A Tour of the Missions: Observations and ConclusionsStrong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
East Asia -- Description and travel; Missions
It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an
exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's
revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man.
Here is a seeking, but not a finding, a groping in the dark, with only
the faint rays of conscience to show man the way. Yet he who is the
Light of the World was lighting every man, before his advent in the
flesh, and even Buddha was a reformer and an advance upon the Brahmanism
of his time. He preached the doctrine of unselfish devotion, but he
turned it into error by ignoring man's duty to himself. He made
extinction of desire, rather than purification of desire, to be the way
to happiness. How different this from that thirst after God, even the
living God, which animated the Psalmist, or that hungering and thirsting
after righteousness which Christ says shall be filled! Buddha found in
self, rather than in God, the power to overcome evil. Buddhism has no
personal God to whom appeal may be made for strength, and Buddha himself
has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of
inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence.
There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but
by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimistic and joyless
religion. Hence it suffers deterioration in competition with the more
active systems. Close by Boro Budor, where Buddhism reached its
culmination, are the temples of Mendoet and Brambanam, which show a
reversion in the popular mind to Hindu Brahmanism. And when the Moslem
came, with his doctrine of a personal and living God, Buddhism had no
force to combat it. Boro Budor, once the center of worship for a mighty
kingdom, now stands alone and desolate in a great wilderness, without
priest or worshiper. Djokjokarta, the next city in size to Batavia, is
to-day more Mohammedan than Buddhist. Christian schools and missions are
doing much to turn this moral wilderness into beauty. To convert Java to
Christianity will add to Christ's subjects the very Queen of the East.
XIV
THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
A recent book by Prof. C. F. Andrews, formerly of the Cambridge
Brotherhood in Delhi, has arrested my attention, as the best extant
synopsis of the religious history and prospects of that great country.
It is entitled "The Renaissance in India." It has not yet been
reprinted in America, and can be obtained only in the British Isles. I
have thought it worth while to make it known among us by writing a
review, and the following paper might perhaps serve such a purpose.
But, in the writing, so many thoughts and illustrations of my own have
suggested themselves, that I cannot credit Professor Andrews with the
result, except in part, and I submit my work as my own almost as much
as it is his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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