BOOKS.
MR. SEN'S PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION..
THESE Lectures and Tracts form an interesting study. In spirit they are as profoundly, one might almost say mystically, devotional as any you could find in the most enthusiastic missionary school of Europe, yet in theology and philosophy they are comprehensive and eclectic to a point which gives almost an impression of the want of a clear personal standing-point. They are perfectly refined and entirely devoid of that flavour of narrow and indelicate self-consciousness which so often marks the "religious experiences" of Europe, though there are passages of strictly personal experience in more than one of the Lectures. Indeed, they give the impression of a highly accomplished mind, with a turn for rather vague and latitudinarian speculation, steadied, however, by great intensity of devotional feeling, and a profound delight in that characteristic quietism and mysticism of Hindoo speculation, of which Western
* The Brahnto-Semqj Lectures and Tracts. By Keshub Chunder Sen. First and Second Series. Edited by Sophia Dobson Collet. London ; Sind= and Co.
quietism and mysticism are little better than a parody. Instead of narrowing his mind, this sincere Hindooism of the writer gives his writings their chief intellectual interest. But for this they would want character, and weary by their diffuseness and the vagueness of their generalizations. The lectures in which Mr. Sen philosophizes most are to us the least interesting. For example, his "Future Church," in which he dwells on the three partial phases of religion, nature-worship, mind- worship, and great-men or incarnation-worship, and says that all these must have their fair share in the Church of the future, seems to us very cloudy and wanting in distinctiveness of thought. Some kinds of nature-worship are surely far more different from others, than certain kinds of nature-worship are from the mind-worship to which Mr. Sen refers, in describing the Pantheism which teaches the merging of the individual mind in the universal mind. Again, there is nothing at all to prevent Pantheism of this latter kind from expressing itself in the doctrine of incarna- tion, as is, indeed, true of Buddhism. The classification is loose and uninstructive. There is far more difference in kind between some of the various faiths which assume an incarna- tion of God in an individual man than there is between some of these and Pantheism, or others of these and Polytheism in the sense given to it by Mr. Sen. Surely the character of the various religions criticized depends not upon their enjoining a worship of material Nature, of mind, and of individual manifestations of the Deity, half so much as on their conception of what is to be understood by material Nature, what is to be understood by mind, and what is the specific character of the human being in whom it is taught that God became incarnate. Nature-worship of the sensual kind is far more distinct from Nature-worship of the Greek kind, such as we ordinarily understand by Polytheism, than the latter is from many forms of Pantheism. To say that the Church of the future must avoid the error of worshipping matter too exclusively, worshipping mind too exclusively, and worshipping individual manifestations of God, yet must not neglect any of these modes of access to God too exclusively, is like saying that the art of the future must avoid the error of being too material, of being too spiritual, and of devoting itself exclusively to the human form, and yet must not neglect any of these important provinces of art. That might be, and yet the art of the future might be worse than the art of the present ; and so the Church of the future might avoid all Mr. Sen's list of partialities, and not neglect to profit by any of them, and yet might be worse than the Church of the present.
Again, we are disposed to find fault with Mr. Sen's philosophy, when, following Lessing's celebrated, but, as we believe, most sophistical teaching, he tells us, in one of his interesting lectures, on "The Religious Importance of Mental Philo- sophy," that the pursuit of truth is of greater import- ance than the possession of the truth ; "that mental exercise is more important than the knowledge it enables us to attain." .If this merely mean that there are some disciplines of the mind (such as logic, say, or mathematics) which are more valuable as mental gymnastics, that is, as preparing the mind to pursue suc- cessfully still higher truths in other departments of speculation, than they are for the particular truths they enable us to master, no doubt this is true, but very inaccurately expressed, and it certainly meant a great deal more than this in Leasing's mouth. But if it mean that even in the highest regions it is of more importance to be pursuing truth than to find it, the assertion seems to us to strike at the root of all hearty truth-seeking, just as it would immediately undermine the vigilance of any other search for the seekers to be told that after all it was not so important to find what they were looking for, as to wish to find it. The highest truth includes the knowledge of men and God. One of the highest truths, for instance, is that self-sacrifice for the good of another is divine. But Mr. Sen would be the last man in the world to say that it is of far more importance to be eagerly seeking for some criterion whether or not self-sacrifice for the good of another is divine, than it is to know and hold fast the truth that it is so. Mr. Sen's religious teaching is here certainly far better than his philosophy.
Once more, when Mr. Sen teaches that Faith is "the direct vision of God," he is surely teaching false and rather dangerous psychology. "True faith," he says in the very original and in- teresting aphorisms near the end of this volume, "is direct vision ; it beboldeth God, and it beholdeth immortality. It is no dogma of books, no tradition of venerable antiquity. It relieth upon no evidence but the eyesight, and will have no mediation. It neither borroweth an idea of God from metaphysics nor a narrative of God from history. It doth not bow its neck to a logical or historical Deity. It adoreth the ever-living and ever-present Reality. The
God of faith is the sublime I Am. In time he is always now, in space always here." Is faith, in fact, direct vision ? If it were, how would it be connected, as it is by Mr. Sen himself, with the divine rashness and imprudence of that wisdom which rejects the wisdom of the world. A direct vision such as Mr. Sen describes would make faith the highest worldly wisdom. If it were possible to see God just as an occupied Frenchvillage now sees the Prussian host which occupies it, would there be any possibility that the mind so
seeing him would need the exercise of humility and virtue in order to follow every dictate of his will? Faith surely means the surrender to a power which we cannot see, or can only see but dimly and in glimpses, under the keen sense that we are higher beings when we trust an unseen or dimly-felt Holiness, than when we ask to see our own way. If faith were sight, the humility and self-abnegation which Mr. Sen rightly teaches to be the companions of faith would be hardly virtues at all,—they would be forced upon us by the vision of the Majesty above us, and of the declared requirements of his will. It is the imperfection of our nature which makes humility and self-abnegation necessary to faith. Faith demands the surrender of our wills, and is in its turn strengthened by that surrender, but" direct vision" would make the surrender of our wills a wise selfishness.
We have found fault with Mr. Sen's philosophy because it has been too much the custom in this country to patronize and praise his writings, as if they were not to be tried by the same standard as English writings on the same subjects. This is a very bad compliment to him, and in some respects he deserves to be tried by a very much higher sta ndard than English religion would afford us any trace of. We doubt if there are many English devo- tional writers who could, even if they would, speak so forcibly and fervently as he does on devotional subjects, without a certain re- pulsive formalism and professional tone from which Mr. Sen is wholly and utterly free. Again, there is a curious freedom in
these Lectures from all the intellectual embarrassments of English controversy. He writes about 'prayer,' for instance, as if the metaphysical and theological difficulties so uniformly discussed in English writings on the subject, were, if not unknown to him, as
of course they cannot be, so uninteresting to him and trivial as not to deserve mention. There are few passages in any religious writer more noble in their eloquence and simplicity than Mr. Sen's account of his religious experience on this subject. There is nothing in it of the prying evangelical manner in which an English pietist would disclose a "precious experience." There is nothing in it of the awkward, half apologetic tone in which an English philosopher would defend his belief in prayer. Mr. Sen relates in powerful and manly language, the sincerity of which no one can mistake, and which has even a noble tone of exultation in the goodness of God, though without any of that prim pride in being "an instrument of the Lord" peculiar to our religious literature, the history of his own heart in reference to it :—
" I can give you no better explanation of the fact how I have learned to pray, and why I am in the habit of offering prayer daily to my God. If I could do without it, this very moment I would leave off the habit. If I had never felt the necessity of prayer myself, I would never have been engaged in it, even if it were insisted upon by teachers or books ; —but I have found it necessary. When it pleased my merciful God to cause the light of religion to dawn upon my heart,—allow me to mention an incident from the earliest chapter of my religious history,—when through his grace my eyes were first opened to the importance of religion, and the first struggles for emancipation from sin began to agitate my heart, then I felt the need of prayer. I found my heart was full of darkness, and was under the deadly influence of all the passions of the flesh, the allurements of the world, the power of evil, the power of fame, and of lust, and of ambition, and of covetousness, and of worldliness. Against these multitudinous enemies I, a poor sinner, could not possibly stand. Feeble in body, feebler in mind, feebler still in spirit, how could I stand in the face of enemies so awful, so formidable, and so numerous as these,—enemies outside and enemies within, con- tending for mastery over my soul day and night? What could I do in circumstances such as these ? I waited not for the revelation of any particular book or the teachings of any particular prophet. In deep agony I consulted my soul, and my soul said, in language exceedingly simple and impressive, Pray, and pray, if you want salvation. None but God can save sinners.' And then my proud and arrogant mind was bumbled down, and with it was humbled down my bead; my heart, which had been eaten up with conceit, and arrogance, and self-sufficiency, found that there was nothing in it which could withstand the awful assaults of temptations, and in utter help- lessness I threw myself at my Father's feet. All sides of the horizon were dark ; light suddenly burst forth in one direction, and it appeared as if the word 'Prayer' was written in golden letters on the gate of the kingdom of God—showing that none entereth God's kingdom except he pass through the gate of prayer—none conquereth sin and temptation unless he humbly, earnestly, and fervently pray. Without wavering or hesitation, therefore, I at once began to pray to my God. The first day—a blessed day it was—I prayed in the morning and in the night, secretly and humbly. No brother helped me with counsel or encouragement. Nay, I had to coneeal the matter from the knowledge of my friends and relatives, lest they should scoff at me. I was sure that as soon as they came to know of it, they would ridicule me and scoff at me, and try to dissuade me, if possible, from such a noble and godly habit ; and lest such circumstances should happen, I kept the matter a great secret. Day after day I kept on praying, and in the course, I assure you, of a few days, I found as it were a flood of light entering into the inmost recesses of my heart and dissipating the dark- ness of my soul, the darkness of death. Oh, it was cheering moonlight streaming through overhanging clouds of hideous sin! Then I felt great relief, unspeakable comfort. I also felt that I could eat and drink with pleasure. Then I found rest on my bed, and then I found comfort in the company of friends. For I can assure you there was a time in my life when I had almost given up mirth and good-humour and cheerful- ness, and amusements of all kinds. I felt that the world was dark because my heart was fall of darkness ; and had not my gracious and beneficent God revealed to me just at that time this great gospel of salvation, namely, prayer, I cannot think where I would have been to-. night. You would not have seen me in Bombay addressing you from this pulpit. Oh, it is too much for my feelings to bear—it overpowers me when it enters my mind—the thought where I would have been to- night if God had not taught me to pray ! Prayer, to me, was the beginning of salvation."
It is in such passages as these that we see how much Mr. Sen and other Oriental Christians,—for in spirit, at least, Mr. Sen is a thorough Christian, however he may repudiate the Christian theology,—may have to teach us. Unembarrassed religious faith, faith of the End which can speak of itself with as little difficulty as a man feels in speaking of his moral or intellectual obligations to another man, hardly exists in England. Even men who earnestly believe in God have acquired the habit of using neutral phrases so as to avoid expressing that belief where it would be most natu- ral to express it. Those who force themselves to express it, do so as if they were forced. Religion, even among those to whom it is the essence of their life, has ceased to be part and parcel of the social nature. Oriental Christianity may help us to see once more how noble, simple, and wholly free from pietism of any kind the higher sort of piety may be. To Miss Collet, for her inde- fatigable labours in making the Brahmo-Somaj properly known in England, both India and England have much reason to be grateful.
Previous page
