Christianity as Bhakti Marga

Jesus, as interpreted by the Fourth Evangelist, has been describing His relation to His devotees in terms of the flesh. With considerable emphasis and in striking phrase He has brought before His hearers this great idea that they must accept Him as a part of their inmost self: _He then concludes with the words -

‘It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.’ The conclusion of this remarkable discourse provokes thought even more than the body of the discourse. At first sight it looks as if in the conclusion He gives away His entire teaching and starts an absolutely different line of thought. But on deeper reflection it will be evident that He is uttering in the conclusion a warning which profoundly modifies its meaning. The conclusion dees not contradict the discourse but like a blaze of light at the end of a long road illumines it. The radiance which it throws spreads far and wide. It is with the help of its powerful light; cleat and penetrating, that we must find our way through the entire discourse. According to the Fourth Evangelist, Jesus seems to say: ‘All that I have been telling you akout the importance of the flesh of the Son of Man and of its relation to man is true. You have indeed to eat His flesh and to drink His blood But do not be misled. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and life.’ In the light of subsequent history these remarkable words gain in significance. There have been millions of Christians who have dwelt so exclusively on the thought that they participate in the life of Christ that they have been ready to emphasize its importance at the expense of everything else. To them the flesh has seemed to profit. They have forgotten that the spirit quickeneth.

The Fourth Evangelist’s attitude towards baptism is the same. A _ detailed consideration of the value which he attributes to it is not necessary as the idea which underlies it has been sketched in this chapter. Jesus says: ‘Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’* Water and the Spirit are brought together here as if they are of equal importance. The physical and the spiritual are not so different as we make them out to be. And yet the next verse goes on to correct any wrong impression which this teaching may give: ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.’ Here again Jesus insists upon everything having its own character while not forgetful of the wonderful unity that pervades life.

Many have regarded the Fourth Evangelist as an ecclesiastic with a bias for ritual and cult. The interpretation which has been suggested in this chapter of two important passages from his writings would seem to show that his view of the Christian life is profoundly ritualistic. While it is clear that participation at the Lord’s table and baptism with water are with him no mere symbols, yet he does not attach any magical efficacy to them. With Jesus he sees clearly that the physical and the spiritual keep close company. That is why he attaches to them something more than a symbolic value. That is also why he does not attach to them any magical efficacy that operates by itself without involving the higher laws of the spirit. We find in another passage a remarkable confirmation of this idea. The Jews and the Samaritans had for a long time disputed over the right place of worship. The Jews, proud of their cult and temple, insisted upon Jerusalem with all its ancient history and all its rich and carefully maintained ‘ritual as the place of worship. ‘The Samaritans preferred Mount Gerizim. When. this controversy was referred to Jesus by a Samaritan woman, Jesus said unto her: ‘Woman, believe me; the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father. Ye worship that which ye know not: we worship that which we know: for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and ney that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

It is fitting we should close a-consideration of the teaching of Jesus on worship as recorded in the Fourth Gospel with these words. A more profound or more inspiring utterance has not been made. We. are here led away from all controversy about temple and ritual into the very heart of religion. Over every church and temple these words should be inscribed in large letters: Every.man seeking to approach the Divine and to realize His presence must treasure them in his heart. No idolatry of any sort, whether it be that of image or rite or liturgy, is permissible in the holy shrine in which we meet God face to face. -

» And the Father which sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his torm. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he sent, him ye believe not. Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have lite. I receive not glory trom men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in yourselves. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: tf another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh trom the only God ye seek not? Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. For it ye believed Moses, ye would believe'me; tor he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe

There are different ways of loving God and of enjoying His fellowship. We have already considered the way of devotion along which we may seek Him, surrendering ourselves entirely to Him. Love for God is a mere phrase unless it expresses itself in concrete deeds of love directed towards men. Such love finds its supreme expression in its readiness and eagerness to suffer with the Loved One. Through such suffering the love itself is ennobled and filled with a new content. After speaking of the love we should have for God, all the time remembering fully that the very capacity to love is given to us and stirred in us by God Himself, we went on to consider one of the means of giving expression to this love. We saw that we should draw nigh to Christ and become one with Him by participating in His body and blood. In this chapter we shall proceed to study yet another means of realizing our oneness with Christ, namely, the study of the Christian scriptures which speak of His life and death. We shall see how the written word of God helps us to understand and realize the Divine presence and to enter into the fulness of joy.

In this context Jesus is speaking of different kinds of witness. John the Baptist, His forerunner, has borne witness to Him. He has recognized in Jesus a greater than himself who has come to the world as the Sacrificial Lamb. But his witness, Jesus declares, is not of such great importance as the witness of the Father Himself. The works which the Father has given Jesus to accomplish, and the Father Himself bear witness of Him: Who has heard the Father bearing witness? No one. ‘Ye have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen his form?’ What then is the meaning of saying that the Father hath borne witness? The witness of the Father is not so much in any direct and immediate revelation which He gives from time to time as in the historic revelation which has been embodied in the scriptures; When we turn to the scriptures, however, we find the seers who wrote them declaring that they have heard the voice of God and seen His form. They do not speak for themselves but definitely assert that the Lord has spoken to them “Thus saith the Lord.’ Then have we to depend upon a second-hand revelation of God, a revelation given to seers of old and passed on to us and not wait expectantly to hear day by day for ourselves the voice of the Lord? If the scriptures contain an authoritative and final revelation of God and we are taught to accept it, then are we in no danger of ceasing to expect immediate and direct communion with God? Let us acknowledge frankly that there are occasions when we are most eager to hear some immediate pronouncement of the Lord on the questions before us. Every man is placed in peculiar circumstances which force upon him from time to time acutely specific and individual problems. The difficulties which he feels no one else feels or perhaps has felt. Face to face with problems, so vital and yet so elusive tecause of theil individual character, we are asked to look for help from ancient writings which themselves are full of problems- Written in languages which all cannot read, and surrounded by numerous conflicting interpretations which have already been offered, the scriptures often raise a great many difficulties. How much more satisfactory would it be if we could hear directly the pronouncement of the Lord on the particular issue before us without having to seek for a clue from such: difficult ancient writings! If God could speak to us now and directly, all these difficulties would disappear and we could have aclear verdict, exactly suited to the particular situation in which we are placed. Instead of seeking, sometimes in vain, to find our way among the mazes of an ancient revelation, we should be experiencing God directly and seeing His form.

' Again such an immediate and direct revelation imparted to us by the Father would not only prove quite suited to the particular occasion which we might be called upon to meet but would come to us with an impressiveness which no study, however earnest and reverent, of the revelation already given to others and permanently written down in books, can possess. One’s own experience has a force of conviction which no other man’s will ever give. The voice of the Lord heard by us in the inner sanctuary of our souls will have a clearness which it cannot have coming to us through another person.

What then is the object of reading the scriptures? “Ye search the scriptures because ye think that in.them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.’ The fundamental import of the Christian scriptures is that they record the story of Jesus. They enable us to get in touch with the historic manifestation of the Divine. It is true only the four

Gospels narrate the life of Jesus. But these Gospels are to the Bible what the keystone is to the arch. The whole structure rests upon the keystone. Take the Gospels away and the massive edifice of Christian revelation tumbles down immediately.

We know from the prologue what a secure place the idea of the eternal God appearing in time has held ‘in the mind of the Fourth Evangelist. To him the fact of profound importance is that the Logos,’ who was with God and.was God, began His work of creation and after manifesting Himself through the’ processes of nature and of history, finally took human flesh and dwelt among men. This is the very starting point of Johannine thought. How thoroughly the entire argument of the Gospel is affected by the initial idea that Christ existed. before all time is evident from several verses. Speaking to the Jews, Jesus says, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad..The Jews therefore said unto him, Thou are not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I. am.’* In the great prayer, recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel, He says: ‘And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.’ * And again: ‘ Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that, where [ am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.’* ‘The First Epistle of John begins with the same note: ‘That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.’ * According to the Fourth Evangelist, it is not possible to see the eternal, ineffable and transcendent God. If we attempt to see Him we shall only fail. This thought has often found noble expression in the religious literature of India; noble because it reveals the thinker in all his sincerity and humility. Kabir, who lived in the fifteenth century, has a poem which may be considered a good specimen of such utterances:

‘There within Him creation goes forward, which is beyond all philosophy; for philosophy cannot attain to Him:

There is an endless world, O my Brother! and there is the Nameless Being, of whom naught can be said.

Only he knows it who has reached that region: it is other than all that is heard and said.

No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there: how can I tell you that which it is?

He comes to the Path of the Infinite on whom the grace of the Lord descends: he is freed from births and deaths who attains to Him.

Kabir says: “It cannot be told by the words of the mouth, it cannot be written on paper:

It is like a dumb person who tastes a sweet thing— how shall it be explained?”.’?

Who can know the eternal Being as He is in Himself? John teaches us that it is only through the world which He has made and through the movements of men whom He guides that we can obtain a glimpse of His personality. And even this can only be tantalizing and vague, enabling us to see but partially and as through a veil the majesty and love that are His. It is only when we realize that the Eternal has become flesh and dwelt among us that we can behold His glory, ‘ glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We cannot see or know the Father but we can see Jesus and through Him we can know the Father. How emphatically and frequently is this thought reiterated in the Gospel and in the Epistles of John. ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’* ‘Philip saith unto him, Lord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Shew us the Father? ’* ‘No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us.’*

As the appearance of Jesus on earth is the supreme moment in history, all the movements of men before and after find their real meaning in His life and teaching. History is important as it prepares the way for this supreme manifestation of the Divine. If God is to reveal Himself to men at a particular point in history it is but reasonable to suppose that through long ages and by various methods they should be taught to recognise the divine manifestation when it did take place. It was necessary that their eyes should be cleansed. All the ignoble fancies and idolatries to which they had yielded or were likely to yield should be deprived of power and charm. Their hearts should be ennobled so that they might realize the purity of God when they saw it. For any real understanding of the meaning and innér significance of the incarnate God such a long process of training and discipline was necessary. A peculiar people, that is, a people with a keen sensibility to the things of the spirit and an eagerness to answer the call of the Divine when it sounded, was chosen. Through numerous lawgivers, teachers, psalmists, and prophets,.their hearts were prepared to receive the Light and, in the ages which followed the revelation, it has been the work of the Church to interpret it.

mind is formed on traditions and ideas’ which have come down to him through long periods of time..No. man can pretend to stand aloof from the mighty stream of history. As all these facts and forces of history have moulded him it is but right that, for this supreme matter of seeing God-and holding communion with Him, he should try,) in spite’ of all the difficulties connected with it, »to understand the real teaching of history, in the. mighty power of which he | is arene caught for good or:evil.

For such an understanding of history a written revelation like that which we have in the Scriptures is necessary. The Scriptures themselves do not possess life. It is folly to think that there is some inherent power in them to give us life. Their most important function is to lead us to the manifestation of the Divine in time. It is with the incarnate God Himself, who has come within the range of human experience, that we have to hold communion. Through Him we can come in contact with the eternal and exalted and loving God of whom He is but the expression in time.