The Impersonal Life

by Joseph Sieber Benner

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a_witness_from_india [2026/08/10 09:24] – iama_witness_from_india [2026/08/10 10:31] (current) – iam
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-A WITNESS FROM INDIA+<WRAP centeralign> 
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 The following extracts are taken from THE CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME, by Chakkerai Chetty, B. A., B. L., a chapter in the volume entitled “The Cultural Heritage of India,” published in 1937 by the Sri Ramakrishna Centenary Committee in Calcutta, India. The following extracts are taken from THE CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME, by Chakkerai Chetty, B. A., B. L., a chapter in the volume entitled “The Cultural Heritage of India,” published in 1937 by the Sri Ramakrishna Centenary Committee in Calcutta, India.
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 THIS PAPER on Christianity is prepared in response to a request that I should write something on this subject for the Commemoration Volume. Only one condition was imposed on me—it was to avoid controversy, to which I gave ready consent. Dialectic may have its place elsewhere but not in describing “The Christ Who lives in me,” for it is an incommensurable quantity, or rather a quality. THIS PAPER on Christianity is prepared in response to a request that I should write something on this subject for the Commemoration Volume. Only one condition was imposed on me—it was to avoid controversy, to which I gave ready consent. Dialectic may have its place elsewhere but not in describing “The Christ Who lives in me,” for it is an incommensurable quantity, or rather a quality.
  
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 There is a mystery surrounding Christ’s life in the world that all the historical insight of the last century and the present has not penetrated. It is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God. Albert Schweitzer in The Quest of the Historical Jesus, a work of wonderful interest, gave a thrilling account of the giant efforts of the profoundest minds of Germany to elucidate this mystery, but, as he says, they have all ended in tragic failure. Many and varying pictures have been given of Him. The collective merit of them all is that they have destroyed each other. Christ has been variously described as a revolutionary, a Bolshevik, a liberal theologian, and above all that jejune thing, a mild prophet, preaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man—a doctrine that no one would dream of disputing till it is attempted to be put into practice. There is a mystery surrounding Christ’s life in the world that all the historical insight of the last century and the present has not penetrated. It is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God. Albert Schweitzer in The Quest of the Historical Jesus, a work of wonderful interest, gave a thrilling account of the giant efforts of the profoundest minds of Germany to elucidate this mystery, but, as he says, they have all ended in tragic failure. Many and varying pictures have been given of Him. The collective merit of them all is that they have destroyed each other. Christ has been variously described as a revolutionary, a Bolshevik, a liberal theologian, and above all that jejune thing, a mild prophet, preaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man—a doctrine that no one would dream of disputing till it is attempted to be put into practice.
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 All interpretations fail to account for the rise of the Christian consciousness of Jesus as Lord that the New Testament embodies. The death of Jesus on the cross ought, by every known rule of historical evolution, to have made an end of Jesus, except as leaving a rightful feeling in the memories of his disciples, as of a last attempt to realize the Unknown. According to some superfine scholars, He taught nothing original, nothing that had not been better said by others before and since, though a few things like the parable of the prodigal would repudiate such a suggestion. But anyhow they claim, there was an end. The grave was there outside Jerusalem. All interpretations fail to account for the rise of the Christian consciousness of Jesus as Lord that the New Testament embodies. The death of Jesus on the cross ought, by every known rule of historical evolution, to have made an end of Jesus, except as leaving a rightful feeling in the memories of his disciples, as of a last attempt to realize the Unknown. According to some superfine scholars, He taught nothing original, nothing that had not been better said by others before and since, though a few things like the parable of the prodigal would repudiate such a suggestion. But anyhow they claim, there was an end. The grave was there outside Jerusalem.
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 After this, it is not to be supposed that the Christian has to fold his hands and sleep. In the Christian life there is no finale, though there is a beginning when the crisis is passed. This is because the redeemed soul lives between two ages, between the—past which was the world of human contingency, the flesh as it is called, and the coming, the age of Christ. The night is gone, the day is at hand. And so the soul experiences the tension of the transition. It calls for struggle, alertness and suffering. The Christian life, though in its inner depths, is one of joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, is on the surface convulsed by the waves of human life, now placidly, now agitated by fierce storms. In the midst of this, toiling and rejoicing, the Christian goes in the faith of the cross and in the power of His Resurrection, the mightiest in all the world. Thus there is no escape into an artificial solitude, and no seclusion, except for seasons and periods of reflection and recollection. But he knows that the world and its fashion is passing away. The reign of Christ, the transcendent Kingdom of God, not as the salvation of the individual soul, is coming. Thy Kingdom come! This faith containing the eternal hope, and filled with love, rises like a fountain day and night. The seer, a prisoner for the Lord, as St. John on the island of Patmos, saw the New Heavens and the New Earth, the New Jerusalem descending like a Bride adorned for the Bridegroom. In it there shall be no more sorrow caused by sin, and no more death, the wages of sin, but the Lord shall be the Light thereof. And the Christian who has joined himself to Him shall behold in undimmed radiance the Beloved Face. After this, it is not to be supposed that the Christian has to fold his hands and sleep. In the Christian life there is no finale, though there is a beginning when the crisis is passed. This is because the redeemed soul lives between two ages, between the—past which was the world of human contingency, the flesh as it is called, and the coming, the age of Christ. The night is gone, the day is at hand. And so the soul experiences the tension of the transition. It calls for struggle, alertness and suffering. The Christian life, though in its inner depths, is one of joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, is on the surface convulsed by the waves of human life, now placidly, now agitated by fierce storms. In the midst of this, toiling and rejoicing, the Christian goes in the faith of the cross and in the power of His Resurrection, the mightiest in all the world. Thus there is no escape into an artificial solitude, and no seclusion, except for seasons and periods of reflection and recollection. But he knows that the world and its fashion is passing away. The reign of Christ, the transcendent Kingdom of God, not as the salvation of the individual soul, is coming. Thy Kingdom come! This faith containing the eternal hope, and filled with love, rises like a fountain day and night. The seer, a prisoner for the Lord, as St. John on the island of Patmos, saw the New Heavens and the New Earth, the New Jerusalem descending like a Bride adorned for the Bridegroom. In it there shall be no more sorrow caused by sin, and no more death, the wages of sin, but the Lord shall be the Light thereof. And the Christian who has joined himself to Him shall behold in undimmed radiance the Beloved Face.
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