Knowledge—The Best – Charles Spurgeon

IT is coming on dark, and we are lost among the mountains. There is an awful precipice there, a quarter of a mile sharp down. There is a bog over yonder, and if a man once gets into it he will never get out again. There is a wood yonder, and if one should be lost in its tangled paths he will certainly not find his way out until the rising of the sun. What do we want just now? Why, we want someone who will tell us the way. Our friend the philosopher, with whom we talked half-an-hour ago, was very valuable to us then, and gave us a deal of information; but, as he does not happen to know the way, we would sooner have the poorest peasant-lad that feeds the sheep upon the hills for a companion than we would that man. The classic scholar who has been repeating to us some admirable lines from Horace, and delighting us with an admirable quotation from some Greek epic, did very well indeed for us while we could see our path and had hope of reaching our home by nightfall; but now the poorest lass with uncombed hair, who can just point the way to the cottage where we may rest tonight will be of more value to us than he. What we want is to know the way. This is just the case, dear friends, of poor fallen humanity. The want of mankind is not the refined prelection of the learned, nor the acute discussion of the polemic; we simply want someone, be it a lad or be it a lass, to show us the way, and the most precious person you and I have seen, or ever shall see, will be the person who shall be blessed and honored of God to say to us, “Behold the way to God, to life, to salvation, and to Heaven.”