ellectual--anything but emotional--it failed to
satisfy many worshippers. And as a church it was conservative in
regard to social reforms.

In 1858 Keshub Chunder Sen, a Vishnuite by family, then but twenty,
joined the Sam[=a]j, and being clever, young, eloquent, and
cultivated, he, after the manner of the Hindus, undertook to reform
the church he had just entered, first of all by urging the abolition
of caste-restrictions. Debendran[=a]th was liberal enough to be
willing to dispense with his own thread (the caste-mark), but too
wisely conservative to demand of his co-religionists so complete a
break with tradition and social condition. For the sacred thread to
the Hindu is the sign of social respectability. Without it, he is out
of society. It binds him to all that is dearest to him. The leader of
the older Sam[=a]j; never gave up caste; the younger members in
doing so mix religion with social etiquette, and so hinder the advance
they aim at. Sen urged this and other reforms, all repugnant to the
society in which he lived, changes in the rite at the worship of
ancestors, alterations in the established ritual at birth-ceremonies
and funerals, abolition of polyandry and of child-marriages, and,
worst of all, granting permission to marry to those of different
castes. His zeal was directed especially against caste-restrictions
and child-marriages. Naturally he failed to persuade the old Sam[=a]j
to join him in these revolutionary views, to insist on which, however
sensible they seem, cannot be regarded otherwise than as indiscreet
from the point of view of one who considers men and passions. For the
Sam[=a]j, in the face of tremendous obstacles, had just secured a
foot-hold in India. Sen's headlong reforms would have smashed to
pieces the whole congregation, and left India more deeply prejudiced
than ever against free thought. Sen failed to reform the old church,
so in 1865 he, with some ardent young enthusiasts, reformed themselves
into a new church, ceremoniously organized in 1866 as the Br[=a]hma
Sam[=a]j; of India, in distinction from the Calcutta Sam[=a]j, or
[=A]di Sam[=a]j. A futile effort was made to get all the other local
congregations to join the new Sam[=a]j, the last, of course, to be the
first and head of the organization.

The new Sam[=a]j renounced caste-restrictions and Brahmanism
altogether, but it was tainted with the hysterical _bhakti_ fervor
which Sen inherited from his childhood's religion, and whi