Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1905-12-23
KINDLING THE DIVINE FIRE

tum and striking home power of that
saying of old, 1.-The children of this
world are wiser in their day and gen.
Grafton than the children of light
But to return to our Hebrew psalm
list with his thrilling cutlery. while /
was musing the fire burned; then
spake I with my tongue" What had
he been doing to kindle and fan the
fire that famed out in such rapt in
SEPARATION on his tongue? He had been
musing. But what did he mean by mus
ing? He had been brooding, incubat-
ing, quickening to throbbing con
scious life a great theme of medita-
ton; and thereby had ben setting on
a marvellous, mystically-divine pro-
cess he mad often paused in love and
reverence to witness in some little
bird-a wren or sparrow, sitting pa
tiently in its nest on its little circ1et
of eggs in prophetic anticipation of a
great joy to break out of them.
Little did the tiny creature reflect
lively know of the creative function
she was subscribing, OF of the seem
ingly miraculous transformations go
ing on underneath her warm, foster
ing body. AS a great mind has said:
1T is not always needful for truth to
take definite shape; it is enough if
it hovers about us like a spirit and
produces harmony; if it is waited
through the air like the sound of
bell, grave and kindly The little
bird was acting on an instinct which
yet to her was vague, but delightful,
soul-experience; undifferentiated ele-
ment of the vaguely-apprehended uni
versal soul. And so dim sacred i'm
pulse held her patient and faithful to
her often wearisome task. Should she
fly away, and, yielding to the fascina-
ton of change and novelty, stay away
too long, then, bereft of her fostering
warmth, the miracle-working process
would cease its play as her eggs grew
cold and added. All this she knows
or does not know; yet no more in
stinctively, perhaps, than often Ho-
mer, or Phidias, or Milton, or Shake
speare, or Beethoven, involving, each
one, his own mightiest creation-a
Parthenon, Hamlet, a Paradise Lost,
a Fifth Symptoms all the while
building better than he knew"
So equally with our Hebrew psalm
list in his brooding, incubating pro-
cess of so quickening to life his great
theme as finally to cry out, While
was musing the fire burned; then
no rapturous discovery for his person
al behoof alone. 1t was to illustrate
and emphasize an experience which
must become the inheritance of uni
versal humanity, and apart from
which there can exist no rich, deep,
varied, genial, grateful interior life in
any man or woman. Until one has
learned-in some feeble measure, at
least-to brood and incubate the pro-
foundest problems of human relations
and human destiny, he must remain
shallow, trivial, unsympathetic and
tedious if not uncomfortable, to live
with. Perpetual surface activity, with
no underlying Quickening process set
on by habits of meditation, is the one
sure f1inty and dust-whirling highway
to intellectual, social and religious
bankruptcy of soul. And why?
Simply because every isolated
thought, object or personality in the
world is by itself trivial and con-
temptible. 1t must gather around
itself rich, varied, beautiful, CHEEKY
and devout associations. And it is
only through hours of profound, CRATE
full meditation on all that any single
obiect-wife, child, nature, art, oppor-
tunity-really has been to us for
years, that we can cry out of them in
rapture:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
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