born?"
The Indian doctrine of transmigration comes with answer--"Life is a
punishment: it is the bitter consequence of our past that we are working
out; we must _submit_ to be born into the world again and again, until
we are cleared." "Yes, until your minds are cleared," the Indian
pantheist adds, "life _itself_ is a delusion, if you only knew it; life
itself, your consciousness of individuality or separateness, is a
delusion." But the pantheist's thought is here beside our present point.

[Sidenote: Transmigration the antithesis of eternal life.]

To the pessimistic Indian accepting the Indian view of transmigration,
it is therefore no gospel to preach the continuation of life, either
here or hereafter. "To be born again" sounds like a penance to be
endured. _Mukti_, commonly rendered _salvation_, is not regeneration
Here and eternal life Hereafter; it is _deliverance_ from further lives
altogether. If, however, we accept the statement that the value of human
life in India is rising, that life is becoming worth living, and that
the pessimistic mood is no ingrained fundamental trait, we are prepared
to believe that the hopeful Christian conception of the Here and the
Hereafter is finding acceptance. Rightly understood, the Christian
conception is at bottom the antithesis of pessimism and its corollary,
transmigration. To deny the one is almost to assert the other. The decay
of the one is the growth of the other. For the Christian conception of
the Here and the Hereafter--what is it? Life, eternal, in and through
the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. "God gave unto us eternal
life, and the life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the
life."[110] Says Harnack in his volume _What is Christianity?_ "The
Christian religion means one thing, and one thing only--eternal life in
the midst of time by the strength and under the eyes of God." Not that
the new idea in India is to be wholly ascribed to Christian influence. A
marked change in Christian thought itself during the nineteenth century
has been the higher value of this present life. Christianity has become
a vitalising gospel for the life Here even more than for the Hereafter.
But assuming the truth of what we have sought to show, namely, that
within the past century the winning personality of Christ has come to
New India, a new incentive to noble life and service, we have at least a
further reason for believing that pessimism and transmigration are
fading out