Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/63

 fitfully rise and swell only to be eclipsed by the blaze of reddish smoke, akin to the scientist's nebular beginning—the reddish smoke of the chaos of our time. And why this chaos? The innate eternal flame of the soul is not extinguished in man—his spirituality is not dead. But while in the past it was fed by one stoker, so to speak, it is to-day fed by a hundred, a thousand stokers, indifferent and indiscriminate, who gather their fuel at random in forests young and old, in rocky copses, in distant bogs. Hence the smoking, coruscating, crepitating, fitfully glowing flame. There are many wet logs and green logs in the fire; much brushwood too and peat; and the ash-heap of the ages, which never can be entirely removed. But the fire is not extinguished, will not be extinguished, can not be extinguished. Gradually the wet and green logs, the brushwood, the peat will all be consumed, and the amber golden flame will become purer, steadier, more enduring and more beautiful than ever. This is my