affections of our hearts, but the convictions of our minds. As the world bowed in homage before this man, what was it but a confession of sin that he was right, and we knew it; and that all the dreadful ways of force and violence, which we have followed through the centuries, were not only wrong but criminal and wicked. When yesterday we thought of nothing but New Delhi and the dead Gandhi, it was with penitence within our souls that he should have walked the way of life alone, or a few of us, perhaps, following afar and wishing unto God that we had the strength and courage and patience and long-suffering to be even as he. Yes, Gandhi is the immortal and omnipotent conqueror, for he possesses the hearts of men forever, and as long as there is a human race upon this planet, will be remembered and revered. When all the kings and princes and great captains of our time, who make so much noise and occupy so central a place upon the stage, when these have long since been forgotten, every one of them, the Mahatma will still be known and revered as the greatest Indian since Gautama the Buddha, and as the greatest man since Jesus Christ.
When I lectured on Gandhi in India—and it lifts up my heart to remember this day that I had the blessed opportunity of going to India and talking to great Indian audiences in love and homage of their great prophet—I used to think at the time of how impudent it was, that I, a man from the militant West, should come to India to talk to Indians about Gandhi. In every address that I made on Gandhi, I always started out with a fervent word of apology. But at this moment it rings like bells of joy within my heart that I had the chance to speak, and to say how I loved this man. Always in my lectures I used to say that Gandhi’s life, as I understood it and could analyze it, was divided into three great periods, and every period was an epic in itself, an incomparable chapter of history which mankind will never forget. Think of it in passing, my dear friends, that you and I should be privileged to live in an age which has seen these chapters of history written, and to hear the words and feel the presence of this consummate spirit.
The first period of Gandhi’s life is a period of twenty years, from 1894 to 1914, and the scene of the great drama is South Africa. Gandhi as a young man and a young barrister, went to South Africa on a piece of legal business. He was absolutely unconscious of the way in which he was setting his feet. He saw not the slightest vestige of the destiny that was awaiting him. But when he came to South Africa, he felt within his own life what it was to be a colored man in a world dominated and ruled by white men. For the first time in his experience he was made to face and suffer prejudice, discrimination and insult. He was thrown off a train, for example, because in South Africa at that time colored people were not supposed to ride on trains with white people. On one notable occasion he was refused admission to a Christian church, because he was dark-skinned, and only people who were fair-skinned went to that church of Jesus Christ. But Gandhi was not so much overwhelmed and humiliated by what happened to him as by what he saw happening to his fellowmen and fellow-countrymen—the tens of thousands of coolies in South Africa, the poorest of the poor and the meanest of the mean, who were treated in that part of the world as Negroes are treated in the United States of America. And his heart went out to these people. And deliberately he stepped out of his place in life, left behind his appointed caste, gave up the practice of the law, sacrificed his property and
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