s drawing him with powerful
magnetic attraction quite contrary to the course or path of men at
large. He presses against the stream: the multitude are floating in
the other direction. As with the kine of Bethshemesh, some hidden
power takes him in a course quite contrary to all the ties or calls of
mere nature. Look at him,--irrespective of anything else, the figure
itself is a grand sight. The path he has chosen lies through the
thorny shrubs of endurance, afflictions, necessities, distresses,
stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, and fastings. No
soft or winsome meadow-way this, nor one that any would choose, except
he were under some strong conviction,--whether true or false,--that
will surely be admitted. For men have at rare times suffered much even
in the cause of error; but never for that which they themselves _knew_
to be false, and which at the same time brought them no glory,--nothing
to feed their vanity, or pride, or exalt them in any way. Admit, then,
for a moment, that he is self-deceived, under some strong delusion, and
that the object of which he is in pursuit is but a phantom. Then mark
the path in which that phantom leads: it has turned him from being a
blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent, overbearing man (1 Tim. 1),
into one of liveliest affections, most tender sympathies, a lowly
servant of all; it has given him a joy that no wave of trouble can
quench, a song that dungeons cannot silence, a transparent truthfulness
which permits a lie nowhere; and all this results from that which is in
itself a delusion,--a lie! Oh, holy "delusion"! Oh, wondrous,
truth-loving, wonder-working "lie"! Was ever such a miracle, that a
falsehood works truth?--that a delusion, instead of leading into marsh,
or bog, or quicksand, as other will-o'-the-wisps ever and always have,
leads along a morally elevated path where every footstep rings with the
music of divine certainty, as though it trod upon a rock! Such a
miracle, contrary to all reason, is worthy of acceptance only by the
blind, childish, credulity of infidelity. Whatever the object before
him, then, it is _real_; his convictions are soberly and well founded;
he runs his race to no visionary, misty goal; but some actual reality
is the lode-star of his life. Let us listen to his own explanation:
"forgetting those things that are being, reaching forth unto those that
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling
o