Page:The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore.djvu/51

DEVENDRANATH TAGORE 3 Sabha, which was celebrated with great éclat in 1842. It was in the same year that my father paid his first visit to the Brahma-Samaj. The Samaj, it must be stated here, was not then an organised community; it consisted merely of a small knot of persons, who met together from time to time to recite the Vedas and offer spiritual worship. Raja Rammohan Roy had founded the Samaj in 1828, and consecrated for its use a house of worship some time later (11th Magha 1830). Since then, his worthy coadjutor Ramchandra Vidyávagish had zealously served as a minister of the Samaj; but the congregation was not growing, and the Cause, if anything, seemed yearly to languish. But when my father joined the Samaj, everything was changed. He devoted himself with zeal and energy to its reorganisation, introduced a regular form of worship, including prayers for spiritual light and strength, and drew up a covenant for promoting consistency of conduct among the brotherhood.

My father himself and nineteen others were the first to sign the Brâhmic Covenant and publicly accept initiation at the hands of Pandit Vidyávagish. "As the twenty young men, dressed in suitable attire, approached the Pandit, and repeated with reverential awe the solemn words of the covenant, the feelings of the old minister overpowered him to such an extent that he sobbed like a child, and could not deliver the sermon he had intended to