he writer will never forget his own brief visit to Protap Mozumdar,
not long before the latter's death. It was on the eve of Good Friday.
He found this devout man with eighteen of his disciples (one of them
an Oxford graduate) studying together the tender words of our Lord
uttered to His disciples in the Upper Room on the night in which He
was betrayed. They were thus qualifying themselves properly to
commemorate His death on the coming morn. And Mr. Mozumdar gave a
strong lecture on "The Suffering Christ" to a large audience in one of
the city halls on the morrow. The thought occurred to us, how many
Christians had met together that same evening, like these Brahmos, for
the purpose of studying our Lord's Words upon that memorable occasion
and bringing themselves thus _en rapport_ with Him whose atoning death
they were to commemorate? As we parted, it was hardly necessary for
that man of God to say to the writer in pathetic tones, "O, sir, I
only wish you knew how near we are to you in these matters!" Some may
have read that remarkable book, named "The Oriental Christ," written
and published by this same gentleman in 1883. In the preface, he gives
this strikingly beautiful account of his conversion:--

"Nearly twenty years ago, my troubles, studies, and circumstances
forced upon me the question of personal relationship to Christ.... As
the sense of sin grew on me, and with it a deep miserable
restlessness, a necessity of reconciliation between aspiration and
practice, I was mysteriously led to feel a personal affinity to the
Spirit of Christ. The whole subject of the life and death of Christ
had for me a marvellous sweetness and fascination.... Often
discouraged and ridiculed, I persisted in according to Christ a
tenderness of honour which arose in my heart unbidden. I prayed, I
fasted, at Christmas and Easter times. I secretly hunted the
book-shops of Calcutta to gather the so-called likenesses of Christ. I
did not know, I cared not to think, whither all this would lead....
About the year 1867 ... I was almost alone in Calcutta. My inward
trials and travails had really reached a crisis. It was a week-day
evening, I forget the date now. The gloomy and haunted shades of
summer evening had suddenly thickened into darkness.... I sat near the
large lake in the Hindu College compound.... A sobbing, gusty wind
swam over the water's surface.... I was meditating upon the state of
my soul, on the cure of all spiritual wretchedne