The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far off when its eclipse will bring back daylight to the earth.
The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay, but the less we see of them, the more manifest is He. He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at moments, but alway shining again more clearly than before.
It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so fully, even in the journals themselves. People begin to feel that all questions of education, government, childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one ruling and underlying question. As God is, so must the world be.
From this we gather that the times are ripe.
So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I seemed momently to see it breaking over the desert where I brought this book to an end.
How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked this desert of mine! I had made my nest on a rock in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a lowly villa surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly pear and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading basin of sparkling sea; behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre, where, at their ease, might sit the Parliament of the world.
This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the daytime with flashings as of steel. But of a winter morning, especially in December, it seemed full of a divine mystery. I was wont to rise exactly at six o’clock, when the signal for work was boomed from the Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a delicious time of it. The quick—may I call it piercing?—twinkle of the stars made the moon ashamed, and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming, and during the struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground, was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard and clear. I said to myself, “How is this? Am I still a man?”
An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched by the rosy dawn, hung round me like a sacred ether, a spirit that made all things spiritual.