Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/425

 perhaps for a longer period and more intimately than almost all else here, this is really marked and noted event in my life. As I have felt and as I have often told others, this is an event which has made this world poorer and death dearer; an event which has left me devoid of las presence here below but yet plants a hope in the hereafter; and an event which stirs me to long to be freed from the allurements of physically tempting life, not in the commercial sense of higher advantages, but in the spiritual signification of seeing a holier vision and living a nobler existence. This event has thrilled through every fibre of his dearest friends. While it is usual to say, ‘Let Thy will be done,’ we ai'e now face to face with the now and pressing enquiry, ‘What is Thy will?’ This is an event which, unlike many a passing event of the time, is significant of more than one inspiring truth. I have been made to feel now, if at any time in my life, that, as the poet has said, one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name. Here is a brief life but a rich one, and an early death but a gentle, peaceful.