multitude do not assemble themselves for united prayer, as Christians
and Mahomedans do; and at the other end of the Hindu scale, the
professed pantheist as such cannot pray. In proof of the latter
statement, we recall the words of Swami Vivekananda, representative of
Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, in a lecture
"The Real and the Apparent Man," published in 1896. "It is the greatest
of all lies," he writes somewhat baldly, although one is often grateful
for a bald, definite statement, "that we are mere men; we are the God of
the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you
were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a hell, and the
partially good see it as heaven, and the perfect beings realise it as
God Himself.... By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are
limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence."
Prayer is therefore irrational for a pantheist, for no man is separate
from God.

[Sidenote: Its limited membership.]

The influence of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j has been far greater than its
numerical success. Reckoned by its small company of 4050 members,[52]
some of them certainly men of the highest culture and of sincere
devoutness, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j is a limited and local movement,
limited largely to the province of Bengal, and even to a few of the
larger towns in the province. But if the taint of the intellectual
origin of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j be still visible in the eclecticism
that it professes, in its rejection of the supernatural, and in its poor
numerical progress, it has nevertheless done great things for India.

[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j and the national feeling.]