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 passionate inquiries," it was discovered that even the Vedas themselves could not be regarded as containing nothing but pure truth, as they inculcated some of the worst forms of nature-worship and some absurd doctrines and ritual; so that the members of the Brahmo-Somaj were forced to abandon the position of a return to primitive doctrine, and to take up that of pure Theists, acknowledging no infallible teacher, no revealed standard of life or doctrine. Naturally, divisions soon made themselves apparent in a society thus constituted, and the Brahmo-Somaj is now broken up into three sects, of which, however, the most important is that which, under the title of the "New Dispensation," maintains the principles and teaching of its founder, Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, who is, without doubt, the most remarkable figure in the history of modern Hinduism.

He belonged to a very good high-caste Brahman family in Bengal, the members of which had been for several generations men of high character and intellectual culture. His grandfather, Ram Comal Sen, was the intimate friend of the well-known Orientalist and Sanskrit scholar, Horace Hayman Wilson, and was respected and esteemed by a large number of English gentlemen. Keshub Chunder Sen himself was born in 1838, and, being early left an orphan, was sent by his uncle to an English school, and afterwards completed his education at