Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/233

 and dangers of their ship as it sailed, among so many myriad others, let us read and learn from; but their soundings of this fathomless sea, their tracings of its unseen shores, of what value are they, but as guesses to riddles whose answers are lost? Do moles draw maps of the world for the guidance of other moles?

In all things do we not listen too much to the voices of our brothers, especially in those matters wherein they are least able to instruct us? Is there not in the world too much pulpit-preaching of this doctrine, and too much novel and essay-writing against that, and too much shrieking out of directions to this truth and of warnings against that; so that, amid the shrieking and the thumping of so many energetic ladies and gentlemen, the still, low voice of God himself, speaking to our souls, gets quite drowned?

Ever since this world was set a-spinning we have been preaching and lecturing, and crusading and pamphleteering, and burning and advising each other into the way to go to Heaven; and we are still hard at it, and we are still all rushing about as confused and bewildered as ever, and nobody knows who is right, but we are all convinced that everybody else is wrong!

This way, that way, not the other way, we cry.

"Here is the path, the only path; follow me, unless you wish to be lost!"

"Follow him not! He is leading you wrong!" says another. "I alone know the way!"

"No, no, heed neither of them!" says a third. "This is the road. I have just found it. All the roads men have gone by before have led them wrong; but we shall be all right now: follow me!"

In one age, by sword and fire, and other kinds of eloquent appeal, we drive men up to Heaven through