Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/448

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

403

cannot for ever dwarf the greatness. It is but proper that our minds, on an occasion like the present, should be hallowed with grateful and reverent recollections of eminent worthies in our own land and also in other lands whose anniversaries come up so close to one another. This, for our behoof, is the anniversary season also of Kursondas Mulji and William Wilberforce, of Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. Kursondas Mulji was a man of light in an age of superstition, a strong man in the midst of sneaks and always a champion of whatsoever was true, pure and righteous. Vidyasagar had the highest esteem for man as man and never heeded authority robed only in the externality of form. He was a man who could and did cry ‘shame’ on every species of hypocrisy and to whom truth was eternal because God was its guarantee. He was a star of the first magnitude whose light shall ever continue to be shed on the onward path of his countrymen towards the regeneration of decrepit India. May his life be a load-star unto our eyes and a