oyed many a one before you.

_Sixthly_, You are for ever mistaking the top; thinking you are at it,
when, behold! there it is, as if farther off than ever, and you may
have to humble yourself in a hidden valley before reascending; and so
on you go, at times flinging yourself down on the elastic heather,
stretched panting with your face to the sky, or gazing far away
athwart the widening horizon.

_Seventhly_, As you get up, you may see how the world below lessens
and reveals itself, comes up to you as a whole, with its just
proportions and relations; how small the village you live in looks,
and the house in which you were born; how the plan of the place comes
out; there is the quiet churchyard, and a lamb is nibbling at that
infant's grave; there, close to the little church, your mother rests
till the great day; and there far off you may trace the river winding
through the plain, coming like human life, from darkness to
darkness,--from its source in some wild, upland solitude to its
eternity, the sea. But you have rested long enough, so, up and away!
take the hill once again! Every effort is a victory and joy--new skill
and power and relish--takes you farther from the world below, nearer
the clouds and heavens; and you may note that the more you move up
towards the pure blue depths of the sky--the more lucid and the more
unsearchable--the farther off, the more withdrawn into their own clear
infinity do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper story, and you
find it less difficult, less steep than lower down; often so plain and
level that you can run off in an ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the
sacred mist--within whose cloudy shrine rests the unknown secret; some
great truth of God and of your own soul; something that is not to be
gotten for gold down on the plain, but may be taken here; something
that no man can give or take away; something that you must work for
and learn yourself, and which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances
of time.

_Eighthly_, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping and as a little
child--as, indeed, all the best kingdoms are entered--and pressing on,
you come in the shadowy light to the long-dreamt-of ark,--the chest.
It is shut, it is locked; but if you are the man I take you to be, you
have the key, put it gently in, steadily, and home. But what is the
key? It is the love of truth; neither more nor less; no other key
opens it; no false one, however cunning, can pick that lock; no