Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/446



The age we live in might very appropriately he termed an epoch-making age, in more ways than one, in the history of our country. The social and religious progress of Modern India is but the life-story of a hierarchy of sages and prophets born to ameliorate the man of the work-a-day world, uplifting the prostrate and appreciating the ignored. The heroes of Modern India are thus quite distinct in type from those of old. Since the time of the great Buddha up till the days of Rajah Rammohan Roy, we have had not many but extremely few philanthropists who combined with cosmopolitan sympathies also a versatile genius and a sturdy will. Modern India dates from the rise of that morning-star of reformation, Rajah Rammohan Roy, who for the first