CHAP. III. who live at the end of the Kali-age shall be awakened, and shall be pellucid as crystal. The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, its probable or age of purity." Yet the modern origin of docuorigin. ments in which this legend is preserved, as well as its position in the series of Hindú avatáras, and the glaring contradiction which it offers to older representations of the sacred books in reference to the yuga-system, all require us to place it in an age far subsequent to the diffusion of the Gospel. On the other hand, the manifest resemblances which it exhibits to some visions of the Apocalypse will as clearly justify us in imputing its origin to Gnostic, if not Christian, influence; an identification fatal to the cavils of a modern rationalist, who, after citing the Kalki-legend with an air of triumph, goes on to tell us that the Jews have the same belief,' but that 'with them it is an after-thought.' The truth is that, so far from being either secondary or derived, the expectation of a Christ, all-righteous and allmerciful, a Christ in whom all nations of the earth may find a blessing, was imprinted on the heart and memory of the Hebrew people from the time of Abraham it was the pivot of their firmest hopes, it was the key to all their Scriptures. : 1 Ibid. Cf. Lüken Traditionen, p. 320. 2Der Kalkin insbesondere mit seinem weissen Rosse ist schwerlich eine indische Erfindung, da er dem Yugasystem, welches am Ende jedes Kaliyuga eine Zerstö rung der Welt verlangt oder wenigstens verlangen sollte, direkt widerspricht, erklärt sich dagegen vortrefflich aus den ähnlichen Vorstellungen der Gnostiker.' Weber, Ind. Stud. 11. 411. CHAPTER IV. Contrasts in the general development of Hindúism and Revealed Religion. 'In the present impure age, the bud of wisdom being blighted by iniquity, men are unable to apprehend pure unity.' HINDU PHILOSOPHER. Ἡμῖν δὲ ἀπεκάλυψεν ὁ Θεὸς διὰ τοῦ Πνεύματος αὐτοῦ.—ST. PAUL. with some 1. If one were asked to single out the main criterion CHAP. IV. by which patriarchs, like Abraham, may be dis- Abraham tinguished from the Aryan chief, whose portrait is contrasted preserved among the oldest hymns of the Rig-Véda, ancient Áryan. it would turn far less upon the difference in their mental organisation and their outward forms of worship, than on sentiments by which that organisation was directed and those forms of worship were upheld. The men to be contrasted are both primitive and simple-hearted. Both are nomades, far inferior, it may be, to their descendants in the strength and clearness of their intellectual powers, though more than equal in poetic sensibility; collecting wisdom as they move from spot to spot in search of regular modes of life and permanent habitations. The wealth of each is in his flocks and herds; his strength in the devotion of his clansmen and posterity. Both are also conscious of their moral wants, and their CHAP. IV. dependence on superior genii; both are men of praise, of prayer, of sacrifice. And yet how very different are the aspects of their inner life, the real character of their religious worship, their relations to the world invisible. The faith of the Hebrew The father of the Hebrew race, as we behold him in the Book of Genesis, abandoning his paternal roof, patriarch. and then encamping, year by year, beneath a foreign sky, is ever influenced by the consciousness of supernatural guidance. The arm on which he leans is that of the Omnipotent. The Lord Himself is with him in the course of his migrations: his misgivings are all hushed when he reflects that God, the SelfExistent, is his shield, and his exceeding great reward (Gen. xv. 1). The patriarch, in other words, has such a faith in God as justifies his claim to be a Christian by anticipation, 'the father of the faithful.' That organ of the soul by which we realise as present what is actually beyond the range of human vision, was in him directed to the object where alone it can be satisfied. The God of Abraham was living, personal, ever-present, irresistible, no cold Abstraction of the logical faculty, no distant Something which could only be defined by negatives, but a willing Friend, a righteous Judge, a sympathetic Father. Abraham's road may lie along the trackless plain or the inhospitable mountain-side, and yet he fears no evil: his trust is in a living God and Guardian, who will never fail His own. He may be called to suffer, but he suffers at the hands of One who will convert the scourge itself into an instrument of blessing. He may have to sacrifice the fairest of his earthly prospects, yet he knows to whom the sacrifice is made. He wanders childless CHAP. IV. in the land of promise, yet as often as he gazes up to heaven, he welcomes in the stars that spangle the unclouded firmament, an image of his own posterity. Abraham 'believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness' (Gen. xv. 6). The Indo-Áryan, on the other hand, had no such faith in God, and no such trust in His protection. Indisposed to love God, he was equally unwilling to retain God in his knowledge. In proportion as he left his Father's house to wander forth in quest of this or that debasing pleasure, faith was dimmed and paralysed within him, till the thought of a supreme Intelligence, distinct from matter and transcending all material processes, had well-nigh vanished from his soul. Instead of finding peace in God, he vainly sought it in the adoration or deprecation of the elements; and having abandoned himself to this inferior kind of worship, he oscillated from one déva to another, but had real faith in none. It is indeed remarkable, that the efficacy of a principle analogous to Christian faith was never plainly recognised in India till after the propagation of the Gospel.' Then it was that the idea began to shew itself in one particular Hindú sect, where men adopted phraseology which might have been mistaken almost for the language of the early Church. They spoke of worshipping God in spirit: they ascribed a wonderful significance to faith (bhakti); yet even this new verity was in the end so much distorted, that the spurious 'faith' of India had become no better than a cloke for heartless apathy or 1 See Lassen, II. 1096, 1099, and above, p. 257, 258, CHAP. IV. gross licentiousness. Belief in one particular déva, or a firm reliance on the merit of some special avatára, would, according to this system, obviate the need of virtue, and would sanctify all kinds of vice.2 The moral Hebrew patriarch. How different was the faith of Abraham! It did superiority not terminate in dévas like Vishnu or Siva, Krishna of the or Gañésa: and the object being raised indefinitely higher, and invested with distinctly moral attributes, the principle of faith had also gained a corresponding elevation. I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be thou perfect' (Gen. xvii. 1). Such was the original basis of the covenant which brought the patriarch into a new relationship with God. The Being whom he worshipped was not only righteous, but was righteousness itself. He was no local deity with limited jurisdiction or with human partialities. He was the Judge of all the earth (Gen. xviii. 25): and to impress this grand idea on Abraham and his posterity was the uniform design of all the elder revelation. The satisfying of men's intellectual cravings was but secondary and subordinate, compared with the enlivening of their conscience, the rectifying of their wishes, and the purification of their heart. The will of man, as one essential organ needed for 1 Elphinstone, pp. 98, 121, and Wilson, Lectures, p. 31. The latter of these authorities, who has enlarged upon the question in his History of the Hindu Sects, remarks that by teaching the doctrine of faith alone,' the Hindú sectarian has rendered conduct 'wholly immaterial.' 'It matters not how atrocious a sinner may be, if he paints his face, his breast, his arms, with certain sectarial marks; or, which is better, if he brands his skin permanently with them with a hot iron stamp; if he is constantly chanting hymns in honour of Vishnu; or, what is equally efficacious, if he spends hours in the simple reiteration of his name or names; if he die with the word Hari, or Ráma, or Krishna, on his lips, and the thought of him in his mind, he may have lived a monster of iniquity, he is certain of heaven.' |