Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/438



Gentlemen, We are here in the shadow of a tremendous calamity. With the sense of heaviness oppressing the heart, it is literally impossible for anything like an appreciable expression of all that one feels on an occasion like this. Nothing is so arresting to the thought and aching to the heart as the sudden and unexpected elimination of a most promising and widely beloved person. If in the course of nature the relief of death comes to one who has passed through the ordinary career of life, though the eye may fill and the bosom may heave, yet there is the prayer in the soul that at last the translation from here to hereafter has come to one rightly prepared for it. But in a case like this, where there was so much to do, where the potentialities were so rich and the promises so inspiring, we really