Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/51

 cated to an end that surmounts the bounds of time and sense, refined and expanded through a strenuous course of self-liberation — ever-taxing and yet ever re-assuring, the pilgrim is led on to an illumination that visions the divine harmony which, like the calm above the storm, prevails eternally through the hankerings and strivings of the work-a-day world. ‘The numbing cloud mounts off the soul’; the whole being is filled with undimmed light and unmixed sweetness ; the full current of life is set, free and pure, to noble ends. The message of this emancipated and illumined life may, in some measure, be summed up in the master’s own words : the ideal life, for every man as for every nation, is the life of service; and service and subordination are the life of the Universe, isolation and selfishness, its death. To the graduates of the year I can offer no happier felicitation than the benediction of his spirit, and I can address no loftier exhortation than the counsel to follow the guiding signal of his life. Before I pass from this subject, might I bespeak your very calm and deep consideration, as befitting persons of