পাতা:রামতনু লাহিড়ী ও তৎকালীন বঙ্গসমাজ.djvu/৪৭৮

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EXTRACT FROM AULD LANG SYNE,

European officials respected and supported Ramtonoo, but among his own countrymen he was 蠶 and shunned. However, he continued his career undis urbed by a friend or foe, and guided by his own conscience only. Poor as he was, he desired no more than to earn a small pittance as a teacher in public and private schools. Later in life he was attracted to the new Brahma-Samaj, and became a close friend of Keshub Chunder Sen. When he saw others who spent much time in prayer he considered them as the most favoured so mortals, for pure and coscientious as he was, he felt himself so sinfur that he could but seldom utter a wordor two in the spirit of what he considered true prayer before the eyes of the Lord. While cultivating his little garden hore was found lost in devotion at the sight of a full-blown rosee and while singing a hymn in adoration of God, his whole countenance seemed to beam with a heavenly light. One of his friends tells us that one morning early he rushed into his room like a madmań and dragged him out of bed, saying that when the whole nature was ablaze with the light and fire of God's glory, it wis a shame to lie in bed. He took the sheeper to the next field, and pointing his fingers to the rising sun and the beautiful trees and foliage, he recited with the greatest rapture—what Not a hymn of the Veda but some verses from Woadsworth. When his end approached, his old friend Debendraah Tagore went to take leave of him, and when he left him, hecried : “Now the gates of heaven are open to you, ana the gods care waiting with their outstretched arms to recerve you to the glorious region.” Did not old Vedantist really say “the gods”? I doubt it, unless he used the language.pf Maya, as we also dó sometimes, knowing that his friend would interpret it in the right sense. I see, however, that Mozdomdar also speaks of his spirit ‘reposing iri his God—showing how the old habits, of thought and old words cling to us and never lose their meaning altogether.

Many more names, might be mentioned, but to us they would hardly be more than names. Debendranath Tagore is the bnly one left who aould give us a history of that important religious movement in India, and of the principal actors in it. But he is too old now to undertaké such a task. The others, to use the language of their friends, have, like the stars that rise in the Eastern sky, after completing their appointed journey, sunk below the visible horizon of death, to pass from the hemisphere of time to that , of eternity But though their names may be forgotten, క్ట్ర works will remain for “Good deed,” as they say in India, “never dies.”