The Indian Road

Last week in a Manhattan vaudeville theatre a man was speaking. "Nietzsche's," he said, "is the present philosophy of the Occidental world, with its gospel of self-assertion and self-expression, personal liberty and personal success." Beside him, on the stage, white lilies curved from the mouths of six vases. "Christ's stern and gentle philosophy, so much more readily understood by the Oriental mind, is the way of self-abnegation, of losing oneself in something beyond oneself." Occasionally, an Indian name came to his lips, hesitant syllables cascaded to a tenebrous penult: Rabindranath Tagore. Sometimes he men- tioned Mahatma Gandhi. Then he seemed to look beyond his audience to India "which is my first love." His face was very quiet. "You cannot bow one knee to Nietzsche and another to Christ," he said.

Thus daily did Dr. Eli Stanley Jones, who last year rejected a Methodist Bishopric (TIME, June 4), conduct noonday services in the vaudeville theatre. Every afternoon, the harlequinades and brass buffoonery of the vaudeville followed. Last week, Dancer Gilda Gray was the star. . . .

Twenty-one years ago, Dr. Jones, a fledgling missionary, went to India. To the impregnable land of Buddha, of Kabir and Nanak he brought the message and life of Christ. He worked hard; there were the inevitable depressions and exaltations; at times "there were several collapses.

"It was more than eight years after his first Indian venture that the cumulus of his experiences, reactions, volitions suddenly crystallized in his mind into what was tantamount to a vision. Figuratively he saw the Galilean walking along an Indian road. He must offer the Christ, not in a Western setting, to which by historic accident he seemed to belong, but in an Indian setting. Thereafter, mostly among the quiet intellectual Brahmans but also among the outcastes, he preached the Christ, not Western, but universal. Him they would accept because they had spiritual accord with the mysticism of his life and suffering. But where loomed the encroachments of Western civilization they cringed, or turned away.

About four years ago Dr. Jones wrote the saga of his Indian missions. He titled it: The Christ of the Indian Road. More than 400,000 English copies (it has been translated into 14 languages) have been sold.*

Throughout his book he traces his brilliant idea which must perforce rank with the most gracious, sympathetic--and effective--missionary approaches. Two figures loom: the Christ, of course, and Mahatma Gandhi./- It is in Gandhi, he finds, or in one like him, that India will find the Christ. Curious is the parallel which Indians already draw between their great leader and Jesus Christ. Gandhi has suffered, fasted, been imprisoned. And many an Indian, now first glimpsing the new figure on the Indian road, has reverently paralleled Yerravada, Gandhi's first prison, with Calvary.

Sometimes too, Indians have spoken of Dr. Jones as a saint, or a reincarnation of a Rishi.* But Dr. Jones discourages meta physical attributes. In the U. S. he has lately been speaking to students and congregations throughout the land. Next week he will return to India. Claimed alike by U. S. Fundamentalists and Modernists, he is independent of both, holds theologic allegiance only to the Methodist Church and to its Board of Foreign Missions.

An important by-product of the Jones missionary work is the impending disintegration of India's rock-ribbed caste system. The Nationalist movement and infiltrations of Western civilization have already shaken it. But, says Dr. Jones. Christianity's recognition of individuals and their equality in the sight of God will deal the most telling blow.

From India, Dr. Jones brought this message to the U. S.: "The biggest task before America at the present time is the spiritualization of the vast resources which have been put into our hands. If these get us, we are gone. If we get behind them with a passion to serve, then they rise from the sordid to the sacred.

"The religious life of America must be saved from both the selfish and the sentimental, to the sacrificial. Very often a feeling of being sentimental toward Chris tian things covers a selfish attitude. We take it for granted that because we can feel, we have thereby the facts that under lie Christianity. The fact that underlies Christianity is the Cross -- that is the attitude we should take toward life."

*Of contemporary best sellers Mam Street sold approximately 500,000 copies, Babbitt 250,000 copies, since publication; both huge sales for novels.

/- Of Krishnamurti, hailed by Theosophist Annie Besant as Christ's reincarnation, he says: "I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable dis- position, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good round English."

*Holy Sage.