“He is my God who maketh all things perfect.  O foolish one, God is not far from you.  He is near you.  God’s power is always with you.  Whatever is to be is God’s will.  What will be will be.  Therefore, long not for grief or joy, because by seeking the one you may find the other.  All things are sweet to them that love God.  I am satisfied with this, that happiness is in proportion to devotion.  O God, Thou who art truth, grant me contentment, love, devotion, and faith....  Sit ye with humility at the feet of God, and rid yourselves of the sickness of your bodies.  From the wickedness of the body there is much to fear, because all sins enter into it.  Therefore, let your dwelling be with the fearless, and direct yourselves toward the light of God.  For there neither sword nor poison have power to destroy, and sin cannot enter.  The greatest wisdom is in preventing your minds from being influenced by bad passions, and in meditating upon the One God.  Afford help also to the poor stranger.  Meditate on Him by whom all things were made."[106]

This tradition of reform is maintained by others without intermission down to the present century, and the M[=a]dhvas and Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana, of whom we have spoken above as being more directly connected with sectarian bodies, are, in fact, scarcely more concerned with the tenets of the latter than were Kab[=i]r and D[=a]d[=u].  Thus the seventeenth century sees the rising of the B[=a]b[=a]l[=a]ls and S[=a]dhus; and the eighteenth, of the Satn[=a]mis, ’worshippers of the true name,’ who, with other minor bodies, such as the N[=a]ngi Panthis, founded by Dedr[=a]j in this century, are really pure deists, although some of them, like the Vi[t.]h[t.]hals, claim to be followers of Kab[=i]r.  And so they are, in spirit at least.

THE DEISM OF TO-DAY.[107]

And thus one arrives at modern deism, not as the result of new influences emanating from Christian teaching, but rather as the legitimate successor of that deism which became almost monotheistic in the first centuries after our era, and has ever since varied with various reformers between two beliefs, inclining now to the pantheistic, now to the unitarian conception, as the respective reformers were influenced by Ved[=a]nta or S[=a]nkhya (later Mohammedan) doctrine.

The first of the great modern reformers is R[=a]mmohun Roy, who was born in 1772, the son of a high-caste Krishnaite Brahman.  He studied Persian and Arabic literature at Patna, the centre of Indic Mohammedan learning.  When a mere boy, he composed a tract against idolatry which caused him to be banished from home.  He lived at Benares, the stronghold of Brahmanism, and afterwards in Tibet, the centre of Buddhism.  “From his earliest years,” says Williams, “he displayed an eagerness to become an unbiassed student of all the religions of the globe.”  He read the Vedas, the P[=a]li Buddhist works, the Kur[=a]n, and the Old Testament