Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/42

platform of 1894 It is also in this spirit that he has produced his really monumental essay in the Hon’ble Mr. C. Y. Chintamani’s publication on “ Indian Social Beform” — a thesis in which he has given us of his best and to which, pending its reappearance in this series, the reader may profitably turn once ’more to measure the ethical and spiritual grandeur as well as the literary greatness of author. Also, pre-eminent among Mr. Venkata Ratnam’s distinctive traits is his peculiar devotion to the ideal of monogamy. Possessed with a profound sense of the sublime sanctity of the marriage relation, he holds, to quote his own ]iregnant woi’ds, that “ the true test of monogamy is the monocracy of the whole heart by the one all-endeniing, as the true mark of monotheism is the monolatry, with the whole soul, of the One All-SufiBcient.” “ Those never loved who dream that they loved once,” said Mrs. Browning. After 5 brief years of wedded life, it has fallen to Mr. Venkata Ratnam’s own lot, since the close" of his twenty-seventh year, to concretise