YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE LIBRARY

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
TO NON-CHRISTIAN RACES

Works by Canon C. H. Robinson.

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THE INTERPRETATION OF THE
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
TO NON-CHRISTIAN RACES
AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

CHARLES H. ROBINSON, M.A.
HON. CANON OF RIPON ; EDITORIAL SECRETARY OP THE S.F.G., AND EDITOR OF
"THE EAST AND THE WEST "

" Whosoever is a good and a true Christian, let him understand that
truth belongs to his Lord, wherever he may find it." — Augustine.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
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Yale Divinity Library

PREFACE.
A Japanese Christian, speaking at a college in
North India, referred to the benefits which Asia
had conferred upon Europe. " We (Asiatics),"
he said, "gave them (the Europeans) their re
ligion, but in giving Christ, unfortunately, we
have lost Him." In the following pages we have
attempted to answer the question, How may
those whose hopes have been transformed by the
great gift which has come to them from the East
hope to interpret to the peoples of the East the
life and character of Christ, so as to beget within
them the desire to reclaim their true heritage ?
There are some who possess a superficial ac
quaintance with the chief non-Christian religions
and whose attitude towards them is one of ig
norant sympathy, to whom, moreover, all re
ligions appear of equal value, because their life
would not be different from what it now is if all
were proved to be equally false. There are others
to whom Jesus Christ is the one supreme reality

VI PREFACE
and whose loyalty to Him makes it difficult for
them to discern, amidst the low ideals and lower
achievements of non-Christian peoples, the mea
sure of truth which is embodied in the great re
ligions of the East. We have tried to show that
our prospect of appealing to the adherents of these
religions depends upon our ability to combine a
loyal acceptance of the faith of Christ with an
intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of what
is best and highest in non-Christian religions.
The limits imposed by the size of the present
volume have prevented any attempt to describe
the ideals of more than the four chief religions of
the East and no reference has been made either
to Taoism or Shintoism. Neither of these, how
ever, is a religion in the same sense as are
the other four, and Taoism is now hardly more
than an elaborate system of witchcraft and necro
mancy. The final chapter on Christian Missions
and the interpretation of natural beauty, whilst
it forms an integral part of the argument that we
have tried to develop, suggests how far-reaching
is the aim which inspires the Christian mission
ary, and how great will be our eventual gain, in
the realm of art as well as in that of morals and
religion, when Christian races in the Far East are
in a position to re-interpret to us the knowledge
which we are now trying to share with them.

PREFACE vii
The chapters on the ideals of the four chief
non-Christian religions will suggest to some of
their readers the criticism that the writer has
failed to point out how greatly the adherents of
these religions fall short of their own ideals.
This failure is not the result of ignorance. He
has seen fakirs and other "holy" men in India
whom he would not dare to compare in holiness
or in spiritual discernment with the cannibals
whom he has met in Central Africa ; he has
stayed with Mohammedan slave raiders whose
religion was unworthy to rank with that of their
pagan slaves ; lastly, he has met nominal Chris
tians in West Africa and elsewhere whose ideals
of life and conduct would compare unfavourably
not only with those of the adherents of non-
Christian religions but with those of many hea
then. But although, even within the limits of
his own experience, the profession and practice
of religion, whether Christian or non-Christian,
have proved to be widely separated, he feels that
to attain a true conception of any religion we
must judge it not by its unfaithful and inconsis
tent, but by its faithful and consistent followers.
Moreover, he feels that the work of the Chris
tian missionary, if it is to follow the lines laid
down by the founder of Christianity, must be
constructive and not destructive. Christ is, we

Vltt PREFACE
believe, the Sun of Righteousness, but in order
to prepare for His complete manifestation we
have not got to extinguish the stars which have
helped to illumine the darkness of the non-Chris
tian world and to guide seekers after truth in
their search for God.
One chief reason why the noble ideals of the
great Eastern religions do not ennoble the lives
of more of their adherents is that these ideals are
themselves so high that they tend to create a
spirit of despair or even of cynicism in those who
accept them. These have found by bitter ex
perience that they cannot live up to the ideals of
their own religions and in too many cases they
have ceased to aspire to do so. Our message to
them is that freedom from sin and selfishness can
be obtained through Jesus Christ whose life, re
produced and lived over again by the power of
the Divine Spirit in their own experience, may
render it possible for them to attain to the utmost
heights to which their own great teachers aspired.
The belief which lies behind this message forms
the basis of our apology for Christian Missions.
Charles H. Robinson.
February, 1910.

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
I.
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST.
The need of an apology for Christian Missions (i).
The goals of Hinduism (2), Buddhism (3), Confucianism
and Islam (4).
The goal of Christianity is the attainment of character (7).
Dr. Lecky on the influence of an ideal character (9).
The features of Christ's character which appeal to English
men (10), and to Hindus (n).
Hinduism and moral responsibility (14).
Christian evidences which fail to appeal to Hindus (16).
The character of Christ needs to be interpreted to India (18).
The reflection of His character in the West and in the
East (20).
Lack of historical perspective in the East (22).
The appeal which Christian history makes to the Western
student (23).
Is Christianity justified in interfering with the religions of
the East ? (24).
We must practise the Christ-like virtues of the East if we
are to commend to the East the Christ-like virtues of the
West (27).
The Church of Christ a focus and centre of attraction (28).

X SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
II.
THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM.
The difficulty of defining Hinduism (29).
The Bhagavad-gita — the Hindu Bible (31).
Brief summary of its teaching (32).
The Ramayana poem by Tulsi Das (34).
The doctrines of bhakti (faith) (36), and of love (40).
The teaching of Kabir (41), of Nanak (42), and of Tukaram
(43)-
A Christian liturgy for India (44).
The Hindu doctrine of oneness with God (45), and of
incarnation (46).
Do Hindus believe in personal immortality ? (48).
The teaching of Ramanuja and Sankara (50).
Failure of the Bhagavad-gita to uplift India (52).
Our hope of appealing to Hindus (54).

III.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM.

Where is true Buddhism to be found? (56).
The Buddhism of Burma largely consists of animism (57).
Theistic sects in Burma (59).
Buddhism in Ceylon (59).
The place of women in Buddha's Order (61).
Buddhism in China : the number of Buddhists in the world
(62).
Buddhism in Japan : the doctrine of faith in Amida (63) ;
the connection of this doctrine with Christianity (65).
Sir Edwin Arnold's poem (66).

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS xi
The ideals of Buddhism : self-conquest and benevolence
(67).
An example of Buddhist self-conquest (69).
Buddhist teaching in regard to benevolence compared with
the Christian doctrine of love (70).
The failure of Buddhists to attain their ideals (72).
The Christian faith supplies a motive force which may
render possible the realisation of the ideals of Buddhism
(74).

IV.
THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM.
The belief of Confucianists in a future life and a Supreme
God (7 7).
The highest ideals of Confucius — the solidarity of the human
race and the dignity and potential worth of human nature
His teaching concerning love (79), and concerning the
potential development of human nature (80).
The need of righteousness (82).
His teaching concerning suffering, sin and truth (84).
The doctrine of "propriety" (85).
The prayers offered by the Emperor (86).
Confucius' teaching concerning the ideal man found its only
explanation in the life and character of Christ (87).
The final results of Christian Missions to the Chinese (88).

V.
THE IDEALS OF ISLAM.
The teaching of Mohammed compared with that of Moses
(90-
The teaching of both on slavery (92), and polygamy (94).

xii SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
Mohammed's description of paradise compared with that in
the N. T. (96).
Ignorance concerning Mohammed in England (98).
An early apology for Islam (99).
Mohammed's teaching in regard to — the reality of God's
existence (100), the nature of God (102), a divine reve
lation (104), the efficacy of prayer (105), the brotherhood
of believers (105).
Sufiism the result of contact of Islam with the Aryan race
(106), its teaching in regard to absorption into God, and
divine and human love (107) ; Babiism (109).
Has Islam been a blessing to the world? (109); compare
Islam with Abyssinian Christianity (no).
Sufiism a preparation for the Christian doctrine of the Love
of God (in).
The ranks of Islam contain many followers of Christ (112).

VI.
ARE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE?
In view of the high ideals of Islam can Missions to Moslem
lands be justified? (113).
The condition of Greece and Italy in the first century a.d.
parallel to that of Moslem lands to-day (115).
The religious teaching of Epictetus (117), and Seneca (119).
S. Paul's work in Greece and Italy (120).
Are Missions to Moslems of any use (123), or productive
of result? (126).
Ought Christian Missions to be encouraged in the Soudan ?
(128).
One thousand three hundred years of Islam in Arabia and
the result (130).
Summary of conclusions (131).

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS xiii
VII.
SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.
The subject of foreign Missions distasteful to many earnest
and intelligent persons (133).
Seven common objections — 1. Why neglect heathen at
home ? (1 34) ; 2. Why interfere with other religious faiths ?
(135); 3. The missionary work done is not satisfactory
(136); 4. and will not last (137); 5. Christians cannot
agree amongst themselves (138) ; 6. The Christian creed
is too dogmatic (138); 7. Missions cause political dis
turbances (139).
A scene at Jerusalem a.d. 60 — seven parallel objections
raised (140).
Had these objections then prevailed, we should not now be
Christians (148).
It was a dogmatic faith which conquered the world (148).
The need of a truer appreciation of the final aim of
Christian Missions (151).

VIII.
"HEATHEN LONDON."
Could any more Christ-like missionaries be found, than
those working in London? (152).
If London can still be called "heathen," what hope is
there for the success of foreign missionary work? (153).
Four questions raised by Mr. Booth— 1. The attitude of
people of London towards Christianity? (154) ; 2. How
far do they possess a knowledge of the Christian, faith ?
(1S6) > 3- To w^at extent does Christianity influence in
dividuals ? (157) ; How far is church attendance a religious
test? (158).

xiv SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
If England is "half-full of home-heathen," why send
missionaries abroad ? (160).
The meaning of the words " I pray not for the world " (162).
Thousands were "perishing" while Christ was devoting
time to individuals (163).
Influence of example, story of a London deaconess (164).
Peking and Calcutta a thousand years hence (166).
The work of Christian Missions affects the whole universe
(167).

IX.

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF
NATURAL BEAUTY.
The ultimate object of Christian Missions (169).
How far have Christian Missions tended to develop an
appreciation of beauty of landscape and of flowers ? (1 70).
The appreciation of natural scenery in Greek and Latin
literature (170).
The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime (171).
Failure of ancient and mediaeval writers to appreciate
Swiss scenery (173).
The lack of appreciation of scenery in Hebrew literature
(i7S)-
The mediaeval interpretation of " Love not the world " (176).
The development of landscape painting (177).
Rousseau, Goethe and Wordsworth, their respective stand
points (178).
References to the beauty of nature in the Rig Veda (180).
Japanese appreciation of beauty of landscapes and of
flowers (181).
Buddhism and the art of painting in the East (182).
Landscape painting in Japan (183).
The appreciation of colour and form in Burma (184).

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS XV
Lack of appreciation of flowers in the ancient world (186);
its literature contains no parallel to Christ's words, " Con
sider the lilies of the field " (187).
The attitude of the Japanese towards flowers (188).
Christian Missions should prepare the way for a deeper
communion with nature (189).
The significance of the divine revelation in Christ will only
be fully grasped when God's revelation of Himself in
nature is perfectly understood (191).

APPENDICES.
I. The Zodi Buddhists in Burma (192).
II. Prayers of the Chinese Emperor (194).

Index (196).

I.
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE CHARACTER
OF CHRIST.
The increasing recognition of the measure of
truth which is common to Christianity and to all
other great religions of the world accentuates the
importance of the question, What is there in the
teaching of the Christian faith which is of so
distinctive and vital a character as to justify
the professors of Christianity in their attempt to
claim a hearing from the adherents of the great
Eastern religions ? After a visit to the principal
centres of missionary work in India, the writer
felt that those of the noble band of civilians who
at present govern India, whose attitude towards
Christian Missions is one of indifference if not
hostility, have something to say in their defence ;
for, unless it can be shown that the distinctive
truth which missionaries have to teach is of vital
importance to the well-being of the non-Chris
tian races, it is impossible to justify the action of
those who are endeavouring to substitute another

2 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
faith for the great religions of the East, such
as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, or Confucianism.
We shall appreciate better the message of the
Christian Church to the non-Christian races if we
try to answer the question, What in the case of
the chief religions of the East is the goal, and
what are the means adopted in order to reach the
goal, which the adherents of these religions set
before themselves? We may, then, compare
these with the goal of the Christian faith and the
means whereby Christians hope eventually to at
tain their goal. Let us try to suggest in the
fewest words the goal and the means whereby
the goal is sought to be attained by Hindus,
Buddhists, Moslems and Confucianists.1 We
need not emphasise the fact that the character
istics to be suggested merely represent salient
features of these religions and are not to be re
garded as summaries of their teaching.
i. The goal which the orthodox Hindu sets
before himself is absorption, or rather re-absorp
tion, into impersonal divinity. The means where
by he strives to attain this goal is intellectual
1 The goals of the non-Christian religions here given are not
intended to represent the ideals of the founders of these reli
gions or of their truest disciples. These are discussed in the
four following chapters. They represent rather the goals of
the majority of the uneducated and less spiritual adherents of
these religions.

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 3
self-control, which, to be effective, must be com
bined with the performance of an elaborate series
of caste regulations and with abstention from
every act of ceremonial pollution. To the Hindu
the visible world is the thought of an imper
sonal God veiled in illusory forms, and every
thing material is a hindrance to the acquisition of
divine knowledge. To him the supreme soul of
the universe is idealised intelligence, and it is by
attaining self-knowledge that he hopes to be
come like his divine ideal. By abstracting him
self from all the concerns and duties of life the
fakir or sadhu hopes to attain that direct and in
tuitive knowledge of the divine being which he
regards as unattainable by people engaged in
the ordinary pursuits of life.
2. Turning from the Hindu to the Buddhist,
we may say that the goal which the Buddhist
sets before himself is perfect enlightenment. To
him personality and divinity are terms which are
even more incompatible than they are to the
Hindu. To obtain divine enlightenment is to
lose all desire for individual action or individual
aspiration. Absence of desire is to him a char
acteristic sign of divinity. The means whereby
he hopes to attain the extinction of desire, which
is the necessary prelude to perfect enlighten
ment, is the recognition of the fact that all that

4 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
he sees around him is illusion. Dr. Copleston,
in his book on " Buddhism in Ceylon," is in
clined to regard Hinduism as more inspiring
and as holding out higher ideals than Buddhism.
" For," as he says, "with all its proud claims and
assertions of attainment, Buddhism does in effect
deny the high capacities of man. The Brahman
ideal of absorption into the One Supreme Being
was nobler and nearer truth. That Buddhism
knows nothing of such absorption, if only because
it admits no Supreme Being, is now at last be
ginning to be understood. The Buddhist theory
makes the fatal mistake of supposing that it is
grand to have nothing and no one to look up to.
The monk, if he has attained the further stages
of his course, can look down, it is pretended, on
deities and all that is divine. But this does not
exalt the monk, it takes away from him the
opportunity of being great. . . . Buddhism de
grades man by denying that there is any being
above him." Later on he quotes from the
" Buddhist Catechism," which has been written
at the instigation of European Buddhists, and is
being circulated by them in Ceylon : "a personal
God Buddhists regard as only a gigantic shadow
thrown upon the void of space by the imagina
tion of ignorant men ".1
1 " Buddhism," pp. 152, 282 sq.

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 5
3. The goal of Confucianism may be described
as a contented materialism. The means where
by this goal is sought to be attained is the culti
vation of practical wisdom which consists to a
large extent in the observance of the series of
maxims which are ascribed to its founder. In
reply to the statement, "Without Confucius
China had been without a native religion,"
Dr. Gibson, in his book, " Mission Problems in
South China," writes : "it would be truer to say,
' But for Confucius China had been a religious
country ' ". He says that in the " Book of Docu
ments " and the " Book of Odes," both of which
are older than the time of Confucius, the one
great spirit, " Shangti," is described as " Creator,
Preserver, and Lord of all". "Confucius," he
writes, "did much to undermine the realisation
of the personality of God in the minds of his
countrymen. With a keen interest in practical
ethics ... he had no anxiety to give his ethics
any theological basis. The result has been to
leave his countrymen without any spiritual at
mosphere, and so to vitiate in practice his ethical
theories." 4. Lastly, the goal of Islam, if by goal we
mean the reward or prize which the average un
educated Musulman J strives to keep in view, and
1 For a sketch of the higher ideals of Islam see chap. v.

6 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the thought of which nerved and inspired his
ancestors in their struggles to spread the know
ledge of Islam, is in a single word, Heaven.
Heaven is regarded by him as a place in which
will be reproduced the material joys of earth, and
the enjoyment of which will be enhanced by the
knowledge, if not by the actual sight, of the
torments which unbelievers will suffer.
The means whereby the Musulman hopes to
attain to his goal is complete resignation to the
will of God, who is regarded as an almighty and
arbitrary Creator, and, secondly, the preservation
of rigid orthodoxy, enshrined for him in the sacred
book which he believes to have existed in Heaven
before the creation of the world.
It would be possible to show how the respective
ideals of the religions to which we have alluded
are included in the higher, wider, and more in
spiring ideal which is set before the follower of
Christ, and which it is our object to set before the
non-Christian world.
With the Hindu the Christian anticipates an
absorption into God, in which his will will become
indistinguishable from God's will, but in which
his identity will be conserved in order that as a
free agent he may bring the greater glory to
God. With the Buddhist the Christian anticipates a

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 7
condition of perfect enlightenment and the ex
tinction of all tormenting, unsatisfied desires, but
the means by which he seeks to attain this en
lightenment is not by cultivating a belief in uni
versal illusion, but by the appropriation of that
eternal life which he regards, not as a state to be
enjoyed in the distant future, but as a possession
which the knowledge of God revealed in Christ
secures to him here and now.
With the Musulman he anticipates compen
sation for all the sorrows and sacrifices of this
present life, but the compensation to which he
looks forward is not of a material but of a spirit
ual order.
The Christian can sympathise, too, at least to
some extent, with the common-sense materialism
of the Confucianist, inasmuch as the realisation
of his own ideal includes an unlimited increase in
the physical well-being of the community here on
earth. If we turn now to ask what, in briefest language,
we may describe as the goal of Christians, and
what the means whereby they hope to attain
their goal, our answer is that the goal of Chris
tianity is the attainment of character. Heaven,
as a Christian writer has well said, is character.
Comparing the goal of Christianity as thus de
fined with the goals and ideals which we have

8 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
already mentioned, we realise how arduous is the
task which confronts the Christian missionary.
If Christian missionaries could be content with
the profession of orthodox opinions, or with the
performance of correct ceremonial, their task
would be comparatively easy. Orthodoxy may
be obtained in a day, the performance of rites and
ceremonies may be taught in a week, but for the
formation of character, decades of years, if not
centuries, are required. We realise, too, how
unreasonable it is to be in a hurry, and how im
possible it is to gauge progress by statistics.
There is no material or arithmetical test by which
we can estimate the development of the Christ
like character in an individual, still less in a com
munity. If, then, it be admitted that the goal of Chris
tianity is the formation of character, how may we
describe the means whereby this goal is to be
attained ? We may say that the means where
by Christians hope to produce character is the
manifestation or presentation of character. They
believe that God's final and complete revelation
to the world is not theological or metaphysical
knowledge, such as Hindus and Buddhists eagerly
desire, nor has it been a code of laws, or maxims
such as the Mohammedans believe that they pos
sess in their Koran, and the Confucianists believe

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 9
that they have received from their great teacher,
but it has been a revelation of His own character
which He has made to us in the incarnate life of
His Son.
"It was reserved for Christianity," said Dr.
Lecky,1 "to present to the world an ideal char
acter which, through all the changes of eighteen
centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an
impassioned love, has shown itself capable of act
ing on all ages, nations, temperaments, and con
ditions, has been not only the highest pattern of
virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice,
and has exercised so deep an influence that it
may be truly said that the simple record of three
short years of active life has done more to re
generate and soften mankind than all the disquisi
tions of philosophers and all the exhortations of
moralists. This has indeed been the well-spring
of whatever is best and purest in the Christian
life. Among all the sins and failings, amid all
the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism
that have defaced the Church, it has preserved,
in the character of its Founder, an enduring
principle of regeneration."
When we go on to ask, How may this reve
lation be made effective, or, in other words, what
is the message which those who have received
1 " History of Morals," vol. ii., p. 9.

IO AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
and understood it have to give to the non-Chris
tian races ? our answer is that we have to bring
to bear upon their lives the influence of this char
acter. To do this the Christian missionary must
not only be able to describe it to them, he must
be able to reflect it. There is a world of differ
ence between the description of a face which we
might read in a book and the direct reflection of
the same on which we might gaze in a looking-
glass. There is as real a difference between the
influence which the character of Christ will exert
upon non-Christians who may read of it in the
Gospels and the influence which will be exerted
by the same character when reflected in the
Christ-like life of a Christian. St. Paul, in writing
to the Corinthians, could venture to speak of him
self as "reflecting as a mirror the glory of the
Lord".1 It is hardly necessary to suggest that if the
influence of Christ's character is to become effec
tive, His followers must not be content with try
ing to present one or two aspects or features of
that character. The features which appeal with
special force to Englishmen are His courage,
His sympathy, and His strenuous activity. They
will not, however, succeed in commending to
non-Christians a character which possessed these
19 Cor. iii. 18, R.V.

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST II
traits unless they can also reflect the meekness
and the patience which were traits of the same
character. It is the passive and non-resisting
features of Christ's character, His meekness and
gentleness, His patient endurance of insult and
outrage, and the unruffled calm which character
ised His whole life, which appeal to the Eastern
mind, and our presentation of His character will
remain ineffective unless we can convince those
to whom we desire to appeal, that we ourselves
are striving to imitate these special traits. This
thought, viz., that he who would reflect Christ's
character to any purpose must reflect it as a
whole, has been well expressed by Dr. J. P.
Jones, who has spent the greater part of a life
time in close touch with Indians. He writes :
" I am inclined to believe that we of the West
have few things of greater importance and of
deeper religious significance to learn from the
East than the appreciation of such graces of life
as patience and endurance under evil. We stand
always prepared to fight manfully for our convic
tions, and to obtrude them at all points upon
friend and foe alike. It is not in the nature of the
East to do this. We say that he has no stamina.
We call him, in opprobrium, 'the mild Hindu'.
But let us not forget that he will reveal tenfold
more patience than we under very trying circum-

12 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
stances, and will turn the other cheek to the
enemy when we rush into gross sin by our haste
and ire. He is one of the hemispheres of a
full-orbed character. Ours of the West is the
other. Let us not flatter ourselves too positively
that our assertive, aggressive part is the more
beautiful or the more important. Yea, more, I
question whether ours is the stronger and more
masculine part of life and character ; for is it not,
to most of us, an easier thing to fling ourselves
in vehemence against an evil in others than it is
to sit calmly and patiently under a false accusa
tion as our Lord Himself did ? At least, it must
be felt an open question as to whether the
impulsive and domineering vigour of the West
is preferable to the 'mildness' of the East.
What I wish to emphasise is the dissimilarity
between our Western type of life and the
Eastern, and to warn the Christian worker from
the West against the danger of assuming that
Christian life must be adorned with only those
Western traits and excellences of character
which are foreign, if not unpalatable to the East
— the very fault which characterises the Hindu
on his side, and which makes him feel so superior
at times and so inaccessible to Christian influ
ence. For let it not be forgotten that the Hindu
regards what we call our foibles of petulance,

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 1 3
arrogance, and intolerance with the same disap
probation and disgust as we do their more fre
quent violation of the seventh, eighth, and ninth
commands of the Decalogue. And who is to
decide as to which catalogue is the worse and the
more heinous in the sight of God ? " *
Mr. C. F. Andrews (of Delhi) writes : " I was
teaching the Sermon on the Mount to a Hindu
student and friend. When we came to the words
' Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth,' he said to me, ' Sir, the Englishman may
inherit the earth, but if you call him " meek " he
would be insulted '. " Mr. Andrews adds : ' ' There,
in one singularly true criticism, in the form of an
epigram, lies the difference between conventional
Christianity and the Christianity of Christ ! "
Again, Mr. Holland (of Allahabad) writes : " I
speak to an Englishman of some acquaintance as
a ' really good man, though he has a hot temper,'
and the description suits a familiar type ; but speak
to an Indian of a good man who loses his temper,
and a look of sheer bewilderment comes over his
face. ' What is goodness,' he asks, ' but calm and
patience and unruffled benign serenity ? ' After
centuries of Christianity we have still not accom
plished the most elementary of all tasks, that of
mastering our temper."
'"The East and the West," vol. iii., p. 13.

14 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
A doctrine which must form part of the Church's
message to the non-Christian world, the presenta
tion of which to the Eastern mind, and especially
to Hindus, is attended with exceptional difficulty,
is that of human responsibility and its correla
tive human sinfulness. Orthodox Hinduism is
so largely pantheistic that the missionary finds it
hard to convince those to whom he appeals that
moral responsibility can attach to them for any
thing that they can do. If, as they are ready to
assert, God is in them and they are in God, and
they have no identity apart from the being of God,
their deduction seems not unnatural that whatever
they do is done by God, to whom must belong
all responsibility.
In dealing with peoples to whom this belief
has come down as a heritage of faith from a pre
historic past, the wisest plan must obviously be
to begin by laying emphasis upon the great truth
which underlies Hinduism and pantheism, that is
the truth of the divine immanence and of man's
affinity with God, and to claim it as part of the
Christian faith. We can then go on to urge that
sin may be defined not as a breach of ceremonial
law nor as the commission of any particular act,
but as an inward rending of the unity of life.
The tragedy of sin will be realised when it is un
derstood that by acquiring a selfish and unloving

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 1 5
character a man renders nugatory the advantage
which should accrue to him as a result of the
divine immanence and separates himself from
God. We can point out how in the early revela
tion given to the Jews the doctrine of human
responsibility was directly based upon the doctrine
of man's affinity with God. Thus we read in
Genesis ix. : " At the hand of every man's brother
will I require the life of man ... for in the image
of God made He man". The Christian believes
and, in a modified sense, the Hindu believes that
God completes Himself through man, and that
man completes himself in God. Sin is that which
interferes with this completion and with man's self-
realisation. Man sins when he asserts himself
against the Divine order. One of the writers of
the Book of Proverbs (viii. 36) said, " He that
sinneth wrongeth his own soul ". The true inter
pretation, therefore, of the great truth of the Divine
immanence which underlies Hinduism and much
of the thought of the East should act as a pre
paration for the appreciation of the Christian
doctrine of human responsibility and human sin
fulness. It is hardly necessary to point out that until
the consciousness of human responsibility and of
sin has been created, the Christian doctrine of an
atonement can have no meaning to the Eastern

1 6 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
mind. It is the contemplation of Christ's char
acter which will most surely raise the ideals of
non-Christians and, by revealing to them how
far short they have fallen of these ideals, will
create a consciousness of sin, and thus prepare
the way for the preaching of the Christian doctrine
of an atonement.
In endeavouring to commend to the Eastern
mind the truth of the Christian revelation we
need to remember that much of the evidence in
its support which appeals to us does not appeal
to the natives of the East at all. An Indian who
was at Cambridge with the writer, and who took
Paley's evidences for the truth of Christianity as
one of the subjects for his first University ex
amination, was asked by a friend what he thought
of the argument which the book contained and
on which he had passed a successful examination.
He explained that though he had nothing to say
against Paley's arguments, in which he could
detect no flaw, they had quite failed to convince
him or to modify in any way his own belief.
Even when we turn from the arguments sug
gested by Paley to the argument which now
appears to many as the strongest that can be
alleged for the truth of our faith, and which is
based upon the existence of the Gospel portrait
of Christ, and the miracle which is implied by

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST I J
the present existence of this portrait, the case is
not altogether different. To the Eastern mind
this argument does not appeal in at all the same
way as it does to us. The Hindu who believes
in the repeated incarnations of Vishnu, which
have no moral purpose, and some of which are
associated with acts of open immorality, is in no
way impelled to believe in the Divine nature or
heavenly origin of Christ, because of the moral
excellence of the character which is attributed
to Him. This inability to feel the force of the
appeal which the moral excellence of Christ's
character makes to us, and which for many of us
constitutes the strongest argument for the truth
of our religion, greatly enhances the difficulties
of the Christian missionary who is in contact with
non-Christian peoples.
Hence before the character of Christ can ex
ert its proper influence in the East it will have
to be interpreted. John Bunyan said that for
the unbelieving world the Bible was written in
an unknown tongue and that the lives of Chris
tians were its only interpreters. As we come
into contact with the peoples of the East we
realise that the character of Christ as portrayed
in the Gospels is written in a language which
no mere translation of the Bible can render in
telligible. If the love of God revealed in Christ

1 8 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
is to exert its potential influence, it must be inter
preted, or rather reflected, in the lives and char
acters of Christians. An Indian, for example,
who has never been accustomed to attribute love
or sympathy to the Divinity may read of the
loving sympathy of Christ and remain entirely
unmoved. The orthodox Hindu finds it im
possible to assign any meaning to the state
ment that "God is Love". He finds it equally
impossible to understand the existence of an ob
ligation to love God. A recent writer on the
religions of India says : " The first great com
mandment of Christianity is 'Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God* . . . Christ setting Himself
before us the concrete object of this affection,
says : ' If ye love Me ye will keep My command
ments '. But from the Eastern point of view,
there is little place for this love in the religious
system. Knowledge, esoteric knowledge of the
Infinite, excludes it, and excludes it logically ;
for if I am God and my apparent separateness
is the snare that hinders me from realising my
identity of substance with the Infinite, love to
God, which presupposes my separate individual
ity, is but tightening the bands that keep me
apart from God, retarding that release which
can be hastened only by ignoring the personal
distinctions involved in love, and plunging be-

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 1 9
neath them into the abysmal blessedness of un
differentiated knowledge."1 There is no line
of intellectual argument by which we can hope
to convince the Indian of the falsity of this
reasoning. When, however, the love and sym
pathy of Christ are presented to him in an in
carnate form, the interpretation of His character
which is thus afforded will prepare the way for
the appreciation of His teaching and of His re
velation of the character of God. We do not
believe that missionaries who have not them
selves a profound conviction of the Divinity of
Jesus Christ will contribute much towards win
ning India to Christ, but this will not be the first
truth that they will emphasise. For while the
average Indian will readily admit the Divinity
of Christ, the admission will mean little and will
but serve to place Him on the same level as
himself. It is only when India comes to realise
that what it needs is not a sage but a Saviour,
and when its peoples learn to know not so much
the Christ of history as a Christ who appeals to
their immediate consciousness that they will come
at last to take their stand beneath the Cross of
Calvary and be constrained to say "truly this
man was the Son of God". A belief in the
1<f Christian Belief Interpreted by Christian Experience,"
p. in. C. Cuthbert Hall. 2 *

20 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Divinity of Christ, in the sense in which Chris
tians understand the words, will come not as a
primary impression, nor as the result of dogmatic
teaching, but as the final outcome of spiritual
experience. In venturing to suggest to non-Christian races
that a distinguishing characteristic of Christianity
is that it puts first the formation of character as
a condition and a result of fuller knowledge of
God, we must be careful to guard against a
possible misapprehension. We need to make it
quite clear to them Whose character it is that we
desire to commend for their imitation and rever
ence. It is not infrequently assumed by Indians,
and the thought is reflected in the Indian Press,
that Christians believe that their own achieve
ments and their own energy and forceful char
acter may be considered as satisfactory illustrations
of the effects which Christianity can produce in
the case of a nation. Such a suggestion will be
regarded as an insult rather than as an argument
for the truth of Christianity by most of the peoples
of the East.
The character of Christ should, and does appeal
to the Eastern mind, but it appeals just because
in some important respects it contains graces
which are conspicuously lacking in the English
people as a whole, and which are only occasion-

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 21
ally illustrated by the lives of individual English
men. Although we may claim that whatever
good exists among us has been developed as a
result of Christian teaching, that good is so
mingled with evil that we cannot point to Eng
land or to any Western country as affording an
illustration of what Christianity is, or teaches, or
refer to it as an exponent of the Christian faith.
There are many individuals among the Eastern
races who lack the special virtues which we are
accustomed to regard of primary importance, but
who are living a life which is as Christ-like as our
own. There is a story told of an Indian eatechist
attached to an English missionary society in
North India whose accounts were never right and
who was at last dismissed for dishonesty. He
spent all the money which was entrusted to him
in promoting missionary work, but not exactly in
the way in which he was told to spend it. The
English superintending missionary demanded
monthly accounts and refused to continue the
supply of funds until these were forthcoming.
Accordingly the poor eatechist, who had not kept
any proper accounts, filled up the balance-sheet
in the way which he thought would please the
European missionary, and when he was ques
tioned about some of the items, and they were
found to be incorrect, he was dismissed as being

22 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
unfit for missionary work. Several years later a
lady was visiting a distant village in the jungle.
She tried to make the simple folk understand
what manner of person Jesus of Nazareth was.
She told them how He was the poor man's friend,
how He used to eat with them and visit their
homes, how He used to go about healing wher
ever there was sickness, how the children used
to run after Him in the street and clamber about
His knees. Her description seemed to meet
with an unusually intelligent response ; and as
she finished, some one exclaimed, "Miss Sahib,
we know him well ; he has been living here for
years ! " Amazed, the lady discovered that this
old eatechist had settled there on his own account.
It was he who fetched the old men and women
their water and their fuel. Where any one was
sick, it was he who used to sit outside the door
till evening, and then come in ; for no one ever
got a chance of sitting up at night but he. When
plague and cholera visited the village he was the
intrepid nurse. In the old man unfit for mission
ary employ the people of that village had seen
and recognised Jesus Christ.
In trying to commend the Christian faith to
Eastern races, we need also to remember their
lack of historical perspective and how little the
history of the past or the records of events

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 23
which have happened in the past appeal to the
Eastern mind. To a Western student of his
tory we can offer few more convincing proofs
of the truth of our religion than that which is
based upon the consideration of what the story
of Christ's life has effected during the last nine
teen centuries. To such a one we can show
that the story of this life has transformed the
hopes, the aspirations, and the lives of a large
proportion of the human race. We can show,
too, that this inspiration has been continuously
manifested throughout the whole period of Chris
tian history, that it has inspired not only strong
men but weak women and little children to suffer
and die for the love of Christ. Browning repre
sents St. John as saying when he lay dying in
the desert : What little child,
What tender woman that had seen no least
Of all my sights, but barely heard them told,
Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,
Or wrapt the burning robe round, thanking God ?
Lastly, we can show that it is not only the
" noble army of martyrs " who have been inspired
by the story of this life. Its inspiring power has
been illustrated by the changes which it has
effected in the lives and characters of men of
every race and of every disposition to whom the
Story has come,

24 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
There are some who have made a study of
non-Christian religions who would have us believe
that Eastern religions are very good for Eastern
peoples, and that the Church of Christ has no
message of supreme importance which it is a duty
to deliver, inasmuch as the truth which it has to
declare differs only in degree from that embodied
in the religions of the East. The professor of
Christianity who thinks and speaks thus has failed
to understand the distinctive nature of his own
religion. The Christian religion came into exist
ence as the result of the manifestation in the
world of a Divine human character, and its chief
claim to universal acceptance is that it alone
holds the secret of the transformation of human
character. To any one who doubts whether
the Christian Church is justified in attempting to
commend its faith to the adherents of other reli
gions, or to any one who desires to ascertain for
himself the measure of truth contained in the
Christian faith, and to compare that faith with
the faiths of Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, we
would say : Endeavour, first of all, to rid your
mind of all prepossession and prejudice, and then
read, study, and meditate upon the life of Christ
as told in the Gospels. Learn the story of that
life by heart, try to breathe the moral atmosphere
which Christ breathed, to look upon the world

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 25
around you from His standpoint, to sympathise
with His aims and aspirations, to appreciate the
purity of His motives, to forget yourself and your
own future while contemplating the prospect on
which His eyes were fixed. You may fail, you
certainly will fail, to accomplish this task, but in
proportion to the seriousness of your attempt you
will become conscious of the fact that, though
He whose life you are studying was really man,
nevertheless His aspirations, His love, His
spiritual power are as high above your own as
the heaven is higher than the earth.
Would you go on to compare the Christian
faith with the faiths of Islam and of Buddha,
study the lives of Mohammed and of Gautama and
of other religious teachers, in the most authentic
records, and place their aims, their aspirations,
and their conduct alongside those of Christ. It
is hard to believe that any one has ever entered
into the life of Christ in the way that we have
attempted to suggest, and has then studied the
earliest and most trustworthy records of the lives
of Mohammed, Gautama and others, without
feeling that the truth revealed in Christ's life so
far exceeds that of all other revelations which
have been made by God to man through the
instrumentality of religious teachers as to justify
and demand the most strenuous efforts which can

26 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
be made to render the knowledge of this truth
effective throughout the whole world.
When we address ourselves, however, to
Eastern peoples and endeavour to commend to
them the Christian faith, we find that it is the
character of Christ far more than any historical
events connected with His life which afford us
our ground of appeal. Eastern peoples have, as
we have said, no historical perspective ; they do
not draw a hard or fast line between history and
myth ; an ancient tale and a well-authenticated
historical narrative create much the same im
pression and convey similar teaching. In the
case of the Hindus a religion the fundamental
doctrines of which are based upon facts of history,
stands self-condemned. To them facts are merely
accidents of time, and as such are hardly worth
recording. It is to them inconceivable that
spiritual and eternal truth should need to be
authenticated by that which belongs to the realm
of the unreal and the illusory.
An appeal, however, which is based upon the
ideal which the character of Christ — and in a lesser
degree the character of His closest followers to
day — creates, avoids these initial and, sometimes,
insuperable difficulties. When the Hindus and
other Eastern peoples learn, as many of them
are learning, to reverence the character of Christ,

INTERPRETING THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 27
they will be in a position to appreciate the signifi
cance of the historical facts which form an indis
pensable part of Christian doctrine.
To sum up in a single sentence what has
been said, the duty which the Christian Church
owes to the non-Christian world is to interpret
to it the Divine revelation, which is the character
of Jesus Christ. To prepare ourselves to deliver
this message, to offer any adequate interpreta
tion of Christ's character, no intellectual study,
however prolonged, no single or repeated acts
of self-sacrifice, and no display of Western
energy, enthusiasm, or philanthropy will suffice.
If we are to appeal to the Eastern races we
must be able to show that we are not ourselves
deficient in the Christ-like virtues which they
themselves possess. In other words, we must
learn to practise the Christ-like virtues of the
East if we are to commend to the East the
Christ-like virtues of the West.
Finally, our message to the non-Christian
races will be delivered with a humility born of
the conviction that, if we have a message to
give to the Eastern and other non-Christian
races, they will one day have a message, have
a re-interpretation of the character of Christ, to
give back to the West. Dr. Cuthbert Hall, in
the course of lectures delivered by him in India

28 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
entitled " Christ and the Eastern Soul," says :
" Shall the Oriental consciousness place its su
blime qualities at the service of Jesus Christ and
become unto the twentieth century what she was
unto the first, a prophet of the Highest? The
Oriental consciousness has the gifts that the
world needs to offset its strenuous externalism
and guide it back to the secret place of the Most
High. The contemplative life, the presence of
the unseen, the aspiration for ultimate being, re
verence for the sanctions of the past, are the four
Gospels with which a Christian East may re-
evangelise the West, giving back to it the spirit
of the first days, co-operating with it to lead the
world out of its own confusion, grossness and sin
into the peace and purity of Jesus Christ."
When this aspiration shall have been fulfilled
the word " catholic " as applied to the Christian
Church will acquire a new meaning.
We are coming more and more to understand
that the Church of Christ is not an enclosure
within which alone truth is to be found, and be
yond the limits of which there is nothing but
falsehood and error, but that it is rather a focus
and centre of attraction toward which, drawn by
its centripetal force, all that is good and true and
helpful in other religions must sooner or later
tend.

II.
THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM.
In the previous chapter we have tried to develop
the suggestion that, whilst the initial task which
appertains to the Christian Church in its attempt
to appeal to all non-Christian races is the inter
pretation of the character of Jesus Christ, its
ultimate aim is the transformation of human
character so that it may tend to conform to the
ideal which the Gospel portrait of His character
has created.
The Christian missionary who desires to at
tain the sympathetic contact with a non-Christian
religion which may enable him to interpret to
its adherents the character of Christ, the char
acter which at once creates and satisfies the
ideals of Christians, must first learn to appreciate
the ideals of the religion which he wishes to
supplant or to develop.
An initial difficulty which confronts those who
desire to get into sympathetic contact with the
belief of Hindus is the impossibility of defining
29

30 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
what Hinduism is. The word covers a number
of religions which are inconsistent with, and con
tradictory to, each other. Theists and atheists,
pantheists and poly theists, claim to be orthodox
Hindus, and are generally recognised as such.
It would seem that caste is the only bond which
binds all Hindus together. But even the ob
servance of caste does not enable us to decide
to whom the name Hindus ought properly to be
given. For a large proportion of the popula
tion in South India who observe caste might al
most as correctly be termed animists as Hindus.
Their worship of goddesses and their blood
sacrifices, performed in some cases outside a
Hindu temple after its doors have been cere
monially closed, tend to show that South India
was at the best only half converted by the tide
of Brahmanism which came from the north. The
writer of the article on Indian religions in the
Imperial Gazetteer of India, says : "The funda
mental religion of the majority of the people,
Hindu, Buddhist or even Musulman, is mainly
animistic. The peasant may nominally worship
the greater gods ; but when trouble comes in
the shape of disease, drought or famine, it is from
the older gods that he seeks relief."1
'Vol. i., p. 432.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 31
The contrast between the Hinduism of the
educated classes and the Hinduism of the coun
try villages is only less marked in the North of
India than it is in the South.
The question which we desire to answer is
this : Where can we best hope to find in Hindu
consciousness points of contact with Christian con
sciousness, such as may prepare the way for the
appreciation and reception by Hindus of the re
velation of God in Christ ? In order to answer this
question we need to study not the ancient Vedas
which are unknown to the great mass of Hindus,
but the chief religious poems which are the com
mon property of all Hindus, and which exercise a
constant influence upon their thoughts. The poem
which, above all others, appeals to the devotional
instincts of Hindus and which, for very many of
them, occupies the place of our Bible is the
Bhagavad-gita. This poem which dates from a
period soon after the Christian era is familiar to
educated and uneducated alike, and no one can
hope to understand popular Hinduism who has
not carefully studied its teaching. Quite recently
twelve new editions of it were printed in India
within a space of twelve months. In this poem
the god Krishna is represented both as the ab
solute Divine Essence, Brahma, and as a personal
Being to whom prayers and sacrifices are to be

32 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
offered.1 Whilst its philosophy is pantheistic,
the form of worship which it presents centres
round a Divine-human helper. The poem teaches
that every action of life should be done without
attachment and that there should be no desire
on the part of any one to see the fruit of his
actions. It expresses the longing of the Hindu
mind for one who should become incarnate for
the good of man and in order to reveal to him
the will of God.
We give a few extracts from the poem which
illustrate its teaching in regard to (i) the nature
of the Divine Being, (2) the Incarnation of the
Divine upon earth, and (3) motives for human
action, and for good works.
(1) The teaching in regard to the nature of
the Divine Being is a combination of pantheism
and monism. Krishna says to Arjuna, who is
the hero of the song : —
" I am the Self inwardly dwelling in all bora be
ings." 2
" I am the father of this universe, the mother, the
ordainer, the grandsire, the thing that is known, and
the being that makes clean." 3
" I am the origin of the All, from Me the All pro
ceeds." 4
1 See appendix on " Modern Krishna Worship " in " North
India," by C. F. Andrews, pp. 230-33.
ax., 26. six., 17. *x., 8.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 33
" They that worship Me with devotion dwell in Me
and I in them." 1
" There is naught higher than I ; all this universe is
strung upon Me, as rows of gems upon a thread. I
am the taste in water, I am the light in moon and sun." 2
" If one sees Me in all things and all things in Me, I
am not lost to him nor is he lost to Me." 3
(2) Incarnation is referred to as a continually
recurring event. Thus we read : —
" Whensoever the Law fails and lawlessness uprises,
O thou of Bharata's race, then do I bring Myself to
bodied birth. To guard the righteous, to destroy evil
doers, to establish the Law, I come into birth age after
age. (3) Although the poem lays stress upon the
value of self-renunciation and knowledge and
declares that " there is naught here that is like
in power of cleansing to knowledge," 5 it has
much to say also of the need of strenuous action.
Krishna says : —
" Your business is with action alone, not by any
means with fruit. Let not the fruit of action be your
motive to action." 6
" Abiding under the Rule and casting off attach
ment, so do thy works, indifferent alike whether thou
gain or gain not." 7
1ix., 29. 2vii., 7, 8. 3vi., 30. 4iv., 7, 8.
»iv., 38. 6ii., 47- 7ii.,48-

34 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" Fulfil ever without attachment the work that thou
hast to do, for the man that does his work without
attachment wins to the Supreme." 1
The poem teaches that action, if it is to be of
value, must be performed without attachment and
must be severed from all passion and expectation
or even desire. It lays emphasis too upon the
necessity of loving devotion ; thus we read : —
"He who with love gives Me a leaf, a flower, fruit,
water, this gift of love I accept. Whatever be thy
work, thine eating, thy sacrifice, thy gift, thy mortifica
tion, make thou of it an offering to Me." 2
The second poem, the Ramayana? written in
Hindi by Tulsi Das, about 1580 a.d. (and which
was founded on the old Sanskrit- poem of the
same name which was written about five cen
turies B.C.), wields an influence only second to
that of the Bhagavad-gita. It is in fact the
Bible of North India. According to a state
ment appended to the Indian census, at least
90,000,000 of people are familiar with and deeply
influenced by this poem. One of its most help
ful characteristics is the high ideal of woman
hood which it embodies. Its description of Sita
has done much to raise and purify the ideal of
1 iii-, 18. 2ix., 25, 26.
3 Ram-ayana, = adventures of Ram.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 35
womanhood which is found to-day amongst the
best Hindus.
Tulsi Das's teaching in regard to the incarna
tion of God may be illustrated by the following
quotations from the Balakanda, which is the first
part of the Ramayana and deals with the advent
and childhood of Ram : —
" There is one God, passionless, formless, uncreated,
the universal Soul, the supreme Spirit, the all-pervad
ing, whose shadow is the world, who has become in
carnate, and does many things only for the love that
He bears to His faithful people ; all-gracious and com
passionate to the humble; who in His mercy ever
refrains from anger against those whom He loves, and
knows to be His own."
" Voluntarily assuming human guise, I will manifest
myself in your house, father, with every element of
my divinity incarnate, and will do great deeds for the
consolation of my people."
A little later we find a clear suggestion that
the sufferings of God incarnate were of a vicari
ous nature : —
" For the love He bore His followers, Rama took
the form of a man, and by Himself enduring misery
secured their happiness."
Once more we have the words of Tulsi Das
who addresses Rama and speaks of His holy feet
as — 3*

36 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" Sorely pierced by thorns during Thy wanderings
in the forest."
Both in the Bhagavad-gita and in the Rama
yana a striking feature is the emphasis which is
laid upon bhakti. The doctrine of bhakti first
appeared in India in the Bhagavad-gita. Its
later development in the poems of Tulsi Das is
believed by many to have been in part the result
of Christian influence. In any case there can
be no doubt that the wide spread of this doctrine
has been an indirect result of the preaching of
Christianity. Bhakti has been defined by a
Hindu writer as an "affection fixed upon the
Lord ". It emphasises the need of a loving de
votional surrender to the Divine Essence which
is most commonly personified as Rama or
Krishna. The Christian word faith perhaps
best expresses its meaning. The personal claim
which Krishna makes upon those who would
worship him is expressed in such passages as the
following : —
" Have thy mind on Me, thy devotion toward Me,
thy sacrifice to Me, doihomage to -Me. Thus guiding
thyself, given over to Me, so to Me shalt thou come." 1
" To the men everlastingly under the Rule, who in
undivided service think and wait on Me, I bring power
to win and to maintain." 2
1 ix., 34. ' ix., 22.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 37
The significance of these last words is left un
explained unless by the statement that —
" He who at his last hour, when he casts off the
body, goes hence remembering Me, goes assuredly
into My being." *
The need of faith is emphasised in such pas
sages as the following : —
" Knowledge he wins who has faith, who is devoted :
having won knowledge he speedily comes to supreme
peace. He perishes who has not knowledge or faith,
who is all unbelief." 2
The doctrine of bhakti contained in the Bha
gavad-gita received a further development in
the writings of Ramanuja, the philosopher of the
bhakti school who flourished during the first half
of the twelfth century a.d. The doctrine after
being developed for another two centuries in
South India was introduced into North India
by Ramananda, who was the teacher of Kabir.
In view of the suggestion that the origin and
development of bhakti teaching were influenced
by Christian doctrines, it is interesting to re
member that Ramanuja was born and educated
within a few miles of St. Thomas's Shrine, where
a mixed worship, partly Christian and partly
Hindu, was then carried on.
1 viii., 5. 2 iv., 39, 40.

38 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Bhakti is distinguished from knowledge, from
intellectual belief and from meritorious action.
It finds expression in many false forms and in
ecstatic trances which tend to produce unsatis
factory results, but it nevertheless represents a
real and successful attempt to supersede the cere
monialism and to break through the intellectual-
ism which have done much to deaden the
conscience of Hindus.
There are two schools of thought amongst
those who practise bhakti in India called respec
tively the cat school and the monkey school.
The adherents of the former hold the doctrine of
"irresistible grace," and believe that God saves
a man even as a cat takes up its kitten without
any act of co-operation on the part of the man.
The monkey school, on the other hand, holds the
need of " co-operative grace," and teaches that
man must reach out and embrace God as a young
monkey reaches out and embraces its mother.
The teaching of the Ramayana accords with that
of the monkey school.
Although the doctrine of bhakti appears quite
distinctly in the Bhagavad-gita it was not till
Tulsi Das enlarged and enforced this teaching
in the sixteenth century that it began to exercise
a wide influence throughout India. His teaching
suggests Christian influence far more clearly

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 39
than does that of the earlier poems. Thus he
writes : —
" Although my body is diseased and full of sin, al
though my every word is foul and false, yet, O Lord,
with thee do I hold the close kinship of a perfect love."
The following is a prayer by Tulsi Das : —
" Lord, look thou upon me — nought can I do of my
self. Whither can I go ? To whom but thee can I
tell my sorrows? Oft have I turned my face from
thee, and grasped the things of this world ; but thou
art the fount of mercy — turn not thou thy face from
me. When I looked away from thee, I had no eyes
of faith to see thee where thou art ; but thou art all-
seeing ... I am but an offering cast before thee ;
what prayer can the reflection on the mirror make to
him who lives and is reflected in it ? First look upon
thyself and remember thy mercy and thy might ; then
cast thine eyes upon me and claim me as thy slave,
thy very own. For the name of the Lord is a sure
refuge, and he who taketh it is saved. Lord, thy ways
ever give joy unto my heart ; Tulsi is thine alone,
and, O God of mercy, do unto him as seemeth good
unto thee."
Ram speaking in the Ramayana says : —
" Though a man endure endless tortures, without
faith he is no friend of mine."
" If Brahma himself had no faith in me he would be
no dearer to me than any other creature ; while the

40 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
meanest creature that breathes, if possessed of faith, is
as dear to me as my own soul. This is my doctrine."
With the doctrine of faith is closely associated
by Tulsi Das the doctrine of love. Thus he
writes : —
" The highest object of every living creature is the
love of Rama."
"Abstraction, prayer, charity, penance, the different
forms of fasting, sacrifice and vows — all move Rama's
compassion less than simple love."
" It is only love that Rama loves, understand this,
ye who are men of understanding."
In the Ayodbyakanda, which forms the second
section of the poem, Valmiki prays to Rama
thus : —
" They who never ask anything, but simply love you,
in their heart abide for ever, for this is your very
home." With this teaching we may compare the words
of a Christian poet, whose thought is in striking
harmony with the loftiest teaching of Hindu
ism : —
" Live thou and love ! so best and only so
Can thy one soul into the one Soul flow, —
Can thy small life to Life's great centre flee,
And thou be nothing, and the Lord in thee." ]
Again, Tulsi Das writes : —
1 F. W. H. Myers.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 41
" Thus it is that Thy servants are so happy ; the
saint abandons for ever all confidence in mortification,
and making simply a vow of perpetual love, serves Thy
lotus feet with a pure heart."
Describing the character of saints or gurus
(teachers) Tulsi Das says : —
" This is the virtue of the saints, Uma, that they
return good for evil." They are " zealous for the good
of others," " sorrowing in sorrows of others, and finding
joy in their joy," " conquerors of greed and impatience
. . . tender of heart, compassionate to the poor ; with
a guileless devotion to Me in thought, word and deed ;
giving honour to all, but claiming none for themselves " ;
"happy abodes of tranquillity, continence and humil
ity " ; " models of contentment, simplicity and bene
volence " ; " never disturbed in their quietude, their
self-control, their religious observances, or their moral
principles ; they never utter a harsh word ".
In speaking of the spread of the doctrine of
bhakti in India some reference must be made to
the two great teachers in North India during the
fifteenth century, Kabir and Nanak. Kabir,
who was described by Sir Wm. Hunter as the
Indian Luther, was born 1440. His followers,
according to the last census, number 843,171.
They exercise an influence far greater than their
number would suggest. Kabir taught that re
ligion without bhakti was no religion at all, and
that asceticism, fasting and almsgiving had no

42 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
value if unaccompanied by worship. He im
parted religious instruction to Hindus and Mo
hammedans alike and had no preference for
either religion. x The following are sayings
attributed to Kabir : —
" Small is the door of bhakti as the tenth part of a
mustard seed. The heart of man is swollen with
pride to the size of an elephant, how can he pass with
in ? Love grows not in the fields, nor is it on sale in
the bazaar ; the man devoid of love will be bound and
cast into hell. A man may read many books before
he dies and yet not be a Pandit ; he is a Pandit who
understands the two and a half letters which form the
word Love."
Nanak, the prophet and founder of the Sikh
religion, which, like the Kabir Panth, has re
cruited its followers alike from Hindus and Mo
hammedans, was born in 1469. His teaching in
many respects resembled that of Kabir, to whom
he was probably directly indebted. The follow
ing sayings attributed to Nanak illustrate the
emphasis which he laid on the doctrine of
bhakti: —
" True is the Lord, of a true Name, in language His
love is infinite. . . .
Pilgrimage, austerities, mercy and almsgiving on
general or special occasions,
1 " Kabir and the Kabir Panth," by Canon G. H. Westcott,
of Cawnpore.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 43
Whoever performeth may obtain some little honour,
But he who feareth and obeyeth and loveth God in
in his heart
Shall wash off his impurity in the place of pilgrimage
within him.
All virtues are thine, O Lord, none are mine.
There is no devotion without virtue."
Another writer whose poems have exercised
large influence in Western India and who lays
special emphasis upon bhakti or " loving faith "
as a necessary qualification for the worshipper
who would draw near to God, is Tukaram.
Tukaram, who was a Sudra by caste, was born
about the year 1600 a.d. He writes : —
" It is not hard to win salvation, for it may readily
be found in the bundle on our back. If we will to
have the delights of faith, our desire shall be fulfilled."
Comparing the love of God to the love of a
mother, he says : —
" It is needless to lay the child in the mother's
arms, she draweth it towards her by her own instinct.
Wherefore should I take thought? He that hath the
charge will bear the burden . . . take no thought for
thy body ; the mother will not suffer the child to be
harmed." Again, he writes : —
" We were not vigilant, therefore we lost the bless
ing; we forgot His Name, we cherished the world.

44 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
We were carried far from Him by the swollen flood
of falsity. We have found a boat in the shape of
faith." " As your faith, such is your fruit."
The ideal guru (teacher) is thus described by
Tukaram : —
" He who calleth the stricken and heavily burdened
his own, is the man of God ; truly the Lord must abide
with him. He that taketh the unprotected to his heart
and doeth to a servant the same kindness as to his own
children," saith Tuka, " is assuredly the image of God."
It hardly needs to be pointed out that the doc
trine of bhakti as suggested in the Bhagavad-gita
and still more as developed by Tulsi Das furnishes
a genuine point of contact between Hinduism and
Christianity. If Christianity can be defined as a
personal surrender and devotion to Jesus Christ,
the passionate devotion to Rama or Krishna
which is the essential characteristic of the bhakti
worship of India, ought to prepare the minds of
its worshippers to understand the meaning and
basis of the Christian faith.
In view of the fact that for centuries past the
highest aspirations and the holiest thoughts of the
Indian peoples have been expressed in the
familiar language of the Bhagavad-gita and the
Ramayana, it should prove possible in drawing
up an Indian Christian liturgy to incorporate some

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 45
of the language which is already dear to the
hearts of millions. " What could be more beauti
ful " — we quote the words of an Indian Christian
— "than the Hindu ascription of God as Sat, Chit,
Ananda (Truth, Reality, Bliss)? How much
more is such a phrase as this charged with Indian
religious emotion than the perpetual ascription of
omnipotence (cf. the use of the word Almighty),
which makes Western prayers appear so cold?
Or again, could not the wonderful Hindu word
bhakti, which expresses devotion to a personal
God, be Christianised ? By it, I think, might be
understood in Indian ways what S. Paul meant
by that phrase, so difficult to Indians, — 'justifi
cation by faith '." x
Another point of contact between Hinduism
and Christianity may be found in the Hindu doc
trine of samadhi, or oneness with God. Although,
in the case of the majority, this represents no
thing more than a metaphysical speculation, in
the case of some it involves a real longing for
fellowship with a personal God. These believe,
as Christians also believe, that the realisation of
oneness with God is attainable here on earth and
need not be postponed to another life. As far
as this aspiration and this belief prevail they
exert an uplifting, one might almost say a
1 Quoted by Rev. C. F. Andrews.

46 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Christianising influence upon those who share
them. It seems not improbable that this the great
positive belief of Hinduism, that man represents
part of the Divine Being, originated as an uncon
scious protest against the pessimism which was
itself the logical outcome of the fatalistic teach
ings embodied in the doctrine of karma and
transmigration. The attainment of perfect union
with the Divine Being provided the only hope
of emancipation from the despair which was
the inevitable result of an acceptance of these
beliefs. It might at first sight seem as though the
Hindu belief in the repeated incarnations of
Vishnu might predispose the Hindu mind to
wards an appreciation of the Christian doctrine
of the Incarnation of God in Christ. When
however we remember that the first three incar
nations of Vishnu were in the forms of a fish, a
tortoise, and a boar, and that the Krishna incar
nation is of a grossly sensual character, we realise
how limited is the resemblance between the
Hindu avatars and the Christian doctrine of the
Incarnation. In a few cases the Hindu doctrine
is found purged of its degrading associations
and stated in a way which may be regarded as
preparatory for the acceptance of the Christian

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 47
doctrine. Thus we read in the writings of
Ramanuja : —
"As He (the supreme Spirit) is a great ocean of
boundless grace, kindness, love and generosity, He
assumed various similar forms without putting away
His own essential God-like nature, and time after time
incarnated Himself in the several worlds, granting to
His worshippers rewards according to their desires,
namely religion, riches, earthly love and salvation, and
descending 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 visible to the sight of all, and doing such other
marvellous deeds as to ravish the hearts and eyes of
all beings high and low."
The Vishna and Bhagavata1 Puranas contain
a prediction of a spotless incarnation of Vishnu
which is to take place at the end of the present
Kali Yuga (age of wickedness) who is to bring
in the age of Satya Yuga (age of righteousness).
As however the "age of wickedness" has still
427,000 years to run, the anticipation of this
spotless incarnation cannot exercise any great
influence upon Hindus.
In considering the ideals of popular Hinduism,
we have to ask the question, How far does the
1 The Bhagavata was probably written about the eleventh
century a.d.

48 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
average Hindu believe in a personal immortal
ity ? To this question it is most difficult to obtain
a satisfactory reply. Dr. Grierson, who edited
the religious census of India, asserts that whilst
a certain number of educated Indians believe
the philosophical pantheism of the Vedanta, the
beliefs of the two hundred millions of uneducated
Hindus are radically different. He writes:
" Until the vernacular works are studied and
popularised people will find it difficult to believe
that the real Hinduism of the two hundred
millions does teach the existence of God as a
Person, and that the real Hindu of the present
day has himself just as vivid a sense of a personal
and continuous life beyond the grave as any
Christian ".1 Comparatively few of the mission
aries who live in closest contact with uneducated
Hindus are prepared to endorse this statement,
but many of them are prepared to admit that
there exists in the background of their minds
a vague but real sense of a Supreme Being
Who is conscious of what they do and are. In
Western India we meet with proverbs in com
mon use which tend to prove that those who
use them have, or once had, a belief in a personal
God. We note, for example, such proverbs as
1 " The East and the West," vol. iv., p. 475.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 49
"Can God ever forget anything?" "To the
helpless God is helper."
According to popular Hindu philosophy, from
the original Essence, Brahma, which is regarded
as neuter, impersonal and unconscious, was
evolved the personal Brahma, which is masculine,
who is the Ishwara or Lord. As everybody and
everything is ultimately re-absorbed into the im
personal Brahma, those who accept this philo
sophy cannot consistently accept the doctrine of
a personal and conscious immortality. The
teaching of the Bhagavad-gita in which God is
represented as at once the impersonal Divine
Essence and as a personal God, to whom
prayers and sacrifices can be offered, represents
the attempt which Hindus make to think, what
is to us the unthinkable, an impersonal God.
It may be said of them that they believe in a
personal God, but He is it. " The Hindu,"
which is the leading paper in Madras, recently
stated that " the Hindus have never sunk so low
as to believe in a personal God". If, as was
probably the case, the writer of this article meant
by "personal," "subject to limitations," it is easy
to sympathise with his disclaimer. The Hindus
find it almost impossible to conceive of an un
limited personal Being. Amongst the more
highly educated classes in Northern India,
4

50 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
however, increased acquaintance with Western
literature and philosophy has done much to
spread a belief in theism which should eventually
facilitate a belief in Christianity.
The teaching of Ramanuja contrasts with that
of the great Indian teacher Sankara.1 Dr. Thibaut,
who translated the Vedanta Sutras with the com
mentary of Sankara for the " Sacred Books of
the East," contrasts the teaching of the two and
maintains that Ramanuja taught a belief in a
personal God and in personal immortality. He
summarises thus the teaching of Ramanuja : " He
who, assisted by the grace of the Lord, cognises
and meditates on . . . him in the way prescribed by
the Upanishads reaches at his death final eman
cipation, i.e. he passes through the different stages
of the path of the gods up to the world of Brah
man, and there enjoys an everlasting blissful ex
istence from which there is no return into the
sphere of transmigration. The characteristics
of the released soul are similar to those of Brah
man." Again, he writes: "The Brahman of
Sankara is in itself impersonal, a homogeneous
1 Sankara, who was born in Malabar in the eighth or ninth
century a.d., wandered as an itinerant preacher over India as
far as Kashmir, and died at Kedarnath in the Himalayas,
aged thirty-two. He moulded the Vedanta philosophy of the
Brahmans into its final form, and popularised it into a national
religion.

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 51
mass of objectless thought, transcending all
attributes ; a personal God it becomes only
through its association with the unreal principle
of Maya, so that strictly speaking, Sankara's
personal God, his Isvara, is himself something
unreal. Ramanuja's Brahman, on the other
hand, is essentially a personal God — the all-
powerful and all-wise ruler of a real world per
meated and animated by his Spirit. . . . The
individual soul is really individual ; it has indeed
sprung from Brahman, and is never outside
Brahman, but, nevertheless, it enjoys a separate
personal existence, and will remain a personality
for ever. The release from samsara . . . only
means the soul's passing from the troubles of
earthly life into a kind of heaven or paradise where
it will remain for ever in undisturbed personal
bliss."1 Our first feeling on rising from the study of the
Hindu religious poems is that it is entirely wrong
and misleading to apply the word "heathen,"
in the sense which it commonly bears, to the
great mass of Hindus. To apply the word
heathen to those who, albeit in many cases they
are polytheists, accept the ideals of love and de
votion set forth in poems such as the Bhagavad-
1 "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxxiv., pp. 29-31.
4*

52 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
gita and the Ramayana and who have a real, if
undefined, belief in a personal God and in personal
immortality, is to suggest that there is no radical
difference between their beliefs and those of the
fetish worshippers of Central Africa or of the
aboriginals of Australia.
Our second feeling is one of surprise and dis
appointment that in view of the countless numbers
in India who are familiar with the teaching of
the Bhagavad-gita and of the other poems to
which we have referred, the moral influence which
they have exerted has been so small. In the
course of a recent lecture delivered by an Indian
Christian graduate of Madras University in South
India, the lecturer said : " What has the Gita done
for our country ? What is the influence exerted
by this most popular work on the religion and
character of the Hindus? In a dark and com
paratively unenlightened age when polytheism
prevailed everywhere and pantheism was poison
ing the mind against piety and virtue, the author
did well to summon his countrymen away from
corrupt ritualism and carnal idolatry to a more
spiritual worship of the Supreme Being. He did
well indeed to perpetuate the comparative purity
of society in his days by emphasising the sacred
separation of caste. And he did well to harmonise
the conflicting philosophies of his age, and make

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 53
thoughtful men view them all as if they were
different sides of the same cube. But apart from
all this, what is the sum total of the good influence
the Gita has exerted upon the people during the
last 1,700 years ? That it is eagerly read and
that its doctrines are more or less universally
known there is not the slightest doubt. They
have filtered down even to the illiterate masses.
The man in the streets asks me : ' Where is
the sin you speak of? It is He who is within me
who does all my actions.' With an influence so
stupendous what has the Gita achieved in the
moral and social world ? Has it abolished idola
try and all its attendant immoralities ? Has it
anywhere established the spiritual worship of the
one Supreme Being ? Have its doctrines dis
missed all other gods from the Hindu pantheon ?
Has it elevated the character of the people, and
spread more correct ideas of purity and morality ?
Has it placed a lofty ideal of divine holiness and
love before the nation ? Has it even supplied a
motive for purity and benevolence ? " J
The words of the lecturer warn us not to base
our hopes for the moral uplift of India upon the
noblest and best of the teachings of Hinduism,
but at the same time the tendency which has
been developed for several centuries, but which
1 " From an Indian Garden," by J. Lazarus.

54 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
is more marked now than it has been at any
previous period, to regard love and faith as the
most important elements in religion, help us
to look forward with increasing confidence to
the time when the noblest ideals and aspirations
of Hinduism shall attain their fruition, and when
the power of the living Christ shall supply the
motive force for the formation of character and
for the attainment of the virtues set forth in
India's great religious poems, which Hinduism
has failed to provide.
Meanwhile our hope of appealing to Hindus
and of recommending to them the Faith of Christ
will depend upon how far we ourselves have at
tained to the best highest ideals of Hinduism
which are Christian as truly as they are Hindu
ideals. The following incident, for the accuracy
of which the writer can vouch, suggests how un
limited would be the influence of English Chris
tians in India if " the meekness and gentleness
of Christ " were to become characteristics of their
daily life. An Indian gentleman in Ferozepore
was recently asked by a general in the British
army what had led him to abandon his ancestral
faith and to become a Christian. He replied :
" Many years ago when quite a young man I
was at the railway station in Lahore, and having
plenty of time on my hands was wandering

THE IDEALS OF HINDUISM 55
about watching the various groups of passengers.
While standing near the luggage godown my
attention was drawn to an Englishman who was
forlornly examining a nearly new bullock-trunk,
the bottom of which had been destroyed by white
ants. I fully expected to hear abuse and to see
a cuff or two bestowed upon his Indian servant,
through whose carelessness the trunk had been
ruined, and to whom he was indicating the
damage. But to my surprise the Englishman
contented himself with pointing out the fault in
the gentlest of tones. This was quite new in
my experience of Englishmen, and I wondered
to what this gentleness was to be attributed.
So curious was I that I made inquiries as to the
identity of the Englishman, and, finding that he
was a Christian missionary, I became an inquirer
after the truth and was eventually baptised."
The story needsjno comment.

III.
THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM.
In our attempt to discover the true ideals of
Hinduism we have already had occasion to notice
how impossible it is to offer any satisfactory de
finition of Hinduism, or to suggest what sect or
division of Hindus have the best right to the
term orthodox. When we turn from Hinduism
to Buddhism, we are confronted with a similar
difficulty. Where is true Buddhism to be found ? The
question does not really admit of an answer, for
of the many millions of professed Buddhists there
is hardly one who does not believe and practise
some form of religion which is at variance with
the teaching of Buddha. Those who possess a
superficial acquaintance with Burma would prob
ably urge that the Burmans should be regarded
as typical Buddhists.1 They will say, Can any
1 Buddhism existed in Burma amongst Hindu colonists from
about the Christian era, but was not generally accepted by the
Burmese till the middle of the eleventh century. On the
frontier between Burma and Bengal, Buddhism is now being
pushed back by Brahmanism: see "Imperial Gazetteer of
India," i., 413. 56

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 57
picture be more ideal than that of Burmese
Buddhism depicted in the book entitled " The
Soul of a People " ? We are loth to admit the
truth, which is that the Buddhism described by
Mr. Fielding Hall exists only in the imagination
of the writer, who did not even possess a suffi
cient knowledge of the language to enable him
to get into closest touch with the Burmans.
Over against the poetical, but wholly mislead
ing descriptions of Mr. Hall, we have to set the
matter-of-fact, but true description by Mr. C.
Lowis in the last official Census Report for In
dia and Burma. He speaks of " The fact — now
largely recognised, that the Buddhism of the
people is of the lips only, and that inwardly in
their hearts the bulk of them are still swayed by
the ingrained tendencies of their Shamanistic
forefathers, — in a word, are, at bottom, animists
pure and simple. ... The Burman has added
to his animism just so much of Buddhism as suits
him, and with infantile inconsequence draws
solace from each of them in turn. I know of
no better definition of the religion of the great
bulk of the people of the province than that given
by Mr. Eales in his 1891 Census Report, 'a thin
veneer of philosophy laid over the main structure
of Shamanistic belief. The facts are here ex
actly expressed. Animism supplies the solid con-

58 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
stituents that hold the faith together, Buddhism
the superficial polish. Far be it from me to
underrate the value of that philosophic veneer.
It has done all that a polish can do to smooth,
to beautify, and to brighten ; but to the end of
time it will never be more than a polish. In the
hour of great heart-searching it is profitless. It
is then that the Burman falls back upon his prim
aeval beliefs. Let but the veneer be scratched,
the Burman stands forth an animist confessed."
The Burman is by nature a happy, pleasure-
loving child. He is specially fond of music and
theatrical representations which Buddhism for
bids. It is true that he may be heard repeating
daily the mournful cry, " Amicca, dukka, anatta"
(impermanence, trouble, unsubstantiality), but
this, which correctly represents the teaching of
Buddhism, is far from representing his working
creed. Buddhism bids him care nothing for the
world and its pleasures, but it is because this
world and its pleasures are to him so real that the
Burman is the happy and contented child whom
visitors to Burma love to describe.
The existence in Burma of such popular ex
pressions as "The Lord knoweth," " Lord, have
mercy," may perhaps be taken to indicate a latent
theism in the minds of the people generally.
During the last 120 years two attempts have

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 59
been made to found theistic sects1 in Burma,
both of which were forcibly suppressed. The
leader of one (Maung Po Me) was impaled by
the father of King Theebaw.
To pass from Burma to Ceylon, it would be
sad indeed if we were compelled to deduce the
ideals of Buddhism from the character of Sin
ghalese Buddhism, for here, as in Burma, the
Buddhism of a large proportion of the Buddhists
is only skin deep. Dr. Copleston speaks of the
popular belief of the Buddhists of Ceylon as one
which "peoples every wood with demons, goes
to Hinduism for the personal guardians of house
and crop and the personal wielders of luck and
pestilence, goes to the basest sorcery for the per
sonal agents of malice and revenge".2 Again,
he writes of the inhabitants of some of the less
frequented parts of Ceylon where Buddhism has
not come into contact with Christianity : " If we
can lead them to talk of their crops and houses
and illnesses, and of the births and deaths that
have occurred in their memory, we shall find that
we are in a world of demons, who give trouble
and must be driven away, who are sometimes
1 The Zodi, circ. 1800, and the Paramats, founded in 1856.
From adherents of the latter have come some of the best of the
Burman Christians. Cf. "The East and the West," vol. v.,
p. 83. For a further account of the Zodi sect, see Appendix.
2 P. 283, ed. igo8.

60 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
seen, with fatal consequences in the jungle — a
world in which tribute must be paid to the god
dess of disease, and to the far-away deity of
Kataragama ; in which scarcely anything hap
pens by direct human or natural agency, but all
by virtue of charms and omens. The whole
home life is haunted by a sort of religion, but
Buddhism is almost as completely outside it as
the British Government."1
The charge which Dr. Copleston brings
against the Buddhists of Ceylon is not that the
ideals contained in early Buddhistic literature are
low, but that during the long centuries in which
it has been the nominal religion of the Sin
ghalese, it has entirely failed to realise its
own ideals. Speaking of the low standard of
morality which Buddhism has failed to improve,
he states that in many of the country districts in
the interior where Buddhism has met with no
rival, marriage is practically unknown. On the
other hand, in the maritime provinces, where the
people have, for three centuries, had intercourse
with Christian nations, marriage is respected and
the morality of the people is comparatively high.2
Buddha urged his followers in strong and oft-
repeated language to abandon their home life
and become monks. Thus we read : —
^'Buddhism," p. 275. 2Id.,p. 286.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 6 1
" Justfas a large bamboo tree with its branches en
tangled in each other, such is the care one has with
children and wife : but like the shoot of a bamboo not
clinging to anything let one wander alone like a
rhinoceros." 1
The underlying principles of Buddha's teach
ing, which were based upon the assumption that
birth into this world is a misfortune and an evil,
necessarily warped his appreciation of the dignity
of womanhood. Moreover, " that specific quality
of the feminine character in virtue of which
woman becomes the complement of man, was
not, and could not, be taken into account, for in
Buddhism the entire effort is, out of single separ-
ateness, whether of man or woman, to make a
self-contained final whole, which no longer re
quires supplement or completion from any quarter
whatsoever".2 According to Buddha's original plan women
had no place in his Order. When he eventu
ally decided to recognise women mendicants, he
is said to have foretold that as a result of doing
so the Law would be forgotten within 500 years.8
A generous Buddhist sentiment in regard to
women is contained in one of the Jatakas : —
1TJravagga, iii., 4.
2 " Buddhist Essays," by Paul Dahlke, p. 247.
3 Culla-Vaggo, x., 1.

62 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" A father's or a mother's pain, or sister's to relieve,
A man should never hesitate his very life to give." 1
It is not, however, fair to regard the lax
morality which prevails in Ceylon as a direct
outcome of the teaching of Buddha,2 though it
furnishes a sad proof that Buddhism has failed
to inspire the Singhalese to live up to a higher
ideal. It has sometimes been maintained that the
majority of the Chinese may fairly be regarded
as Buddhists, but this is by no means the
opinion of those who know the Chinese best.
The Buddhist priest in charge of the chief
Buddhist temple in Nanking, one of the most
important cities in China, recently remarked to
an Englishman that in Nanking and throughout
a large part of Central China only a few women
and children were even nominally Buddhists.
Dr. Legge, the late Professor of Chinese, after
rebutting the suggestion that the majority of the
Chinese were Buddhists, said, " Instead of being
the most numerous of the religions (so-called) of
1 Bk. xxii., No. 547.
2 In the course of a reply given to a request that he would
mention the best boons or blessings to which a layman might
aspire, Buddha is reported to have enumerated, as one of the
best boons, " attendance on mother and father, cherishing of
child and wife " : cf. Khuddaka-patho, chapter entitled Maha-
mangala Sutta.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 63
the world, it is only entitled to occupy the fifth
place, ranking below Christianity, Confucianism,
Brahmanism and Mohammedanism, and fol
lowed, some distance off, by Taoism ".
The teaching of Buddha had been greatly de
veloped and had apparently come to include a
belief in a personal God before it reached China,
and has since been profoundly modified by its
environment. Buddhism first began to spread in Japan at
the beginning of the ninth century a.d., after the
return from China of the two Japanese religious
students or priests, Kobo and Dengyo. At the
present time throughout a great part of Japan its
teachings exercise a small and decreasing influ
ence and very many of its temples are in ruins.
The teaching, however, of some of the Buddhist
sects, which is accepted by a considerable num
ber of thoughtful Japanese, is so distinct from the
dominant Buddhism of Japan and of other lands,
and at the same time presents such high ideals
of life and conduct, that it deserves special atten
tion. The doctrine of faith in Amida J which is
specially taught by the Shin (or Shinsu) sect,
bears a considerable resemblance to the Indian
doctrine of bhakti. Amida or Amitabha was,
infinite ages ago, a monk who lived in the
1 Chinese Omito Fo.

64 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Western Paradise beyond India. Having ac
cumulated merit during a long series of succes
sive lives on earth, he had earned admission into
Nirvana. The thought, however, of the suffering
of his fellow-creatures caused him to make a vow
that he would not enter Nirvana till he had found
some easier way of salvation by which others
might attain Nirvana also. By renewed austeri
ties and penances he was at length able to found
a Paradise into which all might enter, without
effort or toil, who should exercise faith in him
and call upon his name. The deliverance sought
through the intervention of Amida is rather from
the sorrows and sufferings of life than from sin,
but nevertheless faith in Amida does in some
cases result in an effort to live a better and more
moral life as an act of gratitude towards him.
Amida has a spiritual son, Avalokitesvara, who
becomes incarnate again and again for the bene
fit and salvation of men. He has also an attend
ant (Seisha) in whom resides his wisdom, and
the three form a trinity to whom the Shinshu
sect address their worship.1
It is almost certain that this doctrine is of
Christian origin or has been influenced by Chris
tian, i.e. by Gnostic, teaching. The Amida
legend would seem in fact to be an Oriental
1 For account of the origin and doctrine of Amida, see
"Wheat among the Tares," by A. Lloyd.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 65
adaptation of the life of Christ. This doctrine
reached China in 147 a.d., which is the earliest
date that can be assigned to any of the writings
in which it is contained. It came to China, not
from India but from Central Asia.
It cannot reasonably be maintained that the
thoughts contained in the following quotation
can have had other than a Christian origin.
The quotation is from " Fushi Sogo," a book
which exists only in a Chinese version : —
" Hojo (the name of Amida before he attained to
perfection), having meditated for five kalpas (ages),
conceived the desire for the turning of the heart of the
children to their Father and of the Father to the chil
dren, and when as Amida, ten kalpas later, he mani
fested his enlightenment, he created the power where
by the Father and his children receive one another.
Ever since then in accordance with his gracious forty-
eight-fold vow, he has been calling for his lost children ;
but throughout the whole twenty-five forms of exist
ence there was no answer to his call. We may imagine
how grieved must have been his Heart which thus
yearned with affection over his children. But now we
have recollected the home from whence we came and
have begun to call upon the name of our Father.
Surely it must be a great joy to him when he hears the
cry of Namu Amida Butsu." 1
1 " The Praises of Amida," translated from the Japanese of
Tada Kanai by A. Lloyd. 5

66 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
In speaking of the development of the Amida
doctrine in Japan, mention must be made of the
great Buddhist reformer Nichiren (born 1222),
who sought to purify the dominant Buddhism
of his time, and protested earnestly against the
doctrine of faith in Amida on the ground that it
laid stress upon faith rather than upon good
works, and went so far as to declare that each
invocation of the name Amida would procure
for the worshipper a re-birth in the lowest and
hottest of the hells.
The question to which we desire to find an
answer is not what is the general effect pro
duced by the nominal acceptance of Buddhism,
but what are the highest ideals of those who call
themselves Buddhists, whether in Burma, Ceylon,
China or Japan.1
There are a number of persons who profess
to sympathise with the doctrines of Buddhism,2
but whose sole acquaintance with these doctrines
is derived from Sir Edwin Arnold's beautiful
poem, " The Light of Asia ". The author of this
poem never claimed that it was anything more
1 The Buddhism of Thibet is of so degraded a character that
it is hardly deserving of mention in this connection.
2 An English lady, a would-be Buddhist, who recently re
marked, " I do admire Buddhism, and I know so little about it,"
is a representative of a large number.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 67
than a poetical romance, and, in the interests of
historic truth, it is a great pity that it should ever
have been supposed to be anything else. The
poem is founded upon a late Sanskrit romance
entitled " The Chapter of the Great Renuncia
tion " (Mahabhinishkramana Sutra), which is not
accepted as a canonical work by either of the
great Divisions of the Buddhist world.
We are probably right in saying that the
highest and most important ideals which the
modern Buddhist sets before himself are self-
conquest and benevolence. Even if, as we shall
see presently, these ideals fall short of the cor
responding Christian ideals of self-sacrifice and
love, they are nevertheless true and noble ideals,
and we have cause to thank God for the influence
upon the hearts of men which they have exerted
in the past and still exert.
In the Dhammapada, which contains many
verses from various early books of the Pali
Canon, we read : —
" If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a
thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he is
the greatest of conquerors." l
The self-conquest here inculcated involves the
control not only of action but of thought ; thus
we read : — 1 Dhammapada, 103.
5*

68 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" Man should hasten towards the good and should
keep his thought away from evil." J
" All that we are is the result of what we have
thought : it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up
of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil
thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the
foot of the ox that draws the carriage. If a man
speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows
him like a thought that never leaves him." 2
It cannot be attained moreover by retirement
from the world, for —
" Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if
we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there
known a spot in the whole world where a man might
be freed from an evil deed." 3
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 last of the Jataka stories of the
re-births 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 children and then his wife. When
asked to surrender his wife, "he did not reply,
' Yesterday I gave my children to the Brahman ;
1 Dhammapada, 1 16. * Id., i, 2. 3 Id., 127.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 69
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 ; in
different, unattached, with no clinging of mind
he gave her up."
If we turn from Buddhist literature to practice,
we can find examples of the strenuous efforts
which some of the followers of Buddha are pre
pared to make in order to attain to their ideal of
self-conquest. Twenty -five years ago a Chinese
woman entered a Buddhist temple. She was an
earnest Buddhist and had long proved her devo
tion by fasts and pilgrimages. Her request was
that she might know in what way she could
further prove her devotion to her god. The
answer of the priest was that the god required
her to cut off her right hand. For a moment
she hesitated, but again the summons came to
make this sacrifice, and the poor woman, seizing
the fatal knife, severed her right hand from the
arm. She is an aged woman now, and lives as a
nun in a nunnery near Han-kow, and round her
neck she still carries the hand, suspended by a
silken cord.
As we read this story we cannot but recall
Christ's words, " If thy right hand cause thee to
stumble, cut it off and cast it from thee ". Of
such an one we are constrained to say in the

70 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
words of our Master that she is not far from the
Kingdom of Heaven.
The second Buddhist ideal to which we have
referred is benevolence. By benevolence we
mean the laudable but passive attitude of mind
which should prevent its possessor from wishing
or doing harm to any, but which must be distin
guished from the active and passionate virtue to
which Christians give the name of love (dya-m;).
Concerning love (used in this latter sense) we
read : —
" Let no man love anything : loss of the beloved is
evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing have
no fetters.1 From love comes grief, from love comes
fear ; he who is free from love knows neither grief nor
fear."2 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." Of love used in the sense of benevolence, we
read that the true follower of Buddha —
" Lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world
with thoughts of love, and so the second and so the
third and so the fourth ... of all things that have
shape or life there is not one that he passes by or
1 Dhammapada, 211. 2Ji., 315.

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 71
leaves aside, but regards them all with mind set free,
and deep-felt love." *
Again, we read : —
" As a mother at the risk of her life watches over
her own child, her only child, so also let every one
cultivate a boundless (friendly) mind towards all
beings. And let him cultivate goodwill towards all
the world, a boundless (friendly) mind, above and
below and across, unobstructed, without hatred and
without enmity." 2
Once more we read : —
" All the means that can be used as bases for doing
right are not worth the sixteenth part of the emanci
pation of heart through love. That takes all those up
into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory." 8
The distinction between the Buddhist doctrine
of passive benevolence and the Christian doc
trine of active love may be illustrated by one of
the popular stories concerning the re-birth of
Buddha. The king who was mourning the
death of his wife is comforted by being assured
that she has been turned into a dung worm in
his park. On obtaining proof of this occurrence
" he saluted the Bodhisatta and went back into
1 Terigga Sutta, iii., 1 ; cf. " Sacred Books of the East," vol.
xvi., p. 201.
2 Metasutta, 7, 8, translated by F. Fausboll.
3 Itivuttaka, p. 19, translation by T. Rhys Davids.

72 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the city where he married another queen ".1 The
comfort arose from the extinction of his love
which was caused by the repulsion which ensued
on his actually seeing the dung worm.
Although we must interpret the words love
and life in somewhat different ways in Buddhistic
and Christian teaching, it is nevertheless true to
say that Buddhism and Christianity both teach
that he who would save his life must lose it,
that pride2 is a deadly sin and that love is
the supreme virtue.
The disappointing feature of Buddhism is not
that its ideals of life and character are low, but
that these have failed to make a successful appeal
to the vast majority of Buddhists. In Ceylon,
for example, where the great majority of the
people are professed 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
'Assaka Jataka, bk. ii., 207: The literature which is
most widely read and exercises the greatest influence upon
Buddhists in Burma and Ceylon is the Jatakas or birth stories
of Buddha, which consist of a long series of experiences that
are supposed to have occurred to a succession of people in
each of whom Buddha was at one time incarnate.
2 " Whosoever exalts himself and despises others, being
mean by his pride, let one know him as an outcast " (Sutta
Nipata, vii., 17).

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 73
trustworthy records exist) in proportion to their
numbers. The ten commandments which are recognised
by a large number of Buddhists are : Do not
kill. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. Do
not flatter. Do not slander.1 Do not lie. Be not
double-tongued. Be not angry.2 Do not covet.
Be not devoid of pity, or, Be not evil.
If we could obtain assurance from the past
history or the present condition of Buddhism in
any country in the world, that its teaching could
supply the motive power which might enable an
appreciable number of those who now call them
selves Buddhists to approximate to the ideals
contained in their literature, we might feel justi
fied in refusing to support Christian Missions to
Buddhists, at any rate until all the less favoured
peoples of the world had heard the Christian
evangel. It is because we believe that the only power
which can enable a Buddhist to attain to perfect
self-conquest is the power of God's Spirit which,
1 " Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy tongue.
Leave the sins of the tongue and practise virtue with thy
tongue " (Dhammapada, 232).
2 " Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil
by good, let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by
truth " (14., 223).

74 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
becoming a living Presence1 within him, will
inspire him with the desire to sacrifice himself
for the good of others,2 and because we believe
that he can only learn to display perfect bene
volence as he feels himself wrapped round in the
all-embracing love of Christ, that we desire with
all humility, but with all confidence, as constrained
by the love of Christ, to help him to secure his
own ideals by revealing to him ideals which are
1 A Japanese who had been a Buddhist and who admitted
that when first attracted to Christianity he had no sense of sin
at all, in reply to the question, " Can you distinguish in your
experience between Christ and the Holy Spirit ? " said, " I was
taught to distinguish between them, and in my theology I have
done so. Now I am coming to distinguish between them in
my experience. I am coming, when I sin, to feel that there
is a Presence within me that is grieved " (Reported by Rev. W.
Imbrie of Tokyo).
2 Bishop Copleston, referring to the lack of a sense of duty
amongst Buddhists, writes: "The motive which Buddhist
morality recognises, if it can be said to recognise any, is wholly
selfish and individual. It is not for the love of truth or good
ness, nor for the benefit of others, — to instance the two prin
cipal motives recognised by other merely human systems, —
it is solely for the individual's own advantage that he is incited
to cultivate virtue. Nor is it a very brave or noble selfishness.
It seeks, not to make the best of self, like the Greek selfishness,
but to escape from pain and from the burdens of life. It is not
ennobling. " And the idea of duty is utterly absent. From first to last,
the sacred books are terribly consistent in failing to recognise
any sort of • obligation '. . . . [The Buddhist] has no aim in
life except to escape from it" (" Buddhism," p. 150 sq.).

THE IDEALS OF BUDDHISM 75
yet higher than his own, but which have been
completely attained by One Who lived a human
life upon this earth, and is able and willing to live
His life over again in the lives of His followers.
Buddha taught that —
" Bliss of all bliss, joy of all joy, it is,
To leave behind the lie that says, ' I am '."
The sentiment contained in these words is awe-
inspiring and pathetic, but it is altogether devoid
of motive power. No intelligent man who has
understood the meaning of life has ever prayed
to become extinct. The ideal which the words
express is at once lower and more selfish than
that to which the Christian apostle gave expres
sion when he wrote, " I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me ".
Buddha has already been canonised as a saint,1
albeit by mistake, in the Roman and Greek
Churches. We trust that the day may come when,
in view of the realisation of the noblest ideals of
Buddhism by the help of God's Spirit, we may
be able to look upon Buddha if not as a Christian
saint, nevertheless as one who helped to prepare
1 Johannes Damascenus who lived in the eighth century
wrote a Christian manual called " The Story of Barlaam and
Josaphat ". Josaphat is a corruption of the word Bodhisattva,
a title given to each reincarnation of Buddha. S. Josaphat's
day is Aug. 26 in the Greek and Nov. 27 in the Roman calendar.

76 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the way for the final establishment of Christ's
Kingdom. Meanwhile we would make our own the words
of Bishop Copleston : " As promoters in the
long run of Christianity, I reckon all who are dif
fusing knowledge of the true tenets and history
of Buddhism : all who are letting light, by what
ever channel, into the dark places — and some
very dark places exist, and cruel habitations ; —
all who are insisting on what is excellent in
Buddhism, when they do so not merely to praise
Buddhism, but to get virtue practised ".1
1 "Buddhism," p. z86sq.

IV.
THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM.
The claims which have been made on behalf of
Confucius to be regarded as a religious teacher
have been rejected by many on the ground that
he maintained a purely agnostic position both
in regard to the existence of a future life and of
a supreme God.
In attempting, however, to suggest what are
the highest and most inspiring ideals of Con
fucianism it is only fair to take into account the
fact that, whatever their great teacher believed
or taught, the majority of his followers to-day
hold these beliefs. Dr. T. Richards, who has
lived for over half a century in China and knows
the Chinese as well as any living European,
writes : "A Chinaman would consider it the
greatest insult imaginable to speak of his coun
trymen as having no idea of the supreme God.
Every one I have ever met believes in the
Supreme God far more than does the average
man in Christendom." 77

78 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
The agnostic position adopted by Confucius
was in part the result of his keen desire to set
free the minds of his countrymen from prevailing
superstitions. He urged them to "respect the
spirits, but to act as though they were distant".
The greatest part of his teaching was concerned
with the five relations, those of parent and child,
brother and sister, husband and wife, monarch
and subject, friend and friend. The respect
which was to be shown to the dead was the only
point of connection between his teaching and
the unseen or spiritual world. The more definite
belief which his countrymen have acquired in a
personal God and a future life has come to them
very largely from the Northern Buddhism which
at one time exercised a dominant influence in
China. The two highest ideals which Confucius set
before his followers were contained in his teaching
concerning the solidarity of the human race and
the dignity and potential worth of human nature.
To Confucianists the family not the individual
is the unit of society. The respect shown to
ancestors which Confucius encouraged and de
veloped and the belief that by his good conduct
a man can ennoble his ancestors, bear emphatic
witness to the solidarity and continuity of the
human race. The well-known saying of Con-

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 79
fucius, "All within the four seas are brethren,"1
which was spoken in reply to one of his disciples
who had said to him with sorrow, "All men have
brothers, I alone have none," sums up in a single
sentence a large part of his teaching. He in
sisted upon the duty of every man to love his
fellow-man. Thus he said : —
" A heart set on love will do no wrong." 2
When asked to explain the meaning of love,
he replied : —
"Without the door to behave as though a great
guest were come ; to treat the people as though we
tendered the high sacrifice; not to do unto others
what we would not they should do unto us ; to breed
no wrongs in the state and breed no wrongs in the
home." 3
Again, he said : —
" Love is to conquer self and turn to courtesy." 4
" To rank the effort above the prize may be called
love." 5
" The superior man is not affectionate to others with
his countenance [merely], as if, while cold in feeling,
he could assume the appearance of affection." 6
" Good is no hermit : it has ever neighbours." 7
He taught that the sight of others better than
1 "Analects," xii., 5. 2 Id., iv., 4. sId., xii., 2.
lId., xii., 1. 'Id., vi., 20. "Piaoki, 50.
1 " Analects," iv., 25.

80 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
himself ought to inspire a man with the desire
to grow like them, while the sight of evil should
beget within him mistrust of his own goodness.
Thus we read : —
"At sight of worth, think to grow like it. When
evil meets thee, search thine own heart." *
A second characteristic of his teaching was
his profound belief in the latent possibilities of
human nature. He believed that Heaven had
bestowed upon man a moral nature, and that, in
virtue of this endowment, the rule of life in all
its relations was to be found by men within
themselves.2 Man's highest duty is self-cultiva
tion. By learning to become what Heaven in
tends him to be he raises himself as it were from
earth to Heaven. Thus in the classic entitled
" Kung Yung," which has been rendered as
"The Doctrine of the Mean," or "The State of
Equilibrium and Harmony," written by Tsze-su,
a grandson of Confucius, we read : —
" What Heaven has conferred is called the Nature." 8
"The understanding of what is good, springing
from moral perfection, is to be ascribed to the nature
moral perfection springing from the understanding of
1 "Analects," iv., 17.
2C/. Shakespeare, "To thine own self be true".
3 "Kung Yung," i., 1. See "Sacred Books of the East,"
vol. xxviii., p. 300, ed. 1885, translated by James Legge.

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 8 1
what is good is to be ascribed to instruction. It is
only he of all under heaven who is entirely perfect x
that can give its full development to his nature, he
can also give the same to the nature of other men, he
can also give the same to the nature of animals and
things, he can assist the transforming and nourishing
operations of heaven and earth. Capable of assisting
those transforming and nourishing operations, he can
form a ternion 2 with heaven and earth." 3
Again, we read : —
" Perfection of nature is characteristic of Heaven.
To attain to that perfection belongs to man." 4
" He who is entirely perfect is like a spirit." 5
"Perfection is seen in its possessor's self-comple
tion." 6
"The superior man is watchful over himself when
he is alone." 7
"The superior man internally examines his heart
JThe words "who is entirely perfect" are rendered by
some translators " who is possessed of the most complete sin
cerity ".
2 For a discussion as to the meaning of this expression see
article by P. J. Maclagan in " The East and the West," Oct.,
1909, p. 456.
3 " Kung Yung," ii., 21, 22. 4 Id., ii., ig.
6 Id., ii., 24. 6Id., ii., 25.
7 Id., 4. Dr. Legge writes : " ' He is watchful over himseh
when alone ' is literally, ' He is watchful over his solitariness
— his aloneness,' that solitariness being, I conceive, the ideal
of his own nature to which every man in his best and highest
moments is capable of attaining ".
6

82 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
that there may be nothing wrong there, and no occa
sion for dissatisfaction with himself." 1
" The superior man, even when he is not acting,
has the feeling of reverence, and when he does not
speak, he has the feeling of truthfulness." 2
In the three character classic which forms the
first reading book in Chinese day schools the
opening sentence states that man has originally
a good moral nature. The actual statement is
by Mencius, who lived a century later than
Confucius, but it expresses the teaching of Con
fucius. The ideal life, or the life of the ideal man, to
which the teachings of Confucius frequently refer,
differs entirely from the life of the Indian fakir
or sadhu. In India some of those who bear the
highest reputation for holiness live openly im
moral lives, but Confucianists know nothing of
an immoral saint. Righteousness, or right con
duct, is the one thing of supreme concern.
Thus Confucius said : —
" I like life and I like righteousness. If I cannot
keep the two together, I will let life go and choose
righteousness." He believed that man had only himself to
blame if he failed to attain to righteousness. He
said : — 1 " Kung Yung," ii., 62. 2 Id., ii., 64.

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 83
" If a man were really to exert himself for a single
day to live a life of goodness, I do not believe he
would find that he had not the strength to do so." 1
His disciple San Chi'u is reported to have
said : —
" It is not that I do not delight in your doctrines
but my strength is inadequate." 2
The confession of weakness on the part of
San Chi'u expresses the general feeling of the
Chinese, as may be illustrated by their proverbs : —
" There are two good people, one is dead, and the
other is not yet born." 3
" To learn to do good a thousand days is insuffici
ent ; to learn to do evil an hour is more than ample."
Confucius regarded pride as the greatest of
all obstacles to self-realisation. Thus he said :¦ —
" The great man is he who does not lose his child's
heart." 4
On another occasion when asked to name what
he would most desire, he replied : " To make the
old folk happy, to be true to friends, to have
^'Analects," iv., 6.
2 Id., vi., 10 ; cf. " video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,''
Ovid, "Met," vii., 18. "The good which I would I do not,"
S. Paul.3 Cf. "there is none righteous, no not one," Rom. iii. 10.
4 Cf. " Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as
a little child he shall in no wise enter therein," S. Luke xviii.
6*

84 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
a heart for the young".1 He regarded suffer
ing as a means whereby character might be
strengthened or developed. Thus we read : —
" When Heaven is about to confer a great office on
a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering."
Of the peace which belongs to the possessor
of a good conscience, he said : —
" If you have not wounded your conscience in any
way, there may come a knock at dead of night and
you will not be startled." 2
Of the means whereby sin might be forgiven
he had little or nothing to say, for " he who has
sinned against Heaven has none to whom he
may pray".3
Speaking of the supreme value of truth, he
said : —
" To learn the truth at daybreak and die at eve
were enough." 4
On several different occasions he summed up
man's duty towards his neighbour in the state
ment : " What you do not like when done to
yourself, do not do to others ". In the Chinese
1 " Analects," v., 25.
2 Cf. " He shall not be afraid of evil tidings, his heart is
fixed, trusting in the Lord," Ps. cxii. 7.
'"Analects," iii., 13. Cf. " If any man sin, we have an advo
cate with the Father," 1 John ii. 1.
'Id., iv., 8.

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 85
language this can be expressed by a single char
acter. When asked by Tze-kung J if there were
any simple word which would serve as a rule of
life, he replied by naming this character, of which
the nearest equivalent in English would be "re
ciprocity" or "fellow-feeling," and then gave the
well-known explanation of it already quoted.
The word li which occurs constantly in the
teaching of Confucius was rendered by Dr.
Legge by the English word propriety. This
rendering has tended to misrepresent the char
acter of Confucius himself and to obscure some
of the best features of his teaching. A recent
translator of the sayings of Confucius writes
with reference to this rendering of the Chinese
li: " The whole tenour of the Master's teaching
cries aloud against such wilful and outrageous
distortion. Any one who reads the sayings care
fully will soon discover that this accusation
(that Confucius lacked a loving heart) is not
only libellous but grotesque in its remoteness
from the truth. If there is one thing more than
another which distinguishes Confucius from the
men of his day, it is the supreme importance
which he attached to jin, the feeling in the heart,
as the source of all right conduct, the stress
which he laid on the internal as opposed to the
*" Analects," xv., 23.

86 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
external, and even on motives rather than out
ward acts, except in so far as these might be
taken as an index of character."1
Any attempt to suggest the highest religious
ideals of Confucianism must include a reference
to the significant act of worship which has been
performed twice a year from time immemorial
by the Chinese Emperor in the Temple of
Heaven before a tablet which bears the inscrip
tion : " Supreme God of the sovereign Heavens ".
The following are extracts from the ancient
forms of prayers used by the Emperors on these
occasions : —
" To Thee, O mysteriously working Maker, I look up
in thought. I thy servant am but a reed or a willow ;
my heart is but as that of an ant. I deeply cherish a
sense of my ignorance and blindness, and am afraid
lest I prove unworthy of thy great favours. Thy ser
vant I bow my head to the earth, reverently expecting
1 "The Sayings of Confucius," by Lionel Giles, p. 21. Later
on in the same book (p. 52) the writer adds : "Jen is perhaps
the most important single word in the ' Analects,' and the real
corner-stone of Confucian ethics. Its primary meaning, in
accordance with the etymology, is ' humanity ' in the larger
sense, i.e. natural goodness of heart as shown in intercourse
with one's fellow-men. Hence it is sometimes best translated
' loving kindness ' or ' charity ' in the biblical sense, though
in many cases a more convenient, if vaguer rendering is
'virtue,' 'moral virtue,' or even, as in Legge, 'perfect
virtue'."

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 87
thine abundant grace. Thy servant I prostrate my
self to meet Thee and reverently look up for thy
coming, O God. O that Thou wouldst vouchsafe to
accept our offerings, and regard us while thus we wor
ship Thee, whose goodness is inexhaustible."
To the earlier forms1 were added others in
1539 a.d., which are so instinct with Christian
thought and devotion that it is almost impossible
to suppose that their composition was not due in
part to Christian influence. When the time
comes for an independent Chinese Christian
Church to determine its own forms of liturgical
service, it may well be that they will be modelled
upon these prayers, the most modern of which
have been in use for nearly 400 years.
The teaching of Confucius in regard to the
ideal man, though we may not perhaps dare to
interpret it as an actual prophecy of Christ, found
its only explanation in His life and character.
On one occasion he said : —
" How great is the path proper to the sage ! " " It
waits for the proper man and then it is trodden."
" Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path be made
a fact." He never claimed to have attained the ideal
life, or to be in any way superior to his disciples.
Thus he said : — 1 See Appendix II,

88 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" How dare I lay claim to holiness or love ? A
man of endless craving I might be called an unflagging
teacher, but nothing more." *
On one occasion the reply which he gave to
Tze-kung seems an unconscious prophecy of
the One who, as we believe, could have satis
fied his "endless craving". Tze-kung said to
him : —
" What would you say of the man who con
ferred benefits far and wide on the people and
was able to be the salvation of all ? Would you
pronounce him a man of moral virtue ? — Of moral
virtue ? said the Master. Nay rather of divine
virtue. Even Yao and Shun (mythical Em
perors of China) were still striving to attain this
height."2 The result which we may look for, when
Christian Missions have accomplished their task
in China, may be illustrated by the experience of
a convert to the Christian faith who had pre
viously been a Confucianist. Dr. Hale, a mis
sionary at Wakayama in Japan, writes of him :
"At my suggestion he bought a copy of the
Bible and began to study it. He said to me
when afterwards he applied for Baptism, ' When
1 "Analects," viii., 33.
"Id., vi., 28. The above rendering of this passage is by
Lionel Giles.

THE IDEALS OF CONFUCIANISM 89
I first read the New Testament I thought
"This Jesus is a sage. Of course He is not the
equal of Confucius, but He is worthy to rank as
a sage." Then I read again and again the life
and teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels
and compared these with the life and teaching
of Confucius. Confucius did not fall in my es
timation. On the contrary the more I studied
him, the more I admired him. But Jesus con
stantly rose. His teaching and character took
hold of me. He increased until I was forced to
the belief that Confucius was a sage, but Jesus
Christ is God, and I want to dedicate my life to
is service.
We anticipate that when China becomes a
Christian country, as it some day will, Confucius
will be honoured with as true an honour as that
which he now receives. We can well believe
that at many a Christian church throughout the
land congregations will assemble, on a day or
days set apart for the purpose, to render thanks
to God for the life and teaching of Confucius,
and to thank Him that the ideal of humanity
which Confucius endeavoured to depict, has been
manifested in the life and character of the perfect
man, whose way he unconsciously prepared.1 Of
1 Confucius was born 550 or 551 b.c and died 478 B.C., i.e.,
twenty years before Ezra's arrival at Jerusalem. He was a
contemporary of Haggai and Zachariah.

90 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Confucius himself, as we think of him seeking
for the Truth which was in part revealed to him,
we may say in the words attributed by Browning
to S. John : —
" God's gift was that man should conceive of truth,
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
As midway help till he reach fact indeed." 1
1 " A Death in the Desert."

V.
THE IDEALS OF ISLAM.
In attempting to estimate the ideals which Mo
hammed set before his followers, we must con
stantly bear in mind the fact that though
chronologically Islam is later than Christianity,
it was in reality a development not of Christianity
but of Judaism. In order to appreciate aright
the character and teaching of Mohammed we
must compare him with Abraham, Moses1 and
other Jewish leaders and not with Jesus Christ,
of whom and of whose teaching he knew
hardly anything.2
1 Mohammed frequently compared himself to the great law
giver Moses : see Koran, Suras, 7, 18, 27, 28, 55. According to
tradition he drove the camels of Khadijah to the very place
where Moses had tended the flocks of Jethro. The special
permission which Mohammed claimed for himself to marry
Zeinab was probably regarded by him as parallel to the per
mission given to Moses to marry an Ethiopian woman.
2 In the whole of the Koran there are only three passages
which imply direct knowledge of the Gospels, and one of these
might be cited to prove how completely Mohammed misunder
stood their contents : cf. Sura, 61, 6. His knowledge of Christ
appears to have been derived chiefly from the Apocryphal
Gospels. 91

92 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
The caution that we have suggested will
be specially needful when we come to consider
the serious criticisms which have been passed
upon Mohammed's teaching in regard to (i)
slavery, (2) polygamy, and (3) the paradise into
which his followers hope to gain admission here
after. Before we attempt to consider the ideals of
Islam we must briefly allude to Mohammed's
teaching on these three points, in the light of the
introductory statement which we have ventured
to make.
( 1 ) Slavery. When we compare the laws re
lating to the treatment of slaves in the Penta
teuch with those contained in the Koran, we are
compelled to admit that the teaching of Mo
hammed shows a distinct advance on that of
Moses. Mohammed taught that a master who
punished his slave without just cause was bound
to set him free. He taught, again and again,
that slaves who believed were to be regarded
and treated as brothers. To one who asked
him, "How many times ought I to forgive a
slave who displeases me? " he replied, " Seventy
times a day ". In his final address to his fol
lowers at Mina the year before his death, he said :
" See that ye feed them (your slaves) with such
food as ye eat yourselves and clothe them with

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 93
the stuff ye yourselves wear ; for they are the
servants of the Lord, and are not to be tor
mented ". On the other hand Moses taught that
if a master should smite his slave so that he died
immediately, he should be punished, apparently
by a fine, but the infliction of punishment is
qualified by the words that follow : "If a man
smite his servant or his maid . . . and he die
under his hand ... if he continue a day or two,
he shall not be punished, for he is his money"}
It would be hard to find anything in the
writings or sayings of Mohammed which could
be set side by side with this statement that
one human being may be treated by another as
though he were mere inanimate coin.
An objection will at once arise that the teach
ing of Mohammed which we have quoted differs
toto coelo from the practice of the Mohammedan
slave raiders who have long been the curse of
Central Africa. There are few, if any, English
men who are now living who have seen more of
the results of such slave raiding than has the
writer of this book. He has stayed with slave
raiders and seen and suffered from the results
of their work, and shares to the full the horror
which their actions have produced in Europe.
He cannot, however, feel that in an attempt to
1 Exod. xxi. 20-29.

94 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
answer the question, What are the highest ideals
of Islam? we have any right to allow the con
duct of those who strive to cloak their crimes
under a profession of Islam to modify our judg
ment in regard to the teaching of Mohammed
and of the best of his followers. If we did so,
we could not honestly object to the Moham
medan who interpreted the ideals of Christianity
in the light of the fact that English Christians
have carried over 2,000,000 slaves from West
Africa to America and the West Indies, and that
Belgian and Portuguese Christians have, within
the last decade, treated their slaves worse
than almost any Mohammedan has ever treated
his. (2) Let us now compare Mohammed's treat
ment of polygamy and divorce with the Mosaic
regulations and with the customs which charac
terised later Judaism. Napoleon once remarked
that Mohammed was the only Eastern legislator
who ever attempted to place any restraint upon
the practice of polygamy. Before his time there
were apparently no laws or customs which laid
any restraint upon it, or upon unlimited freedom
of divorce in Arabia. By the limitation which
he introduced, and by the stringent law which
he enacted insuring to a woman the retention of
her own property, he did much to make both

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 95
polygamy and divorce difficult. In the "Tradi
tions " Mohammed is said to have declared, " God
created nothing which He likes better than the
emancipation of slaves and nothing which He
hates more than divorce ".
The Mosaic law on the other hand placed no
restraints upon polygamy and put no limitations
upon divorce which can be compared with those
imposed by Mohammed. Patriarchs, judges,
kings, Moses himself, practised polygamy and
were not rebuked by the prophets for doing so.
Even when we come down to later Judaism of
about the time of Christ, the position of women
was almost as bad as it is now in Mohammedan
lands and was far worse than Mohammed tried
to make it. One of the thanksgivings which
were repeated in the regular service of the Syna
gogue was, " Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who
hast not made me a woman". "The Jewish
law," says Edersheim, "unquestionably allowed
divorce on almost any ground, the difference be
tween the two schools being, not as to what was
lawful, but on what grounds a man should set
the law in motion and make use of the absolute
liberty which is accorded him. ... A trouble
some or quarrelsome wife might certainly be
sent away, and ill-repute or childlessness during

96 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
ten years was regarded as a valid ground of
divorce." x
It may be true to say that the Mohammedan
treatment of women is a blight and calamity in
every land where Islam prevails, but how much
worse would it have been for these lands if the
Judaic interpretation of the Mosaic law such as
prevailed in the time of Christ were to be sub
stituted for the laws of the Koran. Even if this
were not so, the modern interpretation by Mo
hammedans of their prophet's teaching in regard
to polygamy and divorce has no direct bearing
upon our appreciation of the higher ideals of
Islam. We may fairly quote as an illustration of the
potential purity and dignity of womanhood the
words of the Koran : —
"And the angels said, O Mary, verily God
hath chosen thee, and hath purified thee, and
hath chosen thee above all the women of the
world."2
(3) The Mohammedan paradise. Though we
must admit that life in a future state of existence
was conceived of by Mohammed, and still more
by his followers, under gross and material forms,
we cannot deny to the Mohammedans the liberty
1 " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," i., pp. 333, 899.
2 Sura, 3, 42.

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 97
which we claim for ourselves, of giving a spiritual
interpretation to these forms. None of Mo
hammed's descriptions of the torments of hell
are more ghastly than are those of the Christian
poet Dante. Mohammed's description of the
trees and fountains and of the glorious apparel
of the inhabitants of heaven may not unfairly
be compared with the gates of pearl, the
streets and harps of gold, and the river of life,
contained in the Apocalypse. Even the sug
gestion that a life of unfettered polygamy awaits
the true believer must be interpreted in the light
of the fact that a monogamous life was practic
ally unknown to the earliest Moslems.
What we have most reason to deplore is not
the low or contracted view of the future life
which Mohammed himself accepted, but the
much lower and more debased interpretation
which Mohammedans generally have been con
tent to place upon his teaching. Our anticipa
tion of what the future has in store would be
poor and meagre indeed if we held ourselves
bound to accept and to interpret literally all the
descriptions contained in the Apocalypse and still
more, in the writings of Dante and other Chris
tian poets.
Whilst, however, we must concede to Mo
hammed the right to have his descriptions of
7

98 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Heaven interpreted in a spiritual sense, we can
not shut our eyes to the fact that the literal
interpretations of these descriptions, which very
many of his ignorant followers have accepted,
have lowered the actual ideals of a large propor
tion of Moslems throughout the Mohammedan
world. The prospect of a sensuous paradise,
moreover, has had a direct influence upon their
present lives. They have been ready to say, in
the words of a Persian poet : —
" In paradise are houris, as you know,
And fountains that with wine and honey flow,
If these be lawful in the world above,
What harm to love the like down here below."
We have tried so far to consider from a sym
pathetic standpoint the three fundamental objec
tions which are commonly brought against Mo
hammed's teaching in regard to slavery, polyg
amy and a sensuous paradise in order that we
may prepare the way for a consideration of the
highest ideals which he conceived and handed
down to his followers. We need to put far from
us the thoughts suggested by the words of
Charles Wesley's hymn : —
" The smoke of the infernal cave
Which half the Christian world o'erspread,
Disperse, thou heavenly light, and save
The souls by that impostor led —

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 99
That Arab thief, as Satan bold
Who quite destroyed Thy Asian fold.
" Stretch out Thine arm, Thou Triune God !
The Unitarian fiend expel,
And chase his doctrine back to hell."
The fact that this hymn could have been writ
ten by a saint like Charles Wesley shows how
profound was the ignorance concerning Moham
med's teaching in England a century ago.1
In considering the change of conduct which
the teaching of Mohammed produced amongst his
fellow-countrymen, it is interesting to read one
of the first formal apologies for Islam that has
been preserved.
At an early stage in his preaching fifteen of his
first converts fled for protection from the persecu
tion of their fellow-countrymen and took refuge in
Abyssinia. When a demand was made by the
Kuraish at Mecca that they should be given up,
one of their number named Djafar came forward
and, in the presence of the Christian bishops
who had been specially summoned, offered the
following apology for Islam. Addressing the
1 For opinions in regard to Mohammed current in England
at an earlier period, see Shakespeare, "King Lear," iii. 4: —
" The prince of darkness is a gentleman ;
Modo he's called, and Mahu."
Modo and Mahu are corruptions of the name Mohammed.
7*

IOO AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
king of Abyssinia, he said : " O King, we were
in ignorance and barbarism, we prayed to idols,
we ate animals that had died of themselves, we
committed hateful things, we wounded the love
of our own relations, and violated the laws of
hospitality ; the strong consumed the weak, till
God sent a messenger among us, of whose birth,
faithfulness and purity we were aware ; he ex
horted us to worship God alone and to turn our
selves from stones and other gods, which we
and our fathers had associated with Him. He
commanded us to speak the truth, to be faithful
to our trusts, to love our relations, and to pro
tect our guests ; not to consume the property of
the orphan, or to slander virtuous women; he
bade us pray, give alms and keep the fast. We
have obeyed Mohammed and have believed in
his message."1
In order to understand the ideals of Islam we
need to rid ourselves of the thought that the
power which it has exerted in the world has
been due to the emphasis which Mohammed
laid upon the unity of God. Although the first
half of the Moslem creed — there is one God —
may seem to support this supposition, there can
ll'Sirater rasul," by Ibu Hisham (the earliest and most
authentic history of the Prophet), p. 219 sq., quoted by R. B.
Smith, " Mohammed and Mohammedanism," p. 103.

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM IOI
be little doubt that the marvellous success of
Islam has been due to the emphasis which has
been laid upon the second rather than upon the
third word in this creed. It was the reality of
God's existence more than the unity of His
nature which Mohammed succeeded in bringing
home to his fellow-countrymen, and which in
spired them with the living and victorious faith
that triumphed over the idolatry of Arabia and
the hazy pantheism of other eastern lands.
The reality of God's existence was the keynote
of Mohammed's message to a world which had
forgotten God. What the Mohammedan creed
lost in comprehension it gained in intensity,
Mohammed lacked the belief of Confucius in the
potential divinity of human nature, he lacked
the sense of mystic communion with God to
which the devout Hindu aspires, he lacked
too the benevolent toleration of all forms of
religion which Gautama inculcated, but he
possessed a conviction of the objectivity and
personality of the Supreme Being such as none
of the founders or adherents of these other religions
ever gained, and which begat in him the burning
enthusiasm that he succeeded in bequeathing to
his followers and which made Islam the second
greatest missionary religion in the world. The
ideals which Mohammed conceived and which

102 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
he placed before his followers were based upon
a belief in (i) the reality and objectivity of
the existence of God. (2) The majesty of the
Supreme Being, with its correlative the obligation
on the part of man to do Him reverence. (3)
The existence of a divine revelation. (4) The
efficacy of prayer. (5) The brotherhood of all
believers. (1) Of Mohammed's teaching concerning the
reality and objectivity of God's existence we
have already spoken.
(2) As an illustration of his teaching in regard
to the nature of God, we may take a well-known
passage which occurs towards the close of the
second Sura of the Koran : —
" 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 intercede with
Him but by His own permission ? He knoweth
that which is past and that which is to come unto
them, and they shall not comprehend anything 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."
In the same Sura we have what is practically
a summary of Moslem morality : —

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 103
" There is no piety in turning your faces to
wards the East or the West, but he is pious who
beheveth in God, and the Last Day, and the
Angels, and the Scriptures, and the Prophets ;
who for the love of God disburseth his wealth to
his kindred, and to the orphans, and the needy,
and the wayfarer, and those who ask, and for
ransoming ; who observeth prayer and payeth
the legal alms, and who is of those who are
faithful to their engagements when they have
engaged in them, and patient under ills and
hardships and in time of trouble ; these are they
who are just, and those who fear the Lord."
These two extracts may help us to appreciate
the noble conceptions of the majesty of God and
of the need of sincerity on the part of His wor
shippers which Mohammed set before his fol
lowers. It is easy to point out, even in these
passages, and still more in others which we
might quote from the Koran, what we conceive
to be the limitations and deficiencies in Moham
med's conception of God and of man's relation to
Him, but to do so would not help us in our search
for the truest ideals of Islam.
It would be equally easy to show how sadly
the great mass of Mohammed's followers have
failed to attain, or even to aspire to attain, the
ideals which he set before them, but this too

104 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
would not advance the object that we have in
view. (3) The Moslems' belief that God has made
known to man His will in a written form has
been stronger and more fruitful than that pos
sessed by the adherents of any other religion.
This belief has been to them the source alike of
their greatest strength and of their greatest weak
ness. It has made God intensely real, but it has
at the same time prevented them from ever
learning anything about Him which was not re
vealed in the Koran. The contrast between the
Christian and the Mohammedan outlook has
been well expressed in the words of Lord
Houghton : —
" Mohammed's truth lay in a holy book,
Christ's in a sacred life.
" 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.
" While, as the life-blood fills the glowing form,
The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read."
About the year 850 the doctrine was officially
proclaimed that the Koran was uncreated and

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 105
had existed from all eternity in heaven. In view
of this belief, which surpasses anything that the
Jews ever held concerning their Scriptures, it is
easy to understand the intense reverence with
which it is regarded.
(4) However limited the scope of his petitions
may be, prayer is to the Moslem a great reality,
and a belief in its efficacy exerts a large influence
upon his life.
Almost every European who has travelled in
the East, has been impressed by the sight of in
dividual Mohammedans, or still more, by that of
serried ranks of men gathered within a mosque,
prostrating themselves in prayer. We can well
believe that if the average Englishman had been
as little ashamed as is the average Moslem of
testifying in public to his belief in prayer, the
world would have become Christian long ago.
There is much formalism connected with the re
petition of the prescribed prayers of Islam, but
they nevertheless testify to a living and fruitful
belief that God is a God who hears and answers
prayer, a belief which has kept Islam alive for
nearly thirteen centuries and will long continue
to do so.
(5) Mohammed's teaching that all believers
are brothers, has been fruitful in results and has
helped to unite men of different races, languages,

106 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
and temperaments. It was delivered to those
who were decimated by blood feuds and separated
from each other by pride of birth,1 and whom no
religious or political bond had ever before united.
Though the limits of the Moslem brotherhood
are narrower than those of the universal brother
hood which Christ taught and which was based
upon the belief that God is the great Father of
all, it nevertheless embodies a true ideal and has
done much to uplift and ennoble a large section
of mankind.
In considering the later history of Islam in
search for yet nobler ideals than those which
Mohammed himself conceived, it is specially in
structive to note the results which ensued when
Islam was first accepted and developed on
original lines by an Aryan race. Sufiism, as
taught in Persia towards the close of the
eleventh century, was an attempt to combine
Mohammedan deism with the pantheism and
mysticism which were more akin to the Aryan
mind. The Sufis endeavoured to draw men
towards spiritual things by appealing to their
emotions. They taught that the human soul
is an emanation from God and that its instinctive
1 Addressing the proud Kuraish at Mecca, Mohammed said :
" No more pride in ancestry, ye Musulmans are all brothers,
are all equal ".

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM I 07
yearning is to rejoin the source from which it
came. They maintained the truth of all re
ligions, spiritualised, and so practically abro
gated, the Koranic law, and asserted the divine
indwelling in the prophets, the Imams and the
later religious teachers.
They taught that ecstasy was the means by
which a nearer intercourse with God might be
secured, and regarded absorption in the Divinity
as the ultimate goal to be attained.1
The doctrine of absorption into God is thus
defined by Jalalu'-d-din, a Persian Sufi (born
1207 A.D.) : —
" Eternal life is gained by utter abandonment
of one's own life. When God appears to His
ardent lover, the lover is absorbed in Him, and
not so much as a hair of the lover remains.
True lovers are as shadows, and when the sun
shines in glory the shadows flee away. He is a
true lover to God to whom God says, I am
thine and thou art Mine."2
The doctrine of the love of God for man, the
absence of which is a marked feature of the
Koran, is one of the keynotes of the teaching of
the Sufis. Thus Shamsi Tabriz, a Persian poet
JSee "Imperial Gazetteer of India," art. by Prof. Palmer,
i-, 437- 2 "The Persian Mystics," by F. H. Davis, vol. i., p. 82.

108 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
of the thirteenth century, writes of divine and
human love : —
" O soul, if thou too, wouldst be free,
Then love the Love that shuts thee in.
'Tis Love that twisteth every snare ;
'Tis Love that snaps the bond of sin ;
Love sounds the music of the spheres ;
Love echoes through Earth's harshest din.
The world is God's pure mirror clear
To eyes when free from clouds within.
With Love's own eyes the mirror view,
And there see God to self akin." l
We take one further illustration of Sufi teach
ing from the Confessions of Muhammed al
Ghazzali (born 1058 a.d.) who was a professor
of theology at Baghdad, and one of the chief
teachers and exponents of Sufiism. His Con
fessions end with this prayer : —
" I pray God the Omnipotent to place us in
the ranks of His chosen, among the number of
those whom He directs in the path of safety, in
whom He inspires fervour lest they forget Him ;
whom He cleanses from all defilement, that no
thing may remain in them except Himself ; yea,
of those whom He indwells completely, that
they may adore none beside Him."
The Sufi doctrines, of which these brief ex
tracts afford some indication, prevail to-day to a
1 " The Persian Mystics," by F. H. Davis, vol. i., p. 65.

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM 1 09
considerable extent in Persia and are accepted
by many devout Moslems in India. It is diffi
cult to imagine that they will ever gain general
acceptance, but here and there in every Moham
medan country are to be found some who aspire
to a closer union with God than their Prophet
thought possible upon earth, and who have
sought and attained it through this interpretation
and development of Islam.
We can only refer in passing to another
strange development of Islam which has arisen
in comparatively recent times in Persia. The
belief entertained by the Babis that God has
become incarnate in their leader Behah Ullah,
witnesses to an instinctive yearning for a doc
trine of the incarnation of God in the world
which the stern monotheism of Islam has failed
to suppress.
Before we answer the question for ourselves,
Have we any right to regret the appearance of
Islam as one of the great religions of the world ?
we are bound to ask what would have happened
to those nations which now profess Islam if
Mohammed had been killed by his enemies
at Mecca when he first began his preaching. Is
there any reason to suppose that the inhabitants
of Arabia, Morocco, Persia or Afghanistan, or
the sixty million Mohammedans in India would

110 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
now be Christians, or that if they were Christians,
their Christianity would be of a purer kind than
the pagan-Judaic Christianity now found in
Abyssinia ? 1 If we cannot answer, Yes, to this
question, and there are few students of Christian
Missions who would dare to do so, we cannot
honestly regard the spread of Islam during the
last 1,300 years as a calamity. Mohammed for
bad, and his teaching eventually abolished, in
Arabia and some of the surrounding districts,
human sacrifices and the murder of female in
fants, unrestrained blood feuds, unlimited polyg
amy, wanton cruelty to slaves, and drunkenness.
It is impossible to say for how many centuries
these practices would have remained unchecked
had it not been for Islam. Although we cannot
look upon Islam as a preparation for Christianity
and are forced to regard the religious progress to
which it has conduced as progress up an impasse,
1 Compare the conditions relating to marriage and divorce
in Abyssinia which has been nominally Christian for 1,500
years and any Moslem country. In Bruce's "Abyssinia" (iv.,
p. 487) we read : " There is no such thing as marriage in
Abyssinia, unless that is to be called so which is contracted by
mutual consent without other form and subsists only till dis
solved by the dissent of one or other, to be renewed, however,
or repeated as often as it is agreeable to both parties ; for when
they please, they live together again as man and wife, after
having been divorced, had children by others, or whether they
have had children by others or not". Cf. also Stanley's
" Eastern Church," pp. 10-12.

THE IDEALS OF ISLAM III
nevertheless the failure on the part of the Chris
tians of Europe to preach their faith to the
heathen who were not Moslems, prevents us from
being otherwise than grateful that the hundreds
of millions who have died in the faith of Islam
during the last thirteen centuries have not lived
and died as pagans.
As we look on into the future, we find it im
possible to forecast the coming developments of
Islam, but of this at least we are certain : its rigid
unitarianism will never be overthrown by logic,
and will only be undermined if its followers can
be brought to accept S. John's definition of the
Supreme Being, contained in the words " God
is love ". It may be that the spread of Sufiism
will help to bring about this result in Moham
medan Asia. The acceptance of this belief will
sooner or later be followed by a sympathetic ap
preciation of the Christian doctrine of the In
carnation. For though an omnipotent ruler,
existing from all eternity in isolation and loneli
ness, has met the aspirations of Moslems in the
past, if love be not only an attribute of God's
character, but be a synonym for His Name and
the expression of His very Nature, we must
needs attribute to Him, even from all eternity,
the necessity of self-realisation and of self-expres
sion as love. If this necessity be admitted, the

112 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
negative part of the Mohammedan creed becomes
altogether unsatisfying and the Christian doctrine
of the pre-existence of Christ as the object of
God's love becomes an obvious truth.
It has not been our object to discuss the pro
spects of Christian Missions to Moslems, but we
may note incidentally the great influence which
the presentation of Christian ideals has had in
all parts of the Moslem world to which they have
penetrated. There is an unnumbered band of
men and women in Moslem countries who have
not ceased to believe in their Prophet, or, if they
have done so, have lacked the courage v^ich
might enable them to endure the loss of husband,
wife or family or to face a cruel death, on declar
ing themselves Christians, but who have been
helped by the Christ-like life of a missionary, not
only to approximate to the loftiest ideals of their
own faith, transformed as these have often been
by a Christian interpretation, but to follow, albeit
as secret disciples, in the steps of our Master.
When the establishment of Christ's kingdom is
complete, there will come from the East and
from the West, from the North and from the
South, full many a Moslem who has never ap
peared in any record of converts to the Christian
faith, but whose name has none the less certainly
been entered in the Book of Life.

VI.
ARE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS
JUSTIFIABLE ?
In the last chapter we have tried to show how
noble and inspiring were some of the ideals
which Mohammed sought to set before his fol
lowers, and what an enormous advance they
were upon those which had previously been ac
cepted by his fellow-countrymen. It may seem
to some of our readers that if these ideals were
as high as we have seen them to have been,
no sufficient justification can be alleged for send
ing Christian missionaries to Moslem lands. It
may therefore be well to consider at some length
what answer can be given to the question which
stands at the head of this chapter.
" If you will only organise Missions to the
heathen in my province, instead of attempting
to convert Mohammedans, I will do everything
in my power to further and support them, but I
cannot approve or allow, at any rate at present,
the opening of a Mission to the Mohammedans."
113 8

114 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
These words, which were addressed to the
writer by an earnest Christian Englishman,
governor of a province in the British Empire,
represent the attitude of a large number of in
telligent Christians, who are most anxious to
support Missions to the heathen, but who object
on principle to spending time, labour, and money
upon a Christian Mission to Mohammedans
while there are still millions of degraded heathen
in the world who have never been evangelised.
The argument most commonly used is this :
Mohammedanism has done a great deal in the
past to raise native races, in various parts of
Asia and Africa, from the lowest stages of ignor
ance and degradation, and has taught them
many important truths in regard to the unity
and majesty of God. Islam is, as Dante long
ago recognised, a Christian heresy rather than a
denial of the Christian Faith. If we feel that it
would be wrong to divert efforts which might
otherwise be made to convert the heathen in
order to teach what we believe to be the true
faith to other Christian heretics, is it not equally
wrong to attempt to convert Mohammedans as
long as there are countless numbers of heathen
as yet untouched ?
This reasoning is often employed by those
whose self-denying lives and whose genuine

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE ? 1 1 5
anxiety to assist in spreading a knowledge of
God's love amongst the heathen forbid us for a
moment to doubt their sincerity. Many of the
opponents of Missions to Mohammedans are
quite as vigorous supporters of foreign Missions
as are those who believe most strongly in the
duty of the Christian Church to send Missions
to Mohammedans, and much unchristian bitter
ness has been engendered by a failure to recog
nise this fact.
The answer to this argument is not to be
found in the command of our Lord to make dis
ciples of all nations, for the question under dis
cussion is not whether we should refuse to
preach the Gospel at all to Mohammedans, but
whether we are justified in neglecting the
heathen, as we must do to some extent, in order
to send Missions to the Mohammedans.
Perhaps the most helpful way in which to
approach the question is by a consideration of
the historic parallel to the present relation of
Islam to Christianity which is afforded by the
early history of Christianity. At the time when
Missions for the spread of the Christian Faith
were first attempted the vast majority of the in
habitants of the world were sunk in ignorance
and superstition, and without any teachers
capable of enlightening them. There were,
8 *

Il6 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
however, at least two countries to which this de
scription could not be applied, viz., Greece and
Italy. In both these countries there had been,
and still were, teachers whose knowledge of
God would compare with the knowledge pos
sessed by the teachers of Islam in the present
day. To take a single example, there was in
the city of Rome at the time when S. Paul
was living there a man named Epictetus, four
books of whose discourses have come down
to us. From them we gather that he was a
stern preacher of righteousness, whose one aim
was to teach men not how to think correctly,
but how to live well. His creed bore a striking
resemblance to that of the best type of the Mo
hammedans of to-day. He believed in the unity
and majesty of God, that apart from the will of
God there is nothing either good or bad, and that
in darkness and solitude man is never alone, be
cause God is with him and within him. He
believed, even as most Mohammedans of to-day
believe, that all things were governed by unalter
able fate, which it behoved man to accept with
out murmuring, and against which it was in any
case vain to contend. In some respects his
teaching was in advance of that of Islam, for he
taught that all men are the sons of God and
of kindred nature to that of the Divinity.

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE ? 1 1 7
The following extracts from the teachings of
Epictetus challenge comparison with the teach
ing of Mohammed. In some instances they
approach more nearly to the teaching of Christ
than any extracts relating to the same truths
which can be produced from the Koran. " Do
not plume yourself," says Epictetus, "on an in
telligent knowledge of philosophy which is quite
valueless, but on a consistent nobleness of action.
Never relax your efforts, but aim at perfection."
We may contrast with this the importance which
Islam attributes to right opinion compared with
which right action is of small account.
In the next saying of Epictetus we have a
true though indistinct recognition of the reality
of sin : "If you wish to be good, first believe
that you are bad". By Mohammed sin was re
garded as an infraction of the arbitrary decree
of God, and there was for him no absolute or
unalterable distinction between right and wrong.
Again, Epictetus said, " What ought not to
be done do not even think of doing ". It would
be hard to find in the teaching of Mohammed
any statement which so nearly approached the
teaching of Christ when He declared that the
thoughts of a man's heart were more to be
feared as a source of defilement than the failure
to observe any outward or ceremonial law.

118 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
When Epictetus was asked how a man could
grieve his enemy, he replied, "By preparing
himself to act in the noblest way ". We may
contrast with this the licence to seek revenge
upon his enemies which Mohammed claimed to
have been allowed him by God.
As we listen to yet another quotation from
Epictetus it is hard to persuade ourselves that
we are not listening to the words of a Christian
teacher, or even to the Apostle Paul himself,
They will compare with the most inspiring of
those attributed to Mohammed. Epictetus says :
" If you always remember that in all you do in
soul or body God stands by as a witness in all
your prayers and your actions, you will not err,
and you shall have God dwelling with you".
Again," When you have closed your doors and
made darkness within, remember never to say
that you are alone. For you are not alone ; God
too is present there."
Epictetus was only one of several philosophers
who believed and taught thus in Rome in the
days when Christian Missions were first intro
duced there. Another Stoic philosopher who
was living in Rome at the time of S. Paul's visit
was Seneca. He was the younger brother of
the Roman judge Gallio, before whom S. Paul
had been brought at Corinth. So closely do

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE? 1 1 9
some parts of his teaching resemble the teaching
of S. Paul that a forged correspondence between
himself and the Apostle had come into existence
as early as the time of Jerome. It would be
easy to institute a comparison between much of
his teaching and the teaching of Islam which
would be favourable to Seneca.
Let us endeavour to imagine an intelligent
Roman citizen, who had been instructed in the
teachings of Epictetus or Seneca, meeting S.
Paul or one of the early missionaries to Rome.
On learning the object for which he had come
— viz., to impart to the citizens of Rome a truer
and more complete knowledge of God than they
already possessed — how natural would it have
been for him to use the identical arguments
which are often used against the prosecution
of Missions to Mohammedans to-day ! Might
he not have urged that whereas the greater part
of the then known world was lying in heathen
darkness, in Rome and in one or two of the
cities of Greece (which S. Paul had visited be
fore he came to Rome) God had granted to
philosophers, and through them to their disciples
and readers, a knowledge of Himself which he,
S. Paul, would have been the first to recognise
as divinely given ? Surely, he would have
urged, the right course to adopt, in the interest

120 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
of Christian Missions, is to leave those whose
knowledge of God is so much greater than that
of all others, and to preach the Gospel in the
first instance to those whose need is most
urgent. We may safely assume that S. Paul was con
fronted with an argument of this kind, and pro
bably on more than one occasion.
If we can judge at all what reply he gave from
his speech to the Epicureans at Athens, he
pointed out that it was those who had already
learnt to feel after God, if haply they might find
Him, and whose knowledge of God was alto
gether superior to that of the less developed
races around them, who had the first claim to
have the Gospel preached to them. The mere
fact that they were unconscious of their needs
did not in any degree abate the Apostle's eager
ness, or alter the conviction which he had ex
pressed : "I am debtor both to Greeks and to
Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach
the Gospel ... in Rome."
Whatever may have been the argument by
which he justified his action, his action itself was
clear and resolute. With very few exceptions
he followed the course of Greek or Roman civili
sation, using the Roman roads and preaching as

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE? 121
a rule to those who had already come under
Greek or Roman influence. The final result
has been that the light of the Christian Faith has
radiated from Rome and Greece, more especially
from the former, and has influenced not only
what were then the barbarous nations of Central
and Northern Europe, but many other countries
of which S. Paul had never heard.
The first answer then which we should be dis
posed to make to the man who objects to send
ing Missions to Mohammedans to-day is that in
undertaking Missions to Mohammedans we are
acting in accordance with the principles which
governed the action of S. Paul.
Some of those who deprecate Missions to
Mohammedans to-day would be prepared to say
that S. Paul was mistaken, and that he would
have made a better use of his time if he had
spent it in preaching the Gospel to the savage
tribes who then inhabited Central and Northern
Europe. But those who believe that S. Paul was in
deed guided, as he professed to have been, by
the Spirit of God to follow the course which
he actually pursued, and which resulted in the
eventual evangelisation of our own islands, have
no ground for objecting to missionary work
which is conducted on the same lines and with

122 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the same object in view — viz., to reach the less
developed races through the instrumentality of
those races which have already received a larger
measure of divine revelation.
The position in which the modern missionary is
placed who has to decide between work amongst
Mohammedans and amongst the heathen, is
strictly analogous to that in which S. Paul was
placed in the later years of his life, when he had
to decide between spending his energies upon
the cultured peoples of Greece, Italy and the
coast towns of Asia Minor, or undertaking work
amongst the races which resemble the heathen
races of to-day. The intelligent missionary who
has made any careful study of Mohammedanism
is prepared to thank God for the large measure
of truth which He has revealed to Mohammed
ans, and to admit that they possess a knowledge
of God to which no other non-Christian people
has attained ; but the recognition of this fact, in
stead of rendering him content to leave his Mo
hammedan brother to himself, will make him the
more eager to help him to a fuller and completer
knowledge. He will recall the words of his
divine Master : "He that hath, to him shall be
given," and will realise that the appropriation of
the measure of divine truth of which the Mo
hammedan has shown himself capable implies

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE? 1 23
his capacity for receiving more, and at the same
time constitutes his claim to have a further
measure of truth presented to him.
There are, however, some of those who are
opposed to Missions to Mohammedans who
would be prepared to endorse all that has been
said, and to admit that if S. Paul were with us
to-day he would recognise the paramount obliga
tion to preach the Gospel to the followers of
Islam. Nevertheless, they feel that they cannot
conscientiously help to support any existing
Missions to Mohammedans. The difficulty
which they feel may be expressed thus. They
would say to us : We are quite prepared to grant
that there is no theoretical objection to preaching
the Christian Faith to Mohammedans, and, if
there was a reasonable prospect of their listening
to or accepting it, we would have nothing more
to say ; but after all it is a practical age in which
we live, and we cannot ignore the fact that the
Missions to Mohammedans which have been
carried on for many years past have produced
but the smallest visible results. Our real objec
tion to such Missions is based not so much upon
the undesirability, as upon the impossibility, of
converting Mohammedans to Christianity. Did
not Christ Himself authorise the abandonment
of effort to preach to those who deliberately

124 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
rejected the message when He said " When they
persecute you in this city flee into the next"?
Is there any Mohammedan city in the world
where the Gospel has been preached in which
the persecution of Christians which has resulted
has not justified the cessation of further effort
and the transference of the work to some more
receptive people? In considering the bearing
and application of this argument, it is impossible
to deny that Missions to Mohammedans have
been lacking in visible results as compared with
those which have been carried on amongst the
heathen. But before we draw the suggested
inference, we need to inquire under what con
ditions have these Missions to Mohammedans
been carried on? Have they been carried on
under similar external conditions to those which
prevail in the countries where Missions to the
heathen have been most successful?
The answer to the question is that until quite
recently they have been carried on, with but one
exception, in the presence of a continuous and
relentless persecution, compared with which the
persecutions of the early Christians in the second
and third centuries were spasmodic and trivial.
To abandon the faith of Islam for that of Chris
tianity in any Mohammedan country outside
India has been to court not only persecution,

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE? 1 25
but death at the hands either of the government
or the people. When travelling in Asia Minor,
the writer was told by one who had witnessed
the baptism of some thirty Mohammedans that
on each occasion the man baptised had to flee
for his life. On one occasion within recent years
a Turkish sheikh at Constantinople was induced,
as the result of studying the New Testament,
to embrace the Christian Faith. He and more
than a dozen of his followers, who were prepared
to do the same, were put in prison, and the whole
number were poisoned.
Mohammedan rulers have always regarded
the conversion to Christianity of a Mohammedan
as an act of treason. It is this close connection
between Islam and the exercise of political sove
reignty which accounts for the dread which Mo
hammedans have always entertained lest their
political power should be taken from them. On
one occasion, whilst travelling across Mesopo
tamia, the writer had lost his way at night, and
found himself eventually in a hamlet of Kurdish
brigands, where he spent the night in the hut of
the headman. One of the first questions which
the Kurdish headman had to ask, as soon as
he discovered the nationality of his guest, was :
When are the English going to leave Egypt,
and by what right had a Christian country inter-

126 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
fered with a Mohammedan Government ? The
interference seemed to him, in his far away ob
scure hamlet, not a political act, but a religious
crime. As long as Mohammedan Powers exist we
cannot expect that Christian Missions to Mo
hammedans will have a reasonable chance of
obtaining an impartial hearing, still less that
they can be carried on under external conditions
as favourable as those which exist in the Missions
to the heathen.
There is, however, one country in the world
where within quite recent years it has been pos
sible for Mohammedans to embrace Christianity
without incurring anything worse than the loss
of all their friends and of their livelihood. After
centuries of contest on unequal terms elsewhere
Christianity and Islam have at last met on a field
where, thanks to the strong arm of an impartial
Government, the balance between their opposing
claims can no longer be turned, as has so often
been the case in the past, by the addition of the
sword of Islam. Of the Christian missionaries
now working in India only a minute proportion
are working amongst Mohammedans. Never
theless it is already possible to point to several
results of their labours, such as must appeal to
every student of Missions. In the Punjaub and

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE? 1 27
Sindh at the present moment there are nineteen
native clergy who have received Anglican Orders.
Of these ten are converts from Islam. Out of
555 native converts to Christianity who were
baptised in the town of Amritsar between 1852
and 1883, 253 were converts from Islam. In a
paper written by Dr. Imad-ud-din (who himself
belonged to one of the most illustrious Moham
medan families in the world), which was sent to
be read at the conference on religions held at
Chicago at the time of the Exhibition, the writer
asserts that converts from Islam to Christianity
"have come, and are coming, in their thousands ".
It may be suggested that these are the words of
a man who would naturally be prejudiced against
the religion he had abandoned. This objection
cannot weaken the force of the evidence con
tained in a list which he supplied of a hundred
converts from Islam to Christianity who are now
occupying influential positions both in the State
and in the Church in India. One of the hundred
names is that of a direct descendant of Moham
med himself.
We have not space to give any further illustra
tions of the effect which the preaching of Chris
tianity is producing upon Mohammedanism in
India at the present time ; but evidence is avail
able to establish the fact that in view of the very

128 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
short time which has elapsed since Christianity
and Islam met on an equal field, it is far from
being true that Missions to Mohammedans are,
or are likely to be, a failure.
There is one country where the question
whether Christian Missions to Mohammedans
should be encouraged or discouraged has a
practical interest at the present time. We refer
to the African Soudan. The name is applied
to the whole of Central Africa north of the
equator and south of the Great Desert, reaching
from the Red Sea on the east to the Atlantic on
the west. The greater part of this vast district
— itself larger than the continent of Europe-
has long been closed to Europeans, and therefore
to European missionaries. Within the last few
years a large part of the Eastern Soudan and
half a million square miles in the Western Soudan
have come under English political influence.
Several English missionary Societies have made
preliminary attempts to establish work both in
the Eastern and Western Soudan.
The question which presents itself to mission
ary Societies and to those who are responsible
for the political government of the Western
Soudan is different from that which is presented
in most of the other countries where Moham
medanism is represented.

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE ? 1 29
There are not a few who are interested in the
well-being of the peoples of West Africa who
argue that Islam is the form of religion best
suited to the native of that country, and the
religion which, if we take into consideration his
past history, will most certainly raise him in the
scale of civilisation and of morality. If we were
concerned only with the immediate future of the
West African native, it would be difficult to see
how such an argument as this could be met ;
but if, in the light of past history, we have regard
to the well-being not merely of the present but
of the next and all succeeding generations, we
shall view with increasing dissatisfaction the
further spread of Islam in West Africa. Our
reason for doing so will be this. Mohammedan
progress is progress up an impasse. Heathen
races which accept Islam are thereby enabled
to advance a little way in the upward path of
civilisation only to find their further progress
checked by an impassable wall of conservatism
and prejudice. It is sometimes assumed that
Mohammedanism is capable of introducing to
heathen races the degree of civilisation which
prevails to-day amongst the Mohammedans of
North Africa, Turkey, or Western Asia. But
a study of past history affords no warrant for
such- a conclusion. Prior to the advent of Islam
9

130 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the greater part of the inhabitants of these coun
tries were Christians. Moreover, these countries
have been so long in contact with European
civilisation that it is impossible to say what
benefits, if any, they have gained from Islam
which would not otherwise have come to them.
The one country where it is possible to esti
mate the abiding effect of Islam upon a people
upon whom no other strong influence has been
exerted is the fountain source of Islam — the
country of Arabia. Here Islam has for nearly
1,300 years exerted its influence undisturbed
by the preaching of any other religion. What
Arabia is to-day we may therefore fairly expect
West Africa to become in a thousand years or
more from the present time. What, then, is the
present condition of Arabia and of Mecca in
particular ? Palgrave, who spent the greater
part of his life amongst Mohammedans, and who
was so far in sympathy with them that on more
than one occasion he conducted service in their
mosques, gives it as his opinion that the Arabs
of Mecca and Medina — the two cities visited by
pilgrims — are notorious above all other Arabs
for their evil living. " The torch burns dark at
its foot " is the Eastern proverb used to account
for this acknowledged fact. After referring to
the decreasing hold which Islam has upon Arabia,

ARE MISSIONS TO MOHAMMEDANS JUSTIFIABLE ? 1 3 1
Palgrave says : " When the Koran and Mecca
shall have disappeared from Arabia, then and
then only can we expect to see the Arab assume
that place in the ranks of civilisation from which
Mohammed and his book have more than any
other cause long held him back ".1
Unless, therefore, we are prepared to contem
plate with equanimity the prospect of African
civilisation being a thousand years hence on a
level with the Arabian civilisation of to-day, we
cannot look with other than grave apprehension
on the progress, whether great or small, which
Islam is making in West Africa at the present
time ; nor can we refuse to lend our active sup
port to the only enterprise which can check the
spread of Islam and which is represented by the
Christian Missions.
To sum up in a few sentences what has been
said, we believe —
(a) That the sending of Missions to Moham
medan countries to-day is justified by the close
analogy which has been shown to exist between
such action and that of the first and greatest of
Christian missionaries, the Apostle S. Paul.
(b) That in view of the results which Christian
Missions have achieved in the course of the
1" Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia," byW. G.
Palgrave, vol. i., p. 175. 9 *

132 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
few years during which Christianity and Islam
have met on equal terms in India, it is impossible
any longer to maintain that Missions to Moham
medans are impracticable.
(c) That in the case of the lowest races in
Africa or elsewhere the acceptance of Islam tends
eventually to retard the progress of the people
by whom it is accepted.
Our brief study of Islam must not, however,
end with words suggestive of pessimism. Let
us rather end by thanking God that the preach
ing of Islam has not been an unmitigated mis
fortune to Christendom. Professor Maurice, in
a letter to Charles Kingsley, wrote : " The
Middle Ages turn more upon him (Mohammed)
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.
What N  calls the Anti-Christ was the divine
means of saving the Catholic Church from
atheism."1 The limits of our space forbid us to
discuss these words, but they should give pause
to any one who is tempted to underrate the pro
vidential purpose fulfilled in Islam.
1 " Life of F. D. Maurice," ii., 239.

VII.
SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.
The editor of one of the most widely-circu
lated society papers in London wrote, not long
ago, in his editorial notes : " I now always quit
a church when I find that the sermon is in aid
of foreign missions, and I heartily wish others
would do the same ".
This is an honest expression of opinion on the
part of an intelligent man who reflects the feel
ings of not a few of the readers of his paper. It
is an opinion too which is more widespread than
many supporters of foreign missionary work
allow themselves to believe. Nothing is to be
gained by ignoring the fact that there are a large
number of earnest and intelligent persons to
whom the subject of foreign Missions is alto
gether distasteful. Let us try to answer the
question how far the difficulties involved in the
prosecution of missionary work are the outcome
of special circumstances, or how far they are a
repetition of objections which have presented
133

134 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
themselves to thoughtful people in all stages of
Christian history. There are many objections
which are from time to time urged by persons
whom nature has endowed with but a slender
allowance of brains, or who are too idle to think
deeply on any subject, and to whom no argu
ment derived, whether from history or experience,
would be likely to appeal. But, apart from the
trivial excuses which are the outcome of ignor
ance and prejudice, there are certain difficulties
which suggest themselves to many thoughtful
men who fully recognise their obligation to help
the more backward races of the world, but who
find it impossible to support the work carried on
by any existing missionary society.
It will help to make the subject clearer if we
put into words a few of these difficulties. We
shall then be in a position to see whether they
are the outcome of modern circumstances, or
whether they have come down to us from a
venerable antiquity.
i. The first objection, and one which specially
presents itself to philanthropic people who are
striving to ameliorate the condition of their
poorer neighbours, is this : How can it be right
to send men and money abroad, in the hope of
converting the heathen to Christianity, when
thousands are dying day by day, in our large

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 35
towns, who are in a worse moral and religious
condition than the heathen ? Surely these have
a greater claim upon our sympathy than those
whom we have never even seen. Ought we not
to wait till the heathen at home have been evan
gelised before going forth to distant lands in
search of those who have no claim upon us other
than that which is based upon the possession of
a common humanity ?
2. The second objection is one which the com
parative study of religions, which has been de
veloped within recent years, has done much to
accentuate. There are several distinct faiths in the far
East, older than our own Christian faith, which
exert, and for decades of centuries have exerted,
a moral and beneficial influence upon their ad
herents. This question then presents itself to
many thoughtful people : Have we any right
to interfere with the influence which these old
faiths are exerting upon the highly civilised
races of the far East — faiths, moreover, which
have much in common with our own faith — in
the hope of supplanting their belief by ours ?
Is it not practically certain that the attempt will
result, in many instances, in the destruction of
these ancient religions and of the whole system
of morality which obtains its support from them,

136 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
without any opportunity being afforded of sub
stituting another system of morality in its place ?
Even if it be granted that it is incumbent upon
us to send missionaries to the degraded heathen,
whose religion is antagonistic to the teaching of
morality, such as are to be found in Central
Africa and Melanesia, have we any right to force
our faith upon Hindus, Buddhists and Confucian
ists ? Ought we not, at any rate, to evangelise
all the heathen in the world before we attempt
to interfere with these other faiths ?
3. The next objection specially appeals to the
man in the street, and is one which strikes at the
root of all missionary enterprise, whether amongst
civilised or uncivilised peoples. It is based upon
reports furnished by travellers, or by European
residents, in countries in which missionary work
is now going on. Many of those by whom the
reports are furnished are anxious to see mission
ary work succeed, but are constrained to admit
that their desires and expectations have been
disappointed. The objection itself is expressed
in such words as these : Is it not the fact that
the native converts to Christianity are in many
cases less trustworthy and less moral than those
who have never come under the influence of
the missionaries ? Is there not good reason to
fear that the attempt to introduce the exalted

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 37
morality inculcated by Christ will end in the de
struction of the genuine moral sanctions which
are to be found even amongst the lowest heathen
to-day, without the substitution of any other
sanctions which can appeal to the great majority ?
Does not the inconsistency of the lives of the
professed converts to Christianity throughout the
world prove that the work of evangelising the
heathen has been a failure, even in those coun
tries in which it has been carried on by most
earnest missionaries ?
4. The next objection is little more than an
expansion of the last. It may be expressed in
question form as follows : Is the conversion even
of the best and most promising converts from
heathenism a permanent factor in their experi
ence ? Are not relapses into old superstitions
a constantly recurring feature of all missionary
work? Do not these constant relapses prove
that a real conversion of character is impossible,
and that the impressions which have been pro
duced on the heathen will in course of time tend
to disappear ? Does not the history of Chris
tianity in some parts of the Southern States of
America, and in Liberia and other parts of West
Africa prove that when the Christian negro is
left to himself he will sooner or later relapse into
practical heathenism ?

138 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
5. The fifth objection is the most plausible of
all. The ordinary man, who understands little
about the theological dogmas which differentiate
professing Christians into innumerable sects and
parties at home, nevertheless feels that the ex
istence of these divisions renders it impossible to
present Christianity in a satisfactory form to the
heathen. He is inclined to say to those who
would interest him in the work of foreign mis
sions : When you at home have arrived at any
kind of agreement as to what it is that you wish
missionaries to teach, it will be time to invite me
to co-operate with you. What can be the use of
sending out missionaries who will flatly contra
dict each other's interpretation of the Christian
faith ? Surely it is bad enough to have this un
christian state of things at home without repro
ducing it abroad ?
6. Yet another objection which is closely con
nected with this last. There are not a few
religious and thoughtful men who think that,
if ever Christianity is to become the universal
religion, it must be prepared to discard a large
proportion of its dogmas, and perhaps to abandon
its claim to be regarded as a unique revelation
from God. They argue that under no circum
stances is a missionary justified in presenting
the Christian faith in such a way as to create an

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 39
impression in the minds of his hearers that the
particular truths on which he himself lays em
phasis are in any way essential to salvation.
What is wanted, is to induce all professing
Christians to agree upon some form of Chris
tianity which should include the truths common
to them all, but from which should be eliminated
all dogmas and controversial statements concern
ing which there exists any disagreement. Chris
tianity, if thus remodelled on a broad and liberal
basis, might hope within a measurable time to
become the universal religion of the human race.
7. The last objection to which we shall refer
is one which specially appeals to Government
officials, and to those who are responsible for the
preservation of order in countries where mis
sionary work is being carried on. This question
presents itself to them : Have we any right to
introduce a religion into a comparatively civilised
land, if the religion be one which teaches men to
disregard the customs and traditions that form
part of the political creed of the inhabitants, and
thereby weaken the hands of the existing Govern
ment? We make no attempt to deal with these ob
jections in detail, or to adduce arguments in
support of the missionary work which is being
carried on by any particular society. We believe

140 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
that the answer to all of these objections is to be
found, not in the history of the present, but in
the story of the past. In order to make this
statement clear let us try to picture a scene which
we may conceive to have occurred in Jerusalem
five or ten years before its destruction, that is
about 60 or 65 a.d. Some half-dozen travellers,
all of whom have been more or less influenced
by the teaching of Christianity, and who have
come from different parts of the Roman Empire,
have met by chance in Jerusalem. They are
engaged in discussing the methods which some
of the more ardent supporters of Christianity are
proposing to adopt in order to spread the know
ledge of their faith. The travellers referred to
are all agreed that an extension of missionary
effort on the lines proposed is to be deprecated,
but the reasons which present themselves to
their minds are of different kinds.
( 1 ) The first speaker is a resident at Jerusalem.
He has been led to accept the Christian faith
for himself and is fully convinced of its truth and
of its adaptability to the needs of all men. It
is, as he says, his very desire to spread the
knowledge of his faith that makes him object to
the means which his fellow Christians are pro
posing to adopt. He points out that the city of
Jerusalem must be the strategic point if, as he

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 141
anticipates, Christianity is one day to become the
universal religion. For it is not only the birth
place of the Christian faith, but it is the geo
graphical centre which Jews are constantly going
out from, and returning to from all parts of the
world. The majority of the inhabitants of Jeru
salem are, however, still unconvinced of the truth
of Christianity. In the interests, therefore, of
the faith itself he feels that the wisest course to
adopt will be to refrain for the present from
sending missionaries abroad, and to concentrate
thought and energy upon those at home who
have the first and greatest claim, and who may
eventually be induced to co-operate in the evan
gelisation of the world.
(2) The second speaker is one who claims no
particular country as his own, but who has visited
nearly all lands in the course of his travels. He
has studied in the schools of Greece and of Italy,
and is learned in the history of Egypt and of
the East. His objections to the methods which
are being adopted to spread the new religion are
based not upon any regard for the needs of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, but upon a considera
tion of the claims of the old and highly developed
religions of Greece and of Rome, of Egypt and
of Persia. If the new religion will try to in
fluence some of the savage races in Northern

142 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Europe or in the interior of Africa, he for one
will rejoice to contemplate its success, but until
the more backward races who inhabit these and
similar districts are evangelised he cannot admit
that it would be right to interfere with the old
and, on the whole, beneficent forms of religion.
He points out that under the systems of reli
gion existing in these countries their inhabitants
have attained to a far higher degree of culture
and civilisation than have the Jews, and that it
would be unjustifiable presumption on the part
of this new religion to interfere with these long-
established faiths.
He admits that in the course of his travels he
has come across Christian missionaries in such .
centres of civilisation as Rome, Athens, Corinth
and Ephesus, and has heard of missionary work
carried on in Alexandria and in Persia, but in
all these cases he cannot himself approve or sup
port the work which has been attempted, nor
can he admit that the missionaries have adopted
the methods best calculated to promote the work
which they have at heart.
(3) The third speaker is a Greek who has
been living for the last few years at Corinth,
where, as he explains, he has had the opportunity
of watching the growth of a Christian community
and of comparing the conduct of its professors

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 43
with that of the other citizens. His experience
has been most unsatisfactory and discouraging.
He tells how on one occasion, when he happened
to be present in a Christian assembly at Corinth,
he heard a letter read out, which had been
written by the missionary who first preached
the Christian faith in that city. In this letter the
writer, who was a Jew, admitted that the Chris
tian converts had fallen into degrading and un
natural sin such as was not even named among
their heathen neighbours. In another part of
the same letter the writer upbraided them for
engaging in lawsuits with their fellow Christians
and for indulging in a narrow party spirit which
was incompatible with the spirit of Christian
love. The speaker feels that he is justified in
regarding what has taken place at Corinth as
typical of what is likely to occur elsewhere, inas
much as Paul the missionary, who first introduced
Christianity to that place, had spent a long time
there and had had every opportunity of exerting
a persona] influence upon these early converts.
(4) The fourth speaker is a man who has re
cently arrived from a visit to Galatia and the
north-western parts of Asia Minor. In the course
of his travels he came across several small com
munities of Christians scattered throughout the
province. He learned that they had embraced

144 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
the Christian faith as a result of the preaching
of the same missionary to whom the previous
speaker had referred. His experience of the
unsatisfactory results of this missionary work
agrees to a large extent with that just described.
In the case of the Galatians, however, it was
not the existence of serious crime or immorality
which he had observed, but a tendency to lapse
into the old superstitions from which they had
been temporarily freed by their adoption of
Christianity. It seems as though the Christian
faith was incapable of accomplishing any real or
permanent change in the characters of these
peoples, and if it fails thus with them how can
its claim to be a universal religion, adapted to
all people alike, be supported ?
(5) The next speaker, a native of Antioch, is
one who has seen a good deal not only of con
verts to Christianity but of the missionaries
themselves. During a stay which he had made
at Antioch he had met two of the most promi
nent missionaries, Paul and Barnabas, and was
present on one occasion when a sharp dispute
had taken place between them in reference to
the employment of a certain missionary helper
named Mark. As a result of this dispute these
two missionaries had found it impossible to go
on working together. On an earlier occasion,

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 45
in the same city of Antioch, the same missionary
Paul had withstood to the face another of his
brother missionaries, the dispute in this case
having reference to a ceremonial law concerning
eating. The speaker's own opinion is that until .
the chief apostles of Christianity cease disputing
among themselves as to the exact nature of the
faith they desire to teach, the outside public can
not reasonably be expected to afford a patient
hearing to what they may have to say.
(6) The next speaker expresses his great de
sire to see missionary work attempted far and
wide beyond the limits of Palestine, but is con
vinced that it is useless to make the attempt so
long as the Christian faith is characterised by a
spirit of harsh intolerance. Can anything, he
asks, be more intolerant than this declaration
which he has read in a letter sent by one of the
Christian missionaries to his converts, whom he
was upbraiding for having abandoned his parti
cular representation of the faith: "Though an
angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto
you than that which we have preached unto you,
let him be accursed " ? Surely the right thing
to do is formally to disown such language and
then to appoint a conference of the Christians
who can be found in Jerusalem, whose duty it
shall be to discover the truths which are common
10

146 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
to the Galatian and all other Christians, or rather
to Christianity, Judaism and other cognate re
ligions. Dogmatism was no doubt the very life
of Judaism, but then Judaism never aimed at
becoming a missionary religion. If Christianity
is ever to become — as he hopes it may become
— the universal religion, it must adopt a far
broader basis than that which Paul or Peter
desires to give it.
Can anything, he says, be more dogmatic or
egotistical than this statement : " If any man
thinketh himself to be spiritual, let him take know
ledge of the things which I write . . . that they
are the commandment of the Lord " ? Nor is this
narrow dogmatism peculiar to one particular mis
sionary, for, as the speaker says, he has himself
heard another of the apostles within the city of
Jerusalem assert with reference to the founder
of Christianity : "In none other is there salva
tion, for neither is there any other name under
heaven that is given among men, wherein we
must be saved ".
(7) The last speaker is a native of Thessa-
lonica, a large and prosperous seaport, which
under the settled order introduced by the Roman
Government has long enjoyed tranquillity. He
describes a scene which he once witnessed when
two Christian missionaries were brought before

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 47
the rulers of the city, the charge against them
being that they had turned the world upside
down by their preaching, and that they and their
converts all did contrary to the decrees of Caesar.
He tells, moreover, how certain friends of his
had witnessed similar tumults, the direct out
come of the preaching of Christianity, at Ephe-
sus and several other places. It seems clear to
him that Christian missionaries ought not to be
allowed to go to places where their preaching is
likely to result in a breach of the peace or to
cause political complications.
The scene which we have been describing is
not an imaginary one. Even if these objections
were never expressed in so many words or on
any single occasion, it is certain that they are
the objections which appealed with greatest
force to intelligent students of Christianity in
the earliest stages of its existence.
It is of no great interest to discover what
answers the first Christian missionaries had to
give to these objections, or how far the answers
given were logically correct. We may take it
for granted that many of the most earnest mis
sionaries of the first century were incapable of
supplying any satisfactory answers.
The two facts of importance which are sug
gested by this retrospect are —
10 *

148 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
(1) That these objections were not allowed
to hinder the missionary activity of the early
Christians. (2) That the disregard of them rendered it
possible for Christianity to spread throughout
the then known world.
Had these objections, many of which seem to
us to-day entirely reasonable, prevailed in the
first century, the Christian faith might conceiv
ably have become known to students of ancient
documents ; but it would never have reached
our shores, and the blessings which we now en
joy, together with the boundless hope of the
future, would never have become ours.
Every blessing which we enjoy to-day and
which has come to us as inhabitants of a Christian
country and as a result of the Christian atmos
phere in which our lives have been passed, is
itself an argument for the support of foreign
missions. With reference to the objection which is
grounded on the dogmatic claims of the Chris
tianity of the present day, we cannot forget that
the Christianity which conquered the ancient
world was that taught by S. Paul and that it
was a Christianity in which dogma figured more
largely than it does to-day in the teaching of
the average missionary. It is open to any one

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 49
to say that S. Paul misunderstood the teaching of
Christ and gave to it a narrow and bigoted inter
pretation which Christ Himself would never have
sanctioned ; but this explanation does not lessen
the significance of the fact that it was the Chris
tian faith as interpreted by S. Paul which proved,
from the missionary point of view, a triumphant
success. We would ourselves endorse the opinion
of a leading Nonconformist writer, J. Baldwin
Brown, who said, " the world has nothing to ex
pect from a religion which reduces to a clammy
colourless pulp the great facts and truths of the
Catholic faith". It is interesting in this connec
tion to observe what an unprejudiced critic of the
various forms of Christianity now represented in
London has to say in regard to the social and
general influence for good exerted by dogmatic
and undogmatic Christianity respectively. Mr.
Charles Booth, in his " Life and Labour of the
People of London," writes : " We must add that a
liberalised form of Christianity, as preached by
some, makes no better headway ; the fact, indeed,
remains that in those chapels and missions in
which the greatest proportion of really attached
working men are found the teaching is strictly
and even narrowly orthodox ".1 Again, speaking
of the influence of the Unitarians, who stand for
1 Third series, vol. vii., p. 425.

150 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
undogmatic Christianity, he says : " However
regarded, it does seem as though the Unitarian
view of the spiritual world in its relation to man
awoke little response in the human soul, compar
ing in this respect unfavourably with even the
most extravagant assertions of any African medi
cine man ".1
Bishop Lightfoot's statement that the best
cordial for drooping spirits is the study of history
admits of a negative as well as a positive appli
cation. Many objections to modern missions
which seem to be, and indeed are, entirely rea
sonable from the point of view of the modern
journalist, tend to dwindle, or disappear alto
gether, when examined in the light of past
history. The true answer, however, to these and all
other objections to missionary work is of a posi
tive, not a negative, character. He who has
understood, in however faint degree, what the
first great Christian missionary called " the eter
nal purpose," or, as it should perhaps be ren
dered, "the purpose of the ages," namely, that
through the Church of God should be made
known, not to men alone, but to the whole uni
verse, the manifold wisdom of God, will feel that
all argument for postponing missionary enter-
1 Third series, vol, vii., p. 145 et seq.

SEVEN OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 5 I
prise, which is based upon a criticism of apparent
results, is irrelevant. What is most needed at the
present time is not a juster estimate of the failure
or success of modern missions so much as a truer
appreciation of their final aims.

VIII.
"HEATHEN LONDON."
Though the subject of foreign Missions is hardly
once alluded to in the volumes which Mr. Booth
has published on the religious influences at work
in London, the questions of which they treat and
the conclusions which they suggest have a direct
bearing upon many of the problems with which
every student of foreign Missions is confronted.
It is often said that if only we could send out
missionaries endued with the pentecostal zeal and
spiritual force of the first disciples, the results
would be seen in the uplifting and salvation of
whole communities, if not of whole races. A
perusal, however, of these volumes renders it
difficult to believe that more earnest, more self-
denying, or more Christ-like men and women
than those now at work in London will ever be
available as missionaries to the heathen. If, then,
Mr. Booth is justified in saying that heathen
London is heathen London still, the inference
seems obvious that the sanguine hopes entertained
152

"HEATHEN LONDON" 153
by many advocates of foreign Missions are un
supported by any conclusions which can reason
ably be obtained from the experience of the past.
In any case the study of these volumes may
well be undertaken as a preparation for the study
of the problems raised by the attempt to evan
gelise the non-Christian races abroad.
The scene portrayed by Mr. Booth in the
seven volumes which treat of the religious influ
ences now at work in London is one of surpass
ing interest. Never before in the history of the
human race has so gigantic a problem been pre
sented for solution within a circumscribed area ;
never before have devotion and self-sacrifice been
exhibited on such a heroic scale ; and yet, if we
are to accept the writer's conclusions, never be
fore have those who are interested in the spread
of the Christian faith and of Christian influence
more completely failed to produce results which,
to the impartial observer, seem at all commen
surate with the efforts made.
We can imagine the case of a man, who is in
doubt concerning the benefits which Christianity
is capable of conferring upon non-Christian races,
turning to these volumes in order to find an
answer to the question : How far does this
Faith, which is the nominal faith of the greatest
city on earth, influence for good the lives of its

154 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
inhabitants, and, if its influence be but small, is
it worth while to attempt to extend this influence
to cities which are neither nominally nor actually
Christian ? Or, to put the question in a more
concrete form, is there any ground for supposing
that the great cities of the East, such as Peking
and Calcutta, will in a thousand years' time be
more Christian than London now is ? And if
there is no ground for assuming that this will
be the case, is it worth while to make the great
efforts that are now being made to send out
missionaries to the non-Christian races when the
prospective results of their labours, even in the
distant future, are so limited ?
There are four questions which need to be
answered before we can draw deductions from
the present condition of London which may help
us to forecast the future of missionary work in
other great cities. To each of these questions
Mr. Booth's volumes contribute materials for an
answer. The questions are : —
i. What is the attitude of the people of London
as a whole towards the Christian faith ?
2. How far is an elementary knowledge of the
Christian faith diffused amongst its inhabitants ?
3. To what extent does Christianity influence
the individual as distinguished from the mass?

"HEATHEN LONDON" 155
4. How far can attendance at church or chapel
be regarded in London as a satisfactory religious
test? We will quote a few of the replies selected
from Mr. Booth's volumes which are given by
many different persons to these questions.
1. As an answer to our first question we may
quote his own words : —
" It may be said of the inhabitants of London, as of
the people of England, that they are distinctly Christian
in the sense that they would all (except the Jews)
repudiate the imputation of belonging to any other of
the great religions of the world. . . . But something
more is demanded than a mere acquiescence which is
often felt to amount to little more than ' not being pre
pared not to believe,' and such sentences as 'It is
heathen London still,' ' it is heathen London with
which we have to deal,' are familiar in the mouths of
the ministers of religion."
He quotes others as saying : —
"The Churches are as missions preaching to the
heathen and shouting the tidings of salvation in the
open air for all to hear."
" Only a fringe of the population is reached at all."
" In this dark spot (a district in Woolwich) religion
exerts no power ; all attempts fail ... in this witches'
cauldron of vice."
The people (says a worker in Wandsworth) " have
ceased to reckon with the non-material side of life ".

156 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
" ' Not one in a thousand cares about God,' is the
cry of one who has given her life to missionary work
here " (Lisson Grove).
" All you will ever get to church (says a City mis
sionary in Greenwich) have been got there long ago."
" Many of the churches (in Hackney) have organised
large clubs for working men, but they have been con
strained, as a necessary condition of success, to banish
from them all overt ideas of religion. The men will
not have it."
2. His answer to the second question — How
far is an elementary knowledge of the Christian
faith diffused amongst the people? — is hardly
that which his answer to the first would have led
us to expect. He quotes, and apparently en
dorses, statements such as these : " The outcast
who have never heard of Christ . . . these do not
exist in London ". " An evangelical deaconess,
in charge of a nurses' institute, who sees the
people through a nurse's eyes, says : ' They
have had too much of religion : there are none
who have not heard of the Gospel, but at the
same time they do not accept the way of salva
tion '." Again, he says : " In regard to the
young . . . the facts are very remarkable : the
children of the respectable working classes, even
of professed atheists, come regularly to Sunday
school ". Speaking of the work done amongst

"HEATHEN LONDON" 1 57
the inmates of the common lodging-houses, he
says : " So complete is the organisation of this
system that there are, it is said, only three com
mon lodging-houses in East London where no
religious meetings are held, and in these, it is
curious to note, the Mission service was discon
tinued because theological wrangling of too ani
mated a character followed the introduction of
some debatable doctrine. . . . And this among
the people who are often referred to as having
never heard of Christ. " Referring to the religious
competition among different sects, Mr. Booth
describes one woman in Deptford busy at her
wash-tub and calling out to a would-be religious
visitor : " You are the fifth who has been here
this morning ".
3. His reply to the third question — To what
extent does Christianity influence the individual
as distinguished from the mass ? — is summed up
in sentences such as these : " It is also said that
if they fail to raise the mass, the Missions do
continually lift individuals out of it, and so jus
tify their existence". Again, "the work of the
deaconesses is thorough, but they don't get the
people to church more than one here and there.
Church-going, it is explained, 'entails incessant
persecution ' ; ' to walk with God means some
thing '. The case is mentioned of a woman who

158 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
used to veil her purpose by carrying a beer-jug
with her and leaving it at a friend's house on the
way to church."
Speaking of Deptford, the author says : "The
express object is intensive, to get a firm hold of
those who are already attached, rather than to
bring in others : 'I grieve,' said the vicar, ^more
over those I lose than rejoice over new adher-
ents .
Again, in another place, he says : " A certain
degree of success is almost universal, and is found
with small as well as with large Missions. Most
have for their core a body of earnest Christian
workers, not only those from outside 'sent' to
do this work, but those who have been won over,
those who, having found salvation for themselves,
devote their lives to the winning of other souls.
... So far as it goes, the success is real. It
consists in the finding and binding together of
kindred spirits in the service of God, and in
maintaining a never-ending fight against the
ungodliness and indifference around them. . . .
Individuals are caught more or less completely."
"As always with religious work of this kind,
when people come in at all they do so completely.
It is all or nothing, and many are splendidly
devoted." 4. The fourth question suggested was : How

"HEATHEN LONDON" 1 59
far can attendance at church or chapel be re
garded as a satisfactory religious test ? Mr.
Booth quotes several interesting statements given
by representative Christian workers which throw
light upon this point. " Indifference to church
... is not a sign of unbelief. The people do
believe in the Christian faith . . . they lead hard
lives." A City missionary is quoted as saying,
"You must credit them for a great deal more
religion than they confess ". Another witness
says : " Among non-churchgoers are found many
more strong and independent and, on the
whole, satisfactory characters than among church
goers ".
Speaking of certain parishes in which all
are poor, Mr. Booth says : " In such parishes
the High Church section is more successful than
any other. They bring to their work a greater
force of religious enthusiasm . . . the poor are
genuinely interested. The charities of the church
are sweetened, and hypocrisy is perhaps left be
hind. ... A similar success may be won by the
solitary self-denying man living for and with his
people. ... In these cases the church, indeed,
may remain empty, but still the people are
touched by a wholesome religious influence."
Testimonies of a similar nature to these occur
again and again throughout the volumes.

160 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
The very brief answers given to these four
questions which we have extracted from Mr.
Booth's volumes may help our readers to appre
ciate the bearing which his volumes have upon
the missionary problems that confront us in
foreign parts. If it be true to say, as Bishop
Harold Browne once said to the Church Con
gress, that " England is now a vast Mission field,
half full of home-heathen," what justification is
there for sending men to preach to heathen
abroad who might be employed in preaching to
heathen at home? There are, in fact, many
earnest people who are convinced that there
is no real justification for sending workers
abroad when so much work remains undone at
home. This belief, reasonable though it appears, is
the result of a misapprehension of the scope and
design of the preaching of Christianity. The
teaching of Christ and the interpretation of His
teaching by His apostles lend no support to the
theory that the preaching of the Gospel will one
day result in the conversion into saints of all the
people on earth. Christ anticipated that His
followers would act as a light in the world both
singly as individuals and collectively as a Church,
and that the light which they would reflect upon
the world around would guide others in their

"HEATHEN LONDON" i6l
search after God, and help them to realise His
presence in their midst.
The fulfilment of this anticipation will not
necessarily involve the visible redemption or re
generation of the mass of the population in any
district or country. If this be a true explanation
of Christ's teaching, it may be shown that the
preaching of Christianity has not been a failure,
nay more, that it has been a definite success in
London. For, if we accept the evidence ac
cumulated in Mr. Booth's volumes, we are justi
fied in believing that there are many thousands of
Christ's disciples now in London who are living
lives of Christ-like devotion, and whose good
works so shine before men that those among
whom they live are constrained to "glorify"
their "Father in heaven". The evidence con
tained in the volumes further shows that count
less numbers of single individuals are enabled
by their Christian faith to attain to ideals higher
and nobler than those which they would other
wise reach or to which those around them aspire.
Lastly, the testimonies adduced show that very
many who never enter a church or chapel are
nevertheless profoundly influenced by the faith
the outward confession of which they reject.
It is true that the measure of success which
has been attained falls far short of what the
u

1 62 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
supporters of Mission work, whether at home or
abroad, have desired and expected. Moreover,
the admission that a chief result from the preach
ing of the Gospel is to be seen in the salvation
of individuals may seem to be equivalent to
an admission that Christianity has no message
for nations or for the human race as a whole.
The answer to the last objection is this : When
Christ was a man upon earth He spent the
greater part of His public life in teaching and
training not masses of men, but a few selected
individuals. His desire was that these indi
viduals, united to each other by their common
love to Himself, should be the channel through
which the blessings which God intended for all
men might at length reach them. As far as we
can judge from His recorded teaching, He did
not expect that His Church, of which the indi
viduals selected by Himself were the nucleus,
would become co-extensive with the human race.
The words of His prayer, as recorded 'by S.
John, " I pray not for the world," whilst they do
not imply any limitation of the final scope of
His love, indicate the impossibility of its immedi
ate accomplishment.
We believe that what Christ did when He
was visibly present upon earth He is still doing
both in London and elsewhere. He is calling

"HEATHEN LONDON" 1 63
out individuals, not because these individuals are
better than their fellows, but because the bless
ings which God intends for all humanity can
best be secured to all by the selection in the
first instance of the few. In answer to the ob
jection that thousands are dying while these
few are being trained and educated, the only re
ply is that as it is now so it was in the time of
Christ. The vast majority of the Jewish race
were dying whilst He was giving His atten
tion to a few individuals. If our spiritual insight
were as great as was that of Christ, or if our out
look were as wide as His was, the difficulty
which is now insoluble would probably dis
appear. There are several passages in the New
Testament which indicate the belief of Christ's
Apostles that the scope of the activity of His
Church is not limited to this present life. It is
true that Christ's own recorded teaching affords
no clear answer to the question how far its work,
which seems so limited and imperfect here, will
one day be completely accomplished. Never
theless, in view of the work which we cannot
but believe awaits the Church in the future, it
was a true instinct which inspired the writers of
our prayer "for the Church militant here on
earth" not only to "make prayers and supplica-
11 *

1 64 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
tions," but also, in accordance with S. Paul's in
junction, to "give thanks for all men".
A further answer to the objection that Chris
tianity as seen in London affects the individual,
but leaves the mass of men untouched, is this :
The Christ-like men and women now in London,
though few in number when compared with the
whole population, furnish it with an opportunity
of understanding the meaning of the Christian
faith not by their words or exhortations, but by
the lives which they live. The following inci
dent was described to the writer by the principal
actor. A deaconess was visiting in one of the poorest
and most degraded courts in South London,
when her attention was attracted to a group of
women, one of whom was pouring forth a torrent
of filthy blasphemy which made her shudder to
hear. The deaconess went up to her and said,
"Stop, for God hates to hear you speak like
that". Her words but elicited passionate abuse,
whereupon the deaconess added : " God sent me
to tell you that He loves you and that He hates
to hear language such as you have been using ".
The woman replied in angry tones, " Don't
say that again ". " No," answered the deaconess,
" I am not likely to come to speak to you again ;
it is not likely that God will send me a second

" HEATHEN LONDON " 165
time." Then followed a sullen silence, and the
deaconess passed on to her work. Four or five
years elapsed, and the deaconess was visiting
some industrial buildings. In response to a
knock at one of the doors, she was invited to
come in, and immediately recognised the woman
whom she had previously encountered. Her sur
roundings suggested that a great change had
come over her character and her life. " Oh,
Mrs. M  ," said the deaconess, "do you
still think as you used to think?" "No,"
said the woman in a subdued voice, and as she
spoke she came and rested her head upon her
shoulder. "Will you tell me," asked the dea
coness, " what has caused you to change ? Was
it what I said to you five years ago?" " No,"
the other replied, " it was not anything you said ;
but day after day from the time when you
spoke to me I watched you, and it was what I
saw which has changed my thoughts about
God." It appeared, on further inquiry, that the
woman had not begun to go to any church or
chapel, but her whole life had none the less been
transformed by the sight of a Christian life lived
beside her.
One chief object of the missionary work which
is now being attempted abroad is to afford, by
means of a limited number of native converts, to

1 66 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
those who as yet know nothing of the Christian
faith, an object lesson of the results which this
faith can produce. Even if there be no grounds
for expecting that Peking or Calcutta will be
more Christian in a thousand years' time than
London is to-day, we should still feel that every
effort made to enlist support and sympathy on
behalf of missionary work was amply justified if
during this time, or the greater part of this time,
those who were desirous of rising to a clearer
knowledge of God than that which their own
religions could afford them were thereby enabled
to study the Christian life exemplified in the lives
of some of their own countrymen.
Mr. Booth believes that some men inherit re
ligious natures, whilst others are naturally incap
able of rising to any spiritual height. There is
an element of truth in this theory, as there was
in the theory of the early Gnostics who distin
guished "psychical" or earthly from "pneumat-
ical " or spiritual souls. But, even if this theory
were true, the duty of undertaking foreign Mis
sions would remain. It would still be the duty
of the Christian Church to seek out and place
before these spiritual souls the high ideal to
which it is possible for them to rise.
S. Paul says in the Epistle to the Ephesians
that the purpose of the ages is that through the

"HEATHEN LONDON" 167
Church should be made known to the universe
the manifold wisdom of God. His words help
us to understand the true object of foreign Mis
sions. Scattered far and wide throughout the
world amongst the adherents of all forms of reli
gion are countless numbers of individual souls
who have the capacity of reflecting the glory of
God, and thereby of helping to accomplish the
purpose of the ages, which is a purpose of love
not only to the human race, or to the peoples who
are now nominally Christian, but to all intelligent
beings throughout the universe to whom the life of
the Church will eventually appeal.
To those who accept the teaching of Christ
contained in the Gospels an unanswerable argu
ment in support of foreign missionary work is af
forded by His direct command to go and make
disciples of all nations ; but apart from the con
sideration of the obligation which these words
create, the condition of London as described by
Mr. Booth is not such as to discourage those who
accept the faith of Christ, and whose gaze is fixed
upon the ultimate goal of the Christian Church.
Our own belief is that if missionary work be
carried on in the same spirit as it is at present,
the Christian faith will be a far greater power in
India and China when a thousand years have
passed than it is in England to-day ; but even if

1 68 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
this expectation should not be fulfilled, if in a
thousand years' time the experience of Peking or
Calcutta, as far as the influence of Christianity
is concerned, should prove to have been but a
repetition of the experience of London, an oppor
tunity will have been afforded to a large propor
tion of the peoples resident in these cities to see
for themselves a real, if incomplete reproduction
of the life of Christ. Not by outward and visible
results, but by the measure and degree in which
such an opportunity is offered to the world, must
the success of missionary work to-day, whether
at home or abroad, be judged.
We are disposed to agree with Mr. Booth
when he says, "if the millennium is to await the
acceptance of the Gospel by all mankind, it grows,
humanly speaking, more and more manifestly re
mote". Nevertheless a careful perusal of his
volumes leaves us with the assurance that, as a
result of the work which he describes, the ideals
alike of the workers and of those amongst whom
they work have been perceptibly rising within
this present generation, and with the conviction
that there is nothing in the present state of Lon
don which can justify us in admitting a feeling of
despair in view of the efforts which are being
made to spread the knowledge of the Christian
faith abroad.

IX.
CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND THE INTERPRETA
TION OF NATURAL BEAUTY.
"When a man begins to appreciate scenery it
shows that our efforts to teach are beginning to
take effect." These words which occur in a
letter addressed to the writer of this book by a
missionary bishop in Central Africa, raise a ques
tion which is of interest not only to professed stu
dents of missions, but to all who are concerned
with the development of an appreciation of
nature, whether in the past or in the present.
Before attempting any consideration of this
question it would be well to enunciate what is
the ultimate object of missionary work.
The ultimate object which the interpreter of
the Christian faith to non-Christian races has in
view is to enlarge the area and deepen the con
sciousness of man's communion with God, with
man and with nature. If this definition be ac
cepted it is clear that the Christian missionary
cannot afford to neglect any indication that those
169

170 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
whom he is trying to influence are beginning to
appreciate the beautiful in nature, or any teaching
which may tend to develop such appreciation.
Let us begin by asking, How far is it true to
say that the preaching of the Christian faith has
tended in the past to develop in its converts an
appreciation of natural beauty, and in particular
of the beauty of landscapes and of flowers ? In
order to prepare the way for the consideration of
this question it will be necessary to inquire, How
far has an appreciation of natural beauty been
developed before, or independently of, the preach
ing of Christianity ? By appreciation of natural
beauty we mean the appreciation of beauty apart
from association or utility, the mystic conscious
ness which a poet of the eighteenth century was
one of the first to express, who wrote : —
" There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
 not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of His unrivall'd pencil." l
In Greek and Latin literature are to be found
proofs of careful observation of natural scenes,
but little or no trace of an appreciation of the
beauty of landscapes and none of a sympathetic
contemplation of flowers. This latter point will
'J. Thomson, 1700-48.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 171
be more fully considered later on. Some of the
similes in Homer,1 the well-known chorus in
Sophocles' " Oedipus Colonaeus," 2 and certain
passages in Lucretius, Horace, and Virgil afford
evidence that the writers were careful observers
of nature, and were able to admire a beautiful
scene, but the difference between their apprecia
tion of nature and that with which the readers
of Wordsworth are familiar is one not of degree,
but of kind.
The highest appreciation of natural scenery
is only possible where a sense of the beautiful
and of the sublime co-exist in the mind and con
sciousness of the observer. The distinction be
tween the beautiful and the sublime is described
by Kant, who says : —
" Both touch us pleasantly but in different ways.
The sight of a mountain with a snowy peak reaching
above the clouds, the account of a storm . . . these
1E.g., "Iliad," viii., 555 sqq., translated by Tennyson: —
" As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart,
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Blazed  "
2"Oed. Col.," 668 sqq.

172 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while flowery
meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered
by browsing herds . . . also cause pleasant feelings,
but of a gay and radiant kind. To appreciate the first
sensations adequately we must have a feeling for the
sublime ; to appreciate the second a feeling for the
beautiful." Again, he says : —
" Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime
are inclined to lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of
the world, eternity."
It would be easy to quote passages from
Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Greek and Roman
literature to show that their writers appreciated
the might, the awesomeness and the majesty
of nature, but we search in vain for the apprecia
tion of the beautiful and sublime which eventually
found expression in landscape painting. Schiller,
speaking of the very limited appreciation of
natural beauty to be found in ancient Greek
literature, says : —
" When we think of the glorious scenery which sur
rounded the ancient Greeks, and remember the free
and constant intercourse with nature in which their
happier skies enabled them to live ... we cannot but
remark with surprise how few traces we find amongst
them of the sentimental interest with which we
moderns attach ourselves to natural scenes and objects.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 73
In the description of these, the Greek is indeed in the
highest degree exact, faithful and circumstantial, but
without exhibiting more warmth of sympathy than in
treating of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armour."
A striking instance of the lack of appreciation
of natural scenery in ancient times is afforded by
the references to Swiss scenery which occur in
Latin writers : —
" No description of the eternal snows of the Alps,
. . . or of any part of the grandeur of the scenery of
Switzerland, have reached us from the ancients, although
statesmen and generals, with men of letters in their
train, were constantly passing through Helvetia into
Gaul." " Julius Caesar, when returning to his legions
in Gaul, employed his time, while passing over the
Alps, in preparing a grammatical treatise." " Silvius
Italicus, who died under Trajan, when Switzerland
was already in great measure cultivated, describes the
district of the Alps merely as an awful and barren
wilderness." J
Perhaps the earliest appreciation of the beauty
of Swiss or Italian mountain scenery is the
statement of Cassiodorus, who wrote in the sixth
century : " Como with its precipitous mountains
and its vast expanse of lake ... is so beautiful
that one would think it was created for pleasure
1 Humboldt's "Cosmos," Bk. ii., p. 24 sqq. ; compare also
Livy's reference to the foeditas Alpinttm.

174 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
only". Nearly two centuries before Basil the
Great had written a description of the mountain
ous district to which he had been banished in
which these words occur : " The contemplation
of nature abates the fever of the soul and banishes
all insincerity and presumption ".
At a very much later date we find mountain and
even hill scenery regarded with horror. Pepys
(in 1668) spoke of crossing Salisbury Plain,
where he encountered "some great hills even to
fright us ". Addison in his " Remarks on Several
Parts of Italy," published in 1705, after express
ing his admiration for the Lake of Geneva, said
of the Alps seen from the lake, they " fill the
mind with an agreeable kind of horror and form
one of the most irregular, misshapen scenes in the
world". Gray in 1739 speaking of the Grande
Chartreuse Monastery wrote : " Not a precipice,
not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with
religion and poetry ". Of Mont Cenis, however,
he wrote : it " carries the permission mountains
have of being frightful rather too far ".
Few would maintain that the immediate result
of the preaching of Christianity was to develop
an appreciation of natural scenery.1 Nor is this
1 " No one since Hellenism had climbed mountains for the
sake of the view. Dante was the first to do so." Cf. "The
Development of the Feeling for Nature," by A. Biese, p. 106.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 75
surprising when it is remembered that Jews were
the first interpreters of this faith to the world.
In Hebrew poetry — that is, the poetry in the
Old Testament — the power and awesomeness of
nature are emphasised, and man's littleness and
God's greatness are illustrated by comparison
with the forces of nature.
The Jew, who inhabited a country which was
more or less surrounded by deserts, had a vivid
appreciation of the fertility of his own land.
Thus the Psalmist says, " The valleys shall
stand so thick with corn that they shall laugh
and sing". Its fertility was often used as a
symbol of spiritual blessings both in the Psalms
and in the latter part of Isaiah, where the prophet
calls upon the trees and mountains to rejoice
with him in view of what God had accomplished.
Thus he says, " Break forth into singing, ye
mountains, O forest and every tree therein " ; and
again : " the mountains and the hills shall break
forth before you into singing, and all the trees of
the wood shall clap their hands ". The words
which immediately follow, " instead of the thorn
shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the
brier shall come up the myrtle tree," seem to
show that the predominant thought in the mind of
the writer was that of the glorious fertility which
the blessing of Jehovah should bring to his land.

176 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
The nearest approach to a sympathetic appre
ciation of nature is found in the Song of Solomon,
where a delight in nature figures and reflects
personal love. A reaction from the polytheism
and pantheism of the surrounding nations pre
vented the Jew from developing any communion
of the soul with nature or appreciating as he
might otherwise have done the inspiring influ
ence of the scenery by which he was surrounded.
In early Christian times the beauty of the world
was held by many to be an enchantment of the
devil. S. John's words, " Love not the world,"
were frequently interpreted as though they were
intended to warn men of the danger of thinking
too much of the beauty of nature.
" Philosophers were anxious to keep God clear
of contact with matter ; Marcus Aurelius found
' decay in the substance of all things, nothing but
water, dust, bones, stench ' (ix., 36). Jesus saw
life in all things, God clothing the grass and
watching over little birds. To-day the old anti
thesis of God and matter is gone, and it comes
as a relief to find that Jesus anticipated its dis
appearance."1 Malebranche, at the end of the seventeenth
century, declared that the irregularities of the
1 "The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire,"
by T. R. Glover, p. 130 sq.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 177
earth's surface, like the uncertainty of its seasons,
both of which are painful to philosophical geo
metricians, were to be accounted for by the fact
that God intended men's thoughts to be fixed on
the world to come, and not on a world which is the
abode of sinners, a world which He ordained to
be given up to disorder, as is indicated by the
irregularities of its rocks and the cliffs on its
coasts. No attempt can be made here to trace the slow
development of the appreciation of nature from
the time of the Christian era, but a brief reference
may be made to the history of landscape paint
ing, which is in some respects an index of man's
power to appreciate nature. Landscape painting,
in the strict sense of the term, is of comparatively
recent origin. Perspective scene painting was
made to contribute to the theatrical representa
tion of the Greek plays, and the Roman painter
Ludius in the Augustan age is referred to by
Pliny as a landscape painter.1 But in these
cases and for many centuries after the landscape
was regarded as an appendage or background to
the main subject.
The first landscape paintings properly so called
were produced in the Netherlands, the first ex-
1 During the same period— i.e. in the epoch of Vikramaditya
—landscape painting is said to have been practised in India.

12

178 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
ample being the altar-piece at Ghent completed
by the brothers Van Eyck in 1432. A century
later (1530) the painting of Titian for the Church
of San Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, representing
the death of Peter Martyr, includes woodland
landscape which is very carefully elaborated. It
was not, however, till the seventeenth century
that any marked development of landscape paint
ing occurred in Europe.
In the middle of the fifteenth century Pope
Pius II. (Aeneas Sylvius) wrote his autobiogra
phy. It contains frequent descriptions of actual
landscapes couched in language which shows the
truest appreciation of natural beauty. Rousseau
(ob. 1778) was the first to discover that the Alps
were beautiful. As an interpreter of the beauty
of nature he did for the French-speaking peoples
what Goethe afterwards did for the Germans,
and Wordsworth for the English. The stand
points of the three may roughly be described as
deistic, pantheistic, and theistic. Great as was
their devotion to nature neither of the two earlier
writers could have described the all-pervading
love revealed in nature to which Wordsworth
refers in the following lines : —
" In his heart
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love
By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 79
Or by the silent look of happy things,
Or flowing from the universal face
Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power
Of Nature, and already was prepared,
By his intense conceptions, to receive
Deeply the lesson deep of love which he,
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught
To feel intensely, cannot but receive.
Such was the Boy — but for the growing Youth
What soul was his, when from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light ! He looked —
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay
Beneath him : — Far and wide the clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love." *
The words which the author of " John Ingle-
sant " puts into the mouth of his hero must be re
garded as attributed to him in anticipation of the
appreciation of Nature which Wordsworth and
later writers have developed. He writes : —
" God discourseth with me as a friend and
speaks to, me in such a dialect as I can under
stand fully — namely, the outward world of His
creatures ; so that I am in fact an inhabitant of
paradise and heaven upon earth ; and I may
soberly confess that sometimes walking abroad
after my studies, I have been almost mad with
1 " Excursion," Bk. i.
12 *

l8o AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
pleasure, — the effect of nature upon my soul
having been inexpressibly ravishing, and beyond
what I can convey to you."
When we turn from Europe to Asia we find
two countries in which appreciation of natural
beauty has been developed to a far greater de
gree than it has been in Europe, if we except
the development that has taken place during
the last two or three centuries. Almost the
whole of the Rig Veda consists of hymns ad
dressed to nature gods. The later and secular
Indian literature contains many beautiful descrip
tions of scenery. A prevailing pantheism and
the belief in re-incarnation helped men to realise
their nearness to nature, but at the same time
made it difficult for them to rise above nature to
nature's God. S. Augustine was devoid of the
keen sense of natural beauty which can be traced
in the literature of India, but we feel how much
more inspiring and uplifting was his conception
of the beauty of nature than any that can be
found there : —
" I asked the earth and she said : ' I am not He,'
and all things that are in her did confess the same.
I asked the sea and the depths and creeping things,
and they answered: 'We are not thy God, seek
higher '. I asked the flowing breezes, and the whole
expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer:

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY l8l
' Anaxagoras was at fault, I am not God '. I asked the
sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and with a loud
voice did they exclaim : ' He made us '. My question
was the inquiry of my spirit, their answer was the
beauty of their form."
Of the non-Christian nations, whether in an
cient or in modern time, the Japanese possess by
far the most remarkable appreciation of natural
scenery and of the beauty of flowers.1 Baron
Hiibner says : —
" The Japanese are wonderful lovers of nature. In
Europe a feeling for beauty has to be developed by
education. Our peasants will talk to you of the fertil
ity of the soil, of the abundance of water so useful for
their mills, of the value of their woods, but not of the
picturesque charms of the country. They are not
perhaps entirely insensible to them, but if they do feel
them it is in a vague undefined sort of way for which
they would be puzzled to account. It is not so with
the Japanese labourer. With him the sense of beauty
is innate." How far this appreciation of the beauty of
nature is due to the influence of Buddhism it is
difficult to decide. Some writers have main
tained that it is the direct outcome of the accept-
1 In the ninth century a.d. the Emperor Saga held garden
parties during the flowering of the cherry blossoms at which
the literati of the day composed verses in honour of the
flowers.

1 82 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
ance by the Japanese of Buddhist teaching.
Others have suggested that it was because Bud
dhism was a religion not of ethics, but of aesthe
tics that it appealed so strongly to, and was
accepted by, a people with whom beauty was
divine. A recent writer on Japan points out the
passion for perfection of detail which co-exists
together with the more general appreciation of
beauty : —
"Coupled with an inherent aesthetic, which the
Tokugawa influences fostered into exquisite taste, and
linked with the Oriental habit of patient industry,
Japanese thoroughness has produced the most minutely
perfect specimens of art that have ever delighted the
world. An artist will chisel at a little block of ivory
for years — not to reap pecuniary reward, but to satisfy
his passion toward perfection — until at length you
hold in your hands a tiny figure which is a microcosm
in itself, and will yield to the microscope alone the
completeness of its dainty perfections." *
The art of painting was fostered and was per
haps introduced by Buddhism. Shinto appears
to have had no art. Its ghost houses, silent and
void, had no decoration, and continue in their
pristine simplicity to the present day. It cannot,
however, be claimed that Japanese art or paint
ing has interpreted man to himself or nature to
'"Young Japan," by S. A. Scherer, p. 154.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 83
man as has been done by those who lived in a
Christian atmosphere.
"The Japanese," says Professor Chamberlain, "are
undoubtedly Raphaels of fishes and insects and flowers
and bamboo-stems swaying in the breeze, and they
have given us charming fragments of idealised scenery.
But they have never succeeded in adequately transfer
ring to canvas ' the human form divine,' they have never
made grand historical scenes live again before the eyes
of posterity, they have never, like the early Italian
masters, drawn away men's hearts from earth to
heaven in an ecstasy of adoration."
There are not many Japanese to whom the
words of one of our English poets might be
attributed : —
" When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadow of ^ernity." J
Landscape painting was practised in Japan as
early as the ninth century and was largely de
veloped in the fifteenth century. The aim of
the Japanese landscape painter was to interpret
rather than to copy the scene which he depicted.2
1 Henry Vaughan.
2 A Japanese critic speaking of a painter of later time, says :
" In his landscape there is less success, as he was so particular
about ensuring correctness of forms that they were lacking in
high ideas and deep spirit. For a landscape painting is not

1 84 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
When we turn to Burma where Buddhism has
exerted the greatest influence, we find that the
Burmans possess a considerable appreciation of
the beauty of colour and form. Yellow is their
favourite colour, but in this case the idea of
beauty is associated with that of preciousness :
gold is in fact one of the most frequently used
words in the Burmese language.
In a recent letter which the present writer
received from one who has lived long amongst
the Burmese, the author says : —
" The Burmans admire sweet perfumes, a nice dress,
a pleasant face, a neat garden, pretty flowers, clear
water, bright ornaments, a shady glade (but not the
deep forest), bright, cheering dawn (but not the sun in
its full power — it is hot and inconvenient), the clear,
cool light of the moon.
" Their ideal garden is one in which there are pretty
flowers, trees planted in geometrical order, and a neat
masonry tank. Purely natural beauty does not appeal
to them. The sight of cultivated fields, of healthy-
looking plantations, fruit-laden trees gratifies their eyes ;
the uncultivated 'jungle' is so much waste land. I do
not think a Burman would understand one who spoke
loved because it is a facsimile of the natural scene, but because
there is something in it greater than mere accurate representa
tion of natural forms, which appeals to our feelings, but which
we cannot express in words." Cf. "Arts and Crafts of Old
Japan," p. 39.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 85
to him of ' beautiful ' trees, or ' beautiful ' mountains,
valleys or rivers. A tree is shady, or yields beautiful
flowers, or good fruit, or is useful for timber; it is
nothing more. A mountain is big, it is an obstacle to
travel, it is the abode of wild beasts, or wild men. A
river is difficult to cross, or is useful as a means of
communication or for fishing ; the sea is solely a thing
to be dreaded.
" The sun is employed in figure as an emblem of
might, the moon of benignant dignity ; the stars do
not seem to suggest imagery — they are but astrological
signs ; the sky is described only with reference to the
weather — as ' cloudy,' ' dark,' etc.
" There are no words in Burmese corresponding to
our ' scenery,' ' landscape,' ' view ' (in its technical
sense). The Burmans never paint landscapes ; the
artist's subjects are human, or architectural, trees and
flowers being added only as ornaments. The orna
mentation on silver-work, cloth-work, lacquer-work, in
wood, stone, etc., consists of geometrical or floral de
signs, or of figures.
" We may conclude therefore that the Burman does
not appreciate the beauties of what we call ' scenery '.
I cannot recall any passage in any Burmese writing I
have read, descriptive of a landscape ; I cannot remem
ber any Burman expressing admiration of ' scenery ' ;
I should never expect to see him stop to take in a
' view '."
Inasmuch then as Buddhism has not succeeded

1 86 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
in developing to anything like the same extent
the appreciation of natural beauty in the country
in which it has for so long exercised influence, it
would seem that a large measure of the credit
for what has been attained by the Japanese
must be given to themselves. One of the most
inspiring hopes of the Christian missionary is
that the day will come when this people to whom
he is endeavouring to explain the message with
which he believes himself to have been entrusted,
will be able to grasp and to interpret to the world
the underlying meaning of the beauty which they
have developed so great a capacity to appreciate.
If the ancients possessed but an imperfect con
sciousness of the beauty of natural scenery, they
seem to have lacked altogether an appreciation
of the beauty of flowers. Flowers were con
stantly used as ornaments or decorations, the
prettiness of their form and colour was recognised,
but if we may judge from the literature which" has
survived, there was no appreciation of their glory
and significance such as that of which Words
worth speaks in his " Intimations of Immorta
lity " :—
" To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
Still less would it be possible to find in ancient

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 87
literature any consciousness of the possibility of
intercommunion between man and plants such as
that suggested by the lines : —
" One impulse from the vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can." *
Theocritus and Meleager contain frequent re
ferences to flowers, but even they did not look
upon flowers as beautiful in themselves. The
only approach in Greek art to such an apprecia
tion is in the acanthus leaves carved on the Cor
inthian columns, but this is conventionalised and
reduced to a geometrical formula.
It would be impossible to find in classical or
in Jewish pre-Christian literature any parallel
to the command of Christ, " Consider the lilies
of the field, how they grow". This, and the
further statement that not all the wealth of the
world, or the gorgeous raiment which wealth
might provide, could make a man as beautiful as
a flower of the field, constituted a new revelation.
The fact that this command to contemplate
flowers is apparently never referred to by any of
the Christian Fathers seems to show that the
world was not yet prepared to appreciate its sig
nificance. Many centuries were to pass before
1 Wordsworth, " The Tables Turned "-

1 88 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
obedience to this command of Christ was to
exert any visible influence on men.
Amongst native races in Central Africa, as the
writer has proved by his own experience, the
surest way in which to be mistaken for a lunatic
is to be seen picking wild flowers ; so completely
wanting is the appreciation of their beauty. In
Japanese schools, on the other hand, a large
amount of time is devoted to instruction in the
arrangement of flowers, both wild and cultivated,
and few, if any, peoples derive so keen an enjoy
ment from their contemplation ; but what the
Japanese lack and what is essential to the deepest
appreciation of natural beauty, whether of flowers
or scenery, is the consciousness that beauty in
nature is the sign and sacrament of a beauty
which lies behind nature. There is no touch of
spirituality, no hint of mystery, no sense of some
thing underlying nature. We look forward with
hope to the time when Japanese poets shall add
to their close observation of natural beauty that
religious sense which may enable them to inter
pret to their fellow-countrymen and to us the
significance of the divine beauty of which nature
is in part a revelation.
Thus the present Bishop of Lahore says : —
" Who that has seen anything of the innate sense
of beauty which is so wonderfully developed in the

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 1 89
Japanese character can doubt what one at least of its
contributions to our common life will be when they,
in God's good time, take their place alongside of us
in the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, and as mem
bers of the Body of Christ? I often think that in
such a text as that of Isaiah, ' Thine eyes shall see the
King in His beauty,' a depth of meaning will open out
to Japanese minds and hearts, and a power of attrac
tion be exercised upon them, far beyond that which
is present, or which is possible in our own case.
We began by defining the ultimate object of
Christianity and therefore of the Christian mis
sionary as the enlargement of the area and the
deepening the consciousness of man's commu
nion with God, man and nature. In order that
this threefold object may approximately be ful
filled man must realise his own individuality.
The pantheist who believes that there is no line
of demarcation between himself, nature and God
ends by degrading himself and God to the level
of inanimate nature, and becomes incapable of
developing any communion with nature which
can uplift or inspire him. So too the man who
believes, as was the case with many in the
early Christian centuries, that he and his fellow-
men are born into the world as children of
the devil, and that the material world is essen
tially evil, will naturally feel, that to attempt to

190 AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
hold communion with nature is worse than
vain. Such communion can only be attained by the
man who believes that he is himself distinct from
nature, and that nature is the handiwork of a
personal Being, who believes also that the words
of the old Jewish writer were and remain true,
" God saw everything that He had made, and
behold it was very good ".
" Earth's crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries." :
Furthermore, inasmuch as men have never
succeeded in discerning the love of God revealed
in nature until they have first discerned that love
revealed in Christ, the acceptance of the faith
of Christ should prepare the way for the fullest
and deepest communion with nature. For the
Christian — " Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green :
Something lives in every hue,
Christless eyes have never seen."
No one would suggest that the primary ohject
of the Christian missionary should be to teach
his converts to climb mountains or to contem-
1 E. B. Browning.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL BEAUTY 191
plate the beauty of flowers. Nevertheless, the
missionary whose ultimate object is "to widen
the area and deepen the consciousness of man's
communion with nature, man, and God," will
welcome every sign which tends to show that
the minds of those to whom his appeal is made
are becoming increasingly responsive to the
beauty of the divine handiwork of which nature
is at once the expression and the veil.
If it be true to say that every country and
every people have something to contribute to
the interpretation of the Christian faith, and that
the completion of the Christian revelation awaits
the contribution of each, may we not go further
and say that every department of nature has
a contribution to make, and that the signifi
cance of the divine revelation in Christ will only
be fully grasped when God's revelation of Him
self in nature is perfectly understood ?

APPENDIX I.
The Zodi Buddhists in Burma.
The following passage occurs in Father San Germano's
work, " The Burmese Empire " : —
" Christianity has hitherto experienced no persecu
tion in these parts, partly on account of the small
number of the converts, and partly through the pru
dence of the missionaries, who have been solicitous to
preserve themselves and their disciples from observa
tion. Otherwise it is probable that they would have
had to suffer much, as we may gather from the fate of
the Zodi (' enlightened ones '), who began by making a
great stir throughout the whole kingdom, and thereby
excited the zeal of the Emperor against them. It is
believed that great numbers of them still (i.e. about
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Father
San Germano was writing his work) exist in divers
parts of the Empire, but they are obliged to keep
themselves concealed. They are of Burmese origin,
but their religion is totally different from that of
Gautama. They reject metempsychosis, and believe
that each one will receive the reward or punishment
of his actions immediately after death, and that this
state of punishment and reward will last for eternity.
19s

APPENDIX I. I93
Instead of attributing everything to fate {karma), as
the Burmese do, they acknowledge an omnipotent
and omniscient Nat (i.e., spirit), the Creator of the
world ; they despise the Pagodas, the Baos (a name
used by the Portuguese in India) or convents of Tala-
poins (the name used by the Portuguese for ' monks '),
and the statues of Gautama. The present Emperor, a
most zealous defender of his religion (and most cruel
despot, who waged many awful wars, Badon Min),
resolved with one blow to annihilate this sect, and ac
cordingly gave orders for their being searched for in
every place, and compelled to adore Gautama. Four
teen of them were put to a cruel death ; but many
submitted, or feigned to submit, to the orders of the
Emperor, till at length he was persuaded that they
had all obeyed. From that time they have remained
concealed, for which reason I have never been able to
meet with any of them, to inquire if any form of wor
ship had been adopted by them. All that I could
learn was that the sect was still in existence, and that
its members still had communications with each other.
They are for the most part merchants by profession." '
1 Pp. 88 sq. of Government reprint of the translation of
"The Burmese Empire," by Fr. San Germano, 1885, quoted
by G. Whitehead in " The East and the West," vol. v., p. 8.

13

APPENDIX II.
Prayers of the Chinese Emperor.
The following prayers amongst others were added
in i S 39 A.D. to those used by the Emperor of China
in the worship performed by him in the Temple of
Heaven twice each year : —
" Thou hast vouchsafed, O God, to hear us, for Thou
as our Father dost regard us. I, thy child, dull and
unenlightened, am unable to show forth my feelings.
Honourable is thy great name. With reverence we
spread out these precious stones and silk, and as
swallows rejoicing in the Spring praise thine abundant
love. The great and lofty One sends down his
favour and regard, which we, in our insignificance, are
hardly sufficient to receive. I, his simple servant,
while I worship, present this precious cup to Him
whose years have no end. Men and creatures are em-
paradised, O God, in thy love. All living things are
indebted to thy goodness, but who knows whence his
blessings come to him? It is Thou alone, O Lord,
who art the true parent of all things. The service is
completed, but our poor sincerity cannot be fully ex
pressed. Thy sovereign goodness is infinite. As a
potter hast Thou made all living things. Great and
194

APPENDIX II 195
small are curtained round by Thee. As engraven on
the heart of thy poor servant is the sense of thy good
ness, but my feeling cannot be fully displayed. With
great kindness dost Thou bear with us, and notwith
standing our demerits dost grant us life and prosperity.
Spirits and men rejoice together, praising God the Lord.
What limit, what measure can there be, while we cele
brate his great name? For ever he setteth fast the
high heavens, and shapeth the solid earth. His gov
ernment is everlasting. His poor servant, I bow my
head and lay it in the dust, bathed in his grace and
glory. We have worshipped and written the great
name on this gem-like sheet. Now we display it be
fore God, and place it in the fire. These valuable
offerings of silks and fine meats we burn also, with
these sincere prayers, that they may ascend in volumes
of flame up to the distant azure. All the ends of the
earth look up to Him. All human beings, all things
on the earth, rejoice together in the great Name."

13 *

INDEX.

Abyssinia, Conditions of mar
riage in, no.
Actions, Motives for good, 33 f.
Addison, re horror caused by Swiss
scenery, 174.
Africa, Central, Mohammedan
slave raiders in, g3 f.
Andrews, C. F., re English lack of
meekness, 13.
Amida, Doctrine of, in Japan, 63-
66.
Animists, in India, 30 ; in Burma,
57 f. ; in Ceylon, 59 f.
Apology for Islam, An early, 99.
Arabia, What Islam has done for,
130 f.
Arnold, Sir E„ "The Light of
Asia " by, 66.
Atonement, How to prepare for
preaching of, 16.
Augustine, S., re God and Nature,
180.
Aurelius, Marcus, re essential evil
of matter, 176.
Avalokitesvara, the spiritual son
of Amida, 64.
Babis, their protest against Mos
lem Unitarianism, 109.
Basil, re mountain scenery, 174.
Beautiful and sublime, Distinction
between, 171 f.
Benevolence, as taught by Buddha,
67 ff.
Bhagavad-gita, The, its influence
and teaching, 31-34; failure
of its teaching to uplift India,
52 f.

196

Bhakti (faith), Hindu doctrine of,
36-44-
Biese, A., Quotation from, 174.
Booth, Charles, re " Heathen
London," 152-68.
Brahma, the absolute divine es
sence, 31, 49 f.
BrahmS., the personal divine Be
ing, 49 f.
Brotherhood, The Moslem, 105.
Brown, Baldwin, re dogmatic
Christianity, 149.
Browne, Bp. Harold, re " home-
heathen," 160.
Browning, quotations from "A
Death in the Desert," 23, 90.
Browning, E. B., Quotation from,
190.
Buddha canonised as a Christian
saint, 75.
Buddhism, Ideals of, 56 ff. ; B. in
Burma, 56 ff. ; in Ceylon, 59
ff. ; in China, 62 ; in Japan,
63 ; B. and the appreciation
of natural beauty, 181.
Buddhists, Number of, in the
world, 62.
Burma, Character of Buddhism
in, 56 ff. ; appreciation of
colour and form in, 184.
Cassiodorus, re mountain scen
ery, 173-
Catechist.Story of an Indian, 21 f.
Census report, its description of
Burmese Buddhism, 57.
Chamberlain, Professor, re Japan
ese painting, 182 f.

INDEX

197

Character of Christ, Reflection of,
by an Indian Catechist, 21 f.
Character, The attainment of, the
goal of Christianity, 7 ; Dr.
Lecky on an ideal character, 9.
Child's heart, Need of a, taught by
Confucius, 83.
Chinese account of Amida, 65.
Chinese Emperor, Prayers said by,
86; Appendix II., 194.
China, The number of Buddhists
in, 62 f. ; story of a Buddhist
in, 69.
Church of Christ, a focus and
centre of attraction, 28.
Commandments, Ten, of Bud
dhists, 73.
Confucianism, Ideals of, 77-90.
Confucius, his date, 89 n. ;
modesty of his claims, 87 f. ;
C. and Christ, 89.
Copleston, Dr., re animistic be
liefs of Burmese Buddhists,
59 ; re disregard of marriage
in Ceylon, 60 ; re Buddhist
lack of sense of duty, 74 n. ;
re Christian attitude towards
Buddhists, 76.
Dante, his description of hell
compared with that of Mo
hammed, 97; describes Mo
hammed as a Christian heretic,
114; D., a mountain climber,
174.
Deaconess, Story of a London,
164 f.
Dengyo, a Japanese student in
China, 63.
Divorce, Teaching of Moses and
Mohammed concerning, g4 ff.
Divinity of Christ, A belief in, an
outcome of spiritual experi
ence, 20.
Djafar, his apology for Islam, 99.
Dogma, Relation of Christian, to
the work of Missions, 138 f.,
146, 149. _
Duty, The idea of, lacking
amongst Buddhists, 74 n.

Edersheim, re Jewish custom
of divorce, g5.
Emperor of China, Prayers said
by, 194.
Epictetus, Teaching of, compared
with that of Mohammed, 116
ff.
Extinction, Doctrine of, 75.
Facts, regarded by Hindus as
accidents of time, 26.
Flowers, Beauty of, first empha
sised by Christ, 187 ; treatment
of, in Japan, 188.
Fushi Sogo, Quotation from, 65.
Galatia, Relapses of Christians
in, 144.
Ghazzali, Muhammed al, A prayer
of, 108.
Giles, Lionel, on meaning ofji'n,
86 n.
Gnostic teaching, its relation to
the doctrine of Amida, 64 f.
Goals of non-Christian religions,
2ff.
Goethe as an interpreter of natural
beauty, 178.
Gray, re Swiss mountain scenery,
174.
Grierson, Dr., re Indian belief in
immortality, 48.
Gurus, character of, described by
Tulsi Das, 41 ; and by Tuka
ram, 44.
Hall, C. Cuthbert, on the diffi
culties created in the Hindu
mind by the statement " God
is Love," 18 f. ; on an Indian
re-interpretation of the Char
acter of Christ, 28.
Hall, Fielding, his description of
Burmese Buddhism, 57.
Heaven as conceived by Moslems,
6, 96 ff.
Hinduism, Ideals of, 29-55; im-
possibility of defining, 30.
Holland, W. E. S., on temper as
a test of character, 13.

198

INDEX

Homer, A quotation from, trans
lated by Tennyson, 171 n.
Houghton, Lord, re influence of
Koran, 104.
Human nature, Potential worth of,
taught by Confucius, 80.
Humboldt's " Cosmos," Quotation
from, 173.
Ideals of Islam, The, 91-112.
Ideal life described by Confucius,
82 ff.
Imad-ud-din, re Christian converts
from Islam, 127.
Immortality, Indian belief in a
personal, 48 f.
Incarnation, Hindu belief in
divine, 17 ; teaching in Bha
gavad-gita, 33 ; in the Rama
yana, 35 ; in writings of
Ramanuja, 47 ; spotless in
carnation of Vishnu, 47.
Inglesant, John, re God in Nature,
179.
Japanese appreciation of beauty
of nature, 181 ff.
Jalalu'-d-din, a Persian Sufi, re
doctrine of absorption into
God, 107.
Jatakas, Buddhist, Quotations
from, 62, 68, 72 n.
yen, Meaning of the Chinese
word, 85.
Jews, their failure to appreciate
the beauty of scenery, 175 f.
Jones, Dr. J. P., on the passive
virtues of the Hindu char
acter, 11 ff.
Kabir, founder of the Kabir
Panth, his teaching on bhakti,
41 f.
Kant, re the beautiful and the
sublime, 171 f.
Kobo, a Japanese student in China,
63-
Koran, believed to be uncreated,
104.
Kung Yung, Quotations from, 80 ff.

Landscape painting in Europe,
177 f. ; in Japan, 183 ; in
Burma, 185.
Lahore, Bp. of, re Japanese sense
of beauty, 188.
Lecky, Dr., on the revelation of
an ideal character, 9.
Legge, Dr., re the number of Bud
dhists in the world, 62.
Li, The Chinese word, mistrans
lated " propriety," 85.
" Light of Asia, The," 66.
Liturgy, An Indian, how to evolve,
44 f.
Lloyd, A., re doctrine of Amida,
64 n. ; re Fushi Sogo, 65
n.
"London, Heathen," 152-68.
Love, Divine, the difficulties which
Hindus feel to understand,
18 f. ; Tulsi Das on, 40;
Christian doctrine of, com
pared with Buddhist doctrine
of benevolence, 70 ff. ; as ex
plained by Confucius, 79;
involves need of self-realisa
tion, in.
Lowis, C, his description of
Burmese Buddhism, 57 f.
Malebranche, re irregular sur
face of the world, 176 f.
Marriage, Disregard of, in Ceylon,
60.
Maung Po M6, a leader of a theis-
tic sect in Burma, 59.
Maurice, F. D., re value of Islam,
132.
Meleager, his references to flowers,
187.
Mencius, his teaching in regard to
human nature, 82.
Missions, Christian, The ultimate
object of, 169.
Mohammed, his teaching com
pared with that of Moses,
91 ff. ; his ignorance of the
Gospels, 91 n.
Mohammedan persecutions of
Christians, 124 f.

INDEX

199

Monism and pantheism combined
in the Bhagavad-gita, 32.
Monks, Buddha's commendation
of, 61.
Morality, Moslem, A summary of,
103.
Moses, comparison between his
teaching and that of Moham
med, 91 ff.
Myers, F.W. H. , on divine love, 40.
Nanak, founder of Sikh religion,
his teaching on bhakti, 42 f.
Napoleon, re restraint placed by
Mohammed on polygamy, 94.
Natural beauty, Appreciation of,
in Greek literature, 172 f.
Nichiren, Buddhist reformer in
Japan, 66.
Omito Fo, the Chinese Amida,
63, 65.
Oneness with God, Doctrine of, 45.
Painting of landscapes, Early at
tempts at, 177 f.
Paley's evidences, their failure to
appeal to Indians, 16.
Palgrave, re Islam in Arabia, 137.
Pantheists, their inability to ap
preciate natural beauty, 189.
Paradise, The Western, of Amida,
64; The Mohammedan, how
to be interpreted, 96 ff. ; sen
suous interpretation of, 98.
Paramats, a theistic sect of Bud
dhists in Burma, 59 n.
Pepys, re hill scenery, 174.
Perfection of nature as taught by
Confucius, 81.
Personal God, Hindu belief in a,
49 ff. ; Buddhist belief in, 63 ;
Chinese belief in, 77.
Polygamy, Teaching of Moses
and Mohammed concerning,
94 ff.
Prayer, a great reality to Moslems,
105.
Pride, denounced by Buddha, 72 ;
by Confucius, 83.

" Propriety," a mistranslation of
the Chinese word li, 85.
Ramananda, his preaching of
bhakti in N. India, 37.
Ramanuja, the philosopher of the
bhakti school, 37 ; his teach
ing re personality of God,
50 f.
Ramayana, The, its influence and
teaching, 34-36.
Reality of God's existence, the
chief tenet of Islam, 101.
Responsibility, Lack of sense of,
amongst pantheists, 14 f.
Revelation, A divine, as taught by
Mohammed, 104.
Richards, Dr. T., on Chinese be
lief in a supreme God, 77.
Rig Veda, its hymns to nature
gods, 180.
Righteousness, as taught by Con
fucius, 82 ff.
Rousseau as an interpreter of
natural beauty, 178.
Samadhi (oneness with God),
Doctrine of, 45.
Sankara, his teaching contrasted
with that of Ramanuja, 50 f.
Scherer, S,A.,on "Young Japan,"
Quotation from, 182.
Schiller, re appreciation of natural
beauty in Greek literature,
172 f.
Seneca, his teaching and that of
Islam, ng.
Self-conquest as taught by
Buddha, 67.
Shakespeare, Quotation from, re
Mohammed, 99 n.
Shangti, the name of the Supreme
Being in early Chinese litera
ture, 5.
Shamsi Tabriz, re love of God,
107 f.
Shinsu, Sect of, in Japan, 63.
Sin, Hindu failure to recognise,
14 ff. ; No forgiveness for,
taught by Confucius, 84.

200

INDEX

Slavery, Teaching of Moses and
Mohammed concerning, g2 ff.
Slaves, 2,000,000 taken from W.
Africa to America by profess
ing Christians, 94.
Solidarity of human race, taught
by Confucius, 78.
Soudan, Christian Missions in,
126 ff.
Swiss scenery, Failure of ancients
to appreciate, 173 ff.
Statistics, Missionary, no gauge of
progress, 8.
Sublime, The, definition of, by
Kant, 171 f.
Sufiism, its origin, 106 ; and teach
ing, 107 ff.
Theistic sects in Burma, 59, 192.
Theocritus, his references to
flowers, 187.
Thibet, Buddhism in, 66 n.
Thomson, J., Quotation from, 170.
Truth, Value of, taught by Con
fucius, 84.
Tsze-su, author of " The Doctrine
of the Mean," 80.
Tukaram, his teaching re love of
God, 43 f. ; re character of
gurus, 44.

Tulsi Das, writer of the Rama
yana, 34-36 ; A prayer by, 39 ;
his doctrine of love, 40.
Vaughan, Henry, Quotation from,
183.
Vicarious sufferings of Ram, 35.
Wesley, Charles, his hymn re
work of Mohammed, 99.
" Wheat among the Tares," by A.
Lloyd, 64 n.
Whitehead, G., Quotation by,
193 n.
Women, Buddha's teaching in
regard to, 61 f., 62 11.; Com
parison of position of, under
the Mosaic and Mohammedan
law, 94 ff.
Wordsworth, Quotations from
" Excursion," 178 f. ; " Ode
to Immortality," 186; "The
Tables Turned," 187.
Worship of Chinese Emperor, 86,
194.
Zodi sect of Buddhists in Burma,
59 n., 192 f.

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