Brahmoism; or, History of reformed Hinduism from its origin in 1830, under Rajah Mohun Roy, to the present time. With a particular account of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen's connection with the movement

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

JUN

OR,

Chapter I. Introductory Remarks

Brahmoism cannot with any shadow of propriety be called a new religion. Regarded, however, as a novel form of faith, its champions need not blush to see it placed in juxtaposition with the two moral creations of the nineteenth century which may with some degree of propriety be called new religions. These are, stated in the chronological order in which they have developed, Mormonism and Comtism.

Mormonism was established in the year 1830, the very year which witnessed the birth of the Brahmo Sabha in Calcutta, by Joseph Smith, generally called Joe Smith, a man devoid of education, but obviously possessed of qualities fitted to make him a leader among certain classes of people, evincing a character in which we see an odd mixture of credulity and cunning. By a series of visions, revelations, and angelophanies he was led to discover and translate a strange book, purporting to embody a connected and coherent history of America since the confusion of tongues at Babel, and to confer upon that book the pre-eminence in relation to the varied books of the Bible which had been given to the Koran by Mohammed long before his birth. To the fanciful narratives thus disinterred by him he added a series of revelations as occasions arose ; and in this way he elaborated a system of theology of the most grotesque character, and a system of morality of a degrading type.

The theology of Mormonism is an odd mixture of pantheism, materialism, and hero-worship of a mythological, idolatrous, not Carlylish type. It begins with "an infinite quantity of self -existing matter," and evolves from " the union" of " two" of its " elementary particles" a God who cannot possibly exist apart from a human body, and who ' ' eats and drinks and loves and hates." The process of evolution it indicates is very slow indeed. The particles after an incalculably long period of self -development become a man of feeble powers, which, however, expand as he grows in knowledge till, instead of a human being of limited capacities, is seen a God of enlarged intelligence and potencies. He goes on improving now, and will go on improving throughout eternity, in knowledge and power, and therefore he is not now and never will be infinite in knowledge and power. It is maintained, as a corollary from this position, that every man living is a God in embryo, and may in process of time attain knowledge and power enough to create and rule a world. There has, moreover, been a succession of Gods — God the Father being God of Adam, Adam being God of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ being God of Joe Smith, and Joe Smith being God of us poor mortals. Is there no eternal and abiding principle to which the homage both of gods and men is due ? Yes : that principle is Truth, which has appeared, does and will appear, in endless varieties of forms.

Mormonism upholds a sort of trinitarianism amid the hosts of its gods emanating, at various times, from an interminable heap of intelligent and self -moving matter by a slow process of evolution. It brings forward what may be called a double trinity, one ancient and one modern. The modern trinity consists of two embodied Gods, the Father and the Son, and one intellectual principle of union and action, the Holy Spirit, who exhibits divine power and wisdom when on account of corporeal limitations the Father and Son cannot act. But the modern trinity is the facsimile of another, the ancient trinity consisting of Jehovah, Elohim, and Michael, who was Adam. Hence Adam's superiority to Christ !

Mormonism upholds the doctrines of universal salvation, but the glimpses it presents of heavenly felicity are in grossness and sensuality scarcely surpassed by the views of Paradise embodied in Mohammedanism. In heaven they marry and are given in marriage ; and the most favored of the Latter-day Saints expect to have in heaven harems as full at least as those they are compelled to leave behind for a time when they go out of this world. And besides, they settle by nice calculations the number of acres they are to have, each of them, around his palatial residence in heaven, to improve by tillage and adorn by art. One good feature of their community, unremitting toil proceeding from or sustained by admirable habits of industry, is perhaps the only redeeming feature of their grossly sensual descriptions of heavenly bliss.

Such is one of the two great creations of the nineteenth century in the department of religion, briefly and very imperfectly sketched ! Joe Smith and his associates had the effrontery to believe that this heap of oddity, eccentricity, extravagance, and contradiction would in time supplant the glorious faith of the Christian Church ! It is impossible to say which of the two things — the grotesque religion he initiated or the grotesque hope he entertained — brings out his universally acknowledged mental aberration with the greater prominence.

But now we come to the second of the two great religious innovations, inventions rather, of the century. Auguste Comte was born a few years earlier than the date which witnessed the birth of the founder of Mormonism ; and there is intellectually that difference between the two which subsists between a giant and a pigmy. A man of wonderful versatility and wonderful attainments, he seemed fitted to communicate a new impetus to the spirit of scientific inquiry and philosophic thought. And if he only had the patience of thought and calmness of intellect, without which great discoveries in the region of science and philosophy cannot be made, he would have left behind him something more permanent, though perhaps less brilliant, than the crude, hasty, and ill-digested speculations with which his name is associated. About fifteen years after Joe Smith had laid the foundation of his execrable creed, Comte fell over head and ears in love with the wife of a galley-slave, and discovered that he had a heart which needed something more than cold, philosophic abstraction. A religion appeared to the enamored philosopher a necessity, and a religion he had no difficulty whatever in evolving out of his fertile brain. The first problem was how and where to find a God, for even Comte could not but conclude that a religion without a God would be something like an institution without its vitalizing principle. He solved this vexed question by calling attention to what he was pleased to call " the Collective Humanity," an abstraction indeed when we take a retrospective view of the history of the world, but appearing in a concrete form in the generations to come, in posterity. This new Supreme Spirit should be called Posthumous Humanity, but as it embraces the nonentities of the past as well as the realities of the present and the embryos pointing to the future, it may be designated by the name of Collective Humanity. But why, it may be asked, call it Collective Humanity, when from the sum-total human beings are excluded whose business is merely " to digest food and manure the earth " ? But there is, after all, no impropriety, as useful animals, such as " horses, dogs, oxen, etc.," are brought in to make up the complement of the number required !

But is not a visible symbol of the invisible deity needed to bolster up pious feeling and devotional enthusiasm ? Comte therefore had to look for an appropriate symbol, and he had not happily far to go. What could be better fitted to draw the soul naturally apathetic out into a stream of passionate devotion than the beautiful Madonnas in the great cathedrals of his own and neighboring countries ? A lovely woman of about thirty with a lovely infant son in her arms — what can be a better symbol of the genius of humanity than such a person ? But such a symbol is not always within reach for purposes of private worship, and therefore a man should daily prostrate himself in mute adoration before his mother as representing the past, his wife as representing the present, and his daughter as representing the future. The mother, the wife, and the daughter form the trinity of Comtism, and the three feelings stimulated by their worship are veneration, attachment, and kindness. This caricature of

12 BKAHMOISM.

worship accompanied with caricatures of the sacraments and feasts of the Eomish Church, all under the absolute control of a hierarchy of savcmts, presided over by a supreme pontiff of philosophy, is the religion of Auguste Comte. That it was entertained for a moment by such a man as Comte ; that it did not perish with him, but has, on the contrary, found advocates among men of education in civilized countries — this is a proof of the oft-repeated truth that when men presumptuously cast aside the light that is in them they are judicially given over to fatuity and madness.

What a relief to turn from these grotesque and extravagant types of faith to the religion of the Brahmo Somaj, which upholds a creed insufficient indeed, and to some extent erroneous, but by no means associated with eccentricities of such glaring character ! Its superiority is to be traced to a variety of reasons, some of which it is desirable to point out. And, first of all, it is desirable to mention the good sense with which the champions of Brahmoism have recognized some of those truths which may justly be called intuitive. Mormons and Comtists are drawn into the region of oddities and eccentricities, intellectual aberrations and religious tomfooleries, because they declare war against their moral nature, and presumptuously cast aside its primary beliefs. They extinguish the flickering lamp of truth in their hearts, and grope in a darkness of their own creation. Hence the facility with which they literally make fools of themselves or become laughing-stocks to all sensible men ! The Brahmos, with commendable good sense, avoid the rock on which not only their faith, but even that which makes them rational beings is wrecked. They accept the fundamental truths of religion on the testimony of their moral consciousness, as they believe in the objectivity of the material world on the testimony of the senses, superadded perhaps to this testimony.

Like the thoughtful Kant, they cannot play either with " the starry heavens" or with their own " sense of responsibility." They instinctively believe in the existence of a God, not an inscrutable force, an impersonal first cause, or a being of Hmited power though boundless good- will, but a personal Deity of unerring wisdom and hmitless power, holy and full of love, just and merciful. They recognize our duty, not merely to express faith in the existence of such a Being and then quietly shelve Him, but to love and serve Him, and allow Him to regulate our life and conversation. They believe in a distinction between right and wrong, essential, eternal, and immutable, not merely one created by society for its convenience and therefore changeable as its emergencies. They believe, in short, in an unchangeable and imperative law of righteousness, emanating from God Himself, and bearing therefore the impress as well of His authority as of His glorious attributes. They believe in a future state of rewards and punishments, wherein the moral anomalies noticed in this life will be rectified, and the balance of justice restored. They believe in our free agency, and in the fact that our happiness and misery here and hereafter hang upon our relation to God and our attitude toward His perfect law. In a word, they believe in all the doctrines and principles of which simple naturalism or the religion of nature consists ; and therefore they have truth on their side as far as they go, though certainly not unmixed with error. Hence the immense superiority of their faith over the extravagant creeds which rear their superstructures on the ruins, so to speak, of the instinctive beliefs of humanity.

Their faith, in the second place, indicates a progress from darkness to light, not vice versa. The Mormons and Comtists shut their eyes to the Sun of Eighteousness and commence a retrograde move from a good toward a bad faith. No wonder they get entangled in ludicrous error and add madness to folly ! The Brahmos, on the contrary, move from a degenerate toward a better faith. Their system may justly be characterized as a reform. It may be regarded as an attempt to revive the ancient faith of the country, of which its modern manifestation may in one sense be represented as a miserable caricature ; or it may be regarded as an attempt to supplant the national faith by a system of eclecticism transferred wholesale from lands more enlightened than our own, or modified and accommodated to the moral exigencies of the country. But in either of these aspects it is a move in the right direction, inasmuch as it is evident that that national faith is so corrupt in its nature and disastrous in its consequences that almost any departure from it, excepting, of course, such as land us in the absurdities embodied in Mormonism and Comtism, indicates genuine progress.

Again, it should be remembered that Brahmoism has had from the very beginning a larger amount of moral earnestness than either of the two systems, which may in one sense be represented as its rivals. Mormonism was originated by a man whose mind, weak and ill-balanced, was a prey to visions and revelations, and who, like Mohammed, certainly did add a great deal of low cunning to the exuberance of fanaticism characteristic of his impulsive nature. For a time it showed earnestness enough to make progress in spite of a series of persecutions — cruel, brutal, and most assuredly unworthy of a country which is emphatically the home of political freedom and religious toleration — but the earnestness it displayed had more of the determined spirit of worldliness in it than of godliness and piety. Since the martyrdom of its founder, Mormonism has degenerated into a vice or nuisance ; and whatever earnestness it now shows is hellish and consequently of an execrable type. Comtism has at times been doubtless associated with what is called the enthusiasm of humanity, but as a system of religion it has never appealed to any portion of our nature higher than the aesthetic. Brahmoism has from the beginning been a religion of a purer stamp, and it has manifested commendable earnestness in adopting and assimilating purer types of worship, and introducing moral reforms of, on the whole, a desirable character. It is undoubtedly true that it has had official patronage enough to cripple its vitality, and that if it had been persecuted as Mormonism was during the first few years of its existence, it would perhaps have been nipped in the bud. But some degree of earnestness of a right type it has shown, as a matter of fact, and its obvious superiority over the other two systems is partially to be traced to it.

And, lastly, the superiority of Brahmoism must be ascribed partly to the superiority in a religious point of view of the community directly benefited by it over those influenced by the two rival creeds. Though frivolous on the whole, our educated countrymen are not so ludicrously senseless as the peoples swayed by the naked absurdities of Joe Smith or Auguste Comte. A grotesque creed might very easily be spread among

1G BBAHMOISM.

the uneducated masses of our countrymen. But, thanks to English education, such a creed, if introduced among those who form the upper ten thousand, would have no chance whatever of considerable or permanent success. A god incapable of living except in a body with possibilities of infinite progress before him, or an abstract idea worshipped in the shape of a beautiful woman with a lovely child in her arms, would be laughed off the stage by them. A few among them are Comtists, but they are followers of Comte's English disciples, who, while they adopted his philosophy and his classification of the sciences, laugh at his religion as an indication of his dotage.

The champions of Brahmoism need not, we repeat, blush to see their system alongside of the religions of the age, to which the term ' ' novel ' ' may with a deal of propriety be applied, along, of course, with the expression generally associated with it, ' i queer. ' ' Brahmoism is one of the signs of the times, and in some respects a good one. Its bright side may be pointed out with devout thankfulness.

1. It has been from the very beginning a standing protest against polytheism and idolatry. If there was anything to which its celebrated founder, Kajah Earn Mohun Roy, seemed irreconcilably opposed, it was idolatry. He disliked and even abhorred it from his youth up, and he allowed no opportunity of publicly expressing his hatred to it to slip out of his hands. He wrote against it, he spoke against it, he deplored its ascendency in the country in public and in private, and he ultimately embodied an implacable hostility to it in an organization which was fitted not to give it quarter. The fact that he once or twice represented it as necessary to the ignorant does not detract from his hostility to it. Brahmoisin has with some degree of fidelity represented his irreconcilable antagonism to the popular idolatry of the country. It has perhaps relaxed its zeal against it a little in the attempts it has at all times made to coquette with it, but on the whole its trumpet has not given an uncertain sound in this matter. As a' standing protest against popular forms of idolatry, we may bid it God-speed.

2. It has, since the organization of the progressive Somaj, been a standing protest against the caste system. Eajah Ram Mohun Eoy strove to maintain his caste, at least ostensibly, even hi England ; and no form of service fitted to indicate his renunciation of its privileges was held when his remains were buried at Bristol. His successor, Babu Debendro JNath Tagore, was equally determined to leave the monster intact ; but Babu Keshub Chunder Sen made it not merely a mootpoint, but a test question, and has ever since his separation from the Adi Somaj been firm on this point, however veering on others. And it must be admitted that in this matter he has sacrificed expediency to principle, and conscientiously thrown off advantages which he might have secured by carrying out a temporizing policy. The avowed antagonism of his Somaj to the formidable system of caste is a good sign.

3. Bralimoism, again, has • to the best of its ability thrown itself into the work of social and political reform. It has introduced a needed innovation into the marriage laws of the country, has bestirred itself in the cause of female education, has organized associations to check the spread of drunkenness in the land, and has always been most forward to back efforts fitted to help the needy and raise the poor. It has been not merely a theoretical religion, but a practical system, and its humanitarianism is worthy of praise and encouragement.

4. Again, Brahmoism is doing its best to resist the tide of atheism which is flowing out specially of government schools and colleges. What may be called the religion of negations is unhappily becoming fashionable among the very best educated alumni of these institutions. This religion appears under a garb of modest doubt or unbelief, and therefore shorn of its repellent features ; but in reality it does its best to hold up to ridicule the primary, instinctive beliefs on which the superstructure of every positive religion is based. It does not boldly deny in unequivocal terms the existence of God, the propriety of worship, moral distinctions, the future reward of virtue and the future punishment of vice. But the denial is implied in its tone, its utterances, its affected modesty, and its sarcastic smile. This insidious foe is abroad, and no Christian fights it more systematically, more energetically, than the Brahmo.

5. Brahmoism, moreover, has been popularizing ideas which are foreign to the literature of the country — which are characteristically as well as admittedly Christian — viz. , the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In an article entitled " The Kelation of the Brahmo Somaj to Hinduism and Christianity," in the Theistic Annual for 1873, there are statements which point out with emphasis the great source from which these lofty ideas have been borrowed. On page 28 of the brochure occur the following sentences : " The idea of the brotherhood and equality of all mankind before God, I am sorry to say, is not to be found, because it is never recognized in any of our ancient writings. The idea is decidedly foreign,

Western, and I think I might say Christian." And on page 31 of the same paper we have this admission : '" I do not deny there are innumerable passages in Hindu books calling the Divine Being by all manner of names, but such names and the sentiments they embody are very different from the deep personality of spiritual relation typically expressed when Jesus exclaimed f " Our Father in heaven !" These ideas may and do lie buried beneath heaps of error in the religions of the world, but Christianity has not merely exhumed and vitilized them, but given them a practical significance they never possessed before its appearance. And Brahmoism, by popularizing them in a country where they are scarcely, if at all, recognized and never reduced to practice, is doing good.

6. And, lastly, the universal veneration in which the name of our Lord is held in almost all circles of our educated countrymen is to be ascribed, partly at least, to the teaching and influence of the Somaj. Time was, even within the recollection of middle-aged men in India, when the excellency of the character of our Lord was so little perceived that attempts to question its spotless purity were made by a few even of those who stood at the head of the educated community at Calcutta. A pamphlet was written entitled, " Christianity — -"What is it ?" by a man who used to distinguish himself both as an essayist and a speaker in the debating clubs of the metropolis, and in it a virulent attack on the moral character of our Lord was made. But a great change has come over the educated community since its appearance in the matter. One scarcely now comes across among its members a person ignorant and stupid enough to throw out hints and innuendoes to the disparagement of the character of Christ, while the monster ready to come out with an open attack thereon in print has entirely disappeared from the stage of religions controversy in India. This change has been brought about by the spread of correct information regarding the life of our Lord, facilitated mainly by the missionaries. But it must be admitted that in this matter they have been helped by the Somaj, which may in one sense be considered a fruit of their labor of love.

Having pointed out some of the excellences of Brahmoism, we consider it our duty to refer to a few of its defects before we proceed to a careful examination of its historical development and doctrinal principles. Let us conclude this paper with a brief notice of a few of the mistakes into which our Brahmo friends have fallen.

1. They have fallen into the mistake of renouncing a few of those beliefs which may justly be characterized as intuitive. They have retained a few of the instinctive beliefs of humanity, the ultimate principles of faith, and in this they have acted wisely ; but the} r have cast overboard a few, and this is one of the most prominent mistakes they have made. They have retained the instinctive beliefs of man unf alien, but they have thrown aside the instinctive beliefs, or what may properly be called the instinctive beliefs of man fallen.

The religion of humanity may justly be represented as consisting of two formations — the primitive and secondary. The primitive formation is simple naturalism or the religion of nature, which finds its complete, or all but complete, embodiment in four of the five well-known symbols of Lord Herbert of Cherbury : (1) There is a God. (2) He ought to be worshipped. (3) Yirtue and piety are the chief elements of worship. (4) There is a future life of rewards and punishments. These principles are the basis of all faith, and may be found, buried it may be, under heaps of error in every system of religion properly so called. The religion they constitute of themselves would have been adequate to the exigencies of human nature if man had not sinned, but the relations in which he stands to the Being whose righteous law he has presumptuously transgressed are disturbed, and his own nature is vitiated. Something therefore must be added to the original religion of humanity to make it suited to his altered circumstances. Lord Herbert of Cherbury is aware of this, and adds to the principles of naturalism another symbol, the necessity of repentance. Repentance, he affirms, is a duty.

But when this father of modern infidelity in England dwells upon the sufficiency of his five symbols, he is at war with the instincts of fallen man, who naturally builds up another formation or stratum of beliefs upon his foundation. These beliefs it is desirable to enumerate.

a. Belief in the necessity of a divine intervention or direct miraculous interference to rectify the disorder of the moral world is universal and instinctive. Every sin a man commits is, as Dr. Bushnell justly says, a miracle — an action performed in contravention of the laws of nature — and brings in a miracle of disorder. The result of man's sin is the complete unhingement of the machinery of nature : man sits in the world amid universal wreck as a child who has let fall a beautiful tea-service from, a table, and shrieks and sits aghast amid scattered fragments of broken cups and broken saucers. And man is no more able to reorganize the world than the child is to replace the beautiful cups and saucers he has broken into pieces. And so he instinctively cries for divine intervention as the child cries for help. And he not only believes in the necessity of such intervention, but maintains that God has intervened — come between a ruined humanity and a ruined world to rectify the disorders of both.

b. Belief in the necessity of a divine revelation — objective, not merely subjective — is also universal and instinctive. One result of sin is darkness in the soul, the extinction of that knowledge of God and our duty, which but for sin would have been our glorious heritage. Experience brings man to a recognition of two indisputable facts — that he is destitute of proper knowledge of God and his duty, and .that he cannot by his own effort struggle out of his spiritual ignorance. And he instinctively cries for a revelation, and maintains, moreover, that one has been granted. There is not merely a universal recognition of the need of a revelation, but a universal belief that God has been pleased to vouchsafe a revelation for the enlightenment and guidance of fallen man.

c. The necessity of mediation, moreover, is universally and instinctively recognized by man. Men who have no adequate ideas or approximately adequate ideas of the intense holiness of God or of their own unutterable corruption may laugh at the idea of approaching the Deity through a Mediator ; but humanity instinctively believes that sin has rendered direct communication between the righteous Kuler of the universe and His rebellious subjects impossible. The religions of the world prove this to a demonstration. Nay, so strong is the tendency to have recourse to mediation that some of those who have been most prominent in their opposition to it have themselves been converted into mediators. Mohammed vehemently opposed the doctrine, and distinctly gave his people to understand that he was not a mediator ; but his ashes had not become cold ere he was raised to the dignity of a mediator by his followers. And if Brahmoism live and become the religion, not of small groups of solitary thinkers but of the masses, Mr. Sen or some other leader will erelong be converted into a mediator in spite of all the loud talk against mediation associated with it !

d. "What has been said of the necessity of mediation may with equal propriety be said of the necessity of an atonement for sin. The universality of the doctrine of sacrifice proclaims this necessity in tones of thunder. Man's tendency to a recognition of the necessity of an atonement for sin — not a spiritual and intangible, but a palpable, bloody atonement for sin — is so strong that all attempts to overcome it have been foiled. The history of Buddhism is full of instruction in this as in other respects. Buddha declared a war of extermination against one and all the moral instincts of humanity, going the length of even ignoring, if not denying, the existence of God. But he has been conquered by these instincts, has himself been worshipped as a god, recognized as an incarnation, honored as a prophet or the source of a special revelation, and regarded universally by his followers as a being who came down from heaven to rectify the disorders brought in by sin. One of the doctrines he opposed most vehemently is the doctrine of sacrifice. How utterly futile his opposition has been is proved by the fact that sacrifices are universally offered in countries wherein his sway has been acknowledged and his religion has been in the ascendant.