Vol.I No.VIII Pg.1
August 1964

The Challenge Of Truth

Robert F. Turner

There is challenge in TRUTH. Towering, majestic and awesome, it beckons the climber. Great and wonderful, clothed in mysteries, it threatens and promises. Benevolently reaching to the world, it summons all; yet sternly holds aloft its' crown, to challenge each who comes.

Below, in railed and graded trails move masses. Camera-clicking tourists, worn by travel; scarce grasp their guide's trained words, and far less understand the magic scene. And as the way grows steeper, more and more are faint, and wander aimlessly-- adrift in parks and glades of theory, with their creeds.

Content to pay lip service to the fountainhead above, they sip its waters, grimace, and add sweets or bitters to their taste. "It's wonderful," they say. "We must organize a party and bring others to this way." So they sip, and talk; they praise with shallow phrase, then pause to rest, and resting, sleep.

Still TRUTH-- glorious, wondrous, whole truth, wreathes its head with hoary clouds and calls with voice of thunder: Onward! Upward ! Excelsior! Error shouts derision, and stops the ear. With arrogance he hides his wounds and walks another way. Tradition, richly garbed and stiff with age, dares not attempt the rugged path. And weaklings, fearing to look heavenward, support a course that others plan, and wish themselves in better clime.

But faith responds, and in the earnest seeker whets desire. He dares look up. Toiling, sweating, step by step, he climbs. Struggling across downed timbers on the slope, he pushes upward. Pressing through the brush slipping with the shale, he moves onward. Onward, upward, higher and higher, his lungs afire, .he climbs with foot, and hand; with heart, and soul.

For TRUTH he lives and, if needs be, dies. He asks no quarter, hears no scorn. His hope is fastened on this goal, whose misty drapery sometimes part and to his raptured eyes reveal its sun swept crest.

He needs no other prize than this for here men humbly walk with God.