the author of both Nature and those portions of the Bible that have been referred to. We will now ask if any other hypothesis can be imagined that will satisfy the demand of the facts?

2. The discussion brings prominently to view another concatenation of facts, which not only supports but demands the hypothesis of a personal Creator and Author, and its corollary that there must be an inductive science of Scripture.

The book of Genesis is confessedly one of the oldest in existence. It was gray with antiquity long before the Museum of Alexandria, which Dr. Draper declares to have been "the birthplace of modern science," was dreamed of. Of all the ancient cosmogonies it alone continues to hold the respect of any of the learned. The modern rigid and concurrent criticisms of Nature and the Book have but served to bring out unimagined harmonies between them. Far more accurately does the first chapter of Genesis represent the established conclusions of the inductive science of Nature of the present day, than do the writings of (so-called) scientists-in astronomy before La Place, and in geology before the present century. Whence came that Book, written in the unscientific period of human history, which is so analagous to Nature in its embosoming, and so concealing unessential truths under apparent phenomena, and which is the verbal counterpart of Nature in the character of the truths which it embosoms?

3. Whilst this article has respect to the inductive science of Scripture in reference to one of the fields common to Nature and Scripture, it is not to be supposed that the researches of the inductive scientist of the Bible are confined to that field. Scripture, in its theology, anthropology, ethnology, history, ecclesiology, prophecy, spreads out before its students, as before hinted, fields as broad and rich in as yet hidden truths as are the natural fields of astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry and biology. In continuance and limitation of this remark, it should be said that there is as little danger that the surface facts of Scripture, those that are essential to spiritual life, will be shown to be false by scientific investigation, as that such investigation in the realm of Nature will ever show that water and corn are not the essential elements of physical nourishment, that arsenic does not destroy life, and that fire does not warm.

4. Between inductive science (Natural or Scriptural) and religion, properly so called (i. e., the activity of the human soul in reference to God), conflict can no more exist than between such science and the activity of mind and body in reference to Nature. Between inductive science and religion, improperly so called (i. e., a human systematization of supposed Scriptural truth), there is no more conflict than between the natural inductive science of the present age and the objective systems put forth by the natural inductive scientists of a former age. In the accepted systems, both of Biblical and Natural (supposed) truths, there are grand surface doctrines, comprising all that it is necessary man should know in the realm of either,doctrines, as declared in the preceding paragraph, that no investigation can overthrow; in both, there are hypotheses concerning embosomed truths-the knowledge of which truths is interesting, essential to the completeness of knowledge, more or less important it may be, but not essential to either physical or spiritual life-some of which hypotheses, doubtless, will be modified while others will be overthrown. The march of the inductive sciences of both Nature and the Bible will ever be, like the curve of the hyperbola toward its unchanging assymptote, toward SCIENCE, rightly so called, i. e., completeness of knowledge.

Art. VII. THE BRAHMOS OMAJ.*

By REV. A. BROADHEAD, D.D., Allahabad, India.

IT may be questioned whether the Brahmist movement in India has assumed sufficiently definite proportions to enable one to form a correct judgment as to its value. It is certain, however, that it may be regarded as a permanent quality among the forces that are to act upon the Hindu mind and assist in determining the form of religious development in the Indian Empire. As yet the area in which the influence of this new religion is felt is limited. It had its origin in Bengal, and for the most part its progress thus far has been confined to that province. The word Somaj may be taken as the equivalent for our word Church, used in its generic sense. There are, probably, not more than one hundred individual Brahmo churches-or Somajes, to form from the word an English plural-throughout India, and none of these have a very large membership. The intensely conservative nature of the people of India, which manifests itself not more in their unwillingness to forsake the manners and customs of their forefathers than in their antipathy to any change in their religious views, leads to the belief that a rapid extension is not to be expected for Brahmism or any other system which differs radically from that which has been so long cherished by the Hindus.

The person of greatest prominence at present connected with this departure from the orthodox Hindu faith, is Bábú Keshab Chandra Sen. Although he is not to be regarded as the originator of the movement, he, perhaps, more than any other, has given it an impetus; and it is probably true that its destiny for good or evil is within his control, since much, if not all, of its vitality is due to his personal magnetism. Although it is less than fifty years since Brahmism claimed any place among the religions of India, nevertheless it bears the impress of three leading minds. First among these stands Rájah Rám Mohan Roy, to whom must be accorded the merit of breaking with his caste-fellows and announcing a creed, the mere statement of which raised an insuperable barrier between him and the vast

*The Brahmo Somaj. Rev. Dr. Jardine, Allahabad Conference, 1872. Indian Evangelical Review, October, 1875.

majority of his countrymen. Rám Mohan Roy was a man of considerable culture, having acquaintance with the literature of the West, as well as with that of his own country. There can be no doubt that he was assisted to the position he was enabled to take, not only by the study of writers of the Unitarian school of belief, but by his familiarity with much of the orthodox literature which came into his hands in his own country and in England; and doubtless he was an interested student of the Bible during the latter part of his life. Dr. Jardine, speaking of a publication of the Rájah's entitled "The Precepts of Jesus," says that it is evident that the writer looked upon the teachings of Christ as being the supreme guide to life eternal.

The first Brahmo Somaj was organized in Calcutta in 1830, three years before the death of Rám Mohan Roy. The word. Brahmo, if chosen with any reference to its derivation, seems to be an unfortunate one, and subjects those who bear the designation to the charge of cowardice in adopting for themselves a name which, if it has any significance, conveys an idea which is repudiated by the adherents to this new faith. At the Allahabad Conference the late Dr. Wilson of Bombay, than whom no one was better fitted to pronounce upon this subject, passed some severe strictures upon these religionists for adopting the word Brahmo, which, he stated, was used in the Hindu-pantheistic philosophy to denote the deity viewed as the sole existence. This doctrine, although rejected by the Brahmos of the present day, seems to have found some favor with Rám Mohan Roy, who quotes from the Upanishods and other Vedantic writings such passages as the following: "A wise man knowing God as perspicuously residing in all creatures, forsakes all idea of duality; being convinced that there is only one real existence, which is God." "The Veda (Védánta) says all that exists is indeed God." 'The soul is a portion of the Supreme Ruler: the relation is not that of master and servant-ruler and ruled-but is that of whole and part." Since the Brahmos have fully adopted the Theistic idea, it certainly seems as though they might have chosen a designation less encumbered with pantheistic notions.

Rám Mohan Roy did not seem ambitious to form a sect, and it was reserved for Debendranath Tajore, and after him Keshab Chandra Sen, to give the movement a permanent shape. Pre

vious to the advent of Debendranath Tajore in 1839, the accessions to the new church had not been numerous; perhaps the larger number of disciples were obtained from among the graduates of the Government schools, the tendency of whose curriculum was to destroy their ancient faith without supplying any other in its stead. The influence exerted by the new leader was in the direction of conservatism and an exaltation of the Hindu shastras, rather than in the taking of any radical positions or showing the superiority of evangelical truth over the errors of the Hindu system. In the year 1857 Keshab Chandra Sen joined the Brahmos. He early began to show adaptation as a leader of men, and since the tendency of his mind was progressive, it was not long before he found himself at the head of a party within the church which was opposed to the tardy methods of the then leader of the Somaj. If we examine the sources from which the three guiding minds among the Brahmos appear to have drawn their inspiration, we shall find that Rám Mohan Roy had been led to drink largely at the fountain of divine truth. Debendranath Tajore, on the other hand, adhered with great tenacity to the sacred books of the Hindus, and clung to as much of the ancestral faith as was consistent with his somewhat advanced views, while Keshab Chandra Sen evidently pursued an eclectic course; for while he fails to grasp the distinguishing truths of the gospel and denies the inspiration of the Scriptures, rejecting altogether the idea that God communicates his will to men by means of a written revelation, nevertheless he emphasizes the two great truths, of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man-truths which could have been revealed to him by the Bible alone, and which cut at the root of polytheism and caste, the twin supports of the fabric of Hinduism.

Keshab Chandra Sen, in his attempt to dissever himself and his co-religionists more entirely from the Hindu faith, which, he contends, differs from the facts of the Vedas, advanced three propositions, and the defense of these, especially the first of the three, finally led to the separation of the Brahmo Church into two sections; that adhered to by Debendranath Tajore and the more conservative portion of the Brahmos, taking the name of the Adi (original) Somaj, and that of which Keshab Chandra Sen espoused the leadership, being called the Brahmo Somaj of India.