Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/232

 its soundings, and no man knows its hidden shoals and rocks, nor the strong currents flowing underneath its sunny surface; for its sands are ever shifting, and its tides are ever varying, and for the ships upon its waves there is no chart.

The sea of Life is vast and boundless, and no man knows its shores. For many thousand ages have its waters flowed and ebbed, and ever, day by day, from out the mist have come the little ships into the light, and beckoned with their ghost-like sails, and passed away; and no man knows from whence they came, and no man knows the whither they have gone. And to each ship it is an unknown sea, and, over it, they sail to reach an unknown land; and where that land lies none can tell.

The sailors that have gone before! who are they, that we should follow them? For a brief day they have lain tossed upon the heaving waters: for a short hour they have clung to their poor bark of Time; and on the restless current it has drifted, and before the fitful wind it has been wafted, and over the deep they have passed into the darkness; and never more have they returned, and never more, though eyes, washed clear with bitter tears, have strained to pierce the gloom, have they or their frail ships been seen. Behind them the waters have closed up, and, of the way they went, there is no trail. Who are they, that they should draw a chart of this great ocean, and that we should trust to it?

What saw they of the mighty sea, but the waves lapping around their keel? They knew not the course they had sailed; they knew not the harbour that they sought. In the night they foundered and went down, and its lights they never saw.

The log of their few days' cruise, telling the struggles