Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/182

 before and nerved a great many souls that had, with the first show of repression, felt well-nigh broken down. The example that Mr. Tilak is is due, in the greatest measure, to that declaration of faith, courage and sacrifice. There have been men who have suffered, there have been men who have exhibited courage in ecstasy, there have been men who have sacrificed their lives on the altar of a cause, but the world has not seen many who, in the hour of peril, have calmly put faith in the purposes of a Divine Power in preference to their own importance as makers of evolution. Many a weaker nature would have fulminated in wrath that the bureaucracy had shackled it and shut the world out of the great good that would have accrued by its own freedom. It was left to the true Indian Grihasta Mr. Tilak to understand the inner significance of man's effort and realise at the supremest moment in his life the truth of truths, that man after all is an instrument of God.

Mr. Tilak's calm stand appealed even to the Government, though not to the Advocate-General. The latter declined to give any certificate that there was an error in the decision of a point or points of law decided by Mr.