Page:Holmes - World Significance of Mahatma Gandhi.djvu/16

 the great Caesar. It has mastered the world by the power of its arms, and is exploiting its resources and peoples to its own advantage. As its outward glory increases, however, its inward disintegration proceeds. At the critical moment in Roman history, there appeared Jesus and the Christians, who brought to the perishing world a new source of life which preserved its vitality for a period of two thousand years. At the critical moment in our not dissimilar age, there appears Gandhi! Does he not also bring with him a new life of the spirit, and may he not therefore be truly hailed as the savior of the world?

It is thus that I would speak of the universal significance of Mahatma Gandhi and his work in India. The parallel with Jesus constantly presents itself. The Nazarene was a divine personality; he taught the law of love, and laid down a program of non-resistance for its fulfillment; he sought to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth by dethroning Mammon in favor of God. So also with Gandhi! This Indian is a saint in his personal life; he teaches the law of love, and non-resistance as its practice; and he seeks the establishment of a new social order which shall be a kingdom of the spirit. If I believed in “the second coming,” as I do not, I should dare to assert that Gandhi was Jesus come back to earth. But if “the second coming” has no historical validity, it has at least poetical significance; and in this sense, can we not speak of Gandhi as indeed the Christ? In a little book called “The Scourge of Christ,” sent me by the author, Paul Richard, from the foot of the Himalaya mountains, where he lives, I find two remarkable sentences:

“If Christ came again, would he not choose again to be a son of an enslaved people, rather than a citizen of the empire?”

“The Christ, if he comes, will not be of the white race; the colored peoples could not put their faith in him.”

Is not this the prophecy of Gandhi? Does not this prove him to be the Christ of our age? Today, as in the olden time, it is no longer a question as to whether Christ is here or not. It is a question only of who will recognize and follow him!

(To help the establishment of a Federal Republic in India. To maintain the right of asylum for political refugees from India)