DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.636#0508
498 Modem Theism. Rammohun Roy's successors.
and literary culture \ but a bigoted Hindu of the Vaishnava
school. The young Keshab was brought up in an atmosphere
of Hindu superstition and idolatry. As might have been
expected, the Vishnu-worship in which he was trained pre-
disposed him to emotional religion and to a belief in one
supreme personal God. Subsequently he received a thorough
English education at the Presidency College, Calcutta. There,
of course, the foundations of his family faith crumbled to
pieces. It could not bear collision with scientific truth as
imparted by European teachers. Nor was any new faith
built up immediately on the ruins of the old. His attitude
towards all religion became one of absolute indifference.
Happily, in a character like that of Keshab, the void caused
by the over-development of one part of his nature was not
long left unfilled. With a greater advance in intellectual
culture came a greater consciousness of spiritual aspirations,
and a greater sense of dependence upon the Almighty Ruler
of the Universe. He began to crave for a knowledge of the
true God. One day, when he was twenty years of age, some
sermons by Raj Narain Bose fell into his hands, and he found
to his astonishment that a pure Theistic Church had been
already founded in Calcutta. Without a moment's hesitation
he decided to enroll himself a member of the Calcutta
Brahma-Samaj. This happened towards the end of 1858,
when he was in his twentieth year.
The English culture and freedom of thought^ not unmixed
with Christian ideas, which Keshab imported into the Calcutta
(Adi) Samaj, could not fail to leaven its whole constitution.
Not that Debendra-nath had been uninfluenced by similar
culture in his reorganization of the Brahma-Samaj. The fear
however was that Keshab's enthusiasm might lead him to put
himself forward prematurely. Happily his extreme youth-
\ He was held in great esteem by Prof. H. H. Wilson, and was the
author of a useful English and Bengali dictionary, to which my own
lexicography is under some obligations.
and literary culture \ but a bigoted Hindu of the Vaishnava
school. The young Keshab was brought up in an atmosphere
of Hindu superstition and idolatry. As might have been
expected, the Vishnu-worship in which he was trained pre-
disposed him to emotional religion and to a belief in one
supreme personal God. Subsequently he received a thorough
English education at the Presidency College, Calcutta. There,
of course, the foundations of his family faith crumbled to
pieces. It could not bear collision with scientific truth as
imparted by European teachers. Nor was any new faith
built up immediately on the ruins of the old. His attitude
towards all religion became one of absolute indifference.
Happily, in a character like that of Keshab, the void caused
by the over-development of one part of his nature was not
long left unfilled. With a greater advance in intellectual
culture came a greater consciousness of spiritual aspirations,
and a greater sense of dependence upon the Almighty Ruler
of the Universe. He began to crave for a knowledge of the
true God. One day, when he was twenty years of age, some
sermons by Raj Narain Bose fell into his hands, and he found
to his astonishment that a pure Theistic Church had been
already founded in Calcutta. Without a moment's hesitation
he decided to enroll himself a member of the Calcutta
Brahma-Samaj. This happened towards the end of 1858,
when he was in his twentieth year.
The English culture and freedom of thought^ not unmixed
with Christian ideas, which Keshab imported into the Calcutta
(Adi) Samaj, could not fail to leaven its whole constitution.
Not that Debendra-nath had been uninfluenced by similar
culture in his reorganization of the Brahma-Samaj. The fear
however was that Keshab's enthusiasm might lead him to put
himself forward prematurely. Happily his extreme youth-
\ He was held in great esteem by Prof. H. H. Wilson, and was the
author of a useful English and Bengali dictionary, to which my own
lexicography is under some obligations.