Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/98

 old, think, I pray you, of the holy names of sister, (daughter,) wife and mother; think of all the holy influences which stream forth upon an evil world from the relations which those sacred names represent, and resolve, one and all, that under no sky from which the sun shines down shall those names have a holier, tenderer meaning than in this fair land."

Nor need this inspiring appeal come amiss to a people with rich traditions and noble examples of. social purity in the past. The crowning merit of our national hero was that he never shot but one arrow and never loved but one woman, the Kohinoor of her kind. Our national pattern of truthfulness preferred gifting away an empire to plucking the rose from a maiden brow. Our national model of devotion made purity the basis of piety by beholding a "mother" in every "stranger woman." The greatest of our epics tells J man "to look upon his neighbour's wife as on her that gave him life." The oldest of our bridal hymns exhorts the couple be-