has outlasted all the nations of the earth. “Before the days of Abraham India had achieved a great civilization. Other civilizations had lived and died. Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria—each came and went. ”

“ But it must be confessed that these parallels, real or supposed, between Christianity and Hinduism have not brought Christ home to the heart of India. In themselves, they only bring Christianity as near to Hinduism as they bring Hinduism to Christianity. Uneducated Hindus feel that the two religions are balanced when they have Krishna and Christians have Christ. ”

“ I do not think there is anything in any other book which can be compared to this:- “Let us endeavour to know the Ruler of the universe, who is the God of gods, the Deity of deities, the Lord of lords – above all, who manifests Himself, and is worthy of his reverence.” Passages like these are clear and unmistakable proofs that the Hindus, at one time in the history of their religious development, did worship One True God of the universe, and not only theoretically but practically protested against and denounced all manner of idol-worship. ”

“ The Hindu religion was denounced as vile and corrupt, and unworthy the regard of rational beings. The degraded state of the Hindus formed the topic of many debates; their ignorance and superstitions were declared to be the causes of such a state, and it was then resolved that nothing but a liberal education could enfranchise the minds of the people. ”

“ But when a man tells me he is a Hindu, I know that he means all three things together—religion, race and country. I can be almost sure that he is an inhabitant of India, quite sure that he is of Indian parentage; and as to religion, the word Hindu undoubtedly locates him within one of the manifold groups who follow the ordinances and worship the gods of Hinduism. Next in importance to the Hindus, as a religious community, come the Mohammedans, who number over sixty millions in India. The two faiths, Hinduism and Islam—polytheism and monotheism—are in strong opposition to each other ”

“ There, in these two examples, the great social problems of India present themselves—caste and the social inferiority of women, and in the English language we see India confronted with ideas different from her own. Take a third illustration from the socio-religious sphere. Few Hindus think of Hinduism as a system of religious practices and doctrines to be justified by reason or by spiritual intuition, or by the spiritual satisfaction it can afford to mankind. No, Hinduism is a thing for Indians, and belongs to the Indian soil. ”

“ As he represents them, the Hindus are not only on a par with the least civilized nations of the old and new world, but they are plunged almost without exception in the lowest depths of immorality and crime. ”

“ The family constitution has conferred immense benefit on the Hindus, as on other nations.
It must be acknowledged that however long we may reside in India, our knowledge of the inner life of the people is very limited. We may be for years on the best terms with them; we may meet them frequently, and converse with them freely on all subjects ”

“ Bishop Heber said, “The Hindus are brave, 118 courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement, sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.” ”

“ Much of the polytheism of the modern Hindus—the worship of hills, trees, apes, cattle, the sun, the moon, unseen spirits, serpents, etc.—has been adopted from these simple tribes, so that the present system embraces all that has ever appeared on the soil of India—even Mohammedanism to some extent ”