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શ્રીમદ્ભગવદ્ગીતા
(2) Pulse (2) 241 $224 refoyang Il la un 914 ? 241c7–4771CH સ્વરૂપનું જ્ઞાન મેળવવાથી. પણ એ જ્ઞાન શી રીતે મળે? એ મેળવવા માટે આપણું શાસ્ત્રકારોએ અનેક માર્ગો છેજ્યા છે, જે ક્રમે ક્રમે જ્ઞાનની ભૂમિreadily endure the keenest sufferings. If it is necessary to choose the cause of honour, virtue, religion, one's country, or one's God, at the cost of physical suffering, however acute, nay even at the cost of death itself, the Christian mind will not hesitate in the choice. To make out war as the ultimate or final evil upon earth is not to adopt but rather to invert the code of Christian morals. It is to prefer the things of sense to the spiritual interests of inankind. It is to narrow life to the limits of material and physical welfare, instead of expanding it to its true spiritual dignity. Two remarks there are which it is possible, as I think, and natural to make upon the subject of war. The first is that the great, decisive, paramount, events in history have been often or generally consummated by the sword. Nor indeed, as it seems, could they have been consummated in any other way. Look over the famous battles of human history, Marathon, Tours, the defeat of the Armada, Leuthen, Plassey, Valmy, Trafalgar, Waterloo, and tell me how the results which were achieved in those great battles could apparently have been achieved by any other means. The creation of a national life, the emancipation of a people, the vindication of religious truth, the regeneration of the social order, can be accomplished in the providential order, by war, and, as it seems to human eyes, by war alone. Thus it is that a modern poet, whose own still, peaceful life lay so far away from the strife and stress of bloodshed, could yet, in his Thanks-giving Ode, use of warfare, in an appeal to the Almighty God, these striking words :
“But Thy most dreaded instrument In working out a pure intent, Is man-arrayed for mutual slaughter, Yea, Carpage is thy daughter 1"
