The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING “T am not strong enough,” says a fourth. “I have no chart.” . . . ‘My business won't let me.” . . . “ My wife is against it.” Thus God enters the heart of man in a thousand forms and tempts man as he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, and Abraham in the land of Moriah. But the strong man replenishing his wallet, and filling his flask, girds a goat-skin about him, and taking his staff sets forth on his Great travel to the Summit of the Mountain of God; and curious to relate, and terrible to tell, the whole length of that wizard way Satan follows behind him in the form of a sleuth-hound ever tempting him from the right path. Now he is overcome by a great loneliness, he is cold, he is hungry, he thirsts; the skyline he had thought the summit is but a ridge, and from it he sees ridge upon ridge in endless succession above him. On he toils, at length it is the summit —no! but another ridge and a myriad more. A thousand fiends enter him, a thousand little sleuth-hounds that would tear him back—comfort, home, children, wife; then he says to himself: What a fool am I! At this stage many turn back and crawling into the valley of illusions reason how much more comfortable and interest- ing it is to read of mountain ascents than to accomplish them. These ones talk loudly and beat the drums of their valour in the ears of all men. At the next stage few return, most perish on the way back; for the higher you climb that great mountain the more difficult it becomes to return. Plod on, and when your legs tremble and give way under you, crawl on, crawl on if on all fours, and clench your teeth 229