Aimlessness

       "And he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." What a picture comes into the mind as by the aid of the imagination we read these words. I think of a vast forest, with its winding trail, its deep shadows, its tangled underbrush, its decayed trunks here and there. I think of myself at the end of a long day's tramp. No opening in sight. The sun has gone down. The light coming through the openings above growing less and less. The sky overcast. Soon it is dark. I miss the trail. I get down on my hands and knees to feel for it. Presently no sound but the cracking of the underbrush. Suddenly it dawns upon me that I am lost in the woods. All sense of direction is gone. Any way I turn may be the wrong way. I am utterly aimless. Jesus says the end of the selfish man is utter aimlessness. That as a man in the woods wanders without aim so the selfish man wanders in the moral universe without aim, not knowing whither he goeth.''  Robert McLaughlin