Moral life is often purified by storms, as the air by a rainy day:
The health-giving properties of rain are not appreciated by
the general public. Rain is an essential to physical vigor
in localities that have any extensive population. Man and
his occupations load the air with countless and unclassified
impurities. The generous, kindly rain absorbs them, even as
a washerwoman extracts the dirt from soiled clothes. The
ammoniacal exhalations, the gases resultant from combustion and
decay, are all quietly absorbed by a brisk shower. People talk
about a “dry climate,” but it is a snare and a delusion. There
is nothing in it. A very dry climate will never support a large
population, for it would soon become so poisoned that it would
be fatal to the human race. A scattering few might inhabit it,
but not the multitude.--_Colliery Guardian._
(2589)
* * * * *
The life of God, if allowed to sweep through the earth unhindered,
would purify man’s life, as ocean waves, described below, purify the
lands they reach:
The air of the sea, taken at a great distance from land, or even
on the shore and in ports when the wind blows from the open sea,
is in an almost perfect state of purity. Near continents the
land winds drive before them an atmosphere always impure, but at
100 kilometers from the coasts this impurity has disappeared.
The sea rapidly purifies the pestilential atmosphere of
continents; hence every expanse of water of a certain breadth
becomes an absolute obstacle to the propagation of epidemics.
Marine atmospheres driven upon land purify sensibly the air
of the regions which they traverse; this purification can be
recognized as far as Paris. The sea is the tomb of molds and of
aerial schizophytes.--_Public Opinion._
(2590)
* * * * *
Longfellow pictures life as a wave hastening to cleanse itself in the
ocean:
Whither, thou turbid wave?
Whither with so much haste,
As if a thief wert thou?
I am the Wave of Life
Stained with my margin’s dust;
From the struggle and the strife
Of the narrow stream I fly
To the sea’s immensity,
To wash from me the slime
Of the muddy banks of time.
(2591)
* * * * *
God uses many unseen agencies to offset the moral poisons of the
universe:
“A device has been perfected by the chemist of the mechanical
department of the Erie Railroad,” says _The Railway and
Engineering Review_ (Chicago), “by which all the cars on
the Chicago limited train are thoroughly sterilized at Jersey
City after each round trip between Jersey City and Chicago, a
run of about 2,000 miles. Experiments looking to this method of
cleaning cars so as to kill all disease germs and destroy all
bad odors have been in progress for some time. A deodorizing
apparatus has also been devised which is placed under the
seats in the cars, out of sight of passengers, and gives off
an odorless gas, which combines with the stale tobacco-smoke
or other offensive odors which may accumulate in the cars, and
serves to completely nullify them. This treatment has been so
effective that it is expected it will be extended to all the
passenger cars in the Erie service.”
(2592)
See EVIL, PURGING FROM.