t of Australia. It has spread from land to land, until
that one tongue is the tongue most widely understood amongst all the
peoples of the world. Other nations are beginning to learn it, because
business and trade and even diplomacy are beginning to be carried on in
that English speech. What wonder then that the Supreme should send to
India this nation whose language is becoming the world-language, and lay
her open to be held as part of that world-wide empire, in order that her
Scriptures, translated into the most widely spoken language, may help
the whole human family and purify and spiritualise the hearts of all His
sons.

There is the deepest object of His coming, to prepare the
spiritualisation of the world. It is not enough that one nation shall be
spiritual; it is not enough that one country shall have wisdom; it is
not enough that one land, however mighty and however beloved--and do not
I love India as few of you love her?--it is not enough that she should
have the gold of spiritual truth, and the rest of the world be paupers
begging for a coin. No; far better that for a time she should sink in
the scale of nations, in order that what she cannot do for herself may
be done by divine agencies that are ever guiding the evolution of the
world. Thus what from outside looks as conquest and subjection, to the
eye of the spirit looks as the opening of the spiritual temple, so that
all the nations may come in and learn.

Only that leaves to you a duty, a responsibility. I hear so much, I have
spoken so often, of the descendants of Rishis and of the blood of the
Rishis in your veins. True, but not enough. If you are again to be
what Shri Krishna means you to be in His eternal counsels, the
Brahmana of nations, the teacher of divine truth, the mouth through
which the Gods speak in the ears of men, then the Indian nation must
purify itself, then the Indian nation must spiritualise itself. Shall
your Scriptures spiritualise the whole world while you remain
unspiritual? Shall the wisdom of the Rishis go out to Mlechchas in
every part of the world, and they learn and profit by it, while you, the
physical descendants of the Rishis, know not your own literature and
love it even less than you know? That is the great lesson with which I
would fain close. So true is this, that, in order to gain teachers of
the Brahmavidya which belongs to this land by right of birth, the great
Rishis have had to send some of their children to other