humours in the body manifest themselves by different symptoms in different persons-those external tokens being largely affected by external and local circumstances-so has it been with the humour of dissatisfaction and discontent which for long centuries has marked the thoughtful portion of the Hindu community. There has been a feeling after something better, surer, and more satisfying than orthodox Hinduism offered. This has led anxious souls to cast about for help. According to the times in which they lived they have made accretions of foreign ideas; these, like new patches, they have tacked on to the old Hindu garment; the new additions have ill agreed with the old system; hence rent after rent has occurred, and newer modifications and improvements have been tried.

The Brahmist movement is the latest of those efforts. It happened to be cast within the Christian era; it is the offspring and bears the features of that era; it first drew breath when those manifold dissolving agencies inseparably connected with that era were beginning to tell upon Hindu society. English education was already unfolding to the intelligent sons of India the treasures of Western science and literature; the removal of restrictions on missionary effort by the memorable Charter of 1813 had been followed by a wider diffusion of Christian influences; the Scriptures were largely scattered, and missionaries began, without let and hindrance, to preach, lecture, and establish schools, in the country. The Presidency cities and other great centres of the population were the first to feel the force of those influences. Of all the cities of India, Calcutta has been the most affected thereby; the dissolving rays have been gathered into a burning focus in this the capital of the Empire; the Bengalees with a feeble physique are intellectually in advance of the more muscular tribes of India, and, probably as much from pride of intellect as from any deeper feeling, they have, during the period of which we are speaking, been specially addicted to change and speculation.

Rammohun Roy, however, was no vain and flimsy theorist, he had real earnestness to prompt him; he was no pedant, he had solid learning to support him. He was a man of great natural talents and of the highest mental culture. He was well versed in Sanscrit and Arabic and Persian, and had also considerable acquaintance with Hebrew and Greek. Of course he was a good English scholar. A man with his turn of mind, and with such varied attainments as he possessed, could not be long in discovering the baselessness of orthodox Hinduism. He was not a man to hide his light under a bushel; what he believed, that he avowed and acted upon. He fearlessly assailed the national faith; he invited learned Pundits and distinguished members of Hindu society to his mansion in Calcutta ; and there, with a force of reasoning and a weight of learning which astonished them, exposed the errors to which they were wedded. The inevitable result followed: thousands of bitter foes reviled and hated him, and all the more because they could not answer him.

But, though he rejected the main deductions of Hindu philosophy and the ritual of popular worship, he did not entirely renounce the Hindu scriptures; he honoured them, especially the Vedas, and made selections from them of all that his judgment approved as true and beneficial. He dealt in a similar way with the New Testament, though there is no doubt that his reverence for the Gospels far transcended his regard for the Hindu Shasters; and it is equally indisputable that the Christian writings exercised far more influence on his theory of doctrine than did anything else. He made a free translation into Bengali of the Sermon on the Mount and other discourses of the Saviour, and published them in a book entitled 'Precepts of Jesus.'

It is a strange and somewhat humiliating fact that one of his first converts was an English missionary, a Mr. Adams, of

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the Baptist Missionary Society! A few more were won over to his views, and the little party, under the style of 'The Unitarian Church of Calcutta,' began to assemble together on Sundays for worship. In 1828 this name seems to have been dropped, and the society resolved itself into what was termed a Vedantist Association. Two years later Rammohun Roy visited England, and there in 1833 he died. Probably at the time of the Rajah's departure the society did not number a dozen members; for a time its existence was of the most precarious nature.

At length the Rajah's mantle fell on a new and interesting convert named Debendra Nath Tagore. This was a gentleman of the highest respectability, and of unaffected piety and simplicity of life and manners. The new president set himself in every way to further the interests of the infant society; but his views were less advanced than those of his abler predecessor; accordingly the basis of the society assumed a more contracted form. Debendra Nath propounded, as the axiom of the association, the declaration We consider the Vedas and the Vedas alone as the standard of our faith and principles.' The Christian element at once fell into the shade; the aim of the president was to reform Hinduism by reverting to Vedic doctrine and ritual. Such was the state of things up to 1845. About that period, in some way, doubts seem to have arisen as to the teaching of the Vedas; the question was, whether those holy books were theistic or pantheistic. Consultations were held, extending, it is said, over three years, with the learned pundits of Benares. The upshot was, that the Vedas were decreed to be pantheistic in principle. The authority of the Vedas as a rule of faith was forthwith renounced; the term 'Vedantist’

Which is only a little less remarkable than the fact that an unlettered Zulu should be able to shake the faith of an English Prelate! Doubtless the same reason will stand good in either case--the faith thus shaken was very shaky to begin with.

was also surrendered, and henceforward the society adopted the definition of Brahmă Shamaj. Here again appeared an effort to cling to the old system; the name Brahmă, by which the old Hindu philosophers indicated the impersonal Divine Essence, was appropriated, though, of course, it was made to do duty as describing a personal God, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe.

Deprived of the basis of the Vedas the Brahmos were compelled to seek a new foundation for their faith and doctrine. They fell back upon the Book of Nature, and, by a process of induction, drew their inferences as to the nature and attributes of the God of Nature. The picture which they drew was of a charming description. Not only had everything been created perfect, but everything was still in that condition; man was destitute of all moral taint, the course of nature was a faultless machine, testifying to the boundless benevolence of its great Author. The one attribute of the Deity then dwelt upon was, his absolute and infinite goodness; he was all love and tenderness; everything showed that the happiness of his creatures was the one aim which actuated him; the idea of punitive inflictions, retributive justice, especially of the future punishment of sinners, was discarded as at variance with the teachings of nature and irreconcilable with the notion of a perfectly gracious God. For a while the Brahmos gloried in this pleasant dream; but the dream was not to last; their position was of course assailed by those who wished to lead them to the one true foundation of hope and faith; they were compelled to see that, besides the lovely features of nature on which they were so fond of dilating, there were other features terribly severe in their aspect and altogether out of harmony with their deductions. There were such things as earthquakes, pestilences, famines, and 30,000 different forms of disease, all transpiring under the natural government of the world! What deductions should be drawn from these events?

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Step by step the Brahmos were compelled to recede; at length the basis of Nature was given up. It thus became necessary for a third time to begin at the beginning, and lay a new foundation for Brahmic belief. In this emergency help came from England and America. The attention of the Brahmos was drawn to the speculations of Francis Newman, Theodore Parker, and some others, on the subject of Intuition. Henceforth it was announced that, Brahmăism stands upon the rock of Intuition.' The new basis was laid somewhere about 1860, and was hailed with acclamation as a safe and sure and lasting resting-place. It was argued that there could be no more uncertainty, no more disquiet; for God having inscribed all divine and saving knowledge on the tablet of the human heart, all that was needful was for every man to look deep down into his inner consciousness to find an infallible answer to all the yearnings of his soul. Again, for a while. all was sunshine and jubilant satisfaction; those were pitied and censured who clung to Book Revelations, creeds and dogmas.' The emancipated Shamaj rejoiced in its freedom from these trammels.

The true

Once more clouds overcast the heyday of content. friends of the Brahmos had no difficulty in exposing the insecurity and dubiousness of this new basis; it was but natural to point out that, if the intuitional theory were a fact now, it was a fact in all past time; but if such a faculty had been inherent in man, then whence the gross spiritual darkness of past generations which the Brahmos lament? Whence the endless diversities of religious opinion which they deprecate? If Intuition give all the light which man requires without a Revelation, then why has mankind persisted in ignoring that faculty and feeling after supernatural light and guidance? Nay, how was it that the Brahmos themselves had, throughout their previous history, been utterly unconscious that they possessed such an all-sufficient, internal guide; and how had they at length become acquainted with this priceless faculty?-why, so far as