by John Haynes Holmes and Donald Harrington

“ The irony that Mahatma Gandhi, the supreme preacher and practitioner, not only in our time but in all the ages gone by, of the great principle of nonviolence, should himself be called upon to fall as the victim of outrageous violence. The irony again, that with his life purpose accomplished, with India free and India’s people, after an initial ordeal of wild bloodshed, entering under his guidance upon the sure pathways of reconciliation and peace, he should he struck down on the very threshold of his sublime triumph. ”

“ Abraham Lincoln, the sweetest and gentlest of men, struck down by a murderer’s bullet. And now, as the crown and climax of all this historic irony, Mahatma Gandhi dead at the hand of a wild assassin. I wonder, O, I wonder, have we always needed the purging of these woes, and do we need it still, to teach us of our own sins of violence and hate, and show us, however bitterly, the better way of life! ”

“ That Mahatma Gandhi, of all men living in the world, should have to die this way! The irony, for example, that Gandhi, who never cherished an unkind thought, and never did an unkind deed, who fought England for forty years with never a feeling of bitterness toward any Englishman anywhere, who forgave Moslems and Hindus alike for the injury they were doing to one another, and asked them only to love one another as he loved them both—that this man should die beneath the stroke of hate and vengeance! ”

“ 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. ”

“ O God, our hearts are full of anguish. For again among us Cæsar has conquered; armed violence has had its way; the armored car and the iron curtain their victory. The warrior has swept away the peacemaker—and the little Father, who loved all men, who walked with the humblest, who lifted up the lowliest, who trusted his enemies, who forgave those who tried to kill him, is gone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then Gandhi came along, dowered first of all with his own supreme sense of dignity and his belief in the integrity of his people, and conveyed to the unlettered and illiterate millions of his fellow-countrymen, that same sense of dignity and honor, of power and right, that lived within himself. It was under the influence of the Mahatma that the Indians raised themselves from out the dust, dared for the first time to stand erect and look an Englishman straight in the face. ”

“ Gandhi’s program of non-violent resistance is unprecedented in the history of mankind. The principle itself, resist not evil and love your enemies, is nothing new. It is at least as ancient as the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sermon on the Mount. But Gandhi did what had never been done before. Up to his time the practice of these non-resistant principles had been limited to single individuals, or to little groups of individuals. Gandhi worked out the discipline and the program for the practicing of this particular kind of principle by unnumbered masses of human beings. ”

“ I have no time this morning to tell the story of that twenty years’ struggle in South Africa, which ended, of course, in victory, for non-violence is irresistible, unconquerable, when it is implemented by a soul that really believes it and is not afraid to practise it. This chapter of Gandhi’s life is really important not in itself, but in its relation to the later tale of what happened in India. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Harrington O Thou Most Holy One, within the vastness of Whose Overlife we live and move and have our being, Our God, Our Father’s God, the God of all whom we love in the Great Unseen, we turn to Thee in this hour because we need Thy reassurance, Thy calm consolation, Thine unfailing strength, and the benediction of Thy Peace. ”

“ But I have insisted from the beginning, as I would insist today, that this last period in Gandhi’s life was the greatest period of all. In my last letter to the Mahatma, written just as I was leaving India, I put it this way—and you will pardon me if I read my words. “Of course,” I said, “you have been sad, wellnigh overborne by the tragedies of recent months, but you must never feel that this involves any breakdown of your life work. Human nature cannot bear too much, it cracks under too great a strain, and the strain in this case was as terrific as it was sudden. ”

“ But when a man, or rather an army of men, comes against an empire bare-handed and barefooted, armed not even with stones or staves, practicing not violence in any form but absolute non-violence, loving their enemies and seeking to serve them even as they love and serve their friends, the empire doesn’t know what to do. The New York Times, in its great leading editorial yesterday morning, spoke of the British Empire as being baffled by Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign of non–resistance. ”

“ But this Gandhi did deliberately, as a symbol of his faith and of his life. Since unnumbered millions of Indians could wear nothing but the loin cloth, then he would wear that loin cloth himself, that he might identify himself the more closely with the great masses of men and women whom he would serve. This was the reason also why he made himself propertyless, stripping himself of practically every possession in the world. The reason was very simple. The multitudes of the Indian people owned nothing, and that being the case, he would be one with them, and himself own nothing. ”

“ Almighty God our heavenly father, the spirit of thy life is within us all, and in thee we live and move and have our being. We pray thee, that we may look on death as a part of life, and find in death and life together the living witness of thy spirit. ”

“ They knew what Gandhi meant by non-violent non-cooperation. They had been taught the discipline of that kind of a life, and there they were as his representatives and his followers to obey his word and do his work. It can be said that, after a period of years, Gandhi had organized the whole Indian people around himself in the great undertaking of national independence, and the power of such organization, led by such a personality, was indeed, as it proved to be, irresistible. ”

“ By the time I left India I had the feeling that everybody who was worthwhile in India had a prison record. I knew this because they referred to it so easily, and were so glad to tell me of the experiences they had in prison. So different from our country! When a man has a prison record in America, he does not say anything about it. He keeps it quiet. But here was a noble service that Gandhi taught the Indian people they could offer on behalf of their great cause. ”

“ John Haynes Holmes As I saw the sensational headlines in last Friday's newspapers announcing the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, I thought of how different it all would have been had this dreadful deed taken place thirty, or twenty, or even ten years ago. An assassination, even of an inconspicuous individual, is always a sensational event But a few inches in an inside page of the newspaper would have sufficed to tell that story. ”

“ But as little in the case of Gandhi as in the case of Jesus is it really finished, for as Jesus came to his own only after the fell moment of his death and has lived serene and potent in the hearts of unnumbered millions to our own time, so Gandhi will live and assert his magic influence upon the souls and hearts of men forever. ”

“ For a wild man in South Africa, like a wild man in New Delhi yesterday, sought to take his life, and Gandhi was left in the gutter by the side of the road as one who was dead. Fortunately he was picked up in time and taken to the hospital, and the first thing he did when he awakened to consciousness, was to ask that the young assassin be brought to him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ South Africa was a kind of laboratory where Gandhi tested the practicability of his non-violent principles and proved that they would work. South Africa was a school wherein he disciplined his own life to the patience, the courage and the long suffering that fitted him to live as the practitioner of non-violence. South Africa was a training ground where he learned how to organize thousands of his fellowmen to strict obedience to the principles which he would lay upon their souls. Gandhi in these twenty years suffered everything. ”

“ Tell me, O Lord, which of those who worship and serve Thee, with earnest minds well-mastered, serve Thee most worthily and best? Which are on the best path, those who worship Thee as God in thy revealed form ”

“ His spirit singeth still within our souls, and dwelleth on high with Thee in glorious brightness. And we too can turn again from the ways of hate and greed and war to the way of Thy Spirit We can repent us of our warlike madness and turn to the way of Thy forgiveness and love. ”

“ That ineffable presence, that sweetest of all smiles, those eyes that had depths of beauty like visions of the eternal, that infinite tenderness and grace, that lovely hospitality of friendship, it is all gone with the frail and feeble body that fell beneath the shot of the assassin’s pistol. ”

“ Eternal God, in whom the spirits of the just do rest from their labors: we bless thee for the memory of the righteous, and especially for those most dear to us, who have lived in faith and departed in peace. ”

“ He is silent and well satisfied with whatsoever befall him or come to pass in the world. He, of whom I have just spoken, is of a steady and equable mind, and devotion is ever manifested by him—he verily loveth Me, and I him. ”

“ Lastly, Gandhi gave to the Indian people the weapons wherewith to carry on their fight, weapons of unimaginable power, weapons that guaranteed eventual victory, and in Gandhi’s own time, praise be to God, won the victory that he could see. ”

“ As they kept the faith in time of trial and held fast to righteousness in the hour of temptation, so inspired by their example, may we, when danger is near and the flesh is weak, triumph over every trial and temptation, and finally attain unto everlasting life. ”

“ It was in this endeavor that he worked out his program of non-violent non-cooperation, which means on the one hand, negatively speaking, non-cooperation with evil and evil doers, and on the other hand, positively speaking, willingness to suffer but never to wreak suffering upon other men, and to love without stint and without discrimination enemies as well as friends. ”

“ Sooner or later when you are talking with your host, who may be a governor of a province, a vice chancellor of a university, or something of the sort, you discover that this man has a prison record, and that he’s very proud of it. ”

“ He, also, is dear to Me, who neither fears the world of men, nor is feared by it; and who is delivered from the turbulence of anger, joy, impatience, or fear, regarding finite things or happenings.
“And he who desireth nothing; who is just and pure ”