PURIFICATION
Moral life is often purified by storms, as the air by a rainy day:
The health-giving properties of rain are not appreciated by the general public. Rain is an essential to physical vigor in localities that have any extensive population. Man and his occupations load the air with countless and unclassified impurities. The generous, kindly rain absorbs them, even as a washerwoman extracts the dirt from soiled clothes. The ammoniacal exhalations, the gases resultant from combustion and decay, are all quietly absorbed by a brisk shower. People talk about a “dry climate,” but it is a snare and a delusion. There is nothing in it. A very dry climate will never support a large population, for it would soon become so poisoned that it would be fatal to the human race. A scattering few might inhabit it, but not the multitude.—Colliery Guardian.
(2589)
The life of God, if allowed to sweep through the earth unhindered, would purify man’s life, as ocean waves, described below, purify the lands they reach:
The air of the sea, taken at a great distance from land, or even on the shore and in ports when the wind blows from the open sea, is in an almost perfect state of purity. Near continents the land winds drive before them an atmosphere always impure, but at 100 kilometers from the coasts this impurity has disappeared. The sea rapidly purifies the pestilential atmosphere of continents; hence every expanse of water of a certain breadth becomes an absolute obstacle to the propagation of epidemics. Marine atmospheres driven upon land purify sensibly the air of the regions which they traverse; this purification can be recognized as far as Paris. The sea is the tomb of molds and of aerial schizophytes.—Public Opinion.
(2590)
Longfellow pictures life as a wave hastening to cleanse itself in the ocean: