Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/401

 have achieved for his own exaltation, if he had chosen to seek self before God! He gave up all, not from external pressure, not from the stress of circumstances, but from, the spontaneity of dedication to a great cause. All honour to him; all honour to the God that led him on to it! He lived, not merely a life of poverty, but a life of privation; and that, without a word of dissatisfaction, leave alone complaint. He felt the greatness of the task before him, the nobility of the vocation, the glory of the end, lie had placed before himself.


 * “Unknown delights are in the cross,
 * All joy beside to me is dross,”

says Madame Guyon. These delights of the cross Pandit Sastri assumed unto himself. All joy beside was to him dross!

And how cheerful was his temperament always! The very laughter of the man was a sunshine of the heart. As we all know, we laugh from different motives. There is the cynical laughter, the sardonic laughter, the empty laughter, the crowing laughter. But there is the laughter of spiritual fellowship, the ' laughter that comes from the