Many expressions in the
New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and
it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no
harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a
substratum of good sense. It never _reflects_, but it _repents_.
There is no poetry in it, we may say nothing regarded in the
light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All
mortals are convicted by its conscience.
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best
of the Hindo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader
is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or _rarer_
region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. Warren Hastings, in
his sensible letter recommending the translation of this book to
the Chairman of the East India Company, declares the original to
be "of a sublimity of conception, reasoning, and diction almost
unequalled," and that the writings of the Indian philosophers
"will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long
ceased to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded of
wealth and power are lost to remembrance." It is unquestionably
one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come
down to us. Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of
their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are
treated. The Oriental philosophy approaches, easily, loftier
themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes
prattle about them. _It_ only assigns their due rank respectively
to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the
latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the
significance of Contemplation in their sense. Speaking of the
spiritual discipline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves,
and the wonderful power of abstraction to which they attained,
instances of which had come under his notice, Hastings says: -
"To those who have never been accustomed to the separation of
the mind from the notices of the senses, it may not be easy to
conceive by what means such a power is to be attained; since
even the most studious men of our hemisphere will find it
difficult so to restrain their attention, but that it will
wander to some object of present sense or recollection; and
even the buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to
disturb it. But if we are told that there have been men who
were successively, for ages past, in the daily habit of
abstracted contemplation, begun in the earliest period of
youth, and continued in many to the maturity of age, each
adding some portion of knowledge to the store accumulated by
his predecessors; it is not assuming too much to conclude, that
as the mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise,
so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired the faculty
to which they aspired, and that their collective studies may
have led them to the discovery of new tracts and combinations
of sentiment, totally different from the doctrines with which
the learned of other nations are acquainted; doctrines which,
however speculative and subtle, still as they possess the
advantage of being derived from a source so free from every
adventitious mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the
most simple of our own."
"The forsaking of works" was taught by Kreeshna to the most
ancient of men, and handed down from age to age,
"until at length, in the course of time, the mighty art was lost.
"In wisdom is to be found every work without exception," says
Kreeshna.
"Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou shalt
be able to cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom."
"There is not anything in this world to be compared with wisdom
for purity."
"The action stands at a distance inferior to the application of
wisdom."
The wisdom of a Moonee "is confirmed, when, like the tortoise,
he can draw in all his members, and restrain them from their
wonted purposes."
"Children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative
and the practical doctrines as two. They are but one. For
both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained by
the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the
other."
"The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from the
non-commencement of that which he hath to do; nor doth he
obtain happiness from a total inactivity. No one ever resteth
a moment inactive. Every man is involuntarily urged to act by
those principles which are inherent in his nature. The man who
restraineth his active faculties, and sitteth down with his
mind attentive to the objects of his senses, is called one of
an astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. So the man is
praised, who, having subdued all his passions, performeth with
his active faculties all the functions of life, unconcerned
about the event."
"Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not
one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. Let not thy
life be spent in inaction."
"For the man who doeth that which he hath to do, without
affection, obtaineth the Supreme."
"He who may behold, as it were inaction in action, and action
in inaction, is wise amongst mankind. He is a perfect
performer of all duty."
"Wise men call him a _Pandeet_, whose every undertaking is free
from the idea of desire, and whose actions are consumed by the
fire of wisdom. He abandoneth the desire of a reward of his
actions; he is always contented and independent; and although
he may be engaged in a work, he, as it were, doeth nothing."
"He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who performeth that which
he hath to do independent of the fruit thereof; not he who
liveth without the sacrificial fire and without action."
"He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of his
offerings, obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm, the Supreme."
What, after all, does the practicalness of life amount to?
