Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/157

 proving him to be nothing better than a perjurer utterly collapsed and Mr. Tilak could not, out of the gratitude of his heart, but recognize the Divine Hand that saved him from the machinations of the tremendous odds against him. The realisation, of this Divine favour created a revolution in his mentality. With all his great and heroic qualities of the heart—his sterling self-sacrifice, his magnificent courage, his genuine humanity and his inborn purity, it must be admitted that Mr. Tilak was more of a Dnyanin than of a Bhakta. The immense intellectual and other powers lavishly bestowed upon him by an all-wise Providence were somewhat inconsistent with that tenderness, pathos and humility which are the essential characteristics of a Bhakta.. But the the excruciating mental tortures of the Tai Maharaj case—we are talking of the earlier stages— convinced him, how weak, how little man after all is, in spite of his intellectual and moral powers, and how in the last resort we have to depend upon dispensations from Above. When his enemies had gathered thick about him and had well nigh caught him in their toils, Mr. Tilak's spirit conferred with the Divine and strong in the consciousness of Divine support, hurled defiance at those mortal enemies. From this period Mr. Tilak's speeches and writings shine with the fire of a prophet. To him the national struggle ceased to be merely intellectual. It was now no longer a fight of arguments. His politics was now spiritualised. It was this spiritual fire that enabled him to tide over reverses yet in store for him and bring his country within the sight of the Promised Land.