Page:Henry Derozio, the Eurasian, poet, teacher, and journalist. With appendices (IA henryderozioeura00edwarich).pdf/54

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The effects of Derozio's teaching

and immorality, it was not Derozio, nor was it the immediate circle of lads whom he most powerfully influenced. The moral teaching of Derozio was as high and pure as his own life was blameless; and issued in as good results as ever follow in the wake of an earnest striving after truth. That he shook the citadel of higher Hindooism to its very foundation, in a fashion that no man, teacher or preacher, has ever done before or since his day. is an undoubted fact, which has been overshadowed by the odium theologicum heaped on his religious opinions, the splendid rhetoric of Duff, and that measure of success which the Scottish Missionary accomplished, by taking up the work of Derozio when his hands were paralyzed, first by calumny, opprobrium and the bigotry of higher class Hindoos and others, and then by death. Before ever Duff set foot in India, the theistic schism in Hindooism, which exists in strong vitality to-day as the Brahmo Somaj, and which is likely to increase in strength, and work out for the people of India a system of religious thought totally unlike the dogmatic formula of the various sections either of the Western or the Eastern Church, had been effected by Ram Mohun Roy. The question of English education had been discussed, and partly settled as early as 1816, in the founding of the School Book Society and the Hindoo School. Ram Mohun Roy had