Pilgrims heavenward: essays

LIFE is a road or way. This is an image in which the writers of allegory have especially delighted, and is something more than metaphor or simile. The expression "the way" is interesting as having been taken up very early into the language of the Christian Church. The early Christians knew each other as those of "the way." Thus in the 9th of Acts, the words of Ananias of Damascus, which in the Authorised Version are "any of this way," should properly be rendered " any of the way.' The schoolmen of the Middle Ages spoke commonly in this manner of Christian pilgrims between the font and the grave. The origin of this symbolic

THE LANGUAGE OF THE ALLEGORISTS.

expression is probably best referred to the words of our Lord, who has spoken of the narrow path, and has declared, "I am the Way."

We are all familiar with the language of the allegorists; especially we recall the vision of the bridge with the threescore and ten arches, of which so many are lapsed and ruined, with the constant pitfalls through which the travellers disappear, with the alternate images of gloom and thick darkness, and the bright and shining seas crowded with innumerable happy isles. And so the allegorists constantly compare the journey of life to the travel of a day. They have described how the rich morning light streamed upon the way at early dawn, and how the wayside groves were vocal with the minstrelsy of innumerable birds. They have spoken of the sudden chances of the road, and the transitory companionship of fellow-travellers. Then they have described warningly the scenes of peril and danger,— the wild beast crouching in the covert, and the foe lurking in the ambush; the precipices that line the pass, and the pitfalls concealed beneath the flowers; the poison of noxious dews, and the fatal fierceness of the intolerable sun. Then they have described the thickening shadows and the paling lights, and the overhanging horror of rocks and forest darkness. The readiness with which such metaphorical language has always been received is evidence of its instinctive truth. Doubtless we all feel that we are on the way.

THE LITERATURE OF PILGRIMAGES.

The familiar scenery fades away into what is strange. Here and there we lose our companions; others may join us, or we may be left alone. Every morning we resume the journey of life; every evening we are one day's march nearer our destination.

The literature of such allegories received, of course, its culmination in the Pilgrim's Progress, the charm and instruction of ages; and Bishop Patrick's Pilgrim perhaps suggested it. It is remarkable how the saintly Herbert, in one of his poems, has anticipated Bunyan's design. He tells how the pilgrim passed by the cave of desperation, the rock of pride, the meadows of pleasure, the wilds of passion, and the lake of brackish water which disappointed him when he had climbed the gladsome hill. When the great wit and politician, Sydney Smith, was on his death-bed, he said that life was indeed a way, a journey; but in how different a manner it was performed by different people! What he meant was, that while to some life is like a journey of pleasure, and to some like a triumphal procession, others, weary of foot and weary of heart, must toil and faint and struggle upon the long and sultry way. There is no lesson, however, on which allegorical descriptions more forcibly insist than that the gaiety of some of the travellers and their flower-enamelled path is a very uncertain proof of real happiness or real progress. The great thing of a journey, after all, is not the journey itself, but the destination of the journey. That path is the best which most safely, quickly, and

THE BIRD IN BEDE'S NARRATIVE.

certainly achieves its goal. The exile who knows he is treading the one path which will lead him to his palace-home would hardly for a moment wish to forsake the path; any complaint of the monotony or unattractiveness of the journey would seem to him strangely out of place.

It appears, then, that it is the universal instinct of the heart of man that this life is best summed up as being only a pilgrimage. According to the beautiful story in Bede, the soul of man is like the bird that flies in through one window from the outside darkness into the lighted hall, and then through another open casement disappears once more into the darkness. "When stepping forward from amidst the morning mists of childhood," says a German writer, " I looked around me, and gradually recognised the heavens and the earth, and the path and district in which my lot was cast. I gazed in astonishment at all I saw, and, wondering, asked, Whence come I? whither do I go? what means the gay spectacle around me? I was a stranger and mystery to myself. I increased in years, but not in wisdom. The enigma only became more enigmatical."* But here, as elsewhere, there are many facts in the most complete contradiction to our strongest convictions. There are many among us who in so many set terms declare their position, beyond that of other men, to be that of strangers and pilgrims. Nevertheless, they often seem to realise Zschokke's Autobiography.

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