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In respect of the third advantage, also, it is obvious that material aid can be had in fixing the true attitude of
RECONCILIATION.
too, have got to tread the path They trod, if we would attain to the heights They have attained. In a word, the Tirthamkaras are models of perfection for our souls to copy and to walk in the foot-steps of. Their images are kept in the temples to constantly remind us of our high ideal and to inspire us with faith and confidence in our own souls. As for their woship, They have no desire to be worshipped by us; their perfection is immeasurably greater than we can praise; They are full and perfect in their wholeness. We offer Them the devotion of our hearts because in the initial stages of the 'journey it is the most potent, if not the only, means of making steady progress,
It is not mere hero-worship, though worship of a hero is transcendent admiration. As Carlyle puts it, it is something more; we admire what we ourselves aspire to attain to. The great English thinker, Thomas Carlyle, tells us :--
"I say great men are still admirable; I say there is at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man, It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Hero-worship endures for ever while man endures Boswell venerates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving French believe in their Voltaire; and burst out round him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they stifle him under roses,' At Paris his carriage is the 'nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets.' The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur to keep it as a sacred relic. There was nothing highest, beautifullest, noblest in all France, that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuller, nobler....... It will ever be so. We all love great men; love, venerate and bow down submissive before great men nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not overy true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really aboze him? No noble or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. It is an eternal corner
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