Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/71

 gratitude. Thus, as a fruit of great sacrifice your Degree has come to be yours; and as an offering of pure sacrifice alone will you be suffered to employ it. This is the true meaning of the noble precept, ‘freely ye have received, freely give As a free gift of the self-sacrifice of the past you have received it; and, rendered richer with your reverent mite, as a free offering of the present you will pass it on.

This incidental reference to a truth of great moment—namely, that life can perpetuate itself only through renunciation, that lasting good is achieved solely through ceaseless self-surrender—demands that I should make a fervent appeal to you, with all the earnestness of a sincere well-wisher, to cleanse your minds of even the slightest taint of one misleading and injurious notion. I refer to the not uncommon notion that there exists a real antithesis, an inherent conflict, between privileges and obligations, between rights and duties. Unlike certain other pairs of words—such, for example, as light and darkness, good and evil-which name irrecon-