If the original author and the various expositors of the Bhagavad Gita have not borrowed from the Christian revelation, they have rendered an undesigned tribute to the great Christian doctrine of a divine and human mediator:  they have given striking evidence of a felt want in all humanity of a God with men.  If it was a deeply conscious want of the human heart which led the heathen of distant India to grope their way from the cheerless service of remorseless deities to one who could be touched with a feeling of their infirmities, and could walk these earthly paths as a counsellor by their side, how striking is the analogy to essential Christian truth!

Let us examine some of the alleged parallels.  They may be divided into three classes: 

1.  Those which are merely fanciful.  Nine-tenths of the whole number are of this class.  They are such as would never occur to a Hindu on hearing the gospel truth.  Only one who had examined the two records in the keen search for parallels, and whose wish had been the father of his thought, would have seen any resemblance.  I shall not occupy much time with these.

2.  Those resemblances which are only accidental.  It may be an accident of similar circumstances or similar causes; it may be a chance resemblance in the words employed, while there is no resemblance in the thoughts expressed.

3.  Those coincidences which spring from natural causes.  For an example of these, the closing chapter of the Apocalypse speaks of Christ as “the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.”  It is a natural expression to indicate his supreme power and glory as Creator and final Judge of all things.  In a similar manner Krishna is made to say, “I am Beginning, Middle, End, Eternal Time, the Birth and the Death of all.  I am the symbol A among the characters.  I have created all things out of one portion of myself.”  There are two meanings in Krishna’s words.  He is in all things pantheistically, and he is the first and best of all things.  In the tenth chapter he names with great particularity sixty-six classes of things in which he is always the first:  the first of elephants, horses, trees, kings, heroes, etc.  “Among letters I am the vowel A.”  “Among seasons I am spring.”  “Of the deceitful I am the dice.”

The late Dr. Mullens calls attention to the fact that the Orphic Hymns declare “Zeus to be the first and Zeus the last.  Zeus is the head and Zeus the centre.”  In these three similar forms of description one common principle of supremacy rules.  The difference is that in the Christian revelation and in the Orphic Hymns there is dignity, while in Krishna’s discourse there is frivolous and vulgar particularity.  Let us notice a few examples of the alleged parallels more particularly.

In Chapter IX.  Krishna says:  “Whatever thou doest, whatever thou eatest, whatever thou offerest in sacrifice, etc., commit that to me.”  This is compared with 1 Corinthians x. 31:  “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”  Also to Colossians x. 17:  “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”