It is written, "When He appears we shall be like Him."
VI
THE PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM
I
Once, possibly, upon the world, man did not know of God; he had not
looked to the blank horizon and spoken to the Someone beyond. He had
all the need to speak, all the oppression in his soul, all the sorrow
and longing pent up in him and the tears unshed, but knew no means of
relief, did not even conceive of any one beyond himself. He had no
great Father, as we have. A strange, unhappy life he lived upon
the world, uncomforted, unfriended. He looked at the stars and
comprehended them not; and at the graves, and they said nought. He
walked alone under heaven's wide hollowness.
We of later days have God as a heritage, or if we did find Him of
ourselves, the road was made easy for us. But some one far away back
in human life found God first, and said to Him the first prayer; some
hard, untutored savage found out the gentlest and loveliest fact in
our religion. A savage came upon the pearl and understood it and fell
down in joy. A man one day named God and emptied his heart to Him in
prayer. And he told the discovery to his brothers, and men all began
to pray. The world lost half its heaviness at once. Men learned that
their prayers were nearly all the same, that God heard the same story
from thousands and hundreds of thousands of hearts.
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