CHAPTER XXI. 

 BE A UTY FOR ASHES. 



"To appoint unto them that mourn to give unto them beauty 

 for ashes." ISAIAH Ixi. 3. 



THE well-known fable of the Phoenix is one that 

 has been often truthfully enacted on our earth. 

 Successive platforms of creation, with all their varied 

 life and loveliness, have been reduced to ruin, and out 

 of the wreck new life and beauty have emerged. The 

 earth has reached its present perfection of form through 

 repeated geological fires. The fair Eden, in the midst 

 of which the history of the human race begins, was de- 

 veloped from the ashes of previous less lovely Edens. 

 The soil of the earth is composed of the ashes of sub- 

 stances that have been oxidized, burned by the slow, 

 soft caresses of the very air that breathed upon them 

 and whose gentle smile gave them colour and form. 

 The building of the world was a process of burning, and 

 its foundations were undoubtedly laid in flames. Its 

 crust was originally like a burnt cinder. The rocks and 

 the earths, the sands and the clays, the very seas them- 



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