Part 16 (1/2)
Out of 956 baptisms of the Church Missionary Society in the Amritsar District, 152 were Mohammedan converts. In the Punjab there are at least two congregations made up entirely of Mohammedans, while in Bengal there is a body of more than 6000 Christians composed almost entirely of Mohammedan converts and their descendants, a large number having come over _en ma.s.se_ some years ago. These last were converts in the first instance from Hinduism to Mohammedanism, and hence were not bound so strongly to Islam.”
In South India, less attention has been paid to Mohammedans as a cla.s.s, and the results therefore have been very meagre. A few individuals, here and there, have accepted our faith, and that is practically all. This is not strange when we remember that out of the eleven hundred Protestant missionaries, male and female, in Southern India, perhaps not a dozen have any special training and apt.i.tude for work among Mohammedans, and hardly more than that number are giving themselves entirely to the work.
The difficulty of this work should appeal more than it does to the heroic element in missionaries and missionary societies alike. The above facts indicate that there is encouragement for one who gives himself heartily to this people. In no other land has missionary effort for the members of this religion achieved greater results than in India. If their numbers are few, they are more resolute and p.r.o.nounced in their Christian character than many others. In the roll of honour among the converts from Islam have been found the names of a number of distinguished pastors and able writers.
In the recent Conference of Missionaries, held in Cairo, a new purpose was manifested to take up with more discriminating and p.r.o.nounced zeal and better methods the work of reaching and converting the Mohammedans of the world.
In India, a better organized and a wider campaign for the conversion of Islam is needed. Men and women who are to take up work in their behalf must not only be well trained for this specific work by a thorough knowledge of both faiths; they must also be imbued with abundant sympathy for the people, and with a sympathetic appreciation of the vital truths which have thus far animated the Mohammedan faith.
The constructive, rather than the destructive, method of activity must increasingly animate all. The Mohammedans are peculiarly sensitive; and there is so much of contact between their faith and ours that through the pathway of the harmonies of the faiths men must be led to know and feel the supreme excellence and power of the faith of the Christ.
CHAPTER XII
THE CHRIST AND THE BUDDHA
The study of the life and the character of noted and n.o.ble men is the most helpful and inspiring of all studies. It not only ill.u.s.trates life at its best, it also fills men with an ambition to pursue the same n.o.ble purposes and to achieve the same lofty results in life. In presenting a brief glimpse of the two most powerful personalities that ever impressed themselves upon the world, I desire to place them side by side that we may appreciate the a.s.sonances and the dissonances of their wonderful lives and rise through the study into a true conception and love of the most perfect Life ever breathed upon earth.
I have no apology to offer, as a Christian, for comparing the life of our Lord with that of any human being; for, though Divine, He was also supremely human; and human glory and achievement appear in their fulness only when we gaze upon Him as one of the mighty human forces of history.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREATEST IMAGE OF BUDDHA (183 feet long)]
Christ and Buddha lived their brief lives upon earth many centuries ago; and yet never did they grip so many by the magic of their attraction as they do at present. Nearly two-thirds of the whole population of the world to-day acknowledges the lords.h.i.+p of the one or the other of these and loves to be called by their names. The influence of the one dominates all the life of the West, while that of the other is supreme in the East. And it is a curious and interesting fact that Buddha has not only been exalted as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu in the faith which he aimed to overthrow, he has also been adopted into the Roman Catholic Calendar and is wors.h.i.+pped on the 27th of November as a Christian saint under the t.i.tle ”Saint Josaphat.”
I am also convinced that the influence of the lives and teachings of Buddha and Christ will react upon each other with ever increasing power during the coming years. Indeed, we are now witnessing this very influence developing before our eyes.
I
Let us first observe the conditions under which these two lived their earthly lives.
One was born into royal prerogatives and splendour and was surrounded in youth with all the luxuries and blandishments of an Oriental court. The other, though of royal lineage, was born in poverty, cradled in a manger, earned a meagre subsistence as a carpenter, and was able to say at the end of His brief career that the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, but that He had not where to lay His head.
Sidhartthan early married and became a father, but later renounced all the pleasures and responsibilities of a _grihastan life_. His great renunciation is one of the most striking and impressive acts in the history of mankind, and his subsequent asceticism was of the most thorough and rigid type.
Jesus of Nazareth avoided the entanglements of married life and had a supreme contempt for the wealth and the pomp of the world. Yet He was not an ascetic. So freely did He a.s.sociate with men, partic.i.p.ating even in their festivities, that His enemies falsely charged Him with being a ”glutton and a winebibber.” He never countenanced the idea that highest sainthood must come through asceticism.
He found His intimates not among the ascetic Essenes, but among householders and men of affairs.
Both these great souls were similarly oppressed by the prevalence and the tyranny of an exclusive ceremonialism. In the one case, it was the innumerable b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices and the all-embracing and crus.h.i.+ng ritual of the Brahmans which roused the anger and opposition of Gautama; while, on the other hand, the myriad rites, the childish ceremonies, and the hollow religious hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees filled Jesus with hatred and led Him to a denunciation of that whole cla.s.s. ”Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,” was the oft-repeated expression of wrath which He heaped upon them.
Thus the religions which both established were, in part, reactions from the religious excesses and errors of the days in which they lived.
It is strange that neither Christ nor Buddha left any writings behind them, even though writing was a known art in their times. Their mighty influence was through oral teaching and example. This was different from the method of other such world-leaders as Moses, Mohammed, and Confucius. It proves that whenever any one has truths of saving power to commit to the world, there are many who, as his messengers, are ready to convey them. Better indeed than to convey one's thoughts by printed page is it to impart them through the living voice to disciples who will thrill the world by the message coloured by their own mind and transfigured by their own enthusiasm. This was the method of Christ and Buddha.
Both were surrounded by an Oriental environment. Their antecedents and their prepossessions were of the East, eastern; and at their births they were introduced to scenes and began to breathe the atmosphere of the Orient. All the great founders of the World Religions were men of the East. This was doubtless because the East kept more closely than the West in touch with deepest religious thought and was animated with highest religious emotions and heavenly aspirations. Certainly the world owes more to ancient Asia for its religious life and spiritual attainments than to all the other continents put together. And Asia is to be thanked, above all, because she gave to mankind the Christ and the Buddha. For the eastern flavour of their messages and the Oriental tints of their life we are deeply grateful. To those of the West, these have always brought quiet restraint and a hallowed, peaceful repose to counteract the hurry and worry of life to which they are so much exposed and which are a part of their very being.
II
_The Common Principles which controlled their Lives_