THE ARYA SAMAJ. 



99 



religion alike " and as " the most important of the doctrines of 

 the Arya Samaj."* 



This doctrine of three separate, eternal, and self-existent 

 entities is of course open to grave objections from the stand- 

 point of philosophy. If God is eternally confronted by souls 

 and matter, of which He is not creator, and for which He is in 

 no way responsible, the absoluteness of His sovereignty must 

 necessarily be very seriously impaired. God becomes logically, 

 on this theory, little more than an umpire to preside over the 

 inexorable processes of Transmigration, and Karma a personified 

 moral order, the apotheosis of the principle of retribution. 

 Karma, or the law of moral causality, was the God of Buddha. 

 This law personified is the God of Swami Dayanand. While 

 making these criticisms, one may cheerfully admit that the 

 realism of the Arya theology has a relative justification as a 

 protest and reaction against the extreme idealism of the 

 Yedanta philosophy, with its exoteric doctrines of emanation 

 and absorption and its esoteric doctrines of illusion and identity. 

 There is also an attempt to do justice to the claims of both 

 science and religion. As regards the freedom of the will, the 

 Arya Samaj holds that " we are not free to will an act, if we 

 were created by some one else. ... In order to be free 

 we must be believed to be eternally acting as we thought 

 best, or as our previous kcmnas determined the course for us, 

 receiving, according to God's eternal laws, the fruits of our 

 own good or bad deeds, and shaping in accordance therewith, 

 and with our own hands, as it were, our future destiny."! 



Thus, as regards the soteriology of the Arya Samaj, the 

 great means of salvation is the effort of the individual, and 

 for this a sufficient sphere is allowed through the doctrine of 

 transmigration, or repeated births. Salvation is conceived as 

 virtually an eternal process. At the last anniversary meeting 

 of the " College " section of the Arya Samaj, held in Lahore, 

 November 30th, 1902, the one sentiment in the address of one 

 speaker which was vigorously applauded was the speaker's 

 conviction that at some time or other, sooner or later, perhaps 

 in some cases after an unspeakable lapse of time, every soul w^ill 

 come to that knowledge of God which constitutes beatitude. 

 In this way, the Arya Samaj is the advocate of the " larger 

 hope." 



"Bearing of Eeligion and Morality on Final Causes." Tlie Arya 

 PatHka^ Lahore, December 14th, 1901. 

 t The Arua Patrika^ loc. cit. 



