ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



mains unchanged. And though the life and mentality 

 of the globe passes daily and is daily renewed, the 

 primal source of those things is as abounding as 

 ever. It is not you and I that are immortal; it is 

 Creative Energy, of which we are a part. Our im- 

 mortality is swallowed up in this. 



The poets, the prophets, the martyrs, the heroes, 

 the saints — where are they? Each was but a jewel 

 in the dew, the rain, the snowflake — throbbing, 

 burning, flashing with color for a brief time and 

 then vanishing, adorning the world for a moment 

 and then caught away into the great abyss. "O 

 spendthrift Nature!" our hearts cry out; but Na- 

 ture's spending is only the ceaseless merging of one 

 form into another without diminution of her mate- 

 rial or blurring of her types. Flowers bloom and flow- 

 ers fade, the seasons come and the seasons go, men 

 are born and men die, the world mourns for its 

 saints and heroes, its poets and saviors, but Nature 

 remains and is as young and spontaneous and inex- 

 haustible as ever. Where is the comfort in all this 

 to you and to me? There is none, save the comfort 

 or satisfaction of knowing things as they are. We 

 shall feel more at ease in Zion when we learn to dis- 

 tinguish substance from shadow, and to grasp the 

 true significance of the world of which we form a 

 part. In the end each of us will have had his day, 

 and can say as Whitman does, 



"I have positively appeared. That is enough." 

 110 



