Milford chronicle., 1893-02-24
EVOLUTION OF THE FlREsIDE.
Great Races That Have Sprung From tn
Family Hearth.

Great Races That Have Sprung From the
Family Hearth.
Somebody found out that the friction Of
two sticks would produce flame And 10.
all the arts and sciences were bornl This
discovery must have been made very, very
long ago, for the earliest people Of whom
we haveany knowledge had forgotten about
it and were turning it into myth and mira
Gle. Agni, the FIRE, was worshiped BY the
Hindoos as one Of the great gods, while
among the Greeks the Titan Prometheus
was said to have stolen the FIRE from heaven
and brought it down to men hidden In a
reed. This he did in pity for the suffering
race Of man, while for the pity and help he,
| like so many other Of mans helpers and re-
formers, was doomed to persecution and
torture. 1t is only within the present CEN
I tury and since the discovery of the old San
skirt Scriptures that we have found out
that PrOmetheus is Pramantha, tho fire
drill, and that out Of the wonder Of the
fire the wOrshiping imaginations Of the
people have created the wonder story Of
the man loving victim of Zeus
The fire early became a symbol of the
sun and through a thousand changes this /
primeval marvel Of the fre has become
apart Of the poetry, the folklore, thereligion |
of all the world. The Parsis were fire wor- /
shippers. Baal, the fire god, ruled many q 4
Semitic tribe. The beautiful Persephonei /
seized by the god Of the underworld and /
borne away to his sunless kingdom. Her
mother, Ceres, mourDs her and searches
everywhere over the desolate earth for her
daughter. By and by she is permitted to re-
turn and spend six months In the upper
world. The flowers bloom, the corn grows
and the birds sing gat her approach. So grows
the fairy story of winter and summer. But
not only in pagan lands do these traces Of
sun and fire worship appear. Our Lents and
casters, our altar candles, our Halloweens.
our eastward positions in prayer-all these
are poetic relics of the age long wonder Of
the fire.
In the first place, the sunshine is the con
dition Of all life on earth, and the fire on
the hearth is only transformed sunshine. ,
This sunshine was stored up ages ago in
the beds Of coal or in the growing trees
year by year. So, as we sit about the fire,
it is the sunshine of other years OF other
ages that dances in the flame or glows in
the red anthracite. And as It is the sun
that gives life, so It is this sunshine In the
fire that makes man the free inhabitant Of r
all the earth, whatever the natural climate /
may be. Wherever he is able to live at all 4
he creates for himself artificial tropics, 4
lHuh ESTABLISHING OIlCe more ana pefluauenN- d
" the essential conditions of his primeval !
home. Born in the tropics, he can live q
only in the tropics, and with the wonder 8
wand Of fire he creates for himself the trop- .
cs anywhere.
In the next place, It is sometimes said e
hat the great races are the ones who live q
n the northlands. This may be so today, 4
'ut If we look back and study the past we q
zee that all the greatest arts and literatures Il
md religions Of the worA grew and bios 4
omed and bore fruit in the lands Of the I,
un. When we speak the names Of India, L,
f Palestine, Of Egypt, OF Greece, Of Rome, K
We speak of the homes Of all the beauty and
ruth and aspiration of man that have
Eliminated in our rmodeIn civilization. All? b
Sot quite, for we must remember Ger =
many and France and England But these h
% not contradict our statement, for the S,
Of these was not attaired ex- n
ept as the fire enabled the peOpls.e7sz--.-k ~
or themselves lands Of the suFour WALTZ F
resides, and in these artif onr stool-
be great works have been 9ONoN *
lev. NJ. j. Savage in Petersf s