________________
the One God. Afford help also to the poor stranger. Meditate on Him by whom all things were made."[106]
This tradition of reform is maintained by others without intermission down to the present century, and the M[=a]dhvas and Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana, of whom we have spoken above as being more directly connected with sectarian bodies, are, in fact, scarcely more concerned with the tenets of the latter than were Kab[=i]r and Di=a]d[=u]. Thus the seventeenth century sees the rising of the B[ra]b[=a]I[=a]ls and S[=a]dhus; and the eighteenth, of the Satn[=a]mis, 'worshippers of the true name,' who, with other minor bodies, such as the N[ra]ngi Panthis, founded by Dedr[=alj in this century, are really pure deists, although some of them, like the Vist.]h[t]hals, claim to be followers of Kab[=i]r. And so they are, in spirit at least.
THE DEISM OF TO-DAY.[107]
And thus one arrives at modern deism, not as the result of new influences emanating from Christian teaching, but rather as the legitimate successor of that deism which became almost monotheistic in the first centuries after our era, and has ever since varied with various reformers between two beliefs, inclining now to the pantheistic, now to the unitarian conception, as the respective reformers were influenced by Ved[=a]nta or S[=a]nkhya (later Mohammedan) doctrine.
The first of the great modern reformers is R[=a]mmohun Roy, who was born in 1772, the son of a high-caste Krishnaite Brahman. He studied Persian and Arabic literature at Patna, the centre of Indic Mohammedan learning. When a mere boy, he composed a tract against idolatry which caused him to be banished from home. He lived at Benares, the stronghold of Brahmanism, and afterwards in Tibet, the centre of Buddhism. "From his earliest years," says Williams, "he displayed an eagerness to become an unbiassed student of all the religions of the globe." He read the Vedas, the P[ra]li Buddhist works, the Kur[=a]n, and the Old Testament in the original; and in later years even studied Greek that he might properly understand the New Testament. The scholastic philosophy
