WE are indebted to “The Covenanter,” the organ of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland, for calling attention to a very serious piece of disloyalty to Christianity, perpetrated by our Indian government. Possibly too much countenance has been given before now to the idolatrous and degraded Hindu religion by our national representatives in India, but early in this year that recognition took for the first time a concrete form which is painful to contemplate. Lord Hardinge, the British viceroy, laid the foundation stone of a new Hindu University at Benares on the 4th February. The cost of this University is estimated at about £2,000,000. A third of this amount had been already raised by subscription. The Government of India has sanctioned an annual grant for the erection and upkeep of the institution. The Australian newspaper, “The Argus,” reports that Lord Hardinge said at the laying of the foundation stone that this ceremony marked a definite step towards the ideal which had stirred to its very depths the imagination of India, and that it was the declared policy of the Government of India to do all within its power and means to multiply the number of Universities throughout India, realising that the greatest boon the Government could give India was a diffusion of higher education through the erection of new universities. It appears that a Central Hindu College already exists at Benares, which has been promoted by a deluded errorist of our own country, Mrs. Annie Besant. This College is now to be absorbed in the University, which is to be governed almost exclusively by Hindus, and is to be marked by avowedly religious and denominational features. We further learn that the institution will be open to those who are not Hindus, but that for all Hindu students the observance of Hindu religious rites and attendance at courses of instruction in Hindu religious philosophy will be made obligatory.
Now, what is the meaning of all this? The meaning is simply that Great Britain, a professedly Christian nation, is giving its sanction and support through its representatives to one of the basest systems of heathenism in existence. No doubt our rulers have already proved unfaithful to their religious profession in Ireland and Egypt, endowing a Papist College at Maynooth in the one country and a Mohammedan College in the other, but this does not justify a further and deeper descent into the mire of apostacy. What is Hinduism? It is adultery and murder garnished with the name of religion. True, the murderous elements—the killing of parents and children, and the suicide of devotees and widows—have already been put down by British law in India, but we have no evidence that the grossly obscene elements are interfered with at all. Here, then, is the Indian Government giving its sanction and support to organised sensualism, adorned with the name of religious worship. More than that; if the general principles of Hinduism are to be taught in the new University, the foundation is being laid over again for the restoration, when opportunity occurs, of all the cruel and bloody rites that are presently prohibited. Surely this is lamentable in the extreme.
It would appear from the manner in which this terrible business is dealt with by the “Argus” newspaper that no harm is seen in the event, but that it is regarded as a new instance of modern enlightened progress. “If the light that is in thee is darkness how great is that darkness!” Thus spake “the Light of the World” when He walked upon earth. No words could be more suitably applied to the light that is so predominant in the present day, a light that shines favourably on all manner of unwholesome opinions and practices. It is the most deceptive and destructive form of darkness that can exist, blinding thousands of poor souls to their eternal destruction.
We are not at all anxious to bring down an evil report of the land, or to seek to discover faults where none exist, in our beloved country. We have been truly wounded and grieved by the discovery of this new act of disloyalty to the name of Christ by our national representatives. Do they think that “the Governor among the nations,” whom they profess to serve, will look complacently on such conduct as this, dishonouring to all that is honourable, and lovely, and of good report, and injurious to the poor natives of India themselves? The Son, whom the Father has made King of Zion and King of nations, has as much right to be honoured in India as in England or Scotland. No wonder that He is angry at the present time and causing the sword of judgment to fall heavily upon us. “Except the Lord of hosts had let unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been made like unto Gomorrah” (Is. i. 9). We have no delight in the work of denunciation, but the Lord has said, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Is. lviii. 1). Our country, though perhaps better in many respects than any other nation under heaven, stands greatly in need of a day of the Spirit’s power. King, and legislators and subjects require to hear “the true and faithful word” over again with majesty and power from the lips of the exalted Son of man, whose “eyes are as a flame of fire,” and whose “voice is as the sound of many waters.” Nothing less than this will raise us from the wreck and ruin of modern departures from “the faith once delivered unto the saints,” and from the moral blindness and corruption that pervades almost all places. “O Lord, in wrath remember mercy!”