Keshub  Chunder  Sen  was,  alas  !  unfaithful  to  his
charge  ;  success  turned  his  head.  His  contagious
enthusiasm  replenished  itself  at  the  dangerous
springs  of  ecstasy  ;  he  believed  himself  inspired  by
Heaven,  and  next,  according  to  the  fatal  bent  of
Asia,  even  as  the  reformer  had  become  the  apostle,
so  in  turn  the  apostle  became  a  god.  Abandoned
by  the  healthier-minded  of  his  followers,  he  founded
the  New  Dispensation,  the  Navavidhana,  which  con-
ciliates Christ  and  Vishnou,  no  longer  in  the  unity
of  conscience  and  ethics,  but  in  the  mystic  unity  of
an  incarnation.  He  died  at  forty  years  of  age,  in
1886,  at  the  moment  of  his  new  departure.  Deprived
of  his  powerful  personality,   Brahmoism  has  done


CALCUTTA.  277

little  more  than  vegetate.  Even  at  Calcutta,  its
centre  and  its  cradle,  it  counts  a  bare  five  hundred
sectaries.  But  a  religion  measures  its  force  less  by
the  number  of  its  adherents  than  by  its  action  on
the  masses,  and  by  its  influence  on  movements
beyond  the  sphere  of  its  orbit.  The  aims  and  ideas
of  Brahmoism,  the  social  reforms,  the  reconstitution
of  the  Indian  family,  these  dreams  and  aims  outlive
the  gospel  of  Keshub  Chunder  Sen.  A  Parsee,
Malabari,  is  the  heir  of  these  reforms  ;  his  obstinate
and  enthusiastic  crusading  spirit  has  already  worked
wonders  in  this  respect.  For  he  has  been  able  not
only  to  present  the  question  to  the  English  public,
but  to  impose  it  on  the  attention  of  English  states-
men, ever  eager  to  avoid  the  obscure  domain  of  the
instincts  and  moral  conscience  of  a  foreign  tribu-
tary.
