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Title: Gita and gospel

Author: J. N. Farquhar

Release date: February 28, 2024 [eBook #73070]

Language: English

Original publication: Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co, 1903

Credits: Andrew Sly, MFR, David King, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GITA AND GOSPEL ***


                            Gita and Gospel




                            GITA AND GOSPEL.


                                   BY

                            NEIL ALEXANDER.


                                Calcutta
                          THACKER, SPINK & CO.
                                 1903.




CALCUTTA:

PRINTED BY THACKER, SPINK AND CO.




                           TABLE OF CONTENTS.


Chap. I.—WHAT IS THE _Bhagavadgītā_? . . . 1

Chap. II.—PLATO’S JUST MAN . . . 21

Chap. III.—THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH . . . 26

Chap. IV.—VIRGIL’S NEW AGE OF JUSTICE AND PEACE 36

Chap. V.—JESUS OF NAZARETH . . . 41

APPENDIX.—NEO-KRISHNA LITERATURE . . . 67


                             ABBREVIATIONS.


AMALNERKAR: Amalnerkar, _Priority of the Vedanta-Sutras over the
Bhagavadgītā_.

BOSE, _H. C._: Bose, _Hindu Civilization under British Rule_.

DEUSSEN: Deussen, _Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda_.

DUTT, _C. A. I._: Dutt, _Civilization in Ancient India_.

_G._: _The Gītā._

GARBE: Garbe, _The Philosophy of Ancient India_.

GOUGH: Gough, _The Philosophy of the Upanishads_.

HOPKINS, _R. I._: Hopkins, _The Religions of India_.

HOPKINS, _G. E. I._: Hopkins, _The Great Epic of India_.

KAEGI: Kaegi, _The Rigveda_ (Arrowsmith’s translation).

KIDD, _P. W. C._: Kidd, _Principles of Western Civilization_.

KRISHNACHARITRA: Bunkim Chundra Chatterji, _Krishnacharitra_, fourth
edition.

MACDONELL: Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_.

MOMMSEN: Mommsen, _History of Rome_.

MONIER-WILLIAMS: Monier-Williams, _Brahmanism and Hinduism_.

MÜLLER, _A. S. L._: Müller, _Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, second
edition.

MÜLLER, _S. S. I. P._: Müller, _Six Systems of Indian Philosophy_.

_S. B. E._: _The Sacred Books of the East._

SCHÜRER, _H. J. P._: Schürer, _History of the Jewish People in the Time
of Jesus Christ_.

SEAL: Brajendra Nath Seal, _Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and
Christianity_.

TELANG: Telang, _The Bhagavadgītā, &c._ (Sacred Books of the East, vol.
VIII.)

WEBER, _I. L._: Weber, _Indian Literature_.




                               CHAPTER I.
                      WHAT IS THE _BHAGAVADGITA_?


In the whole literature of the world there are few poems worthy of
comparison, either in point of general interest, or of practical
influence, with the _Bhagavadgītā_. It is a philosophical work, yet
fresh and readable as poetry; a book of devotion, yet drawing its main
inspiration from speculative systems; a dramatic scene from the most
fateful battle of early Indian story, yet breathing the leisure and the
subtleties of the schools; founded on a metaphysical theory originally
atheistic,[1] yet teaching the most reverent adoration of the Lord of
all: where shall we find a more fascinating study? Then its influence on
educated India has been and still is without a rival. Everybody praises
the Upanishads, but very few read them; here and there one finds a
student who turns the pages of a Sūtra or looks into Sankara or
Rāmānuja, but the most are content to believe without seeing. The
_Gītā_, on the other hand, is read and loved by every educated man. Nor
is there any need to apologize for this partiality: the Divine Song is
the loveliest flower in the garden of Sanskrit literature.

For the Western mind also the poem has many attractions. The lofty
sublimity to which it so often rises, the practical character of much of
its teaching, the enthusiastic devotion to the one Lord which breathes
through it, and the numerous resemblances it shows to the words of
Christ, fill it with unusual interest for men of the West. But while it
has many points of affinity with the thought and the religion of Europe,
it is nevertheless a genuine product of the soil;[2] indeed it is all
the more fit to represent the genius of India that its thought and its
poetry are lofty enough to draw the eyes of the West.

What, then, is the _Gītā_? Can we find our way to the fountain whence
the clear stream flows?

A. When the dwelling-place of the ancient Aryan tribes was partly on the
outer, partly on the inner, side of the Indus (primeval patronymic of
both India and her religion), and the tribesmen were equally at home on
the farm and on the battlefield, then it was that the mass of the lyrics
that form the _Rigveda_ were made. We need not stay to set forth the
various ways in which this unique body of poetry is of value to modern
thought. For us it is of interest because it gives us the earliest
glimpse of the religion of the Indo-Aryans. That religion is
polytheistic and naturalistic. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature
and natural phenomena as personal gods. They praise also, as distinct
powers, the departed fathers. Such is undoubtedly the general character
of the religion of that age. On the other hand, the hymns to Varuna
bring us very near monotheism indeed.[3]

It is, however, only at a later period when the Aryan conquest had moved
out of the Punjab to the South and West, and just on the eve of the
formation of the _Rigveda_ as a collection of religious hymns, that we
find the beginnings of philosophic speculation.[4] A few hymns, chiefly
in the tenth Mondol, ask questions about the origin of the universe, and
venture some naive guesses on that tremendous subject. Some of the
hymns[5] take for granted the existence of primeval matter, and ask how
or by whom it was transformed into a _cosmos_. In others[6] there is
more monotheistic feeling, and a Creator, either Hiranyagarbha or
Visvakarman, is described. In others[7] the strain of thought is
agnostic.

B. With the collection of the hymns of the _Rigveda_ we pass into a new
and very different period, the literature of which is altogether
priestly. To this age belong the two great sacerdotal manuals, the
_Sāmaveda_[8] or Chant-book, and the _Yajurveda_[9] or Sacrifice-book,
and those extraordinary collections of priestly learning, mythology and
mysticism, the Brāhmanas.[10] These books introduce us to changed times
and changed men, to new places and a new range of ideas. The fresh
poetry of the youth of India has given place to the most prosaic and
uninteresting disquisitions in the whole world.[11] The home of this
literature is the great holy land of Brahman culture, stretching from
the Sutlej on the West to the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges at
Prayāga.[12] In this period the doctrine of the transmigration of the
soul first appears.[13]

C. The Aranyakas[14] and Upanishads[15] place before us a further
development of Indian religion. Reflection led to the perception of the
great truth, that the kernel of religion is not the ritual act but the
heart of piety behind it. Many a man who had found the endless formulæ
and the showy ceremonial of the sacrifice a serious hindrance to real
religion, sought refuge from the noise and distraction of the popular
cult in the lonely silence of forest or desert. To run over the
sacrifice in one’s own mind, they reasoned, was as acceptable to the
gods as to kill the horse or to pour the ghee upon the altar fire. But
they soon reached the further position, that for the man who has
attained TRUE KNOWLEDGE sacrifice is altogether unnecessary. For
knowledge of the world-soul emancipates a man from the chain of births
and deaths and leads to true felicity. The main purpose, thus, of the
Upanishads, is to expound the nature of the world-soul. Their teaching
is by no means uniform. Not only do the separate treatises differ the
one from the other; contradictory ideas are frequently to be met with in
the same book. They all tend to idealistic monism; they all agree in
identifying the soul of man with the world-soul; but on the questions,
whether the latter is personal or impersonal, how spirit and matter are
related, and how the human soul will join the divine soul after death,
there is no unanimity.[16]

There is thus no speculative system to be drawn from these books. Those
of their ideas that are held with settled, serious conviction, are
taught rather dogmatically than philosophically; and, on the other hand,
where there is freedom of thought, there is rather a groping after the
truth than any definite train of illuminative reasoning. Yet this
occasional, conversational, unconventional character gives these simple
and sincere treatises their greatest charm, and fits them for that
devotional use to which so many generations of pious readers have put
them. To this early period there belong only the first great group of
prose Upanishads, the _Brihadāranyaka_, _Chāndogya_, _Taittirīya_,
_Aitareya_, _Kaushītaki_ and parts of the _Kena_.[17]

D. In bold contrast to this unsystematic meditation on the Eternal
Spirit there stands out the severe, clear-cut, scientific system of
Kapila,[18] the first Indian thinker who dared to trust the unaided
human mind. Buddhist tradition recognizes that he preceded Buddha, and
connects him with Kapila-vastu, the birth-place of Buddha, the site of
which was discovered as recently as December 1896.[19] He drew a sharp
distinction between matter and spirit and declared both to be eternal,
without beginning and without end. The material universe develops in
accordance with certain laws out of primeval matter, _prakriti_. Spirit,
on the other hand, exists as an indefinite number of individual souls,
each eternal. There is no supreme divine spirit. The value of this
system lies chiefly in its severely logical method, which demands that
all reasoning shall proceed from the known elements of experience. It
has exercised a very great influence on Indian thought, partly by its
method, but still more perhaps through its cardinal ideas, the eternity
of matter, the eternity of individual souls, the three _gunas_, the
great cosmic periods, and _kaivalya_, _i. e._, the attainment of
salvation through the separation of the soul from matter. This great
system is known by the name Sānkhya, _i. e._, enumeration, seemingly on
account of the numbering of the twenty-five _tattvas_, or principles,
which it sets forth.[20]

Such is the _Sānkhya_ system; but it would be dangerous to affirm that
the whole came from Kapila; for no treatise written by him has come
down. The earliest systematic manual of the philosophy extant to-day is
the _Sānkhya-Kārikā_ of Isvara-Krishna, which dates from the early
Christian centuries.[21]

E. Shortly after the Sānkhya system, and in close dependence upon it,
there appeared Buddhism and Jainism; but as these great religions
exercised no very definite influence on the main stream of Indian
thought for several centuries, we shall not linger over them.

F. We notice next the second great group of Upanishads, the _Katha_,
_Isā_, _Svetāsvatara_, _Mundaka_, _Mahānārāyana_,[22] which are all
written in verse. That this group is later than the great prose
Upanishads is abundantly clear from the changed form as well as from the
more developed matter. “As contrasted with the five above-mentioned
Upanishads with their awkward Brāhmana style and their allegorical
interpretations of the ritual, the _Katha Upanishad_ belongs to a very
different period, a time in which men began to coin the gold of
Upanishad thought into separate metrical aphorisms, and to arrange them
together in a more or less loose connection.”[23] Further signs of their
belonging to another stage of thought are their references, more or less
clear, to the Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies,[24] and their tendency to
adopt the doctrine of Grace,[25] _i.e._, that salvation is not a fruit
of true knowledge, but a gift of God. The idea of _Bhakti_, which became
afterwards so popular, appears in this group of Upanishads only
once.[26] Here also for the first time in Sanskrit literature the word
_Sānkhya_ occurs as the name of a system.[27]

But while these five metrical treatises are clearly later than the prose
Upanishads, scholars are not agreed on the question of their relation to
the great systems. Some[28] hold that the _Katha_ is earlier, others[29]
that it is later, than Buddhism; Weber[30] believes that the
_Svetāsvatara_, _Mundaka_, and _Mahānārāyana_ depend not only on
Kapila’s system, but also on the _Yoga Sūtras_ of Patanjali (see below),
while others[31] believe that in these Upanishads we have scattered
pieces of teaching which were later systematized. But whatever be the
truth on these points, it is clear that these five are posterior to the
first group, that their relative age is _Katha_, _Isā_, _Svetāsvatara_,
_Mundaka_ and _Mahānārāyana_,[32] and that this last belongs to quite a
late date.[33] Along with these verse Upanishads we may take three prose
works, which are manifestly still later,[34] the _Prasna_,
_Maitrāyanīya_ and _Māndūkya_.

G. Several centuries after the Sānkhya there appeared the Yoga
philosophy, the text-book of which is the _Yoga Sūtras_. According to
Indian tradition the founder of the school and the author of the Sūtras
was Patanjali,[35] the well-known scholar who wrote the _Mahābhāshya_ on
Pānini’s grammar. He accepts the metaphysics of the Sānkhya system, but
postulates the existence of a personal god, and urges the value of Yoga
practices for the attainment of _Kaivalya_, that isolation of the soul
from matter, which, according to Kapila, is true salvation. Thus not one
of the three main elements of his system is original; for Yoga practices
have existed from a very early date in India. Yet his system is
sufficiently marked off from others, first by his combination of Yoga
practices with Sānkhya principles and a theistic theology, and,
secondly, by his systematic treatment of Yoga methods.[36]

H. Later still than the Yoga philosophy is the systematic statement of
the Vedānta point of view by Bādarāyana in his Sūtras, which are known
either as _Brahma-sūtras_, _Sārīraka-sūtras_ or _Vedānta-sūtras_.[37]

I. We next notice the latest development of Upanishad teaching, namely,
that found in the Upanishads of the _Atharvaveda_. With the exception of
three, namely, the _Mundaka_, _Prasna_ and _Māndūkya_ Upanishads, which
we have already noticed, they are all very late.[38] They fall into four
great groups, according as they teach (_a_) pure Vedantism, (_b_) Yoga
practices, (_c_) the life of the Sannyāsin, or (_d_) Sectarianism.[39]
For our purpose the last of the four is of the most importance. “These
sectarian treatises interpret the popular gods Siva (under various
names, such as Isāna, Mahesvara, Mahādeva) and Vishnu (as Nārāyana and
Nrishinha) as personifications of the Atman. The different Avatārs of
Vishnu are here regarded as human manifestations of the Atman.”[40] Let
readers note that the doctrine of Avatārs is quite unknown in the Vedas,
the Brāhmanas, the early Upanishads and the Sūtras.[41] We may also note
that in groups (_a_) and (_b_) we find what is not found in earlier
Upanishads, namely, the phrase _Sānkhya-Yoga_ used as the name of a
system.[42] Here also the doctrines of Grace and _Bhakti_, the
beginnings of which we found in the verse Upanishads, are regularly
taught.

J. The last development that we need mention is the teaching of the
_Mahābhārata_ and _Manu_. We take them together, not only because each
of them is the final product of long centuries of growth and
compilation, but because they are so closely related to each other in
origin, that it is hardly possible to take them separately.[43] In the
first book of the _Mahābhārata_ we are told that the poem originally
consisted of only 8,800 _slokas_, and that at a later date the number
was 24,000. The complete work now contains over 100,000 _slokas_.[44] We
need not here enquire when the simple heroic lays were composed, which
lie at the basis of the great composition as it has come down to us; nor
need we stay to decide at what period it finally reached its present
labyrinthine structure and immense dimensions.[45] It is sufficient for
our purpose to notice that scientific investigations have laid bare four
stages in the formation of the Epic:—(_a_) early heroic songs, strung
together into some kind of unity: this is the stage recognised in Book
I, when the poem had only 8,800 _slokas_, and is in all probability the
point at which it is referred to by Asvalāyana; (_b_) a Mahābhārata
story with Pandu heroes, and Krishna as a demi-god: this is the form in
which it had 24,000 _slokas_, and is the stage of the poem referred to
by Pānini; (_c_) the Epic re-cast, with Krishna as All-god, and a great
deal of didactic matter added; (_d_) later interpolations.[46] Scholars
are able to fix, within certain limits, the dates of these various
stages. We need not attempt to be so precise: for us it is enough that
_the representation of Krishna as the Atman belongs to the third stage
of the growth of the Epic_. Parallel with this third stage is the final
redaction of _Manu_.[47] The philosophic standpoint of these two great
works is practically the same, being now the _Sānkhya-Yoga_, now a
mixture of Sānkhya, Yoga and Vedantic elements.[48]

But the main thing to notice is that in these books we are already in
modern Hinduism. Turning from the Vedas to them we find ourselves in an
altogether new world. There are many new gods; most of the old
divinities have fallen to subordinate places. New customs, new names and
ideas are found everywhere. The language too has changed: new words, new
expressions and new forms occur in plenty; old words occur in new
senses; while many others have disappeared.[49]

                  *       *       *       *       *

Let us now turn to the _Gītā_. What is its place in this long
succession? Clearly it is posterior, not only to our first, but also to
our second group of Upanishads. For it echoes the _Katha_, the
_Svetāsvatara_, and several of the others repeatedly;[50] its
versification is decidedly later in character;[51] the doctrines of
Grace and of _Bhakti_, which are found in these Upanishads only in germ,
are fully developed in the _Gītā_;[52] while the whole theory of Krishna
is a fresh growth.

The _Gītā_ may also be shewn to belong to the same age as the Atharvan
Upanishads. It has in common with them (_a_) the identification of
Krishna and Vishnu with the _Atman_, (_b_) the doctrine of Avatārs,[53]
(_c_) the doctrines of Grace and _Bhakti_, (_d_) the Sānkhya-Yoga.

But we may go further, and show that the _Gītā_ is in its teaching, in
general, parallel with the third stage of the _Mahābhārata_ and with
_Manu_. For while the usual philosophic standpoint in the Song is
Sānkhya-Yoga, there are frequent lapses to the Vedānta; and there is an
evident effort here and there to combine all three.[54] This is
precisely the position of _Manu_ and the Epic, as we have seen. Note
that in the _Gītā_ the Yoga philosophy is already old, so old that it
has fallen into decay, and requires to be resuscitated.[55] The Sānkhya
is not a loose group of ideas, but a formed system, as appears from the
phrases _Sānkhya-Kritānta_[56] and _Guna-sankhyāna_.[57] Kapila, its
author, is so far in the past that he is canonized as the chief of the
_Siddhas_.[58] There are many minor points which the _Gītā_ holds in
common with the _Mahābhārata_, and which are not found earlier. The
latter half of the tenth chapter is full of Epic mythology. There Skanda
is the great warrior-god,[59] as in the _Mahābhārata_,[60] there too we
find the horse Uccaihsravas,[61] the elephant Airāvata,[62] the snake
Vāsuki,[63] the fish Makara.[64] _Nirvāna_ is used in the _Gītā_[65] for
‘highest bliss,’ ‘Brahmic bliss,’ precisely as in the Epic.[66] In the
_Mahābhārata_ Bhīshma, after receiving his mortal wound, has to wait for
the _Uttarāyana_ (the northward journey of the sun), _i. e._, he has to
wait until the sun passes the southern solstice, before he can die in
safety.[67] In the _Gītā_ we find a similar idea: only those devotees
who die during the _Uttarāyana_ go to Brahman; those who die during the
_Dakshināvana_ return to earth.[68] This dogma is not found in the early
Upanishads nor yet in the Sūtras.[69]

A study of the language of the _Gītā_[70] leads to the same conclusion.
A portion of its vocabulary is the same as that of the first group of
Upanishads; a larger portion coincides with our second group; a still
larger coincides with the diction of the Atharvan group; and finally,
much that is found in no Upanishad is characteristic of the Epic.

We need not attempt to fix the date[71] of the poem, for that is not
only impossible as yet, but is quite unnecessary for our purpose. What
we wish to do is to show that the religious literature of India displays
a long, regular, evolutionary process, that the _Gītā_ belongs to the
same period as the third stage of the _Mahābhārata_, and is itself
clearly the result of all the preceding development.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Can we then accept the declaration of the poem itself, that it was
uttered by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra?—That necessarily
depends upon the history and the chronology. At what point then in the
historical development of the literature which we have been studying
does the famous battle stand?—According to all scholars the great war
and the compilation of the _Vedas_ both belong to the same period.[72]

The results of our study may, therefore, be tabulated as follows, with
the proviso that the long process of the growth of the Epic cannot be
fully represented:—

        The Hymns of the Vedas.
        Compilation of the Vedas . . .     KURUKSHETRA.
        The Brāhmanas.
        The prose Upanishads.
        Kapila.
        Buddhism and Jainism.
        The verse Upanishads.
        Patanjali.
        Bādarāyana.
        The Atharvan Upanishads.
        The third stage of the Epic and _Manu_ . . .      THE GITA.

It has thus become perfectly clear that THE GĪTĀ CANNOT HAVE BEEN
UTTERED ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF KURUKSHETRA; for it is the last member of
a long series, the final product of a clearly defined and elaborate
process of development. To ascribe the _Gītā_ to the age of Kurukshetra
is much the same as if one were to ascribe the poetry of Tennyson to the
age of Alfred the Great. A thousand years intervene; the thought and
toil of a millennium were needed to produce the great result.

Had Krishna uttered these doctrines on the famous battlefield, we should
inevitably have found references to them in the literature produced
during the following centuries. But where in the Brāhmanas do we find
any of the leading ideas of the _Gītā_? Even if men had disbelieved
Krishna, his claim to be God incarnate would at least have drawn out a
protest; but in no single Brāhmana or early Upanishad is there the
slightest hint of anything of the kind. So far from there being any
corroboration of the great myth in early literature, there is the
clearest proof that it is false. In the _Kāthaka_ recension of the
_Black Yajur Veda_ king Dhritarāshtra is mentioned as a well-known
person[73]; yet in the whole literature of the Black Yajur there is no
suggestion that Krishna claimed divine honours. _The Satapatha
Brāhmana_, which is a product of the _Kuru-Panchāla_ country,[74]
contains the names of a number of the heroes of the great war,[75] but
never refers to Krishna as God incarnate; while in the _Chāndogya
Upanishad_,[76] which belongs to the same district,[77] he is spoken of
merely as a man: he is mentioned as a pupil of Ghora Angirasa and is
called Krishna Devakiputra.[78] Nay, even in the earliest part of the
_Mahābhārata_ itself Krishna is only a great chief, and not a deity at
all.[79] Finally, the references to Pandu heroes and to the worship of
Krishna and Arjuna in Pānini,[80] would lead to the conclusion that in
Pānini’s day Krishna was not regarded as the supreme God, but as one
among many;[81] and this cautious inference is corroborated by the fact
that the _Mahābhāshya_ itself does not recognize him as the incarnation
of Brahma, but as a hero and demi-god.[82] _Thus the whole of the Vedic
literature, and the whole of the Sūtra literature, are destitute of a
single reference to Krishna as the incarnation of the Supreme._ There is
only one conclusion to be drawn from this overwhelming mass of
evidence.[83]

It is strange that educated Hindus should have clung so long to the idea
that the _Gītā_ is a real utterance of Krishna. The very fact that the
poem has always been regarded, not as _Sruti_, but simply as _Smriti_,
should have been enough to suggest the truth. A piece of genuine divine
teaching, uttered in such circumstances, and before the composition of
the earliest Upanishads, would have inevitably found a place among the
most authoritative scriptures of the faith. The fact of its having been
always regarded as _Smriti_ is sufficient proof by itself that the book
does not belong to the Vedic age at all. Another consideration ought
also by itself to have been sufficient to save Hindus from such a grave
error, namely, this, that _no great religious advance or upheaval
followed the time when Krishna is supposed to have lived and taught_.
Contrast the mighty revolutions that followed the work of Buddha, of
Christ and of Mahommed; and the emptiness of the Krishna claim will
become at once apparent.

Again, the subject of all the early Upanishads is the nature of the
Supreme Spirit, whether called the _Atman_ or _Brahma_. If on the field
of Kurukshetra, Krishna had claimed to be the Supreme, as the _Gītā_
says he did, can any one believe that the claim could have been passed
unnoticed in the Upanishads? Krishna is mentioned in the _Chāndogya_;
Brahma is the subject of the _Chāndogya_: yet there is not the slightest
hint anywhere that Brahma has been incarnated, far less that Krishna is
Brahma. Such evidence is surely irresistible.

One reason why the truth about this myth has been so long in finding its
way into the minds of educated Hindus is undoubtedly to be found in the
wretchedly inadequate way in which Sanskrit literature is taught in the
Universities of India. In Calcutta at least most men who take Sanskrit
as one of their subjects for the B. A. Degree get through their
examination without having the slightest knowledge of the history of the
literature.[84] For some curious results of this very deficient
training, see the Appendix.

With Krishna, all the other so-called Avatārs vanish; for they rest on
foundations still more flimsy and fanciful. They merely serve as signal
proofs of the tendency inherent in the Hindu mind to believe in
incarnations and to see such around them. This tendency was already
living and creative long before the Christian era, and it has kept its
vitality down to the present day; for though Chaitanya, the
sixteenth-century reformer, is the most noteworthy of those who within
recent times have been counted Avatārs, he is by no means the last: the
late Ramkrishna Paramhamsa was regarded as such,[85] and some of her
admirers claim the same honour for Mrs. Annie Besant.[86] Further, this
making of Avatārs is but one aspect of that passion for deifying men
which has characterized Hinduism from first to last,[87] a passion which
has set many a modern Englishman among the gods. Even such a
whole-hearted Christian as John Nicholson did not escape.[88]

The story, then, that Krishna uttered the Song on the battlefield, is a
pious imagination. All scholars hold the war to be historical; Krishna’s
name can be traced in the literature from the Upanishads downwards; it
is possible, or even probable, that he was a Kshattriya prince[89] who
fought in the war; but _the assertion that on the field he claimed to be
the supreme being, is absolutely negatived by all the early history and
literature of India_.

                  *       *       *       *       *

How then are we to account for the _Gītā_? Whence came its power and its
beauty? and how did it reach the form it has?—We must recognise the
action of three factors in the formation of the Song, the philosophy,
the worship of Krishna, and the author. We have already traced in
outline the genesis of the philosophy; there remain the cult and the
author.

All our scholars recognize that Krishna-worship has existed in India
since the fourth century B. C. at least; for there can be no doubt that,
when Megasthenes says that Herakles was worshipped in Methora and
Kleisobora,[90] he means that Krishna was worshipped in Mathura and
Krishnapur. How much further back the cult goes we have no means of
learning. Nor does it really matter for our purpose. The important thing
to realize is the existence of this worship of Krishna, before his
identification with Vishnu[91] and final exaltation to the place of the
supreme pantheistic divinity.

The author of the _Gītā_ was clearly a man of wide and deep culture. He
had filled his mind with the best religious philosophy of his country.
He was catholic rather than critical, more inclined to piece things
together than to worry over the differences between them. Each of the
philosophic systems appealed to his sympathetic mind: he was more
impressed with the value of each than with the distinctions between
them. But his was not only a cultured but a most reverent mind. He was
as fully in sympathy with Krishna-worship as with the philosophy of the
Atman. Indeed, it was the union of these qualities in him that fitted
him to produce the noblest and purest expression of modern Hinduism. For
Hinduism is just the marriage of ancient Brāhmanical thought and law
with the popular cults. But without his splendid literary gifts the
miracle would not have been possible. The beauty, precision and power of
the diction of the poem, and its dignity of thought, rising now and then
to sublimity, reveal but one aspect of his masterly literary ability.
Much of the success of the poem arises from his genuine appreciation of
the early heroic poems, which he heard recited around him, and from his
consequent decision to make his own Song, in one sense at least, a
heroic poem. Lastly, there is the shaping spirit of imagination, without
which no man can be a real poet. With him this power was introspective
rather than dramatic. No poet with any genuine dramatic faculty would
have dreamed of representing a warrior as entering on a long philosophic
discussion on the field of battle at the very moment when the armies
stood ready to clash. On the other hand, what marvellous insight is
displayed in his representation of Krishna! Who else could have imagined
with such success how an incarnate god would speak of himself? Nor must
we pass on without noticing that, though the situation in which the Song
is supposed to have been produced is an impossible one, yet for the
author’s purpose it is most admirably conceived: how otherwise could the
main thought of the book—_philosophic calm leading to disinterested
action_—have been so vividly impressed on the imagination?

This author, then, formed the idea of combining the loftiest philosophy
of his country with the worship of Krishna. He would intertwine the
speculative thought that satisfied the intellect with the fervid
devotion which even the uncultured felt for a god who was believed to
have walked the earth. Philosophy would thus come nearer religion, while
religion would be placed on far surer intellectual ground. His tastes
led him to connect his work with the romantic poems of the day; his
genius suggested the situation, a dialogue between a noble knight and
the incarnate divinity; his catholicity taught him to interweave the
Sānkhya with the Yoga and both with the Vedānta; and as we have seen,
his penetrative imagination was equal to the creation of the subjective
consciousness of a god-man.

We can now answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter,
What is the _Bhagavadgītā_? It consists of two distinct elements, one
old, one original. The philosophy is old; for it is only a very
imperfect combination[92] of what is taught in earlier books. The
original element is the teaching put into Krishna’s mouth about his own
person and the relation in which he stands to his own worshippers and to
others. Of this part of the teaching of the _Gītā_ we here give a brief
analysis:—

    Krishna is first of all the source of the visible world. All comes
    from him,[93] all rests in him.[94] At the end of a Kalpa everything
    returns to him,[95] and is again reproduced.[96] He pervades all
    things;[97] and again, in another sense, he is all that is best and
    most beautiful in nature and in man.[98] But while Krishna is thus
    the supreme power in the universe,[99] he is altogether without
    personal interest in the activity therein displayed:[100] he sits
    unconcerned,[101] always engaged in action,[102] yet controlling his
    own nature,[103] and therefore never becoming bound by the results
    of his action.[104] This conception of the Supreme, as at once the
    centre of all activity and yet completely detached, enables the
    author, on the one hand, to soften the seemingly hopeless
    contradiction involved in identifying the king, warrior and
    demon-slayer, Krishna, with the passionless, characterless
    _Atman_[105] of the Upanishads, and, on the other to hold up Krishna
    as the supreme example of Action Yoga.

    We now turn to Krishna’s relation to his worshippers. Knowledge is
    good;[106] mental concentration is better;[107] disinterested action
    is better than either;[108] but the supreme wisdom is faith in
    Krishna and boundless devotion to him.[109] Such is the teaching of
    the _Gītā_. The worst epithets are kept for those who fail to
    recognise him as the Supreme, who disregard him, carp at him, hate
    him.[110] To those who resort to Krishna,[111] who place faith in
    him,[112] who shower on him their love, devotion and worship,[113]
    who rest on him,[114] think of him[115] and remember him[116] at all
    times,—to them are promised forgiveness,[117] release from the bonds
    of action,[118] attainment of tranquillity,[119] true knowledge[120]
    and final bliss[121] in Krishna.[122]

    Since all the gods come from Krishna,[123] and since he is in the
    last resort the sole reality,[124] worship offered to other gods is
    in a sense offered to him.[125] He accepts it and rewards it.[126]
    This is in accordance with his indifference to men: to him no one is
    hateful, no one dear.[127] Yet the highest blessings fall only to
    those who recognize him directly.[128]

Clearly our author formed his conception of the man-god with great
skill, and fitted it into his general scheme with all the care and
precision he was capable of. On this elaboration of the
self-consciousness of Krishna he concentrated all his intellectual and
imaginative powers. And with what unequalled success! Could any greater
compliment be paid an author than to have sixty generations of cultured
readers take the creation of his mind for a transcript from history?

                  *       *       *       *       *

The masses of evidence we have marshalled to prove that Krishna never
claimed to be God, may be briefly summarised as follows:—

1. The situation in which the _Gītā_ is said to have been uttered at
once strikes the historical student as suspicious: one can scarcely
believe that there was ever a battle in which such a thing could have
taken place; and, on the other hand, it makes such an excellent
background to the theory of Action Yoga, that one cannot help believing
that it was invented for the very purpose. Further investigation leads
to the following results:—

2. The characteristic religious and philosophical ideas of the _Gītā_
are not found in any books produced immediately after the age of
Kurukshetra. If we start with the teaching of that age, we have to trace
the stages of a long and clearly-marked development before we reach the
ideas of the _Gītā_.

3. The diction of the _Gītā_ is not the Vedic Sanskrit of the early
_Brāhmanas_ (which are the literature of the period following
Kurukshetra), but belongs to a very much later stage of the language.

4. The fact that the _Gītā_ is not _sruti_, but _smriti_, proves that it
comes neither from Krishna, nor from the time of Kurukshetra.

5. Krishna Devakiputra is known in the later Vedic literature as a man,
and in the Sūtra literature as a hero or demi-god, but never as the
supreme being.

6. The fact that there is not a single reference in the whole of the
Vedic literature, nor yet in the Sūtra literature, to Krishna as the
incarnation of Brahma, makes it impossible for us to believe that at the
battle of Kurukshetra he claimed to be such.

7. The fact that there was no revival or reformation of religion in the
age of Kurukshetra proves that God was not incarnated then.

Footnote 1:

  The philosophic basis of the book is primarily the _Sānkhya_ system
  which is essentially atheistic.

Footnote 2:

  Dr. Lorinser’s attempt (_Die Bhagavadgītā_, übersetzt und erläutert
  von Dr. F. Lorinser, 1869) to prove that the author of the _Gītā_
  borrowed many ideas from the Bible must be pronounced a failure. _Cf._
  Garbe, 19, 83-85; Max Müller, _Natural Religion_, 97-100; Hopkins, _R.
  I._, 429.

Footnote 3:

  On the religion of the _Rigveda_ see Kaegi, 27-74; Hopkins, _R. I._,
  Chaps. II-VI; Macdonell, 67-115; Bose, _H.C._, I, 6-9; Dutt, _C.A.I._,
  Vol. I, Chap. V; Monier-Williams, Chap. I.

Footnote 4:

  Hopkins, _R.I._, 141; Macdonell, 385; Garbe, 1-2; Kaegi, 87.

Footnote 5:

  _E.g._, X, 90.

Footnote 6:

  X, 81; 82; 121.

Footnote 7:

  X, 129.

Footnote 8:

  Kaegi, 3; Macdonell, 171-174.

Footnote 9:

  Kaegi, 4; Macdonell, 174-185.

Footnote 10:

  Kaegi, 5; Macdonell, 202 ff.; Müller, _A.S.L._, Chap. II; Bose,
  _H.C._, I, 9-12.

Footnote 11:

  Müller, _A.S.L._, 389.

Footnote 12:

  Hopkins, _R.I._, 177.

Footnote 13:

  Gough, Chap. I; Garbe, 2-7; Macdonell, 223; Hopkins, _R.I._, 204.

Footnote 14:

  Müller, _A.S.L._, 313 ff.; Macdonell, 204; Kaegi, 5.

Footnote 15:

  Müller, _A.S.L._, 316 ff.; Macdonell, 218 ff.; Kaegi, 5; Bose, _H.C._,
  I, 12-19.

Footnote 16:

  For the teaching of the Upanishads _see_ Gough; Hopkins, _R. I._,
  Chap. X; Garbe, 7-10.

Footnote 17:

  _See_ Deussen on each of these Upanishads, especially p. 264; and
  _Cf._ Macdonell, 226.

Footnote 18:

  Garbe, 10; Macdonell, 390, 393.

Footnote 19:

  Führer, _Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni’s Birthplace_, Arch. Surv. of
  India, Vol. XXVI, Allahabad, 1897; Macdonell, 13.

Footnote 20:

  For the Sānkhya system, _see_ Garbe, 10, 11, 29, 36, 45; Macdonell,
  390-395; Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, pp. 276 ff.

Footnote 21:

  Macdonell, 393.

Footnote 22:

  Macdonell, 226; Deussen, 261, 523, 288, 544, 241.

Footnote 23:

  Deussen, 264.

Footnote 24:

  _Katha_, 3, 10-13; 6, 6; 6, 7-11; 6, 14-18; _Svet._ passim; _Mundaka_,
  2, 1, 1-3; _Mahānār_, 63, 21. _Cf._ Deussen, _ad loca_.

Footnote 25:

  _Katha_, 2, 23; _Svet._ 3, 20; _Mundaka_, 3, 2-3. _Cf._ Hopkins,
  _R.I._, 238.

Footnote 26:

  _Svet._ 6, 23.

Footnote 27:

  _Svet._ 6, 13.

Footnote 28:

  Müller, _Anthrop. Rel._, 345; Oldenberg, _Budda_, 56.

Footnote 29:

  Weber, _Sitz. Berli. Ak. 1890_, p. 930.

Footnote 30:

  _I. L._, 159.

Footnote 31:

  Deussen, 291, 308.

Footnote 32:

  Deussen, _ad loca_; Macdonell, 226.

Footnote 33:

  Deussen, 242.

Footnote 34:

  Deussen, _ad loca_; Macdonell, 226.

Footnote 35:

  Garbe, 14; Macdonell, 396; Hopkins, _R. I._, 495.

Footnote 36:

  For the Yoga system, _see_ Garbe, 14-15; Macdonell, 396-399; Dutt, _C.
  A. I._, Vol. I, pp. 285 ff.

Footnote 37:

  Garbe, 16-18; Macdonell, 400-402.

Footnote 38:

  Deussen, 4; Macdonell, 238; Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, 119; Garbe, 69.

Footnote 39:

  Deussen, 541-543; Macdonell, 238-239.

Footnote 40:

  Macdonell, 239. _Cf._ Deussen, 543; Weber, _I. L._, 153 ff.

Footnote 41:

  Bose, _H.C._, Vol. I, 4.

Footnote 42:

  _Garbha_, 4; _Prānāgnihotra_, 1; _Sūlika_, passim.

Footnote 43:

  Macdonell, 428; Hopkins, _G. E. I._, 18-23.

Footnote 44:

  Macdonell, 282-4.

Footnote 45:

  See Hopkins, _G. E. I._, Chap. VI; _R.I._ 350; Macdonell, 285-288.

Footnote 46:

  Hopkins, _G. E. I._, 397-398; Macdonell, 283-286. Bunkim Chundra
  recognizes the second, third and fourth of these stages: see
  _Krishnacharitra_, Chap. XI.

Footnote 47:

  _The Ordinances of Manu_, Burnell and Hopkins, pp. XIX-XXVIII;
  Macdonell, 428.

Footnote 48:

  Hopkins, _G. E. I._, Chap. III; _R. I._, 265.

Footnote 49:

  Hopkins, _R. I._, Chaps. XIV and XV; Bose, _H. C._, Vol. I, 3.

Footnote 50:

  _See_ Telang’s translation throughout, and _cf._ Hopkins, _G. E. I._,
  28-46; Amalnerkar, 4-5.

Footnote 51:

  Telang, 15.

Footnote 52:

  _Cf._ Hopkins, _R. I._, 429.

Footnote 53:

  _G._, IV, 8.

Footnote 54:

  Hopkins, _R. I._, 399.

Footnote 55:

  _G._, IV, 1-3.

Footnote 56:

  _G._, XVIII, 13.

Footnote 57:

  _G._, XVIII, 19.

Footnote 58:

  _G._, X, 26. This is a noticeable point; for Kapila is the only
  founder of a philosophical system known to the Epic; he alone is
  authoritative in all philosophical matters. _See_ Hopkins, _G. E. I._,
  97.

Footnote 59:

  _G._, X, 24.

Footnote 60:

  _See_ Hopkins, _R. I._, 414.

Footnote 61:

  _G._, X, 27.

Footnote 62:

  _G._, X, 27.

Footnote 63:

  _G._, X, 28.

Footnote 64:

  _G._, X, 31.

Footnote 65:

  _G._, II, 72; V, 24; 25; 26; VI, 15.

Footnote 66:

  Hopkins, _G. E. I._, 88; _R. I._, 427.

Footnote 67:

  _Mahābhārata_, Bhīshma Parvan.

Footnote 68:

  _G._, VIII, 24-25.

Footnote 69:

  Amalnerkar, 13.

Footnote 70:

  See _Jacob’s Concordance to the Principal Upanishads and
  Bhagavadgītā_.

Footnote 71:

  Mr. Justice Telang was inclined to put the date before the third
  century B.C., but his otherwise most judicious criticism is faulty in
  this that it does not take all the factors of the problem into
  consideration. Others, such as Müller, Weber, Davies and Lorinser,
  incline to a very late date, about the third century A.D. Most writers
  believe that the true date lies between these extremes. So
  Monier-Williams, Hopkins, Fraser and others. Prof. Amalnerkar’s
  pamphlet contains a number of most interesting points. His contention,
  that the phrase, _Brahmasūtrapadaih_ (_G._ XIII, 4) refers to the
  _Vedānta Sūtras_, and that the _Gītā_ is therefore the later work of
  the two, has been accepted by Max Müller (_S. S. I. P._, 155), but
  Prof. Hopkins thinks the _Gītā_ is earlier than the Sūtra (_R. I._,
  400). The theory which Prof. Hopkins holds, that the Divine Song was
  originally an Upanishad, and that it was redacted, first as a Vishuite
  poem, and then a second time in the interests of Krishnaism (_R. I._,
  389), would account, on the one hand, for the numerous inconsistencies
  in its teaching, and, on the other, for the very conflicting signs of
  date which it presents. For a criticism of Bunkim Chundra’s views,
  _see_ the Appendix.

Footnote 72:

  Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, 9-11; Bunkim Ch. Chatterji,
  _Krishnacharitra_, 46; Macdonell, 174-175, 285; Hopkins, _R. I._, 33,
  177-179.

Footnote 73:

  Macdonell, 285; Weber, _I. L._, 90.

Footnote 74:

  _S. B. E._, Vol. XII, pp. XLI-XLII; Macdonell, 213.

Footnote 75:

  _S. B. E._, Vol. XIV, Index. _Cf._ Weber, _I. L._, 186;
  _Krishnacharitra_, 31.

Footnote 76:

  3, 17, 6. _See_ Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, 189; Weber, _I. L._, 71;
  Bose, _H. C._, Vol. I, 26; Hopkins, _R. I._, 465.

Footnote 77:

  Weber, _I. L._, 70.

Footnote 78:

  Whether Krishna Angirasa in the _Kaushītaki Brāhmana_ be the same
  person as Krishna Devakiputra, or not, we cannot tell.

Footnote 79:

  Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, 127; Bose, _H. C._, Vol. I, 33-34; Hopkins,
  _R. I._, 403; Monier-Williams, 112.

Footnote 80:

  The reference to Krishna and Arjuna runs _Vāsudevārjunābhyām vun_ (IV,
  3, 98), words which put the two on one level.

Footnote 81:

  Hopkins, _G. E. I._, 390-395.

Footnote 82:

  Hopkins, _G. E. I._, 395.

Footnote 83:

  We need not stay to ask whether the _Srimadbhāgavat_ and other Purānas
  can be trusted as evidence for the life of Krishna; for all scholars
  agree that, while ancient Purānas existed, all those that have come
  down to us reflect _a later stage of Hinduism than that of the
  Mahābhārata_; and that, while they contain much that is old scattered
  up and down their pages, the oldest fragments are of the same general
  date as the _Mahābhārata_ and _Manu_. Hopkins, _R. I._, 434-445;
  Macdonell, 299-302; Dutt, _C. A. I._, I, 19; II, 211; Müller, _A. S.
  L._, 61; Kaegi, 8, 105; _Krishnacharitra_, Chaps. XIV-XVI.

Footnote 84:

  The study of Prof. Macdonell’s excellent manual ought surely now to be
  made part of any Sanskrit course prescribed for a University degree in
  India.

Footnote 85:

  Bose, _H. C._, Vol. I, 5.

Footnote 86:

  _The Student’s Chronicle_, May 1903, p. 6.

Footnote 87:

  For some amusing instances _see_ Hopkins, _R. I._, 522, note, and
  _cf._ Monier-Williams, Chap. X.

Footnote 88:

  Monier-Williams, 260.

Footnote 89:

  Garbe, 85; Monier-Williams, 98, 112, note.

Footnote 90:

  McCrindle, _Ancient India_, 201. _Cf._ Hopkins, _R. I._, 459;
  Macdonell, 411; Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. I, 219; Garbe, 19, 83.

Footnote 91:

  That it was only at a very late date that this identification took
  place is evident from the fact that it is not once mentioned in the
  early literature. Even in two of the Vishnu Upanishads of the Atharva
  Veda, the _Atmabodha_, and the _Nārāyana_, Krishna is referred to as a
  mere man. Apart from the _Gītā_ and the _Mahābhārata_, the earliest
  reference to him as God incarnate is in the _Gopālatāpanīyopanishad_.
  See Weber, _I. L._, 169; and _cf._ Garbe, 18-19, 85; Bose, _H. C._,
  Vol. I, 25-26; Dutt, _C. A. I._, Vol. II, 191.

Footnote 92:

  For the inconsistencies of the _Gītā_, see Telang, p. 11; Hopkins, _R.
  I._, 390, 399, 400.

Footnote 93:

  VII, 6; 10; IX, 8; 10; 13; XIV, 3.

Footnote 94:

  VII, 7; IX, 5.

Footnote 95:

  IX, 7.

Footnote 96:

  IX, 7.

Footnote 97:

  IX, 4.

Footnote 98:

  VII, 8-11; X, 20-38.

Footnote 99:

  IX, 10; 17-18.

Footnote 100:

  IV, 14.

Footnote 101:

  IX, 9.

Footnote 102:

  III; 22-24.

Footnote 103:

  This is Telang’s translation of two very difficult, yet very
  instructive phrases. In the _Gītā_ the word _prakriti_ is used, first
  for the primeval matter of the Sānkhya system (III, 27; 29; IX, 8, 10,
  12; XIII, 19, 20, 23, 29), and secondly for the primeval matter of
  personal character, each man’s natural disposition (III, 33; VII, 20;
  XI, 51; XVIII, 59). There is then a third class of passages in which
  the word is used in the Sānkhyan sense, but, _by the addition of a
  personal pronoun_, _prakriti_ is made to belong to Krishna personally
  (VII, 4, 5; IX, 7, 13). Here we have one of the devices our author
  employed to give the great old phrases a vivid personal colouring. Now
  such a phrase as “my prakriti” is already ambiguous; so we are not
  surprised to meet with two passages, in which it is impossible to tell
  whether the meaning is metaphysical or ethical (IV, 6; IX, 8).
  Probably the author intended to suggest both meanings. Most
  translators take the meaning to be metaphysical, but Telang may be
  right in taking it as ethical: Krishna is regarded as the ideal of
  Action Yoga. For a similar use of the personal pronoun compare
  _sarvakarmāni mayi sannyasya_ (XVIII, 57) with _sarvakarmāni
  sannyasya_ of the _Paramahansopanishad_. Pages 706, 708 and 709 of
  Jacob’s _Concordance to the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavadgītā_ are
  peculiarly instructive in this connection.

Footnote 104:

  IV, 14; IX, 9.

Footnote 105:

  X, 12, 20.

Footnote 106:

  III, 3; IV, 36-38; XII, 12.

Footnote 107:

  XII, 12; XIII, 24.

Footnote 108:

  II, 47-53; III, 7, 30; IV, 14-23; V, 2; VI, 1; XII, 12; XVIII, 1-11.

Footnote 109:

  VII, 13-14; XII, 20.

Footnote 110:

  VII, 15; IX, 11-12; XVI, 6-20.

Footnote 111:

  II, 61; VII, 14; XII, 6; XVIII, 57.

Footnote 112:

  XII, 2.

Footnote 113:

  VI, 14, 31; IX, 13-14, 22, 30, 34; X, 8-10; XII, 2, 6-7, 14.

Footnote 114:

  IV, 10; VII, 1, 29; IX, 32.

Footnote 115:

  VI, 14; X, 9; XVIII, 57-58.

Footnote 116:

  VIII, 5, 7, 14.

Footnote 117:

  X, 3; XVIII, 66.

Footnote 118:

  IV, 14; IX, 28; XVIII, 49.

Footnote 119:

  V, 29; VI, 15; XVIII, 62.

Footnote 120:

  X, 11.

Footnote 121:

  VI, 15; VIII, 15.

Footnote 122:

  IV, 9; VII, 19; VIII, 5, 7, 15-16; IX, 25, 28, 32, 34; XII, 8; XIII,
  18; XIV, 2; XVIII, 55-56, 62, 65.

Footnote 123:

  X, 2.

Footnote 124:

  X, 1-3, 20.

Footnote 125:

  IX, 23.

Footnote 126:

  VII, 21-22.

Footnote 127:

  IX, 29.

Footnote 128:

  IX, 22; X, 7-11.




                              CHAPTER II.
                           PLATO’S JUST MAN.


We must now leave the land of Bhārata and seek the shores of Greece.

In the fifth century, B. C., Athens became the focus of Hellenic
culture. Her achievements in the Persian wars had given her very
distinctly the leadership of all the Greek states; and the steady
progress of her commerce brought her not only wealth but abundant
intercourse with other cities. So that in the latter half of the century
we find the peculiar genius of Hellas displayed in Athens with
unexampled vigour, variety and splendour. But space will not allow us
even to outline the achievements of that incomparable age in the various
provinces of human culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy.

The general advance of intelligence, education and culture in Greece
produced the only result possible in communities whose religion was a
traditional polytheism and whose morality rested merely on custom and
proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both religious and ethical, broke in like
a flood. Tradition and custom could not withstand the corrosive
influences of fresh thought fed by deepening experience and widening
science. The Sophists were the exponents, but scarcely the creators, of
this sceptical habit of thought. The philosophers had not done much to
cause it, and they could do as little to cure it. Their theories dealt
with nature rather than man, and stood in no clear relation to the
problems that agitated every thinking mind.

It was at Athens that this sceptical spirit showed itself most
conspicuously, now in the lectures of the chief Sophists of Hellas,
naturally drawn to the centre of intellectual ferment, now in the
stately tragedies of her Dionysiac festivals, now in the _fin-de-siècle_
conversation of her gilded youth. The timid, the old-fashioned, the
conservative scolded and sputtered and threatened, blaming individuals
instead of the time spirit, but had no healing word to utter.[129]

From the very centre of the disturbance came the new spirit of order and
restoration: Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece. The older
philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his attention to
practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted human reason; but
unlike them, he aimed not at a display of intellectual dexterity but at
reaching the actual basis of human morality, society and politics. Human
conduct was the sole subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence
the definite, practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in
the closest possible relation to life and to the problems of the time.
On the other hand, he began with introspection; self-knowledge was what
he demanded of every disciple. Hence the inexhaustible significance of
his work for philosophy. He gave no set lessons to his pupils, delivered
no lectures, wrote no books. He spent his whole time in conversation
with individuals, proceeding always by question and answer, thus
compelling his companion to think for himself. His extraordinary
intellectual skill and the loftiness and simplicity of his character
drew all the best intellects of Athens around him. But what gives him
his unchallenged supremacy in the history of Greek thought is the fact,
that in his hands the sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay
everywhere, proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities
which men had feared for.[130]

In 399 B. C., when he was an old man of seventy years of age, a number
of his fellow-citizens brought a criminal case against him, charging him
with corrupting the youth of Athens and with impiety. He was tried,
found guilty and sentenced to death. A month later he drank the
hemlock—such was the Athenian mode of execution—surrounded by his
friends.[131]

How tragic! Athens, “the school of Hellas,”[132] kills her greatest
teacher! Socrates, the father of ethical philosophy, the founder of the
critical method, the ideal instructor, dies as an impious corruptor of
the youth of Athens!

But Socrates was not merely the greatest teacher of his day. All
subsequent Greek philosophy is filled with his spirit; indeed the
leading schools of thought were founded by his pupils.[133] Consequently
he is the fountain-head of all Western philosophy and science; for in
both Greece was the school-mistress of Europe.

Among all the disciples, Plato best represents the master’s spirit. The
Megarians, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics, and, at a later date, the Stoics
and the Epicureans, certainly carried on the work of Socrates, but they
are deflections from the straight line: they are “imperfect schools,” as
Zeller calls them.[134] Plato is in the direct line of succession.

He was about twenty years of age when he began to listen to Socrates.
Eight years later came the death of the great teacher. Plato then left
Athens and spent a number of years in travel and in study in different
places. About 390 B. C., however, he returned to the city and set up a
philosophical school in a garden called Academia. For forty years
thereafter he was the acknowledged leader of philosophic thought and
teaching in Athens.[135] His influence since his death has rested
chiefly on his Dialogues, one of the most perfect literary treasures in
the Greek language. The form of these beautiful compositions still
reflects the question-and-answer method of Plato’s master; and the debt
of the pupil is everywhere acknowledged; for in most of the Dialogues
Socrates is the chief interlocutor.[136] Among the Dialogues the
_Republic_ is universally recognized as the most precious; for it shows
us not only his literary art at its highest, but the thought of his
matured mind: it represents Plato in his strength.[137]

The subject of the _Republic_ is “What is Justice?” It is thus the
culmination of the ethical teaching of Socrates. Among the preliminary
discussions in this book there occurs a very striking conversation
between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the former gives two ideal
portraits, one of a man consummately unjust, the other of a man
altogether just. Here is the passage:—

    “But in actually deciding between the lives of the two persons in
    question, we shall be enabled to arrive at a correct conclusion by
    contrasting together the thoroughly just and the thoroughly unjust
    man,—and only by so doing. Well then, how are we to contrast them?
    In this way. Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of
    the unjust, or from the justice of the just, but let us suppose each
    to be perfect in his own line of conduct. First of all then, the
    unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do. For a first-rate pilot
    or physician perceives the difference between what is practicable
    and what is impracticable in his art, and while he attempts the
    former, he lets the latter alone; and, moreover, should he happen to
    make a false step, he is able to recover himself. In the same way,
    if we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must
    suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust
    enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out,
    we must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of
    injustice to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore,
    grant to the perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most
    perfect injustice: and we must concede to him, that while committing
    the grossest acts of injustice, he has won himself the highest
    reputation for justice; and that should he make a false step, he is
    able to recover himself, partly by a talent for speaking with
    effect, in case he be called in question for any of his misdeeds,
    and partly because his courage and strength, and his command of
    friends and money, enable him to employ force with success, whenever
    force is required. Such being our unjust man, let us, in pursuance
    of the argument, place the just man by his side, a man of true
    simplicity and nobleness, resolved, as Æschylus says, not to seem,
    but to be, good. We must certainly take away the seeming; for if he
    be thought to be a just man, he will have honours and gifts on the
    strength of this reputation, so that it will be uncertain whether it
    is for justice’s sake, or for the sake of the gifts and honours,
    that he is what he is. Yes; we must strip him bare of everything but
    justice, and make his whole case the reverse of the former. Without
    being guilty of one unjust act, let him have the worst reputation
    for injustice, so that his virtue may be thoroughly tested, and
    shewn to be proof against infamy and all its consequences; and let
    him go on till the day of his death, steadfast in his justice, but
    with a lifelong reputation for injustice; in order that, having
    brought both the men to the utmost limits of justice and of
    injustice respectively, we may then give judgment as to which of the
    two is the happier.”

    “Good heavens! my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how vigorously you work,
    scouring the two characters clean for our judgment, like a pair of
    statues.”

    “I do it as well as I can,” he said. “And after describing the men
    as we have done, there will be no further difficulty, I imagine, in
    proceeding to sketch the kind of life which awaits them
    respectively. Let me therefore describe it. And if the description
    be somewhat coarse, do not regard it as mine, Socrates, but as
    coming from those who commend injustice above justice. They will say
    that in such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked,
    fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering
    every kind of torture, will be crucified; and thus learn that it is
    best to resolve, not to be, but to seem, just.”[138]

The picture of the just man here is surely a very remarkable one. It is
dramatically put into the mouth of Glaucon, and part of it is by him
attributed to those who commend injustice; but these are but literary
forms; the picture is Plato’s own. It is his ideal of the just man; and
the extraordinary thing is his belief, here stated so plainly, that a
man whose heart is perfectly set on righteousness may be so completely
misunderstood by those around him, as to be regarded by them as utterly
unjust, and may in consequence be subjected to the extremest torture and
the most shameful death.

No one can doubt that it was the death of his master that led Plato to
perceive the great truth to which he here gives such energetic
expression. The charges against Socrates were a complete inversion of
the truth: his reverence was called impiety; his brilliant work for the
character of the youth of his day brought him the charge of baneful
corruption. From his tragic end Plato learned that the good man who
brings new truth is very likely to be completely misunderstood and to be
classed with the worst wrong-doers.

Footnote 129:

  Zeller, _Socrates_, Chaps. I and II.

Footnote 130:

  Zeller, _Socrates_, Chaps. III to IX; Bury, _History of Greece_, II,
  140-146; Grote, _History of Greece_, Chap. LXVIII.

Footnote 131:

  Zeller, _Socrates_, Chap. X; Bury, _History of Greece_, II, 147.

Footnote 132:

  So called by Pericles, her greatest statesman. See _Thucydides_, II,
  41.

Footnote 133:

  See Milton, _Paradise Regained_, IV, 272-280.

Footnote 134:

  _Socrates_, Part III.

Footnote 135:

  Mahaffy, _Greek Literature_, II, 160-162; Ritchie, _Plato_, Chap. I;
  Mayor, _Ancient Philosophy_, 41 ff.

Footnote 136:

  For the Dialogues _see_ Ritchie’s _Plato_, Chap. II.

Footnote 137:

  On the _Republic_ see Mahaffy, _Greek Literature_, II, 195-201.

Footnote 138:

  Plato, _Rep._, II, 360 E-362 A, Davies and Vaughan’s translation.




                              CHAPTER III.
                        THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.


The history of Israel is unique in the annals of the nations. In size
scarcely worthy of regard, in politics only for one brief reign of any
serious account, with no special genius for art or war, for speculative
thinking or scientific research, failing to keep even their racial unity
in the day of their greatest strength, torn in pieces by every
conqueror, deported out of their own land, and even after their return
kept in subjection by other imperial races, finally stripped of their
temple and sacred city by the Romans, and shattered into fragments, this
feeble people has yet set its name high beside Greece and Rome, has
given the world the only book which all the world reads,[139] and the
religion which has produced Western civilization.

The one duty of which the best spirits in Israel were conscious
throughout the history of the people was faithfulness to Jehovah. Indeed
the whole consciousness of the race might be summed up in two phrases:
_Jehovah is the God of Israel_, and, _Israel is the people of Jehovah_.
War, government, philosophy, art might be for other peoples: Israel’s
one duty was to serve her God, religion the sole activity of her spirit.

The relation between Jehovah and Israel was a peculiarly tender
one;—“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt,”[140] says Jehovah by the mouth of one of His prophets. As
Israel was Jehovah’s son, he had to be taught, trained, disciplined. The
history of the people, then, is simply the record of Jehovah’s dealings
with them in this process of loving and patient training.

Israel’s education was chiefly in the hard school of experience, in
national disaster and disgrace, in national recovery and victory. But
not in events alone: Jehovah spoke His will out clearly through a series
of most remarkable men known as the PROPHETS. What is most noticeable in
these men is the directness and the certainty of the message they
brought from Jehovah to His people. Usually it was criticism and
condemnation, with a definite declaration of coming punishment; but now
and then it was comfort and consolation, with the promise of speedy help
and relief.

It would be most interesting to trace the history in detail and to watch
how the people were led step by step to fuller and clearer knowledge of
God, but we must not stay for that here. We need only say sufficient to
enable readers to understand the circumstances in which the great
prophecy which we wish to discuss came to be uttered.

The people were slaves in Egypt. They were brought out under Moses; and
in the peninsula of Sinai a Covenant was made between them and Jehovah,
which laid the foundation of their religion and their national life.
Joshua was their leader in the conquest of Palestine, an event which
probably took place in the thirteenth century B. C. During the first two
centuries of their residence in the land they had no settled form of
government, but acknowledged as their rulers from time to time certain
great personalities known as Judges. Towards the end of the eleventh
century the pressure of the Philistines led to the establishment of a
monarchy. Saul knit the people together; David built up a petty empire;
Solomon gave his attention to commerce and internal organization.

But after these three reigns the nation fell in two. From 937 B. C.
onward for two centuries, instead of one state there are two rival
kingdoms, the northern called Israel and the southern Judah. The great
events of these centuries occur in Israel. Through the prophets Elijah
and Elisha the people were taught that Jehovah would never consent to be
one among many gods: _They must worship Jehovah alone_. Later, Amos
prophesied that Jehovah would bring about the destruction of the kingdom
of Israel, because the people would not live righteously. They offered
God sacrifices, while He demanded righteous conduct between man and man.
But they could not believe that Jehovah would destroy His own chosen
people: “How can we believe that He will destroy the only people in all
the world that He has made Himself known to?” Swift comes the answer,
“You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I
will punish you for all your iniquities.”[141] Israel had had greater
privileges than any other people; therefore Israel had a deeper
responsibility, and would receive a severer punishment. In 722 B. C. the
Assyrians overthrew Israel, and carried away 27,290 of the leading
inhabitants and settled them in Mesopotamia and Media.[142] The prophecy
of Amos was thus literally fulfilled.

The kingdom of Judah, which was not involved in the fate of Israel,
stood for rather more than a century longer. Isaiah was the prophet of
Jehovah in Judah when Israel fell. He condemned his own people just as
Amos had condemned Israel, because they identified religion with ritual,
and would not give Jehovah what He wanted, namely, righteousness. The
state of the people was so bad that Isaiah declared that nothing could
cure them. Jehovah would intervene: the bulk of the people would be
destroyed, but _a righteous remnant would be saved_. Towards the end of
Isaiah’s life Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came, devastated the land of
Judah, took many of the cities, and demanded the surrender of the
capital, Jerusalem. Isaiah advised the king not to yield, and prophesied
that the Assyrian would not be able to touch the city. His prophecy was
fulfilled to the letter. The huge Assyrian army was suddenly annihilated
by some unknown cause, probably pestilence, and Sennacherib hastened
back to Assyria.[143]

A century later Judah was in a still worse condition: idolatry,
polytheism, immorality were eating out the vitals of the nation. In 604
B. C. Jeremiah prophesied that Jehovah would bring Nebuchadnezzar, king
of Babylon, into Syria, and that he would destroy Judah and all the
nations round about, that they would groan under the rule of Babylon for
seventy years, but that at the end of that period Jehovah would punish
the Babylonians for their iniquity, and would make their land desolate
forever.[144] But his countrymen would not listen. Jehovah had saved His
people from the Assyrian in the time of Isaiah: why should He allow the
Babylonian to touch them now? Yet in 585 B. C. Nebuchadnezzar took
Jerusalem, burned the city and the temple, and carried away the king and
all the leading families to Babylon.[145] Once more the word of Jehovah,
as spoken by His prophets, was literally fulfilled.

But what was to be the end?—Jehovah seemed to have utterly destroyed His
chosen people: what was His purpose? what good was to come out of it?

The people of the northern kingdom, carried away in 722 B. C., soon lost
their religion, and were in consequence speedily lost themselves among
the peoples of the East. Not so the captives of Judah: the training of
Isaiah and his disciples and of Jeremiah and his friends had taken fast
hold of their hearts, so that even in a foreign land, far away from home
and temple, they held by the religion of Jehovah. Nor is that all: they
began to take their religion seriously; they began to perceive that the
prophets were right in declaring that Jehovah was a very different God
from the gods of the nations around them, that He would not be satisfied
with sacrifice and song, but demanded _heart-worship and righteousness_.
But although they clung to their faith in Jehovah, they were naturally
greatly depressed by the seeming hopelessness of their captivity.[146]
To rebel against the Babylonians, and by the sword regain their freedom
and their land, was an utter impossibility: they were altogether
helpless under the omnipotent empire.

But about 550 B. C. Cyrus, an Elamite king, began a great career of
conquest. In 549 he overthrew the Cimmerians under their king Astyages,
and by 546 he was master of Persia. He then went further west to subdue
Asia Minor.[147]

It was at this juncture, according to all scholars, that a great
prophet, whose name is unknown, began to comfort and encourage the
Jewish exiles in Babylon. His prophecy is preserved for us in the latter
part of the book of Isaiah.[148] His message is that the sufferings of
the exiles are nearly at an end, that Cyrus is to capture Babylon and
give them leave to return to their native land.[149]

In 538 B. C. Cyrus marched into Babylonia, defeated the Babylonian army,
and seized the city, thus fulfilling in a very striking way the second
part of Jeremiah’s prophecy.[150] Soon after, the Judean captives
received permission to return to Palestine. They were also allowed to
carry with them the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away
from the temple in Jerusalem.[151] The prophecy of restoration was thus
triumphantly fulfilled. One company of exiles went at once, and others
followed them later.

The people of Jehovah in this way began life afresh after the great
national punishment of the Captivity. They had thoroughly learned one
lesson at least, namely, this, that _Jehovah spoke through His
prophets_. So in their new system, while they retained the old ritual of
the temple, they made careful provision for the preservation of the
writings of the prophets and for the instruction of the people in the
Mosaic Law.

We need trace the history no farther; for it was this post-exilic
Judaism, with its great care for the Scriptures, and its energetic
attempts to instil them into the minds of the people, that formed the
environment of Jesus and His work.

But we must now return to the great prophet who spoke consolation to the
exiles in Babylon, and study his ideas. His conception of God is very
lofty. He illustrates in many ways His holiness, His faithfulness, His
tender sympathy, His omnipotence, His absolute sway among nations, and
His power of foretelling future events by the mouth of His prophets. On
the other hand, the prophet’s conception of the duty and destiny of the
people of Jehovah is correspondingly high. Israel has been created and
chosen by Jehovah, and therefore is precious in His sight; but He did
not choose them out of favouritism, nor was it His purpose to heap
blessings on them merely for their pleasure and aggrandizement. Israel
is _the Servant of Jehovah_. The service they have to render is to
reveal God’s character and purposes to all the nations of the earth.
This is the end of their election and of their long training. But, as in
the past the nation has fallen far short of Jehovah’s ideal, so now in
Babylon the people as a whole is very far from fit for the work which
God has for them to do: “Who is blind but my servant? or deaf as my
messenger that I send?”[152]

Consequently there is a further choice within the chosen people. The use
of the title, the Servant of Jehovah, is narrowed. The prophet knows
that God’s ends will be worked out, that through Israel Jehovah’s name
will be carried to the ends of the earth; he also sees as clearly that
the nation as a nation is unfit for this lofty duty; so he recognises
that the Servant who shall do this work will be found within the people.
Whether he identified the Servant of Jehovah in this narrower sense with
the small group of really God-fearing men who formed the soul of Israel
in his own day, or whether he thought of an individual to be specially
prepared for the task by Jehovah, we do not know. Most probably this
point was not clear to the prophet himself.[153]

It is in four poems of peculiar dignity and surpassing spiritual
penetration that this narrower use of the title occurs. In the
first[154] of these Jehovah describes His Servant’s character and work;
in the second[155], the Servant tells how Jehovah prepared him for his
task; in the third,[156] we have a portrait of the Servant as a martyr;
while in the fourth[157], he is represented, though righteous himself,
as dying a shameful death as an atonement for the sins of the
unrighteous. It is to this fourth poem that we would direct the
attention of our readers.


              THE ATONING DEATH OF THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.



         _Jehovah._—


         Lo, My Servant shall deal wisely;
         He shall rise, be uplifted, and be exalted exceedingly.

         Even as many were amazed at him,—
         So marred from a man’s was his appearance,
         And his form from that of the sons of men!—
         So shall he startle many nations;
         Before him kings shall shut their mouths.
         For what had not been told them they shall see,
         And what they had not heard they shall consider.


         _Israel._—


         Who believed what was heard by us?
         And the arm of Jehovah, to whom was it revealed?

         He grew up like a sapling before us,
         And like a shoot out of parched ground.
         He had no form, nor majesty, that we should look upon him,
         Nor appearance, that we should desire him.

         He was despised and forsaken by men,
         A man of pains and familiar with sickness;
         And as one from whom men hide their face
         He was despised, and we held him of no account.


         Yet it was our sicknesses that he bore,
         And our pains that he carried;
         While we accounted him stricken,
         Smitten by God, and afflicted.

         But he was pierced because of our transgressions,
         Crushed because of our iniquities;
         Chastisement to secure our peace was laid upon him,
         And through his stripes healing came to us.

         We all like sheep had gone astray,
         We had turned each one to his own way;
         And Jehovah made to light on him
         The iniquity of us all.


         _The Prophet._—


         He was oppressed, yet he let himself be afflicted,
         And opened not his mouth,
         As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
         And as a sheep that is dumb before her shearers,
         And opened not his mouth.

         By a tyrannical judgment he was taken away;
         And, as for the men of his time, who considered,
         That he was cut off out of the land of the living,
         That for the transgression of my people he was stricken?

         And his grave was made with the wicked,
         And his tomb with the unrighteous,
         Although he had done no violence,
         And there was no deceit in his mouth.

         But it was Jehovah that willed to crush him,
         That laid on him sickness:
         If he should lay down his life as a guilt-offering,
         He would see a posterity, he would lengthen his days,
         And the will of Jehovah would prosper by his hand;
         After the travail of his soul he would see it,
         And would be satisfied with his knowledge.


         _Jehovah._—


         My Servant, the righteous one, shall make many righteous;
         For he shall bear their iniquities.

         Therefore I will give him a share with the many,
         And with the strong he shall divide the spoil;
         Inasmuch as he poured out his life-blood to death,
         And let himself be numbered with the transgressors;
         Yet it was the sin of the many he bore,
         And for the transgressors he interposed.

In this marvellous poem we have four successive vignettes of the
Servant. There first rises in the prophet’s mind a vision of the
awe-struck wonder with which the nations and their kings shall gaze on
the Servant of Jehovah, when after unequalled humiliation he shall be
uplifted in surpassing glory. The next picture takes us back to his life
of humiliation: he grows up with nothing in him to strike the eye or
attract the attention of men; nay, rather all turn their back on him as
worthless, contemptible, smitten with divine punishment. But along with
this sorrowful portrait there comes the passionate confession of the men
of Israel, that the Servant in all his sufferings had been bearing their
sins. The third picture shows us the suffering Servant in uncomplaining
meekness enduring a criminal’s death with all its shameful associations;
yet this death is explained as occurring in accordance with God’s will,
and as being a guilt-offering. The series ends in triumph: the righteous
Servant by bearing iniquity will make many righteous and will achieve
the glory and the reward of the conqueror.

In this prophecy the remarkable thing is that the sufferings and death
of the Servant are construed throughout, not as a martyrdom, but as much
more. In his death he lays down his life as a guilt-offering; and all
his sufferings, inclusive of his death, are, from Jehovah’s point of
view, chastisement laid on him on account of the sins of others, from
the Servant’s point of view, a voluntary bearing of their iniquities.
His willingness to endure and his meekness under oppression are very
vividly put before us; but God’s purpose to crush him is insisted on
with equal emphasis. The awful tragedy happens within Israel; but after
it is consummated, the Servant, once so despised, neglected and
oppressed, startles the nations, and kings in amazement shut their
mouths in his presence. The purpose of the dread sacrifice is TO BRING
MEN TO RIGHTEOUSNESS; and that end, we are told, will be widely
accomplished.

Whence did the prophet draw the ideas of his prophecy? If any piece of
literature bears signs of inspiration, this does; but the experience
which enabled him to become the vehicle of inspiration in this
particular case may also be conjectured. The sufferings, which many of
the prophets, and especially Jeremiah, had endured at the hands of their
fellow-countrymen, had made a profound impression upon the best minds in
Israel; and the affliction of the exiles in Babylon was manifestly not
merely penal, but also purificatory.

Footnote 139:

  The Bible, complete or in part, is printed and published to-day in 454
  languages and dialects. The number of Bibles, New Testaments and
  portions sold by the various Bible Societies of Europe and America, in
  lands outside Europe, amounted in 1901 to 3,286,834. (_Centennial
  Survey of Foreign Missions_ by the Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D.) These
  figures do not include the Bibles sold by the ordinary publishers of
  Christian countries, nor the Bibles sold in Europe by Bible Societies.
  If it were possible to gather all the statistics, we may be certain
  the figures would amount up to five or six millions. What a book that
  must be, which circulates in 454 languages, and is sold at the rate of
  5,000,000 copies per annum!

Footnote 140:

  _Hosea_, 11, 1.

Footnote 141:

  _Amos_, 3, 2.

Footnote 142:

  2 _Kings_, 17, 1-23; the figures are from an inscription of Sargon,
  the victorious Assyrian King: see _Authority and Archæology_, 101.

Footnote 143:

  2 _Kings_, 19, 35-36; Wellhausen, _Israel and Judah_, Chap. VII;
  _Authority and Archæology_, 105-108.

Footnote 144:

  _Jeremiah_, 25, 1-14.

Footnote 145:

  2 _Kings_, 25, 1-22.

Footnote 146:

  _Psalm_ 137.

Footnote 147:

  The details have now been read in Cyrus’s own inscriptions: Hastings,
  _Dictionary of the Bible_, I, 541.

Footnote 148:

  From Chap. 40 onwards. _See_ Driver, _Introduction_, 217.

Footnote 149:

  _Isaiah_, 40, 1-10; 44, 24-28.

Footnote 150:

  _Authority and Archaeology_, 123-126.

Footnote 151:

  _Ezra_, Chap. 1.

Footnote 152:

  _Isaiah_, 42, 19.

Footnote 153:

  For the ideas of this great prophet, see _the Cambridge Bible for
  Schools, Isaiah_, Vol. II, pp. XXII-XXXIX.

Footnote 154:

  _Isaiah_, 42, 1-4.

Footnote 155:

  _Isaiah_, 49, 1-6.

Footnote 156:

  _Isaiah_, 50, 4-9.

Footnote 157:

  _Isaiah_, 52, 13-53, 12.




                              CHAPTER IV.
                 VIRGIL’S NEW AGE OF JUSTICE AND PEACE.


The slow but steady rise of an obscure inland Italian town, first to the
rule of all Italy, and finally to imperial sway over the whole
Mediterranean world, is as full of problems for the intellect as of
fascination for the imagination. Whence the extraordinary vigour and
practical genius of this city? What gave it so much capacity in
comparison with any other Italian town? Does the secret lie in the Roman
character, the Roman intellect, or in the constitution of the republican
city itself? But other questions still more serious press for answers:
How did the Roman government affect the subject provinces? How did it
react upon the Roman character and upon the life of the capital? Could a
single city furnish men of character and ability in sufficient numbers
for such a prodigious task?

The answer to these grave questions must be sought in the history of the
last century of the existence of the republic. From about 145 B. C. to
about 48 B. C. Rome was never at rest: violent political strife,
faction, proscriptions and civil wars eclipse everything else in the
internal history of the imperial city during these years. The old state
machinery was getting worn out; the old families, corrupted by the
immeasurable success of the Rome which was their making, were grinding
the provinces by their cruelty and greed, and would not budge an inch
from their privileges, nor indeed lift a finger, to save Rome and Italy
from the moral and economic ruin with which they were threatened. The
wrongs of the slave, the Italian and the provincial cried aloud for
redress; scarcely less urgent was the need for the introduction of a
great deal of fresh blood into the governing classes; but the latter
were bitterly hostile to every change. Hence the violent struggles
throughout the century between the Government and the other classes. The
empire had proved too much for the old Roman character.[158] The only
force that remained really efficient was the army.

Who shall describe the ruin, bloodshed, misery, desolation, wrought by
these years? The national character suffered a frightful fall also:
corruption in public, immorality in private, became all but universal.
The weariness and the hopelessness generated by the seemingly unending
strife made men forget their old passion for freedom and sigh even for
tyranny, if only it would bring peace.

Relief came when Julius Cæsar crushed Pompey at Pharsalus in B. C. 48.
There was fighting here and there for two years more, but it was of
little consequence. Pharsalus made Cæsar the monarch of Rome. He lived
barely four years after his victory; for the daggers of the conspirators
found his heart on the 15th of March, 44 B. C.; yet by a series of
masterly administrative and legislative acts he laid in great broad
lines the foundation of the new empire and set in motion the healthy
forces that were needed for the regeneration of Rome and Italy. His work
is Titanic both in conception and execution. Seldom has such a great man
executed such a mighty task.

But his murder loosed all the old fiends again, and they worked wilder
woe than ever. For now the whole gigantic empire was drawn into the
whirlpool, and the provinces were only a little less miserable than
Italy. During Cæsar’s own struggle his mighty genius and his magnanimity
had thrown a glory upon the murky clouds of the storm; but now that the
sun was set, black darkness settled over the unhappy empire.[159]

There was a pause in the strife, when, in B. C. 40, a treaty was drawn
up between Octavian and Antony at Brundisium and confirmed by the
marriage of Antony to the sister of Octavian. Men hoped that the end had
come at last and that the world would enjoy a lasting peace.

It was during this bright moment that Virgil, who later was to write the
_Aeneid_, and so earn for himself a very great name in European
literature, composed a short poem, which finds a place among his
Pastorals, and is named _Pollio_. Here is a translation of lines four to
twenty-five, which will be found quite sufficient to bring the main
ideas of the poem before us:—

    “The last epoch of the Sybil’s prophecy has come at length; the
    great series of the ages is being born anew; at length the virgin,
    Justice, is returning, returning too the reign of Saturn; at length
    a new race of men is being sent down from heaven high. Do thou,
    Lucina, but smile thy chaste smile upon a boy with whose coming at
    last ceases the iron race and the golden springs up throughout the
    world; do so, Lucina: it is thine own Apollo that now reigns. It is
    in thy consulship, Pollio, that this glorious age will come in, and
    the months of the great year will begin their march. Under thy
    leadership all traces that remain of Roman crime in civil strife
    shall pass away, and passing, free the lands from constant fear.

    “He shall receive the life of the gods, and shall behold gods and
    heroes mingling together; and himself shall be beheld by them; and
    with his father’s virtues he shall rule the world at peace.

    “Unasked the earth shall shower upon thee, sweet boy, thy first baby
    gifts, the gadding ivy with the fox-glove, and lily-bean entwined
    with smiling bear’s-foot. The goats shall bring home uncalled their
    milk-filled udders; the harts shall no longer fear great lions; and
    flowers shall spring to caress thee where’er thou liest down. The
    asp shall perish; the treacherous, poison herb shall perish too; and
    everywhere shall spring Assyrian balm.”[160]

The Greeks and Romans had a great system of cycles and ages, not unlike
the Hindu Kalpas and Manvantaras. One cycle follows another, the
beginning of each being marked by the sun, moon and stars all occupying
their original positions. The Roman phrase for cycle is “great year.”
Each great year is subdivided into “months,” that is ages. The first age
of each great year is the golden, when Saturn reigns, and a divine race
of men occupies the earth; the last is the iron age, when Apollo reigns,
and men are sinful.

Virgil declares, then, that the end of the old cycle has come, and that
the new cycle is about to begin with all the splendour of the golden
age. Saturn will reign; Justice and Peace will return to the earth; a
god-like race of men will spring up all over the world; nature will be
redeemed; and primitive simplicity and innocence will reappear. Idyllic
scenes of peace and plenty—trade and manufacture all forgotten—give the
poem a wonderful charm.

The most outstanding idea of the prophecy, however, is that the new age
opens with the birth of a boy, who is to receive special divine help,
and is to be at once the pattern and the prince of the new time. Who the
boy was that Virgil had in mind, the critics have not been able to
decide.[161] Clearly he was a son born in 40 B. C. to one of the leading
Romans; but we can say no more. Evidently Virgil believed that the civil
wars were over, that a new era of peace had begun, and that this boy
might be looked forward to as the ruler who should effectively transform
the empire, revive primitive virtue and simplicity, and banish the foul
demon war forever.

His prediction was not verified: no boy born in 40 B. C. became a
world-ruler and regenerator; and, besides, nine long years of doubt and
fear, horror and blood, had to be endured, before Octavian became, by
the battle of Actium, the acknowledged master of the Roman world; and,
while he completed the task of Cæsar, and succeeded in doing the work of
a great ruler in a marvellous fashion, no one would dream of saying that
he fulfilled the ideal of this poem.

It is an unfulfilled prophecy; yet it is not without interest and value
for men to-day. First of all it is of interest as a revelation of the
ideas and the hopes that filled men’s minds in Virgil’s time. “The
anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the
world; and this anticipation—the state of men’s minds at and subsequent
to the time when this poem was written—probably contributed to the
acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited
the world.”[162] But it is of still greater interest as a revelation of
what Virgil himself thought, Virgil, who was perhaps the purest and most
interesting personality in the Græco-Roman world then. Men generally
were looking for a regeneration of the world; we have here Virgil’s own
thoughts on the great subject. He shared with others the idea that the
world was on the verge of the dawning of a new day, a day of renewed
justice and peace; but he had an idea of his own, that of a great
personality, a man of high moral character, specially endowed by the
gods for his great task as leader and ruler of the new time. Scarcely
less prominent is his idea of the nobler race of men that shall spring
up in the new era. It is no picture merely of good government such as
Augustus gave the world that we have here; but a prophecy of the moral
regeneration of mankind under the influence of a divinely prepared
leader.

Footnote 158:

  Froude, _Cæsar_, 12-19.

Footnote 159:

  For the whole picture _see_ Mommsen, especially the very last page of
  his history.

Footnote 160:

  Virgil, _Eclogues_, IV, 4-25.

Footnote 161:

  Sellar, _Virgil_, 146; Simcox, _Latin Literature_, Vol. I, 257.

Footnote 162:

  Sellar, _Virgil_, 145. _Cf._ Boissier, _La Religion Romaine_.




                               CHAPTER V.
                           JESUS OF NAZARETH.


I. The difference between ancient and modern times in Europe is vital.
Human society is never stagnant; development in one direction or another
is constant; so that in the course of a few centuries changes, both
numerous and noticeable, take place everywhere. Thus the Europe of the
middle ages differs very markedly from the Europe of to-day. Yet the one
is the direct outcome of the other. On the other hand, the civilizations
of Greece and Rome, although we owe them an incalculable debt, are
marked off from modern civilization by differences which can only be
spoken of as essential. For it is not any single element that has been
added externally to ancient life so as to produce modern society; it is
rather a subtle spirit, which has modified all thinking, altered the
values of things, produced organic changes in government and society,
and recreated art and literature. The unexampled development of science
and invention, and the extraordinary activity and vigour of European
commerce and arms, which are often spoken of as the chief
characteristics of modern civilization, are rather to be regarded as
indications of unparalleled vitality and efficiency in the social
organism than as essential products of its spirit. Science and invention
flourished among the Greeks; the Roman empire was as vigorous as any
modern state in matters of war. These things prove the healthy vitality
of the society of the West; its essential spirit is to be sought
elsewhere.

A comparison of ancient and modern life reveals differences at once very
numerous and greatly significant. The economics of Europe have been
revolutionized; for the labour, the manufacture and the commerce of
ancient times rested on a basis of slavery.[163] Government has been
turned upside down; for the ruling principle of ancient politics was
hereditary and exclusive citizenship in a city-state;[164] while modern
politics have been created by the great principles of the equality of
men irrespective of birth or station and the indefeasible sovereignty of
the people.[165] In ancient society human life as such had no value:
infanticide was practised openly by all as a right and proper thing
necessary for the well-being of the family and the state;[166] prisoners
taken in war, if not killed, were made slaves, and as slaves their lives
and persons were absolutely at the mercy of their masters;[167] aliens
had a place in the state only on sufferance: society stood in no
relation to them and had no duties towards them.[168] The social
organism of modern times, on the other hand, is a new creation, produced
by the conception of the inherent sanctity of human life and the divine
dignity of the human personality.[169] Modern education is in form and
method Greek; but the results it produces are altogether new; first,
because it carries the modern spirit within the ancient forms, and
secondly, because modern men regard education as part of the birthright
of every human being. Moral ideals show very important differences,
chiefly in the direction of the elevation of humility, meekness,
sympathy, forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary advance
in the conception of the right of individual freedom. In ancient times
the individual citizen had no rights as against the State;[170] now we
demand not only freedom in matters of profession and business, as
against caste restrictions, but intellectual, moral and religious
liberty. The differences between ancient and modern religion are very
extraordinary in many ways. For the present we need only note the one
far-reaching distinction, that to the ancients religion was a _political
duty_, which the citizen was bound to fulfil, and a _civic privilege_,
which only those in whose veins ran the sacred blood of the community
could share;[171] while modern religion is the loftiest activity of the
human spirit, as far transcending the narrow limits of the State as it
does the petty distinctions of race and blood. The differences, then,
between ancient and modern life are not accidental but essential.

A second thing to be noticed is the altogether unexampled vitality and
pervasiveness of modern civilization. During the nineteenth century
alone, while the population of the rest of the world remained nearly
stationary, the actual numbers of the European peoples rose from
170,000,000 to 500,000,000.[172] Here is physical life on a gigantic
scale. Let readers think, next, of the extraordinary advances made
during the nineteenth century in every province of natural science, from
mathematics and physics up through the biological sciences to psychology
and the science of religion, the swift upward progress made in literary,
historical and philosophical method, and the innumerable inventions that
have been produced for facilitating every form of human activity. Are
not these facts evidence of an amazing store of intellectual vitality in
the society of the West? Think also of the buoyancy, the hope, the
youthful delight in action, the glance into the future, which
characterize the progressive peoples of Europe and America.
Colonization, on the other hand, exploration, missions, world-wide
commerce, domination over other races, whether you call them bad or
good, are incontestable proofs of energy, physical, moral and
intellectual. Further, these forms of vital force are clearly of the
greatest practical importance in the world. In the process of natural
selection which, whether we like it or not, is ceaselessly being carried
on among the races of mankind, the possession of such energy is one of
the crucial factors in the struggle. But this civilization has also an
altogether unique power of entering into other civilizations and working
revolutionary changes there: its pervasiveness is almost as remarkable
as its vitality. We need only point to India and Japan to-day for proof
of this.

Western civilization, then, is a thing by itself, not more clearly
distinguished from ancient life than from the civilizations that have
arisen in other parts of the world. What is it that has made the
difference? What subtle spirit is it that appears in every aspect of the
civilization, that assumes so many forms, and generates such
transcending energies?

There can be but one answer: it is Christianity. In every community
religion is the life principle, the central fire, which fills the whole
with living force, and communicates its own spirit to every cell of the
organism.[173] That is a law which is becoming ever more apparent in all
anthropological, sociological and religious science. From this general
law we might conclude in this particular case, that it is the religion
that gives the civilization its character. But we need not appeal to
general principles; history tells us in the clearest tones that the
peculiarities which distinguish Western civilization from every other
spring directly or indirectly from the Christian faith.

Now one way of classifying religions is to divide them into two groups,
spontaneous and founded. The former are results of the united
unconscious action of a tribe or people: for example, the religions of
Greece and Rome. The latter spring from some particular man, and are
inseparably connected with his life: for example, Buddhism, Christianity
and Mohammedanism.

That Christianity is a founded religion, and that it springs from
Christ, admits of no question. Tacitus, the Roman historian, in speaking
of the great fire at Rome in 64 A. D., which devastated ten of the
fourteen districts into which the Imperial city was divided, says that
the people got their heads filled with the suspicion, that the Emperor
himself (Nero was then on the throne) had used his agents to set the
city on fire. He then continues:—

    “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and
    inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their
    abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom
    the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the
    reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius
    Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the
    moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the
    evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from
    every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
    Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty;
    then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted,
    not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against
    mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered
    with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished; or
    were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to
    serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

    “Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a
    show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of
    a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who
    deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of
    compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but
    to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.”[174]

Christ, then, is a historical person. He was a Jew; He founded
Christianity; and He was executed by Pontius Pilatus during his
procuratorship of Judæa, _i.e._, between 27 and 37 A. D.[175] Other
facts enable scholars to fix the date of His death within narrower
limits: a few adopt 30 A. D., but by far the greatest number prefer 29
A. D.;[176] and that date we adopt here.

Here, then, are the facts: Christ was put to death by the Roman Governor
of Judæa in 29 A. D., but this did not extinguish Christianity; for it
spread not only in Judæa but beyond; so much so, that in 64 A. D. “an
immense multitude” of Christians were found in Rome, and were for their
faith put to death with horrible barbarities.

Such is the first chapter of the history of Christianity in Europe. From
this point onwards the facts are well known. The furious hostility
visible here in the spirit of the Roman Empire against the Christian
faith ended in the victory of the latter, in its gradual acceptance by
the races of Europe, and the continuously increasing infiltration of
Christian ideas into the minds of the people. The process is far from
complete; for the contrast between the old spirit and the new is so
extreme that only long ages of discipline and the slow processes of
evolution will suffice to work the transformation. We have seen how
essentially different the spirit in our modern life is from the spirit
of Græco-Roman life: how much greater would be the contrast, if one were
to oppose the pure spirit of Christ to the spirit of Paganism! When men
accept Christ, they are conscious of the authority of His perfect
character and His heavenly life, and they know that He claims their
complete submission to Him; but they have no idea how far-reaching this
claim is. Christ demands that not only every part of the individual’s
life—thoughts, feelings, words, deeds—but every aspect of social and
political life as well should be made subject to His law of love. This
is easily stated: how hard is it to work it out, except in a long series
of generations!

But imperfect as has been the perception of Christ’s aims, and still
more imperfect the execution of these by the peoples of Europe, yet the
results of even their very partial submission to them have been, as we
have seen, momentous in the highest degree. Christ has made modern
Europe.

Now we found from our study of Virgil’s prophecy that he believed that a
new age was just about to open. Like other thinking men of his day, he
felt that the civilization under which he lived was played out, that new
life was needed, new morals and a fresh organization of society. He
believed that in the new age the leader and king would be a great Roman,
and that under him the world would be transformed.

Further, it is sufficiently striking that, while his prophecy received
no literal fulfilment, yet the new age did actually begin shortly after
the time when he wrote, an age which has produced a new race of men, new
moral ideas and an altogether fresh organization of society, and
vitality and virility, besides, such as Virgil never dreamed of. He
spoke of a great leader favoured of the gods, a noble Roman. The new age
did come in under the guidance of a new leader, but he was no
aristocratic Roman, but a Jew, and a man of the people, Jesus of
Nazareth.

                  *       *       *       *       *

II. Christ’s name and life are well-known outside Christendom. He is
spoken of in very high terms in the book which all Mohammedans revere;
and contact with the West has brought a certain amount of knowledge
about him to the peoples of India, China and Japan. Now the most
striking fact in this connection is this, that while most of these
Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians condemn Christians
violently, and many write against Christianity, _they one and all speak
with the highest praise of the character of Christ_. The same is true of
sceptics and agnostics in Christian lands. One might compile a most
fascinating volume consisting merely of extracts from non-Christian
writers, in which Christ is spoken of as the best of men, as the ideal
man, as the man whom all men should not only admire, but imitate.

Now we have in this a most remarkable fact. There is no other character
in history that is so universally revered. There is no other man whom
all men join in praising with so much heartiness. Charles Lamb speaks
for the human race when he says: “If Shakespeare were to enter this
room, we should all spring to our feet; if Christ were to enter, we
should all fall on our knees.”

But HE WAS CRUCIFIED. This, the purest and noblest of men, was subjected
to the most shameful form of death possible. Nor was there only the bare
execution: every circumstance that could make death bitter to the noble
human spirit was added. He was betrayed by one of His own chosen Twelve;
the remaining eleven deserted Him; one plucked up heart and followed at
a distance, but only to deny him. Indeed the universal breakdown of
human character around Him is one of the saddest things in history. The
Jewish priests and scribes, the common people, the Roman Governor and
the common soldiers, all reveal their worst passions in the presence of
Christ, while He stands amongst them in all the silent majesty of
innocence.[177]

We here quote three short paragraphs from St. Matthew’s Gospel.[178] The
first describes what took place after the members of the Jewish
Sanhedrin had decided that Jesus deserved to be put to death:—

    “Then did they spit in His face, and buffet Him; and some smote Him
    with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, Thou
    Christ: who is he that struck Thee?”[179]

Then those model judges carried their prisoner before Pontius Pilate,
the Roman Governor, and after much persuasion got him to condemn Jesus
to death, when the following scenes took place:—

    “Then the soldiers of the Governor took Jesus into the palace, and
    gathered unto Him the whole band. And they stripped Him, and put on
    Him a scarlet robe. And they plaited a crown of thorns and put it
    upon His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they kneeled down
    before Him, and mocked Him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And
    they spat upon Him, and took the reed and smote Him on the head. And
    when they had mocked Him, they took off from Him the robe, and put
    on Him His garments and led Him away to crucify Him.”[180]

    “And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name;
    him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear His cross.
    And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to
    say, The place of a skull, they gave Him wine to drink mingled with
    gall: and when He had tasted it, He would not drink. And when they
    had crucified Him, they parted His garments among them, casting
    lots: and they sat and watched Him there. And they set up over His
    head His accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
    Then are there crucified with Him two robbers, one on the right
    hand, and one on the left. And they that passed by railed on Him,
    wagging their heads, and saying, ‘Thou that destroyest the temple
    and buildest it in three days, save Thyself: if Thou art the Son of
    God, come down from the cross.’ In like manner also the chief
    priests mocking Him with the scribes and elders said, ‘He saved
    others: Himself He cannot save. He is the King of Israel; let Him
    now come down from the cross, and we will believe on Him. He
    trusteth on God; let Him deliver Him now, if He desireth Him: for He
    said, I am the Son of God.’ And the robbers also that were crucified
    with Him cast upon Him the same reproach.”[181]

How was it that of all men Jesus should be the man subjected to all
this? How can we reconcile His character and His destiny?

Let us recollect what Plato had written 400 years earlier:—

    “The just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes
    burned out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will
    be crucified.”

Now we do not insist on the correspondence in detail between the words
of Plato and the death of Christ, although that, while not complete, is
sufficiently remarkable; but we wish to emphasize, with all possible
force, this most extraordinary fact, that Plato foresaw that a man of
the character of Jesus would suffer as He did.

How are we to explain the fact? What is the reason why the men of
Christ’s day treated this most humane of men with such barbarous
inhumanity? The answer is that it was inevitable. Jesus is the
revelation of the uttermost holiness of God, and _His attempt to lay
that standard upon the human spirit_[182] roused to its utmost fury
against Him all the sinfulness of our common human nature. It is the
same contest of which we are each conscious in our daily life between
inclination and conscience; only, in the case of Jesus, it seems as if
all the little battles of every individual life had met in one gigantic
struggle between sinful human nature and its Lord. And the same struggle
necessarily continues wherever Christianity goes. The persecutions of
the Roman Empire are merely the external signs of the convulsive efforts
of the spirit of Paganism to resist the march of the Spirit of God. In
every land Christ is met by the same opposition. Everywhere selfishness,
self-interest and passion dissuade men from following the Man of
Sorrows; and the struggle is there, terrible in its reality and
intensity, even if it never break out into open persecution. But, in
surveying these surging battles, the careful observer is much struck
with this fact, that, while human passions inevitably fight against
Christ, yet He has in Conscience an ally, which neither by bribes nor by
bullying can be made to desert Him. He is the objective conscience of
the human race. He is Plato’s just man.

                  *       *       *       *       *

III. Let us now try to realize what kind of a being the founder of
Christianity was. Our chief sources of information are the Gospels; for
from the other books of the New Testament and from outside literature we
learn only scattered facts about His life on earth. We shall not appeal
to the fourth Gospel, for there are still numerous questions with regard
to it unsettled, but shall confine ourselves to Matthew, Mark and Luke,
books recognized on all hands as of high historical value, and as having
been written between 65 and 95 A.D.[183] Anyone may very speedily
convince himself of the splendid historical reliability of these simple
narratives. From Josephus and other Jewish writers of the first and
second centuries, and from casual remarks in Greek and Roman books, we
are able to learn what the life of these days was like;[184] but nowhere
do we get such vivid, detailed, realistic pictures as in the Gospels.
“They are full of feeling for the time; they understand its men,
schools, classes, parties; they know the thoughts that are in the air,
the rumours that run along the street; they are familiar with the
catchwords and phrases of the period, its conventions, questions, modes
of discussion and style of argument. And all is presented with the
utmost realism, so grouped round the central figure as to form a perfect
historical picture, He and His setting being so built together as to
constitute a single organic whole.”[185]

How then does Christ appear in them?—His name was Jesus;[186] Christ is
a title springing from his teaching, as we shall see. He lived in the
small town of Nazareth, in the district of Galilee[187] in Palestine,
and worked as a carpenter there.[188] At length, in 26 A.D., He gave up
carpentry and began His public career as a preacher.[189] The picture
given of Him in the Gospels is a most attractive one. Wherever He goes,
the sick, the suffering, the distressed crowd around Him. Blind beggars,
outcast lepers, hopeless paralytics, even uncontrollable lunatics,
receive help from His healing power. He feeds the hungry, breathes hope
into the downcast, lifts up the enfeebled patient, helps the helpless.
But while every form of suffering and sorrow appeals to His compassion,
His heart is set on winning the souls of men. So we find Him preaching
in the synagogue and by the sea, on the mountain-side and in the busy
street, now stirring vast crowds, now dealing with an individual, and
again pouring His rich teaching into the ears of the chosen Twelve. No
man ever had such power of convincing men of sin and leading them to
repentance: the simple fisherman,[190] the fallen woman,[191] the
wealthy custom-house officer[192] and the dying robber,[193] all felt
condemned in His presence, and through Him entered into the new life.

The character revealed in His words and deeds is beautiful beyond
comparison. The most outstanding feature of it is His love for God and
the perfect and unbroken serenity of His intercourse with Him. Love for
man also shines out everywhere. But the most extraordinary point is
this, that He in whom the moral ideal was so lofty, so deep and so
broad, He who was so keenly conscious of sin in others, and had such
power to make them feel it, betrays absolutely no consciousness of sin
Himself, never asks for pardon, and never speaks of having repented, or
of having passed through any crisis of the nature of conversion.[194] On
the other hand the perfect balance of His character is almost as
marvellous as His sinlessness: judicial severity controlled by perfect
love; supreme authority that is also supreme gentleness; strength filled
with tenderness; regal dignity shown in acts of lowliest service;
holiness that led Him among the unholy;(sublimest self-consciousness,
never leading to anything but self-effacement and self-sacrifice.) And
yet again, is there anything about Him so wonderful as His power of
winning human love? The Gospels are full of instances of it, and to-day
how many millions of men, women and children would count it a supreme
joy to die for His sake!

His teaching is a perfectly articulated and unified whole, as may be
seen from the scientific studies of it that have been published during
the last twenty years.[195] But we must not attempt to deal with that
fascinating subject here, except in so far as the whole is implied in
what He says about Himself. For it is only that part of it, namely, His
account of Himself and His mission, that we propose to touch on.

We shall understand it best, if we begin with what happened at His
crucifixion; for it was only at the end of His life that He made
perfectly clear to the whole world what His claims were. People often
wondered whether He were not THE CHRIST, _i.e._, _The Messiah_, the
Anointed One, the great national deliverer whom the Jews were so
earnestly expecting and praying for;[196] but during the three years of
His public life He seldom openly made the claim.[197] When, however, He
went to Jerusalem for the last time, He made a royal entry into the
sacred city,[198] cleansed the Temple from the desecration of its
cattle-market,[199] and began to teach in the Temple courts,[200] thus
by both word and act publicly claiming recognition as the Christ.

The Jewish leaders had been often bitterly incensed by His teaching and
His actions before. His bold seizure of authority now decided them: they
resolved on His death.[201] He was apprehended[202] and brought before
the Sanhedrin,[203] _i.e._, the High Court of Judæa. Evidence was led
against Him, but it proved very unsubstantial;[204] so the High Priest,
the president of the court, formally asked Him, “Art thou the Christ,
the Son of God?” and He answered in the affirmative.[205] Since they did
not believe His claim, they could only come to the conclusion that He
was an irreligious impostor, impiously arrogating divine authority to
Himself. Consequently they declared that He ought to be put to death for
blasphemy against God.[206]

But the Sanhedrin could not put anyone to death; the sanction of the
Roman Governor was necessary.[207] He was therefore dragged before
Pilate. Here they did not charge Him with blasphemy, but with rebellion
against the Roman Emperor. ‘The King of the Jews’ was a synonym for ‘the
Christ’; so they argued that Jesus, in claiming to be the Christ,
claimed the sovereignty of the Jews, and was therefore guilty of
rebellion against Tiberius.[208] Pilate knew perfectly well that the
Jewish leaders were jealous of Jesus, and that the charge was a mere
pretence;[209] his Roman sense of justice revolted against the execution
of an innocent man; and he wished to save Him; but they played upon his
fears, and finally succeeded in wringing a condemnation from him.[210]
It was because the Roman soldiers were struck with the extreme absurdity
of the idea of Jesus being a rival of Tiberius, that they got up their
pitiable comedy of a court, and did Him mock homage as King of the Jews.

So He was led away to Calvary and crucified, and above His head on the
cross was written, in three languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin), the
charge against Him,—

    JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Thus Jesus took good care that there should be no doubt as to what He
claimed to be: He did not write a book, nor cut an inscription on a
rock, _but He let Himself be crucified_, that all men to the end of time
might know that He claimed to be the Christ.[211]

                  *       *       *       *       *

Now let us see what He meant when He called Himself the Christ. To get
to understand this fully would be to learn the complete meaning of His
teaching; for it is such a perfect organism that every member of it is
closely related to every other member; yet we may gain sufficient
insight for our purpose from a broad survey.

The subject of the whole teaching of Jesus was _the Kingdom of God_. He
held that God had been working from the very beginning for the winning
of man to Himself, and that especially among His own people Israel He
had shown His hand. They had not only come to know Him as the God of
righteousness whose law was holiness; they had enjoyed His love; they
had experienced His mercy and His power to redeem. But with the coming
of Jesus Himself a new era of the world had opened:[212] God was now
drawing near to all men, in a new relationship of love and mercy, with
the purpose of saving them.[213] This was the coming of the Kingdom of
God.[214] The history of Israel had been a long discipline in
preparation for this.[215] On the ground cleared in Israel, and on the
basis of the revelation already made to them, God would now reveal
Himself to all men. The destiny of Israel—“I will give thee for a light
to the Gentiles”[216]—would now be fulfilled.[217]

God, then, was about to enter into a new relationship with the whole
human race. That new relationship would be, like the old one with
Israel, characterized not only by His righteousness, but by His
redeeming love. His eternal purpose, which had been in contemplation all
through the centuries of Israel’s training, would now be unfolded. The
childhood of the world was over: its first simple lessons had been
learned; the real business of Time could now be begun. The partial
unveiling of God’s face which it had been Israel’s privilege to behold
would now become a full revelation in the sight of the nations. The King
of Israel would be seen to be the Father of men. Further, as Israel had
learned her lessons through Jehovah’s redemptive acts at the Red Sea, on
Zion, and in Babylon, so mankind would learn the Father’s love through
the great redemptive acts involved in the coming of the Kingdom.

The chief conviction that Jesus had about Himself was that _in and
through and by Him the Kingdom of God was coming_: this it was that
constituted Him THE CHRIST. His self-consciousness is the most
marvellous phenomenon within the compass of history; there is nothing
else comparable with it. The primary element in it seems to have been
the knowledge that He was the true man, man as God wishes Him to be,
faultless both morally and religiously.[218] Closely connected with this
is another element, quite as unparalleled in human experience, a feeling
of close kinship to all men, a consciousness of solidarity with the
whole race and of personal connection and sympathy with every
individual.[219] These two elements of His nature—His perfection as man,
and His relationship to the race as a whole—He summed up in the phrase
which He used so often to describe Himself, THE SON OF MAN.[220]
Correspondent to this double relationship to man stands a double
relationship to God: first, He stands in the closest personal kinship to
God—the Son with the Father—; so that He alone can reveal God, and God
alone can reveal Him;[221] and secondly, He is God’s representative to
the human race.[222] This dual relation to God He expressed by calling
Himself THE SON OF GOD.[223]

The life of a being of this order, standing in great, pregnant relations
to God on the one hand and to the human family on the other, would
necessarily be of transcendent significance. So we find that He regarded
His own words and acts and all the great experiences of His life as of
supreme importance in the history of the world:[224] His coming opens a
new era;[225] His public life is a wedding feast in the otherwise grey
experience of men;[226] His teaching is the final revelation of
God;[227] His acts are glimpses of the divine activity;[228] His death,
which to the casual observer is but a coarse judicial murder, is the
solemn sacrifice that ratifies the establishment of the new relationship
between God and man.[229]

Since such were the chief convictions Jesus held about Himself and His
mission, _authority_ was naturally the chief note of His teaching. His
hearers marked that characteristic at the very outset;[230] and a modern
student cannot fail to be impressed with it as he reads the Gospels. He
states quite frankly that He has come to fulfil the law and the
prophets;[231] He sets up His own “I say unto you” not only against the
Jewish traditions,[232] but against the definite provisions of the
Mosaic law;[233] and over and over again He demands from men such love,
faith, submission, obedience, as can be rightly given only to a Divine
Master.[234]

In Jesus of Nazareth, then, we have a historical person, whose time and
environment are well known to us, and whose teaching and life also stand
out clear and unmistakable; and the most prominent thing about Him is
this, that, by word and deed, and finally by His crucifixion, He made it
clear to all men that He claimed to be both Son of Man and Son of God.

Here, then, we have the secret of that similarity which we are all so
clearly conscious of, when we read a Gospel alongside of the _Gītā_. In
the Gospels we have in historical form the authoritative utterances of
the historical Jesus; in the _Gītā_ we have the imaginations of a
poet-philosopher who was clear sighted enough to realize that an
incarnate god would have many things to say about himself, and that his
teaching would bear the note of authority. When, however, we look for
exact parallels between the two, they are hard to find: the books are so
utterly diverse in origin and teaching that they have little in common
except the tone of the master. In a few cases, however, the resemblance
is rather striking: here, then, we place side by side the words of Jesus
and the imaginations of the writer of the _Gītā_.

    SAYINGS OF JESUS.

    All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.
    _Matt._, 28, 18.

        VERSES FROM THE GĪTĀ.

        Nature gives birth to movables and immovables through me, the
        supervisor, and by reason of that the universe revolves. IX, 10.

    All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one
    knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save
    the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. _Luke_,
    10, 22.

        I know the things which have been, those which are, and those
        which are to be; but me nobody knows. VII, 26.

    Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
    give you rest. _Matt._, 11, 28.

        Forsaking all duties, come to me as thy sole refuge. I will
        release thee from all sins: do not grieve. XVIII, 66.

    But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath authority on earth to
    forgive sins,—_Mark_, 2, 10.

        Of all mortals, he who knows me to be unborn, without beginning,
        the great Lord of the world, being free from delusion, is
        released from all sins. X, 3.

    If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up
    his cross, and follow me. _Mark_, 8, 34.

        In thought renouncing all actions unto me, intent on me,
        applying thyself to the yoking of thine intellect, be thou
        always thinking of me. XVIII, 57.

    So, therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that
    he hath, he cannot be my disciple. _Luke_, 14, 33.

        Having thyself yoked by the yoke of renunciation, thou shalt
        come to me. IX, 28.

    Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
    give you rest. _Matt._, 11, 28.

        In him seek shelter with all thy might: by his grace thou shalt
        attain supreme peace, the eternal dwelling-place. XVIII, 62.

    If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more
    shall they call them of his household? _Matt._, 10, 25.

        hating me in their own bodies and in those of others. XVI, 18.

    And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling
    in me. _Matt._, 11, 6.

        Deluded people, ... not knowing my highest nature as great lord
        of entities, disregard me, as I have assumed a human body. IX,
        11.

    My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. _Matt._, 11, 30.

        To the constantly-yoked Yogi, who constantly remembereth me,
        never thinking of another, I am easy of access. VIII, 14.

    Learn of me. _Matt._, 11, 29.

        Learn from me. XVIII, 50.

It would lead us far afield to set forth in detail all the striking
things that Jesus has to say about His own person and mission, but it
may be well to quote a few passages exhibiting lines of character and
thought not exemplified above:—

(_a_) His meekness and lowliness.

    “I am meek and lowly in heart.” _Matt._, 11, 29.

(_b_) The conditions of His earthly life.

    “The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests; but the
    Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” _Luke_, 9, 58.

(_c_) The necessity that He should die for men.

    “And He began to teach them, that the Son of Man must suffer many
    things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and
    the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
    _Mark_, 8, 31.

(_d_) His spirit of service and self-sacrifice.

    “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
    minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” _Matt._, 20, 28.

    “But I am among you as he that doth serve.” _Luke_, 22, 27.

(_e_) His claims on the allegiance and love of men.

    “Every one who shall confess Me before men, him shall the Son of Man
    also confess before the angels of God: but he that denieth Me in the
    presence of men shall be denied in the presence of the angels of
    God.” _Luke_, 12, 8-9.

    “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;
    and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of
    Me.” _Matt._, 10, 37-38.

(_f_) His universal sympathy.

    “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren, even these
    least, ye did it unto Me.” _Matt._, 25, 40.

(_g_) His declaration that he will return to judge all men.

    “Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by
    Thy name, and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy name do many
    mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:
    depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” _Matt._, 7, 22-23.

(_h_) His presence with his followers.

    “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I
    in the midst of them.” _Matt._, 18, 20.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The _Gītā_ is one of the most eloquent possible proofs of the fact that
the human heart cries out for an incarnate Saviour. Scarcely less
impressive is the evidence furnished by the reception of the _Gītā_ by
Hindu readers: not the greatest of the Upanishads, neither the
_Chāndogya_ nor the _Katha_, has had one quarter of the influence
exercised by this late poem; and the secret undoubtedly is to be found
in the attraction of the man-god Krishna. How many generations of pious
readers have found in the story of the life and teaching of the
incarnate god something to which their deepest and most persistent
religious instincts have responded! How many to-day turn to Krishna in
their trials and troubles!

On the one hand, then, we have the imaginative portrait of Krishna,
surrounded by millions of adoring worshippers—touching spectacle! On the
other, stands the historical Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man and Son of
God, stretching out His nail-pierced hands to India, as He says, “Come
unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.” Rightly read, the _Gītā_ is a clear-tongued prophecy of Christ,
and the hearts that bow down to the idea of Krishna are really seeking
the incarnate Son of God.

IV. We have been able to see some little distance into the
self-consciousness of Jesus, and to realize in part at least that on
which He grounds His claim to the heart of every man; but we have not
yet learned the secret of that most marvellous of His powers, His power
to win human love. To that we must now address ourselves.

It is a well-known fact of history that, shortly after the death of
Christ, His followers began to preach in His name, and that very soon
the new faith began to spread rapidly. We have already learned from
Tacitus that in 64 A. D. there was “an immense multitude” of Christians
in Rome itself. Now the greatest of all the early missionaries was Paul.
He was the apostle of Europe. We mention his name here, because we wish
to refer to one of his Epistles. These letters are the earliest of our
Christian documents. The series begins with two brief letters, both
written, with a short interval between them, to the church at
Thessalonica. The most probable date for them is 49 A. D., that is, only
twenty years after the death of Christ. But the letter we wish to use is
one sent from Ephesus to the church of Corinth[235] about 55 A. D.,[236]
that is, twenty-six years after the death of Jesus. We must not stay
here to speak of the splendour of the ethical feeling and teaching of
the Epistle further than to say that it manifestly has its source in
Jesus. We must direct our attention to other facts which appear in it.

Christianity, we note, has already spread from Judæa into the provinces
of Asia[237] and Galatia[238] in Asia Minor, and Macedonia[239] and
Achaia[240] in Europe. Phœnicia, Syria, Cilicia and Cyprus are not
mentioned; but we know from other sources[241] that they too were
already evangelized. Thus in twenty-six years the Church of Christ has
become a great organization, extending through many lands, yet conscious
of its unity in Christ.[242] We note also that then, as to-day, BAPTISM
is a solemn ceremonial act, in which a man through the action of the
Holy Spirit becomes a member of the body of Christ,[243] while THE
LORD’S SUPPER is a recurrent feast, in which the members of the Church
have fellowship with the Lord and with each other.[244]

But what we would call special attention to is _the place assigned to
Christ_ in the Epistle. With reference to the Christian, Christ is THE
LORD;[245] with reference to the Father, He is THE SON;[246] He is
spoken of as the Lord of Glory,[247] the Power of God,[248] and the
Wisdom of God;[249] and prayer is offered to Him.[250] All spiritual
authority and power are attributed to Him.[251] The Church is His
body,[252] and He supplies His grace and power to every member.[253] He
will come back again to earth in glory,[254] and will then reveal all
secrets and judge all men.[255]

But there is another point still more noteworthy, and that is _the way
in which the crucifixion of Christ is interpreted_. Instead of regarding
that judicial murder as a regrettable incident, like the assassination
of Cæsar or the death of Socrates, Paul and his fellow-believers glory
in it,[256] not only as the crowning event of the divine revelation made
in Christ, but as the consummation of His work as the Saviour of
men.[257] Paul makes it the basis of all his preaching,[258] and in it
he finds all the wealth of spiritual wisdom which Christianity
contains.[259] He contrasts the wisdom of God wrapped up in that divine
tragedy with the worldly wisdom of earthly rulers.[260]

What can be the explanation of this extraordinary attitude to such an
event?—The basis of it is the solemn declaration, which Paul makes in
the Epistle, and which he says he made to his converts first of all,
that ON THE CROSS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS.[261] The crucifixion, as a
bare event in history, is but an act of wicked folly on the part of the
rulers of Judæa; but, viewed from the standpoint of morality and
religion, it is a divine act of world-wide significance. In the blood of
Christ a new covenant had been made between God and man.[262] This is
the Gospel, which all the Apostles teach, and which all the churches
believe.[263] Through faith in Christ, on the basis of this tremendous
assertion, the Corinthian Christians, like the rest, had been
saved,[264] _i.e._, they had received _the forgiveness of their
sins_[265] and _the sanctifying Spirit_.[266] They thus no longer
belonged to themselves: they had been bought with a great price, the
blood of the Son of God.[267] They were no longer part and parcel of
heathen society; each one was a member of the body of Christ.[268]

What led Paul and all the other Apostles and all the early Christians to
form such an extraordinary theory? How did they come to the conclusion
that the crucifixion was not a squalid tragedy, but a divine sacrifice?
This letter tells us quite plainly; the reasons were these: Jesus
Himself declared before He was crucified, that _His death was to be the
basis of the New Covenant_,[269] and this declaration of His _had been
divinely confirmed by His Resurrection_.[270]

Now mark: this letter was written within twenty-six years of the event.
The majority of the twelve Apostles, and multitudes of other men who had
known Jesus, were still alive.[271] Paul’s good faith is beyond all
question; and, as he was intimate with Peter and John and the rest of
the Apostles, and also with James the brother of Jesus,[272] he had
access to the very best information possible. Further he had been one of
the most violent opponents of Christianity. His testimony is, therefore,
evidence of the very highest value. We may conclude, then, with the
utmost certitude that we are standing on an immoveable historical
foundation, when we say that _Jesus, before His crucifixion, said He was
about to die for the sins of men_.

But this evidence does not stand alone. It is a historical fact,
acknowledged by scholars of every school, that all Christian churches
have from the very beginning celebrated the Lord’s Supper.[273] Now this
universal usage in so many churches, divided not only by long distances
but in many cases also by minor differences in doctrine, cannot be
explained at all except as a result of a command of Jesus Himself. If
any single disciple had started such a practice, it could never have won
its way to universal acceptance. Now consider the significance of this
fact: Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, broke
it, and bade His disciples eat it, saying, ‘This is My body.’ He then
took a cup of wine and bade them drink it, saying, ‘This is My
blood.’[274] The scene is absolutely without a parallel in the history
of the world; and it can have but one meaning, _viz._, that Jesus
regarded His death as a sacrifice.

But the direct statement of Paul is corroborated, not only by the
institution of the Supper, but also by this fact, that the doctrine,
that Christ died for our sins, is an integral part of the teaching of
Jesus as that is handed down to us in the Gospels. We have already seen
that He held that His death was necessary for the establishment of the
Kingdom. We must now set out His teaching on this subject with a little
more fulness. We shall restrict ourselves to a single Gospel. In the
earliest saying that refers to it, His death is a future event, coming
inevitably, and destined to bring sorrow to His disciples. “And Jesus
said unto them, Can the sons of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the
bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom
shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast.”[275] In the
next it is much more clearly defined. Its necessity is emphasized; we
are told that the agents are to be the religious leaders of Israel; and
it is to be followed by the resurrection. “From that time began Jesus to
shew unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer
many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed,
and the third day be raised up.”[276] Twice over this same prophecy is
repeated, the last time with more detail.[277] Then follows a most
striking saying, in which He speaks of His death as voluntary: it is a
giving away of His life; and it is explained as the climax of His life
of service; for the gift is ‘a ransom for many,’ that is a price paid,
in order to redeem many from sin. “The Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many.”[278] We need not linger over the next sayings, though each has
its own interest.[279] The last saying occurs in the account of the
institution of the Supper. In these words He teaches in the clearest
way, first, that His death is to be the ground of forgiveness, and
secondly, that after His death He is to be the source of the spiritual
life and strength of His followers. “And as they were eating, Jesus took
bread, and blessed, and brake it; and He gave to the disciples, and
said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And He took a cup, and gave thanks,
and gave to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of
the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins.”[280] The
teaching of Jesus is an organic whole, and is incomplete without this,
His own interpretation of His death of shame.

Jesus, then, gave Himself up to death as the sacrifice for the sins of
men. Our Christian documents go on to declare that _He rose from the
dead on the third day_, and that this resurrection of His was God’s
confirmation of the sacrifice of His Son. That men should at first sight
disbelieve the astounding assertion, that the crucified Jesus rose from
the dead, is not to be wondered at; but _the fact remains_. Sceptical
scholars have laboured for centuries to explain away this extraordinary
occurrence, but no one of these scholars themselves will venture to say
that any explanation hitherto given is satisfactory. The latest attempt,
that made by Schmiedel in the _Encyclopædia Biblica_, is a farcical
failure. The following are the adamantine facts which no rationalism has
ever yet succeeded in crushing or melting:—(_a_) the Christians declared
that they had seen Christ and spoken with Him after His resurrection;
(_b_) they were absolutely sincere in this belief[281]; (_c_) the
Christian Church arose as a result of this conviction; (_d_) the grave
was empty. The account of Christ’s appearances given in the fifteenth
chapter of our Epistle is well worth study. Those who wish to look into
this question further may consult Ballard’s _Miracles of Unbelief_, pp.
135 ff.

We have thus, by a serious historical inquiry, reached the conclusion,
that Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of the Christian religion, declared,
before His crucifixion, that He was about to die for the sins of men,
and that this assertion of His was sealed with the divine approval by
the unique miracle of the resurrection. We have also seen that this was
_the Good News_, which Paul and all the other Apostles preached, and on
which the early Church was founded. It is this that has won for Jesus
the love of myriads; it is this that has been the magnet to draw them
away from sin. It is the source of the joy and vital power of the
Christian life.

Now let us recollect the poem upon _The Servant of Jehovah_, which we
considered in our third chapter. How marvellously Jesus corresponds to
the extraordinary idea which that poem discloses, the despised and
oppressed prisoner who endures in uncomplaining meekness the uttermost
shame of a violent death, and is finally recognized as having been
“pierced because of our trangressions, and crushed because of our
iniquities.” That anyone should write such a poem, seems strange in the
extreme; that Jesus should have fulfilled it, is infinitely more
wonderful.

How comes it that this Jewish carpenter, with His three years of public
life and His cross of shame, fulfils so many ideals and aspirations? He
brings in the new age which Virgil and his contemporaries sighed for; He
is Plato’s just man; He utters from His own self-consciousness such
things as the author of the _Gītā_ imagined an incarnate god would say;
He gives Himself up to death, in sheer love, as a sacrifice for sin,
thus fulfilling the deepest needs of man, as expressed by the old Hebrew
seer; and He is the only human being whom men of every race and clime
can heartily admire and unhesitatingly imitate. Nor is this all: many
other convergent lines of thought might be suggested, in the light of
which Jesus stands out as the ideal of our common humanity and the
fountain of the love of God.

How is all this to be explained? Wide chasms sever the Hindu sage, the
Greek philosopher, the Hebrew prophet and the Roman poet; yet in Jesus
their several ideals are reconciled in a loftier unity. Once in the
course of the centuries East and West have actually met! Nor was the
meeting merely the resolution of antitheses in a wider conception: what
the Jew and the Indian, the Greek and the Roman, dreamed of as the
unattainable, that Jesus actually accomplished in this work-a-day world
of ours, amid storms of the cruellest hatred and calumny.—What is your
candid opinion about Him, brother? How are you to solve the problem
raised by His life, death and place in history? Can He be better
described than in His own words, SON OF MAN and SON OF GOD?

Footnote 163:

  See article _Slavery_ in _Encyclopædia Brittanica_; and _cf._ Gibbon,
  Chaps. II and XXXVIII; Cunningham, _An Essay on Western Civilization
  in its Economic Aspects_; Wallon, _Histoire de l’Esclavage dans
  l’Antiquité_.

Footnote 164:

  Fowler, _The City-State of the Greeks and Romans_; Mahaffy, _Social
  Life in Greece_, 44; Kidd, _P. W. C._, Chap. VI.

Footnote 165:

  Kidd, _P. W. C._, Chaps. VII to IX.

Footnote 166:

  Kidd, _P. W. C._, 190, 223-4.

Footnote 167:

  Sohm, _The Institutes of Roman Law_; Wallon, _Histoire de l’Esclavage
  dans l’Antiquité_.

Footnote 168:

  Bury, _History of Greece_, I, 72.

Footnote 169:

  Kidd, _P. W. C._, 223.

Footnote 170:

  Kidd, _P. W. C._, 168.

Footnote 171:

  Kidd, _P. W. C._, 160-172; Seebohm, _The Structure of Greek Tribal
  Society_, 4, 138.

Footnote 172:

  Sir Robert Giffen, _Address to the Manchester Statistical Society_,
  15.

Footnote 173:

  Kidd, _Social Evolution_, Chaps. IV & V.

Footnote 174:

  Tacitus, _Annals_, XV, 44, Church and Brodribb’s translation.

Footnote 175:

  Church and Brodribb’s _Annals_, 374.

Footnote 176:

  For all the facts and the opinions of various scholars, _see_
  Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, I, 410-415.

Footnote 177:

  _Matthew_, Chapters 26 & 27.

Footnote 178:

  For the criticism of the Gospels _see_ below, pages 49-50.

Footnote 179:

  _Matt._, 26, 67-68.

Footnote 180:

  _Matt._, 27, 27-31.

Footnote 181:

  _Matt._, 27, 32-44.

Footnote 182:

  It was not the _teaching_ of Jesus, but His _interference_, in the
  interests of His own supreme standards, with the traditional worship
  and customs of the Jews, that led the Jewish hierarchy to determine on
  His death. See below p. 52.

Footnote 183:

  See Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, _ad loca_, and Moffatt,
  _Historical New Testament_, pp. 272-274. The most probable dates are,
  for _Mark_, 66 to 70 A.D., and for _Matthew_ and _Luke_, 70 to 75 A.D.

Footnote 184:

  See the masses of evidence gathered in Schürer, _H. J. P._

Footnote 185:

  Fairbairn, _The Philosophy of the Christian Religion_, pp. 328-9.

Footnote 186:

  _Mark_, 1, 9.

Footnote 187:

  _Mark_, 1, 9.

Footnote 188:

  _Mark_, 6, 3.

Footnote 189:

  _Luke_, 3, 1; 1, 4, 14.

Footnote 190:

  _Luke_, 5, 8.

Footnote 191:

  _Luke_, 7, 36-50.

Footnote 192:

  _Luke_, 19, 1-10.

Footnote 193:

  _Luke_, 23, 39-43.

Footnote 194:

  See Harnack, _What is Christianity_, pp. 32-35.

Footnote 195:

  See specially Weiss, _N. T. Theology_; Beyschlag, _N. T. Theology_;
  Wendt, _Teaching of Jesus_; Stevens, _Theology of the New Testament_;
  Robertson, _Our Lord’s Teaching_; and many others.

Footnote 196:

  See Schürer, _H. J. P._, Div. II, Vol. II, pp. 126 ff.

Footnote 197:

  The reason for His silence is to be found in the fact that the
  Messianic hope, as popularly held, had become largely political: to
  have confessed Himself the Christ would have been to precipitate a
  revolt against Rome. Cf. McGiffert’s _Apostolic Age_, 28.

Footnote 198:

  _Matt._, 21, 1-11.

Footnote 199:

  _Matt._, 21, 12-17.

Footnote 200:

  _Matt._, 21, 23-23, 39.

Footnote 201:

  _Matt._, 26, 3-5.

Footnote 202:

  _Matt._, 26, 47-56.

Footnote 203:

  _Matt._, 26, 57 and 59.

Footnote 204:

  _Matt._, 26, 59-62.

Footnote 205:

  _Matt._, 26, 63-64.

Footnote 206:

  _Matt._, 26, 65-66.

Footnote 207:

  Schürer, _H. J. P._, Div. II, Vol. I, 188; _John_, 18, 31.

Footnote 208:

  _Matt._, 27, 1-2; 27, 11.

Footnote 209:

  _Matt._, 27, 18.

Footnote 210:

  _Matt._, 27, 11-26.

Footnote 211:

  McGiffert’s _Apostolic Age_, 27-32.

Footnote 212:

  _Mark_, 1, 15.

Footnote 213:

  See the parables in _Matt._, 22, 2-14; and _Luke_, 14, 15-24.

Footnote 214:

  _Mark_, 1, 15.

Footnote 215:

  _Matt._, 11, 13-14; _Luke_, 16, 16.

Footnote 216:

  _Isaiah_, 42, 6; 49, 6.

Footnote 217:

  _Matt._, 24, 14; 26, 13; 28, 19.

Footnote 218:

  _Matt._, 11, 28-29.

Footnote 219:

  _Matt._, 25, 40; 25, 45.

Footnote 220:

  See _e.g._, _Matt._, 9, 6; 11, 19; 12, 8; 16, 13; 20, 18; 20, 28; 25,
  31; 26, 64.

Footnote 221:

  _Matt._, 11, 27; 16, 17; 17, 5.

Footnote 222:

  _Matt._, 21, 37; 11, 10; _Mark_, 8, 37-38; 9, 37; _Luke_, 10, 16.

Footnote 223:

  _Matt._, 3, 17; 17, 5; 26, 63-64; 21, 37; 22, 41-45; _Luke_, 10, 22.

Footnote 224:

  _Luke_, 10, 23-24.

Footnote 225:

  _Mark_, 1, 15.

Footnote 226:

  _Matt._, 9, 15; 22, 2-14.

Footnote 227:

  _Luke_, 10, 22.

Footnote 228:

  _Luke_, 11, 20.

Footnote 229:

  _Matt._, 20, 28; _Luke_, 22, 20.

Footnote 230:

  _Mark_, 1, 22; 1, 27.

Footnote 231:

  _Matt._, 5, 17.

Footnote 232:

  _Matt._, 5, 44; 15, 20.

Footnote 233:

  _Matt._, 5, 32; 5, 34; 5, 39; 15, 11; 19, 7-9.

Footnote 234:

  _Matt._, 5, 11; 8, 22; 10, 37-39; 11, 28-30; 16, 24-25.

Footnote 235:

  _i.e._, _I Corinthians_.

Footnote 236:

  For the dates of Paul’s Epistles, see the articles in Hastings’s
  _Dictionary of the Bible_, or Moffatt’s _Historical New Testament_,
  121-137.

Footnote 237:

  16, 19.

Footnote 238:

  16, 1.

Footnote 239:

  16, 5.

Footnote 240:

  16, 15.

Footnote 241:

  _Acts_, 11, 19; _Galatians_, 1, 21-24.

Footnote 242:

  12, 13.

Footnote 243:

  12, 13.

Footnote 244:

  11, 20-34; 10, 16-17.

Footnote 245:

  Very frequent: cf. 1, 2; 1, 3; 1, 7; 8, 6; 12, 3; 16, 22. _The Lord_
  takes in the Epistles the place held by _the Son of Man_ in the
  Gospels.

Footnote 246:

  1, 9.

Footnote 247:

  2, 8.

Footnote 248:

  1, 24.

Footnote 249:

  1, 24; 1, 30.

Footnote 250:

  1, 2.

Footnote 251:

  5, 4; 7, 10; 14, 37; 15, 24-28.

Footnote 252:

  12, 12-13; 12, 27.

Footnote 253:

  1, 4-7; 1, 30; 3, 5; 12, 5; 16, 23.

Footnote 254:

  1, 7; 4, 5.

Footnote 255:

  4, 5.

Footnote 256:

  1, 17-18.

Footnote 257:

  11, 23-26; 15, 3.

Footnote 258:

  1, 18; 1, 21; 2, 2; 15, 1; 15, 11.

Footnote 259:

  1, 22-24.

Footnote 260:

  2, 6-8.

Footnote 261:

  15, 3.

Footnote 262:

  11, 25.

Footnote 263:

  15, 1; 15, 2; 15, 11.

Footnote 264:

  1, 18; 1, 21.

Footnote 265:

  15, 17.

Footnote 266:

  1, 2; 1, 30; 3, 16; 6, 11; 6, 19.

Footnote 267:

  6, 19; 7, 23.

Footnote 268:

  6, 15; 10, 17; 12, 12-13; 12, 27.

Footnote 269:

  11, 23-25. Cf. _Jeremiah_, 31, 31-34.

Footnote 270:

  15, 4 compared with 15, 14.

Footnote 271:

  15, 6.

Footnote 272:

  _Galatians_, 1, 18-2, 10.

Footnote 273:

  See McGiffert’s _Apostolic Age_, 536.

Footnote 274:

  The event is described in _Matt._, 26, 26-30; _Mark_, 14, 22-26; and
  _Luke_, 22, 14-20; as well as in _1 Corinthians_, 11, 23-26.

Footnote 275:

  _Matt._, 9, 15.

Footnote 276:

  _Matt._, 16, 21.

Footnote 277:

  _Matt._, 17, 22-23; 20, 17-19.

Footnote 278:

  _Matt._, 20, 28.

Footnote 279:

  _Matt._, 21, 39; 26, 2; 26, 12.

Footnote 280:

  _Matt._, 26, 26, 30.

Footnote 281:

  Now universally acknowledged.




                               APPENDIX.
                        NEO-KRISHNA LITERATURE.


The Neo-Krishna movement is about twenty years old. Before 1880
Vaishnavism does not seem to have been in great favour with the higher
castes of Bengal. Traditionally they were Saivas or Sāktas rather than
Vaishnavas; and English education, which bore very heavily for half a
century on every form of Hinduism seems to have told with peculiar
severity on Krishnaism. But shortly after 1880 a great change becomes
visible: Krishna begins to be praised on every hand, and ancient
Vaishnava books are read and studied with avidity. The new movement
seems to have owed its origin, on the one hand, to the teaching and
influence of Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Keshub Chundra Sen, Bijoy Krishna
Goswami and Shishir Kumar Ghose; and on the other, to the efforts of two
or three noteworthy literary men, who threw themselves into the task of
painting the character of Krishna with extraordinary enthusiasm. The
_Gītā_ at once leaped into greater prominence than ever: numberless
editions and translations of it have been published. Many essays have
appeared comparing Krishna with Christ and Vaishnavism with
Christianity. Thus a large Krishna literature, both in English and
Bengali, has sprung up. The following seem to be the more important
books of this literature:—

    1884

    Essays in _Prachār_ on _Krishnacharitra_ by Bunkim Ch. Chatterji.

    1886

    1. _Krishnacharitra_, Bunkim Ch. Chatterji, 1st edition. A volume in
    Bengali prose on the character of Krishna.

    1887

    2. _Raivatak_, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on Krishna’s
    youth. 3. _The Bhagavad Gītā, or the Lords Lay_, Mohini M.
    Chatterji. An English prose translation of the text and of parts of
    Sankara’s commentary. An attempt is made to put the _Gītā_ on the
    same level as the New Testament.

    1888

    4. _Krishna Jivani_, Prosanna Kumar Vidyaratna. A life of Krishna in
    Bengali prose.

    1889

    5. _Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma_, Gaur Gavinda Ray. The life and
    religion of Krishna from the standpoint of the New Dispensation:
    Bengali prose.

    1890

    6. _Srimadbhagavadgītā_, Krishnananda Swami (_i.e._ Krishna Prasanna
    Sen). The text in the Bengali character with a Bengali commentary
    and translation.

    1892

    _Krishnacharitra_, Bunkim Ch. Chatterji, 2nd edition. This edition
    contains a great deal of new matter.

    7. _Amiya Nimai Charity_, Shishir Kumar Ghose. First part. A life of
    Chaitanya in Bengali prose.

    1893

    _Amiya Nimai Charit_. Second part.

    8. _Kurukshetra_, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on Krishna
    at Kurukshetra.

    1894

    9. _The Landmarks of Ethics according to the Gītā_. Bulloram
    Mullick.

    _Amiya Nimai Charit_. Third part.

    1895

    10. _Kālā Chānd Gītā_, Shishir Kumar Ghose. A sort of Krishnaite
    Song of Solomon in Bengali verse. It is said to have been composed
    in 1888.

    1896

    11. _Srikrishna, his Life and Teachings_, Dhirendra Nath Pal. 3
    vols.

    12. _Srikrishner Kalanka Kena?_ Nava Kumar Devasarma. A Bengali
    prose defence of the character of Krishna.

    13. _The Bhagavad Gītā_, Annie Besant. New and revised edition. An
    English prose translation with an introduction and a few notes.

    14. _Prabhās_, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on the later
    years of Krishna’s life.

    1897

    15. _Lord Gaurānga_, Shishir Kumar Ghose, 1st volume. A life of
    Chaitanya in English prose, with a discussion of the doctrine of
    Incarnations.

    1898

    16. _Krishna and Krishnaism_, Bulloram Mullick.

    _Lord Gaurānga_, 2nd volume.

    17. _Hindu Theism_, Sitanath Tattvabhushan.

    18. _An Elementary Treatise on Universal Religion._ Kshetra Mohan
    Mukerji. The religion of the _Gītā_ is here put forward as the
    universal religion.

    1899

    19. _Incarnation_, Nanda Krishna Bose. This treatise follows in most
    points the theory of Incarnation put forward in _Lord Gaurānga_.

    1900

    20. _The Young Men’s Gītā_, Jogindranath Mukharji. An English prose
    translation with introduction and notes.

    21. _Srimadbhagavadgītā_, Prasanna Kumar Sastri, 2nd edition. The
    text in the Bengali character, with several commentaries, and a
    Bengali translation by Sasadhar Tarkachuramani.

    1901

    22. _The Imitation of Sreekrishna_, S. C. Mukhopadhaya. A daily
    text-book, containing extracts in English from the _Gītā_, the
    _Mahābhārata_, and the _Bhāgavat Purāna_.

    23. _Sree Krishna_, Muralidhur Roy. An account, in English prose, of
    the life and character of Krishna.

    24. _Srimadbhagavadgītā_, Bhudhur Chattopadhaya, 4th edition. The
    text in the Bengali character, with a Bengali commentary.

    1903

    25. A most elaborate edition of the _Gītā_, edited by Damudar
    Mukerji, is being published in parts.

    26. A Bengali verse translation of the _Gītā_ by Satyendra Nath
    Tagore is appearing in _Bhārati_.

This revival of interest in Krishna and his worship is clearly part of
the great national movement which has been so potent in Bengal,
religiously, socially and politically, these last twenty years. This
period has witnessed the appearance of the whole Neo-Hindu movement,
with its literature, lectures, societies and missionary propaganda, the
rise of the Indian National Congress and of the social reform movement,
the advance of native journalism to its present extraordinary influence,
and the establishment of the native unaided colleges, which have so
seriously changed the balance of influence in Higher Education.
Neo-Krishnaism, then, is one result of the operation of that potent
spirit whereby India has become conscious of her unity, and her sons
have been roused to a vigorous defence of all that they have inherited
from the past. This rise of the national spirit, though it may be
troublesome in small matters to the rulers of India, is undoubtedly the
last and greatest justification of English rule; and, while, with its
exaggerations and insincerities and follies, it cannot fail to provoke
criticism,[282] yet its power to awake self-reliance, self-respect and
the passion for freedom ought to win for it the approval and the
encouragement of all good men.

There can be no doubt that among the influences which have produced
Neo-Hinduism, Christianity is one of the most potent, if not the chief.
This is peculiarly evident in the case of the Neo-Krishna literature we
are discussing. In 1899 the Bengal Librarian wrote, “There is no denying
the fact that all this revolution in the religious belief of the
educated Hindu has been brought about as much by the dissemination of
Christian thought by Missionaries as by the study of Hindu scriptures;
for Christian influence is plainly detectable in many of the Hindu
publications of the year.” But beyond this general influence, which
cannot fail to be noticed by anyone who will take the trouble to read
the volumes, it is, we believe, perfectly plain that the very ideas
which have given birth to the literature are the result of Christian
influence. A distinct taste for such books as the Gospels has sprung up;
and men have come to feel the need of a perfect character, such as
Christ’s is, for daily contemplation and imitation. The Neo-Krishna
movement endeavours to supply these needs from within Hinduism, offering
the _Gītā_ instead of the Gospels, and Krishna instead of Christ.[283]

Nobin Ch. Sen seems to have been the first to conceive the idea of a
modern rendering of the character of Krishna; for he laid the project
before some of his friends in 1882.[284] His famous epic trilogy,
_Raivatak_, _Kurukshetra_ and _Prabhās_, are the result of this pregnant
thought. But, while he and Shishir Kumar Ghose have done a great deal to
popularize the movement, there can be no doubt that Bunkim Ch.
Chatterji’s _Krishnacharitra_ has been by far the most influential
volume in the whole of this literature. Gaur Gavinda Ray’s work,
_Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma_, is a piece of excellent characterization,
and has won the high regard of many thoughtful men.

The books on our list fall into two classes, _Historical_ and
_Traditional_. In the Historical class there are only two volumes,
Tattvabhusan’s _Hindu Theism_, and the _Young Men’s Gītā_. These two
frankly acknowledge that the _Gītā_ is a late book. In the _Young Men’s
Gītā_[285] its date is said to be a century or two before, or a century
or two after, the Christian era; while in _Hindu Theism_[286] the _Gītā_
is regarded as the point of transition from the old Vedānta to the
religion of the Purānas. The standpoint of these two books is thus
thoroughly historical, but it necessarily implies the abandonment of the
divinity of Krishna.

All the rest of the books on the list fall into the second class; for
they hold the traditional position about Krishna. Most of them make no
attempt at criticism of the sources, but treat the _Mahābhārata_, the
_Gītā_, the _Harivansa_ and the Purānas as all historical and all
equally trustworthy. A few of the authors, however, state plainly their
own critical conclusions, and two or three enter into some discussion of
the main problems. These attempts at criticism are the most pitiable
parts of the whole literature. The talented author of _Srikrishner
Jivana O Dharma_, by far too sincere and candid to ignore the Puranic
elements in the sources, frankly confesses their presence; yet,
believing these books to be genuine representatives of the age of
Kurukshetra, he is driven to the extraordinary conclusion that the
Vedic, the Vedantic, and the Puranic ages were contemporaneous.[287] The
late Bulloram Mullick, in discussing the eighteen Purānas, goes so far
as to say, “Whatever may be the views of European savants, there is
indubitable proof that some of these Purānas existed in the eleventh or
twelfth century before Christ.”[288] Even Bunkim Chundra Chatterji
himself not only unhesitatingly adopts Goldstücker’s rash guess, that
Pānini’s grammar was written before the Brāhmanas and the Upanishads,
but on the basis of that unwise conjecture, pushes back Pānini’s date to
the tenth or eleventh century B. C.,[289] _i.e._, four or five centuries
earlier than the pre-Buddhistic date which Goldstücker[290] wished to
establish. Dhirendra Nath Pal, seeing that Bunkim Babu found it so easy
to leap over a few centuries, goes a little further and suggests the
twelfth or thirteenth.[291] But, indeed, without some such strange
perversion of history, it is impossible to construct an argument for the
authenticity of the _Gītā_ and the historicity of the _Mahābhārata_ that
shall have even the semblance of reason.

We note next that of all the books of the second class, Bunkim Chundra’s
_Krishnacharitra_ is the only work that gives any independent criticism:
all the rest, with the single exception of _Srikrishner Jivana O
Dharma_, merely echo his arguments. Thus Bunkim Babu’s theory is the
only one we need discuss.

Now the whole critical structure of the _Krishnacharitra_ rests upon the
passage on pages 41 and 42, where the date of Pānini is discussed.
Pānini is pushed back to 1000 B. C.; and, the ‘original’ _Mahābhārata_
being earlier than Pānini, we are asked to believe that it was produced
within a century or two of Kurukshetra, and that it is in consequence
trustworthy historically. The whole argument thus rests on the date of
Pānini.

We translate this important passage:—

    “Goldstücker has proved that, when Pānini’s Sūtra was composed,
    Buddha had not arisen. In that case Pānini must belong to the sixth
    century B. C. But not only that, in his time the Brāhmanas, the
    Aranyakas, the Upanishads and the other parts of the Vedas had not
    been composed. Apart from the Rig, the Yajur, and the Sāma Vedas,
    nothing else existed. Asvalāyana, Sānkhāyana and the rest had not
    appeared. Max Müller says that the age in which the Brāhmanas were
    composed began about 1000 B. C. Dr. Martin Haug says that that was
    the end of the age, and that it began in the fourteenth century B.
    C. Therefore, if we say that Pānini must belong to the tenth or
    eleventh century B. C., we do not say too much.”

Now the first remark we make on this extraordinary piece of criticism is
this, that Goldstücker and Max Müller are most unfairly conjoined to
support a date which both of them would have indignantly repudiated. For
Müller’s date for Pānini is the fourth century B.C.,[292] and
Goldstücker never proposed to push him further back than the sixth
century; indeed all that he claims is that he has brought forward
evidence which affords a strong _probability_ that Pānini preceded the
origin of the Buddhistic creed.[293] Our next remark is that, though
more than forty years have passed since Goldstücker’s book
appeared,[294] he has convinced no one that the Brāhmanas and the
Upanishads are posterior to Pānini’s grammar: opinions still differ as
to Pānini’s precise date, but no scholar to-day puts him before the
Brāhmanas.[295]

Can the grounds for this unanimity among modern scholars be vividly set
forth? We believe they can. Here, as in our first chapter, we shall not
attempt to fix a definite chronology, but shall simply aim at reaching
_the relative age_ of the great books we are dealing with; and we shall
not deal with the meaning of disputed passages, but shall rest the case
altogether on the clear and prominent features of history which every
one can appreciate. There is, then, first of all the great broad fact
that the Sūtras depend on the Brāhmanas, and are, in general, posterior
to them, and that _the language and style of Pānini’s Sūtras show that
he belongs to about the middle of the Sūtra period_.[296] All the
detailed study of the last forty years _has gone to strengthen this
stable conclusion_.

But there is another and still more conclusive proof that Pānini comes
long after the early Brāhmanas. _These ancient books are written in
Vedic Sanskrit._[297] The early Upanishads are more modern in character,
but even they belong to a stage of the language a good deal earlier than
the Sūtras: Professor Macdonell’s words are, “the oldest Upanishads
occupying a position linguistically midway between the Brāhmanas and the
Sūtras.”[298] Thus the Brāhmanas were composed while Vedic Sanskrit was
still the language of the Indo-Aryans. Now Pānini’s grammar _deals with
classical Sanskrit_, not the Vedic speech. He deals with many points of
Vedic grammar, it is true, but he deals with them as exceptions; his
subject is classical Sanskrit. He laid down the law, which has ruled
Sanskrit throughout the centuries since his day. Thus he arose at a
time, _when the language of the Brāhmanas had become archaic_, and
modern Sanskrit had taken its place.[299] It is thus absolutely
impossible to believe that Pānini lived and wrote before the Brāhmanas
were composed: to propose to put him back before their composition is
much the same as proposing to push Johnson’s Dictionary back before
Chaucer.

Another line of proof may also be indicated. Careful study of the early
Brāhmanas has made it plain that they were composed after the collection
of the hymns of the _Rigveda_, but before[300] the formation of the
_Sanhitā_ text (_i.e._, the text in which the words are joined according
to the rules of _Sandhi_) and the _Pada_[301] text (_i.e._ the word by
word text). The author of the _Pada_ text is Sākalya.[302] Now Yāska
refers to Sākalya as a predecessor;[303] and Yāska himself is earlier
than Pānini.[304] Thus the historical order is the early Brāhmanas, the
_Sanhitā_ text, Sākalya, Yāska, Pānini.

Bunkim Babu’s date for Pānini being thus altogether untenable, his whole
argument for the historicity of the _Pāndava Mahābhārata_ and Krishna’s
character as therein pourtrayed tumbles in ruins, and brings down with
it all the rest of this Krishna literature.

We would invite our readers to turn away from these vain attempts to
turn a myth into sober history, and to listen to the teaching of those
really scholarly Indians who study Hinduism from a scientific
standpoint. We have already referred to Sitanath Tattvabhushan’s _Hindu
Theism_, and we have frequently used Bose’s _Hindu Civilization under
British Rule_ and R. C. Dutt’s works as authorities. We would now call
attention to a monograph by one of the greatest scholars in Bengal
(_Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity_, by Brajendra
Nath Seal), where[305] the growth of the Krishna legend is frankly
discussed;[306] also to a very remarkable essay on _Buddhist and
Vishnuite_ in a recent number of _Sāhitya_[307] by the late Umes Chundra
Batabyal, in which grave historical reasons are given for concluding
that the _Gītā_ is in part at least a polemic against Buddhism; and to
the late Mr. Justice Telang’s introduction to his translation of the
_Gītā_ (_S. B. E._, vol. VIII), with regard to which readers will note,
that, although the date is put a little earlier than most scholars would
put it, no attempt is made to defend the traditional theory of the
origin of the Song.

Footnote 282:

  Many of the wisest Indians have spoken out on this subject. The latest
  utterance is an article on _Pseudo-Nationalism_ in _the Indian
  Messenger_ for August 9th.

Footnote 283:

  Many other signs of Christian influence might be noted: thus _the
  Young Men’s Gītā_ is a counterblast to a Christian edition of the
  Song, and it is besides most evidently arranged and printed in
  imitation of some tasteful edition of _the Imitation of Christ_; while
  _the Imitation of Sreekrishna_ proclaims its origin by its very name.

Footnote 284:

  See an essay by Hirendra Nath Dutta, which originally appeared in
  Sāhitya, now republished as an appendix to Nobin Chundra Sen’s
  _Kurukshetra_.

Footnote 285:

  p. ii.

Footnote 286:

  pp. 74-76.

Footnote 287:

  p. 1.

Footnote 288:

  _Krishna and Krishnaism_, 16.

Footnote 289:

  _Krishnacharitra_, 42.

Footnote 290:

  _Pānini, his Place in Sanskrit Literature_, 227.

Footnote 291:

  _Srikrishna, his Life and Teachings_, vol. I, p. xxv.

Footnote 292:

  _Physical Religion_, 76.

Footnote 293:

  _Pānini, his Place in Sanskrit Literature_, 227.

Footnote 294:

  It was published in 1861.

Footnote 295:

  Macdonell, 430-431; Kaegi, 7; Max Müller, _Physical Religion_, 63-64;
  Haraprasad Sastri, _A School History of India_, 4-7; R. C. Dutt,
  _Brief History of Ancient and Modern India_, 17, 27; Böhtlingk’s
  _Pānini_ (Leipsic, 1887); Weber, _Indische Studien_, V, 1-172;
  Hopkins, _R. I._, 350; Bühler in _S. B. E._, vol. II, pp. xxxv,
  xxxix-xlii; Eggeling in _S. B. E._, vol. xii, p. xxxvii; Bhandarkar,
  _Early History of the Deccan_, 5.

Footnote 296:

  Max Müller, _A. S. L._, 311-312; Macdonell, 36, 39, 268. Cf. what
  Whitney says, “The standard work of Pānini, the grammarian-in-chief of
  Sanskrit literature, is a frightfully perfect model of the Sūtra
  method” (_Oriental and Linguistic Studies_, I, 71).

Footnote 297:

  Max Müller, _Natural Religion_, 296; Macdonell, 203-4.

Footnote 298:

  Macdonell, 205.

Footnote 299:

  Max Müller, _A. S. L._, 138; _Natural Religion_, 297-298; Macdonell,
  22-23.

Footnote 300:

  Macdonell, 50.

Footnote 301:

  On these texts see Kaegi, Note 77; Macdonell, 48, 50.

Footnote 302:

  Macdonell, 51.

Footnote 303:

  Macdonell, 268.

Footnote 304:

  Macdonell, 269. Goldstücker (_op. cit._ p. 225) acknowledges that
  Yāska earlier than Pānini.

Footnote 305:

  pp. 8-10.

Footnote 306:

  See also Bose, _H. C._, 33-35.

Footnote 307:

  13th year, 1st part.




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