"We are Pilgrims," they replied; "we would not linger here."
"Whither are you going?" I inquired.
"Home!" they answered, joyfully. "To a Holy City which is our Home."
"But how do you know the way?" I asked, for no barriers seemed to limit
their path, so that any of the Wanderers might join it at any point.
"We know it by two marks," they answered—"by the footsteps of One who
trod it once, and left indelible footprints wherever He stepped. And we
know it also by the goal to which it tends!"
Then looking up, I saw resting on the mountains where this path ended,
a bridge like a rainbow, and beyond it, in the sky, a range of towers
and walls, pearl and opal, ruby and golden, such as in a summer evening
is sometimes faintly pictured on the clouds, when the setting sun
shines through them.
And the little band chanted as they went, "The doom of our race is
reversed for us. We are not Wanderers; we are Pilgrims. We would not
linger here; this is not our rest. Onwards, upwards, to the City!—To
the Home!"
The Ark and the Fortress.
—————
ONE day, I had been thinking about the terrors of the Great Flood, when
it seemed to me that I saw back through the long ages to that distant
day, as you look with a night-glass through the night to an illuminated
planet.
I saw an old man, venerable with the centuries by which we count the
lives of nations, not of men, yet vigorous with the vitality of one who
had still centuries to live. He stood on an inland plain, far from any
sea; yet above him rose the sides of a large ship. It had been finished
that day.
Once more the old man warned the laughing crowds around of the waters
which would surely come and float the vessel high above the submerged
world. He had told them the same truth for a hundred and twenty years.
There had been no indefiniteness about his prophecy. As, since then,
men have been warned by the uncertainty of a doom which may come at any
moment; then, they were warned by the certainty of a period definitely
fixed. Every fall of the leaf had brought it precisely a year nearer.
And now the last evening of the last year had come, and once more the
patient preacher of righteousness stood and warned them to forsake the
sin which must bring the doom.
But in vain. There was no persecution; perhaps some mockery, as they
pointed to the cloudless sky, and the fields and forests growing daily
greener in the spring-tide sunshine; but for the most part simply
unbelief and indifference. "They ate, they drank, they married, they
were given in marriage." And so the last warning was finished, and the
last evening closed.
But one little group seemed to me to detach itself from the rest with a
bolder confidence. They pointed to a fortress on the highest summit of
the mountain range above them, and said:—
"If what you say is true, surely we shall be safer there than in a
floating ark like yours. In the rushing of the great water-floods you
speak of, and the beating of the storms, our mountain fortress will
serve us better, at least, than your wooden walls. We shall look down
from our height on your waters, and, perchance, see the wreck of your
vessel drifted to our feet!"
The patriarch and his family were shut in the ark. Before the next
morning, the day of doom had set in. Not a break in the pitiless roof
of clouds. Steadily the torrents poured from the opened flood-gates of
heaven, whilst the waters from beneath broke their barriers, and the
reservoirs under the hills burst forth in sudden rivers.
The flood had begun. The valleys became lakes, the plains seas; but
the builders of the mountain fortress had fled to it, and looked
triumphantly down on the waves.
Higher and higher they rose. The lower hills were covered. The mountain
range was isolated. But the dwellers in the fortress thought, "We are
well provisioned. This cannot last for ever!"
The waters rose. Peak after peak became an island. And at last, the
highest peak, on which the fortress stood, looked out alone upon the
waste of waters, and the floating ark buoyed up securely on them.
They looked still down on the waters, but with trembling hearts. The
wild waves dashed furiously against this one remaining obstacle. The
firmest human masonry cannot stand like the everlasting rocks. The
strong foundations gave way, and with a crash, and a wail of anguish,
the fortress fell, and nothing rose above the waters but the floating
ark. For nothing that is founded on earth can escape the doom of earth.
But—
"Planted Paradise was not so firm
As was, and is, Thy floating ark."
The Three Dreams.
—————