Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/181

Rh to be a world-wide church, and its doctrines were to include all those that were highest and best in the Bible, the Koran, the Zendavesta and the Shastras, extracts from all of which met for the first time side by side as the creed of the new Brahmo Samaj. 'The wide universe is the Temple of God' ran the motto of the new Faith 'Wisdom is the pure land of pilgrimage: Truth is the everlasting Scripture: Faith is the root of all religion; Love is the true Scriptural Culture: the Destruction of Selfishness is the true asceticism.' It was to be a universal church founded on broad principles to which the whole world might subscribe if it would. Keshub and his little band of followers, having given up all their worldly prospects threw themselves with true missionary zeal into the work of spreading the tenets of their faith. To all parts of India Keshub carried his message of peace and good will, being everywhere welcomed by officials and non-officials alike and meeting much sympathy from Lord Lawrence, the Governor-General, whose guest he was on several occasions in Simla. On the 24th of January 1868, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Brahmo Samaj as founded by Ram Mohan Roy, was laid the foundation stone of the Brahma Mandir, the new church of the new Faith. It was opened for service in August 1869.

Keshub's visit to England in 1870, like that of Ram Mohan Roy just forty years before, aroused