পাতা:রামতনু লাহিড়ী ও তৎকালীন বঙ্গসমাজ (নিউ এজ ২য় সংস্করণ) - শিবনাথ শাস্ত্রী.pdf/৩৫০

350 EXTRACT FROM*AULD LANG SYNNE among his own countrymen he was despised and shunned. However, he continued his career undisturbed by 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 ın public and private schools, Later in lıfe 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 of mortals, for pure and conscientious as he was, he felt himself so sinful that he could but seldom utter a word or two in the spirit of what he considered true prayer before the eyes of the Lord. While cultivating his little garden he was found lost in devotion at the sight of f full-blown rose 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 mad man and dragged him out of bed, saying that when the whole nature was ablaze with the light and fire of God's glory, it was a shame to lie in bed. He took the sleeper to the next field, and pointing hus fingers to the rısıng sun and the beautiful trees and foliage, he recited with the greatest rapture-what? Not a hymn of the Vcda but some verses from Wordsworth. When his end approached, his old friend Debendranath Tagore went to take leavic of him, and when he left him, he cried: "Now the gates of heaven are open to you, and the gods are waltung with their outstretched arms to receive you to the glorious region." Did not old Vedantist really say "the gods"? I doubt it, unless he used the language of Maya, as we also do sometimes, knowing that his friend would interpret 1t in the right sense. I see, however, that Mozoomdar also speaks of hus spırıt reposung 1n his Godshowing 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 1s the only one left who could give us a history of that important religious movement ın India, and of the principal actors in it. But he is too old now to under take 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 forgotton their good works will remain for "Good deed," as they say in India, "never dies.”