Christianity as Bhakti Marga

There is a certain danger attached to a revelation in history. Given at a particular time, to a particular people and at a particular place, it has naturally ‘a local character. Those who think they have a revelation readily come to despise all those -who do not accept it. But it is a mark of the breadth of thought characteristic of the Fourth Gospel that it recognizes that the Logos is the light ‘ which lighteth every. man coming into the world.’* Jesus quotes with entire approval the words of the prophet, ‘ And they all shall be taught of God’ and gives them a wider significance than the prophets who were referring only to the children of Israel.” In all men there is a capa-, city to see goodness and to follow it though in some it is obscured by training or innate darkness. This inner capacity to see and to recognize goodness is the work of the Logos. Let no one who believes in a historical revelation deny to others any such capacity.

This, then, is the point at which we have arrived. There are indeed dangers and difficulties connected with a revelation in time. The dispensation of the Old Testament prepares the way for the supreme event in human history, the tabernacling of God in human flesh. The New Testament first records this event itself with numerous details and then interprets its tremendous meaning for all human history. But we must guard ourselves against three dangers:

I. The danger of casuistry. There ought to be no merely intellectual understanding of the letter which results in quibbling.

2. The danger of literalism, which comes from expecting detailed rules instead of a guiding spirit. A historical revelation does not give us ready-made moulds into which all our thought has to be cast. All the ingenuity of commentators has. arisen from an anxiety to discover new modes of thought from the ancient Scriptures. We should study the Scriptures with the greatest care and diligence but should also be prepared to listen to the voice of the Spirit of God as He beckons us to follow Him through unknown paths into new realms of understanding and practice.

3. The danger of pride. in a revelation already possessed, which may blind us to the light granted to others. _We should be ready to recognize great religious teachers wherever they are: found.

These things spake Jesus; and ltting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorily thy Son, that the Son may glority thee: even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that whatscever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life. And this ts life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. I gloritied thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee betore the world was.

I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are trom thee: tor the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them; and they recetved them, and knew of a truth that I came torth trom thee, and they believed that thou didst send me. TI pray for them: I pray not for the world, but tor those whom thou hast given me, for they ave thine: and all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine: and I am glorified in them. And Iam no more in the world, and these ave in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are.

While I was with them, I kept them in thy name which thou hast given me: and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to thee; and these things [ speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even'as I am not of the world. TI pray not that thou shouldest take them trom the world, but that thou shouldest keep them trom the evil one. They are not ot the world, even as IT am not of the world. Sanctity them in the truth - thy word ts truth. As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent L them into the world. And for thetr sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified tn truth.

Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me [ have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be pertected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me belore the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst sent me; and I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.

In entering the vast precincts of a temple we first pass through the outer gate, high and massive, supporting the lofty tower that is seen for miles around. Then come the extensive courtyards through which we wend our way attracted and impressed by their spaciousness. Then there are the halls with their stately and beautiful pillars preaching their ‘sermons in stones’ in graphic and striking imagery so as to appeal to the imagination of young and old alike. It is only after passing through these different parts of a temple that we come to the central structure. In it again we walk through more halls with lofty columns before we reach the great sanctuary. It takes us a long time to come to this central shrine. In some such way it has taken us a good deal of time to come to prayer, which is the inner shrine of all religion. We have considered a great many matters which pertain to the structure of religion. These are all essential just as the gates and the courts and the porches of a temple are essential to it. And yet more important than all these is the central structure of prayer in which the soul holds direct and joyous fellowship with God. There is, however, this fundamental difference between prayer and all other inner shrines. Into other inner shrines, as a rule, it is only the followers of a particular religion or creed and even among them it is only the priests who are allowed to enter and officiate. The mass of the people. have to stay in different parts of the temple according to their various grades of spiritual progress and capacity. Into the holy sanctuary of prayer, on the other hand, all may enter. In the outer courts of duties and creeds and sacraments there may be differences which divide men. All may not find it possible to unite wholeheartedly in these outer courts, because their spiritual eyes are dim with the veil which the external things of religion have cast upon them. But in the inner shrine of prayer there are no such differences to divide them. -Men of all creeds and religions can step into its sacred enclosure and partake reverently in its worship.

This, however, does not mean that prayer is an experience which can be spoken of lightly or shared carelessly with others. Jesus Himself has taught us that when we pray we should enter into the inner chamber and having shut the door pray to the Father in secret. It is impossible for one man to reveal to another his experiences in the deepest moments of prayer. And yet we are fortunate in possessing in the long passage quoted at the head of this chapter a record of a prayer which Jesus offered on a solemn occasion. Even if, bearing in mind the usual method of the Fourth Evangelist, we consider that the account of it is not a verbatim report but is interwoven with the Evangelist’s own meditation, there is no reason to suppose that we have notin the main a true outline, close enough for us to learn from it something at least about Jesus’ method of prayer.

There is, however, a great difficulty about this prayer with which we ought to deal at the very outset. The relation of Jesus to the Father was unique. His attitude to the Father and the confidence and assurance with which He speaks of His work are so entirely distinctive of Him that we must, at least at first sight, be more bewildered than helped. It was possible for Jesus to pray thus. Can every one follow in His footsteps and make this his own private prayer? It is quite true that one aspect of this prayer fills us with a sense of awe and makes us stand off at a distance in the utmost humility. We realize that it is not for us to make it wholly our own even as Jesus did. And yet this does not mean that it has nothing to teach us. If we have to follow Jesus—and we know how difficult it is—we have to follow Him in His way of prayer too,. which is the heart of His religion. Imperfect and weak as we are, we have to learn from His example and to. make His prayer the norm for our life of prayer.

What strikes us first is that much of the prayer is in the nature of an intimate conversation with God. lfa son is engaged in doing his father’s business, and returns home after a long and crowded day’s work, he will tell his father in the evening all that has occurred that day. If we could listen to such a conversation, we should find that there is, in the first place, a goud deal of narrative in it. The son will tell the father all the important things which he has done or which have happened to him. Occasionally narrative may give place to reminiscence and he may speak not merely of the things which have happened to him that day but of events in the past which have a bearing upon the day’s events. But he will not stop with narrative and reminiscence. His experiences may have given rise to certain reflections. He may have received certain impressions, and learnt certain principles. These also he will tell his father. As he goes on describing his work he may actually ask his father to do certain things which are beyond his own power. A conversation between a father and son will range among all these subjects, now dealing with this and now with that, in no very particular order but simply as they arise.

Jesus’ prayer has all these different elements. A good deal of it is taken up with an account of the work which Jesus has done while on earth. He says that He has manifested the Father’s name to the men who were given to Him. While He was in the world He kept them and as the Father has sent Him into the world, even so He has sent them into the world, sanctifying Himself for their sake. A narrative of His present work leads to a recollection of the authority which was given to Him over all flesh and of the glory and love which He had with the Father before the world was.’ The present is intimately bound up with the past and His memory goes back to former things which have such a profound bearing on the present. There are in this prayer not merely narrative and reminiscence, but also the statement of new ideas. Philosophy, that is man’s reflection upon life and his conclusions, has an important place in all conversation. It is not merely the philosopher who deduces laws from experience and formulates general propositions. All of us are doing it all the time in our conversation. Jesus passes naturally from narrative and reminiscence to reflection.’ ‘This is life eternal that they should know thee the only true God and Him whom thou didst send even Jesus Christ.’ ‘Thy word is truth.’ The occurrence of such words in the course of the prayer have given rise to much discussion. It has been asked why they should appear in a prayer and they have sometimes been regarded as the Evangelist’s personal comment. If prayer means a continuous petition it is indeed difficult to understand why other matter should occur init. But if prayer is considered as communion these difficulties will disappear. Petition also has its place here.” Jesus prays for Himself that He might be glorified with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. For His disciples He prays that they may be kept in the Father’s name. They need not be taken from the world but kept from the evil one. They need to be sanctified. He prays also for them that believed on Him through the word of the disciples, that they may all be one even as He and the Father are one, Christ in them and the Father in Christ, so that they may be perfected into one. He wills that they may be with Him to behold His glory. Thus Jesus tells the Father about Himself, His work,

His disciples and their future. Not that the Father did not know all these things nor that Jesus wanted to deliver a discourse to Him about them. All that Jesus wanted to do was to think aloud in His Father’s presence and to share with Him His own highest experiences and ideals. Such was the love He bore to the Father and such the eagerness with which he sought His presence that it led Him to speak of the deepest things of His life as naturally and as intimately as aman would share all His most cherished thoughts with some good friend.

But it may be said that this prayer reflects the Fourth Evangelist’s own conception of prayer rather than Jesus’. We are told in the Synoptic Gospels that Jesus spent whole nights in prayer, retiring toa mountain or toa solitary place. We may well ask what He did on these occasions. Though we have no account of His prayers we may suppose that He did not keep on feverishly asking for different gifts whether for Himself or for others but stayed quietly in the fellowship of His Father deriving from such quiet communion the insight and strength and power He needed. We learn that Jesus went out of His way in quest of solitude though He returned to His work as soon as His prayer. was over. He felt that among men or near the haunts of men He could not as effectively commune with the Father as when alone. Even more than the prayer of petition, the prayer of communion is jealous in its demands and requires absolute outward peace and quiet, though there are occasions when we have to seek the presence of the Father in the midst of disturbing external circumstances. Again, we learn that Jesus took much time over his prayers; this also implies that His prayers -were largely prayers of communion. It takes time to still the mind into repose and when once that is done, communion is such a great joy that it is an effort to break it off. To continue in prayer becomes a source of steady joy and, to some minds, even a source of temptation. Yet again, the prayer which we are studying in this chapter cannot, on one point, adequately reflect the habits of Jesus for it is expressed in words. The finest and most devout men have taught us that in the highest flights of prayer the soul feels itself one with the Divine so intimately and profoundly that it is impossible to set its experience down in words. Even in human intercourse every one of us has felt the friendship or love of a devoted person in some solemn moment with an intensity and passion which it is impossible to. express in language. As we have no records to tell us. what Jesus actually did during those nights of prayer we can only reverently conjecture, taking a clue from the experience of some of the greatest of His followers, that He must have spent them in prolonged and joyous fellowship with His Father.

But we proceed from conjecture to fact when we study what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Though very brief this prayer lays great stress on prayer as communion. In it Jesus teaches us to invoke God first, affectionately and yet reverently, as ‘Our Father which art in heaven’ and then to say, ‘ Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’* Do not all these emphasize the necessity of forgetting our own needs and difficulties and letting our minds dwell upon the thought cf the Father and of His name, His kingdom and His will? We have always to live in the consciousness of the Father’s. presence, praying that His will may become effective in the world and reach down into the hearts of men as profoundly as it does in heaven. This fervent desire to share in the life of the Father and to make it operative in and around us should form the keynote of all prayer. Only after thus directing our thoughts and minds towards this ultimate interpenetration of human life with the spirit and power of God should we ask for help or guidance, and place before our loving Father our need of daily bread, of forgiveness and of deliverance from evil.

The aspect of communion is not so clear in the Lord’s Prayer as it is in the prayer recorded in the Gospel of John, perhaps, because of its brevity. This prayer is a record of Jesus’ own experience. It reveals Him in one of His most exalted moments, and takes us to loftier heights than the prayer which he taught His disciples on an occasion which, as far as we can see, was not particularly solemn and to an audience which was not in any way especially prepared for exalted prayer. This prayer in the Gospel of John stands far apart from all the prayers which have been prayed by the best of men; it reveals an experience above all other religious experience.. If at all we seek to learn anything from it, it must be with the greatest humility, for though we are bound to walk in His footsteps we cannot enter into all His immeasurable and infinite life with the Father. We should strive to make that experience ours and yet we know that it can become ours only in a limited measure and not in the profound fulness which it was the unique privilege of Jesus to enjoy.

It is easy to see the wisdoin of giving such a large place in prayer to communion. The general habit of making prayer a continuous petition tends to give us an ignoble conception of God. Wecome to look upon Him as an omnipotent philanthropist of infinite resources and endless patience who is ever ready to help us in the least things of life and whom it is our duty to besiege with requests for all possible gifts. It is not possible even to imagine any satisfactory relationship of love existing among men on such a basis. What would a father think of his son if that son only made him pay all his bills and help him in all his difficulties and yet did not care to live a life of filial love and friendship? What would a husband think of his wife, if she regarded him all the time merely as the one who would help and put out all his resources to relieve her troubles, and yet did’ not seek his company with the sole aim of participating in it and teing filled with its joy? What would a man think of his friend if he made friendship the pretext for always asking for help and never enjoyed it for its own sake? If we look into our minds, shall we not find that the person whom we love most is the person whose company we enjoy most without any thought whatsoever of anything he or she can do? If we are devoted to a friend we love to be in his presence, to confide our thoughts in him, to listen to his words, to share our experiences with him. Of course if he is a real friend he will help us when we are in trouble and we shall naturally appeal to him. But do we think of making our relation with him nothing but an opportunity to press him with requests and to gain from him all the help which he can give us? To think of prayer as an opportunity to place all our troubles before God and to ask him for all the help which it is possible for us to imagine, is to have a wrong notion of our relation to God. If we continue to make prayer an opportunity only for petition, we are not likely to aspire after the steady life of communion with God, so full of bliss, for its own sake. Our life of prayer is likely to be a matter of duty and work rather than a source of infinite delight. It is only when we seek the presence of God for the sake of its own unutterable joy without constant. thought of the needs and troubles of our lives and of those with whom we are closely connected that our communion with Him can become a reality. Those people are obviously wrong who have made communion with God a matter of narrow and selfish piety withdrawing from the duties they owe to Society in order to indulge it. So also those who have made prayer merely a matter of seeking help in distress have degraded it.. Is it not because many people consciously or unconsciously define prayer as petition that they neglect it? Ifit is considered as an opportunity for holding intercourse with God it would become the noblest business of our lives.