[Sidenote:  Christ and Chaitanya of Bengal.]

From Krishna we turn to Chaitanya, surname Gauranga, the fair, a religious teacher of Bengal in the fifteenth century, who is also being set up as the Christ of Bengal, in that he preached the equality of men before God and ecstatic devotion to the god Krishna.  A Christ-like man, indeed, in many ways, Chaitanya was, and the increased acquaintance of educated Bengal with Jesus Christ naturally brought Chaitanya to the front.  The new cult of Chaitanya and his enthronement over against Jesus Christ are manifest in the titles of two recent publications in Bengal, the first entitled, Lord Gauranga, or Salvation for all, and the other, Chaitanya’s Message of Love.  Chaitanya and his two chief followers, it should be said, were called the great lords (prabhus) of the sect, but the title “Lord Gauranga” is quite new, an echo of the title of Jesus Christ.  With regard to the new power of Christ’s personality, it should be noted that the author of Lord Gauranga strongly deprecates the idea that his desire is to demolish Christianity, or other than to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ.  He declares that Jesus Christ is as much a prophet as any avatar of the Hindus, and that Hindus can and ought to accept him as they do Krishna or Chaitanya.  This is in accord with the spirit of Hinduism—­namely, the fluidity of doctrine, and the free choice of guru or religious teacher, as set forth in a previous chapter—­although it is still an advanced position for a Hindu to take up publicly.

[Sidenote:  Eccentric manifestations of the power of Christ’s personality.]

Could we observe the course of evolution down which a species of animals or plants has come from some remote ancestry to their present form, with what interest would we note the specific characteristics gathering strength, as from generation to generation they prove their “fitness to survive”!  The whole onward career of the evolving species would seem to have been aimed at the latest form in which we find it.  Yet quite as wonderful phenomena as the species that has survived are the many variations of the species that have presented themselves, but have not proved fit to survive.  One species only survives for hundreds of would-be collaterals that are extinct.  The religious evolution that we have been observing is the growing power of Christ’s personality in New India; and now, as further testimony to its power, a number of collateral movements, similarly inspired yet eccentric and hardly likely to endure, attract our attention.  In these eccentric movements the power of Christ’s personality is manifest, and yet it appears amid circumstances so peculiar that the phenomena in themselves are grotesque.

[Sidenote:  The Punjab—­two have set themselves up as Christ come again.]

[Sidenote:  Hakim Singh.]

[Sidenote:  Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad.]