ess, what profession you are to follow. Think more deeply, I
beg you, about how you are to follow it and what you are to follow it
for. Stand in the ways, and see.

II. Second, I earnestly advise you to ask for the old paths, where is
the good way.

I do not regard this as a mere counsel of conservatism, an unqualified
commendation of antiquity. True, it implies that the good way will not
be a new discovery, a track that you and I strike out for ourselves.
Among the paths of conduct, that which is entirely original is likely to
be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on
it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all
by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the
young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, "It is both new
and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is
beautiful is not new."

But this is by no means the same as saying that everything ancient is
therefore beautiful and true, or that all the old ways are good. The
very point of the text is that we must discriminate among
antiquities,--a thing as necessary in old chairs and old books as in old
ways.

Evil is almost, if not quite, as ancient as good. Folly and wisdom,
among men at least, are twins, and we can not distinguish between them
by the grey hairs. Adam's way was old enough; and so was the way of
Cain, and of Noah's vile son, and of Lot's lewd daughters, and of
Balaam, and of Jezebel, and of Manasseh. Judas Iscariot was as old as
St. John. Ananias and Sapphira were of the same age with St. Peter and
St. Paul.

What we are to ask for is not simply the old way, but that one among the
old ways which has been tested and tried and proved to be the good way.
The Spirit of Wisdom tells us that we are not to work this way out by
logarithms, or evolve it from our own inner consciousness, but to learn
what it is by looking at the lives of other men and marking the lessons
which they teach us. Experience has been compared to the stern-light of
a ship which shines only on the road that has been traversed. But the
stern-light of a ship that sails before you is a head-light to you.

You do not need to try everything for yourself in order to understand
what it means. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that he gave his
heart to know madness and folly; and that it was all vanity and vexation
of spirit. It will be a wise economy for us to accept his