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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
junctions also repeatedly occur to worship Him, and Him only. “Adore God alone, know God alone, give up all other discourse;" and the Vedant says, “It is found in the Vedas, that none but the Supreme Being is to be worshipped, nothing excepting him should be adored by a wise man."
It was upon these and similar passages that Rámmohan Roy grounded his attempts to reform the religion of his countrymen, to put down idolatry, and abolish all idolatrous rites and festivals, and substitute the worship of one God by means of prayer and thanksgiving. His efforts were not very successful, not so successful as they might have been, had he confined himself to their legitimate objects; but he involved himself in questions of Christian polemics and European politics, and intermitted his exertions for tlie subversion of Hindu idolatry. He did not, however, labour wholly in vain; and there is a society* in Calcutta, which although not numerous is highly respectable, both for station and talent, which professes faith in one only Supreme God, and assembles once a week, on a Sunday, to perform divine service, consisting of prayers, hymns, and a discourse in Bengali, or Sanskrit, on moral obligations, or the attributes and nature of the Deity. A leading preacher at those meetings, when I left India, was a learned Brahman, who was professor of Hindu law in the Sanskrit college of Calcutta: and another influential
* [the Tattvabodhini sabhá.]
