'
Let us consider the lot of these men. Any who have entered on even a
secular crusade, something that takes them off the beaten, official
paths, that leads them through the thorns and wildernesses of a new,
untravelled country, towards some distant goal seen dimly, or not seen
at all except in dreams, will know what such an undertaking means. It
means snakes in the grass; it means savages, or in other words veiled
and poisonous hatreds and bitter foes, or, still worse, treacherous
friends. The crusader may get through, in which case no one will thank
him except, perhaps, after he is dead. Or he may fail and perish, in
which case every one will mock at him. Or he may retreat discouraged
and return to the official road, in which case his friends will remark
that they are glad to see that his insanity was only of the
intermittent order, and that at length he has learned his place in the
world and to whom he ought to touch his cap.
Well, these are official roads to Heaven as well as to the House of
Lords and other mundane goals, a fact which the Salvation Army Officer
and others of his kind have probably found out.
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