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Updated: June 19, 2025
The new Somaj, however, soon acquired prominence and became the life and embodiment of the Indian theistic movement. But Chunder Sen had his serious dangers; and those lay in the very excess of his virtues.
Nor have they imparted to the members of the Somaj that altruistic fervour which enables them to deny themselves in behalf of their common cause and purpose. Numerically, the progress of the Brahmo Somaj has been most disappointing. At the last census there were only 4050 members. And, of these, more than three-quarters were in Bengal.
The Brahmo Somaj, the Arya Somaj, and other similar organizations, are not only all monotheistic, but they declare that monotheism was the religion of the early Vedas. And many other Hindu reforms, some of them going as far back as the twelfth century, have been so many returns to monotheism.
Nevertheless, it is doubtless true that some of the best ideas that Dayanand possessed were gleaned from the Bible; and the Arya Somaj has learned and inculcates some of the important lessons of our faith. When Dayanand found no encouragement in his appeal to the Pandits, he turned ultimately to the people and founded, in 1875, the Arya Somaj at Bombay.
They need to reverse this order so as to add efficiency and potency to the Brahmo Somaj. It is a significant fact that Chunder Sen, with all his declared love for Christ and his great admiration for Him and His work, mentioned neither the name nor the saving work of Jesus in the final creed of the New Dispensation. That creed is as follows: "One God, one Scripture, one Church.
The Brahmo Somaj and various other Somajes furnish, as we have seen, asylum and rest for many men of culture who have abandoned polytheism and all that pertains to it. The Arya Somaj appeals to, and gathers in, men from all ranges.
"But is there not a new church or philosophy of recent date I mean Brahmo Somaj?" inquired Dr. Hawkes. "Rammohun Roy, or Rajah Ram Mohan Rai, was a Hindu ruler in the Presidency of Bengal, born in 1772. His ancestors were Brahmins of high birth. He studied Sanskrit, Arabian, and Persian, and was a profound scholar and philosopher.
It is maintained by many authors, in India as well as in Europe, that these designations were only applied as names of one and the same potential deity. This is the ground held by the various branches of the modern Somaj of India. Yet we must not suppose that the monotheism of the early Aryans was all that we understand by that term; it is enough that the power addressed was one and personal.
Martyn Clark, D.D., Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at Umritsur, India, has given thorough study to the Sanscrit, and has thereby been enabled to expose the fallacies and misrepresentations which the Arya Somaj, in its bitter controversy with the Gospel, has put forth as to the real character of the Vedic literature.
This took place in 1865. Thereupon, the old society became known as the "Âthi Somaj," "The Original Somaj," while Sen and his party formed a new organization, which was pretentiously known as "The Brahmo Somaj of India." This happened in 1866. The old society settled down into inactivity, lost much of its spirit of reform, and has never since accomplished much in the realm of theistic advance.
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