It is now time to turn again to my experiences with Christian friends.
Mr. Baker was getting anxious about my future. He took me to the
Wellington Convention. The Protestant Christians organize such
gatherings every few years for religious enlightenment or, in other
words, self-purification. One may call this religious restoration or
revival. The Wellington Convention was of this type. The chairman
was the famous divine of the place, the Rev. Andrew Murray. Mr.
Baker had hoped that the atmosphere of religious exaltation at the
Convention, and the enthusiasm and earnestness of the people
attending it, would inevitably lead me to embrace Christianity.
But his final hope was the efficacy of prayer. He had an abiding
faith in prayer. It was his firm conviction that God could not but
listen to prayer fervently offered. He would cite the instances of
men like George Muller of Bristol, who depended entirely on prayer
even for his temporal needs. I listened to his discourse on the
efficacy of prayer with unbiased attention, and assured him that
nothing could prevent me from embracing Christianity, should I feel
the call. I had no hesitation in giving him this assurance, as I had
long since taught myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in
submitting to it. To act against it would be difficult and painful
to me.
So we went to Wellington. Mr. Baker was hard put to it in having a
'coloured man' like me for his companion. He had to suffer
inconveniences on many occasions entirely on account of me. We had
to break the journey on the way, as one of the days happened to be a
Sunday, and Mr. Baker and his party would not travel on the Sabbath.
Though the manager of the station hotel agreed to take me in after
much altercation, he absolutely refused to admit me to the
dining-room. Mr. Baker was not the man to give in easily. He stood
by the rights of the guests of a hotel. But I could see his
difficulty. At Wellington also I stayed with Mr. Baker. In spite of
his best efforts to conceal the little inconveniences that he was
put to, I could see them all.
This Convention was an assemblage of devout Christians. I was
delighted at their faith. I met the Rev. Murray. I saw that many
were praying for me. I liked some of their hymns, they were very
sweet.
The Convention lasted for three days. I could understand and
appreciate the devoutness of those who attended it. But I saw no
reason for changing my belief – my religion. It was impossible for me to believe that I could go to
heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a Christian. When I
frankly said so to some good Christian friends, they were shocked.
But there was no help for it.
My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that
Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who
believed in Him, would have everlasting life. If God could have
sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God
Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My
reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death
and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically
there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity
only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom
death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I
could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a
divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death
on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was
anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could
not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything
that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen
in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among
Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in
Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed
to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was
impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or
the greatest of all religions.
I shared this mental churning with my Christian friends whenever
there was an opportunity, but their answers could not satisfy me.
Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the
greatest religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being
such. Hindu defects were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability
could be a part of Hinduism, it could but be a rotten part or an
excrescence. I could not understand the raison d'ętre
of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the meaning of saying
that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God? If they were inspired,
why not also the Bible and the Koran?
As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were
Musalman friends. Abdulla Sheth had kept on inducing me to study
Islam, and of course he had always something to say regarding its
beauty.
I expressed my difficulties in a letter to Raychandbhai. I also
corresponded with other religious authorities in India and received
answers from them. Raychandbhai's letter somewhat pacified me. He
asked me to be patient and to study Hinduism more deeply. One of his
sentences was to this effect: 'On a dispassionate view of the
question I am convinced that no other religion has the subtle and
profound thought of Hinduism, its vision of the soul, or its
charity.'
I purchased Sale's translation of the Koran and began reading it. I
also obtained other books on Islam. I communicated with Christian
friends in England. One of them introduced me to Edward Maitland,
with whom I opened correspondence. He sent me The Perfect Way,
a book he had written in collaboration with Anna Kingsford. The book
was a repudiation of the current Christian belief. He also sent me
another book, The New Interpretation of the Bible.
I liked both. They seemed to support Hinduism. Tolstoy's
The Kingdom of God is Within You
overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the
independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of
this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into
insignificance.
My studies thus carried me in a direction unthought of by the
Christian friends. My correspondence with Edward Maitland was fairly
prolonged, and that with Raychandbhai continued until his death. I
read some of the books he sent me. These included
Panchikaran, Maniratnamala, Mumukshu Prakaran
of Yogavasishtha, Haribhadra Suri's Shaddarshana Samuchchaya
and others.
Though I took a path my Christian friends had not intended for me, I
have remained for ever indebted to them for the religious quest that
they awakened in me. I shall always cherish the memory of their
contact. The years that followed had more, not less, of such sweet
and sacred contacts in store for me.