Choosing Blind Guides by A. C. Gilbert

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 4, 1916

Choosing Blind Guides

By A. C. Gilbert

By A. C. GILBERT

WHO, in making a journey through a difficult country, would choose a blind man for a guide? The idea is absurd, and its absurdity would be all the more manifest were the journey known to be attended with much peril.

Explorers usually supply themselves with competent guides. They select those who know the way, both by study and by experience, and can present the proper credentials. Travelers depend almost wholly upon the judgment and knowledge of their guides. Therefore the need of exercising the greatest care in making a choice in so important a matter.

Dishonor, treachery, villainy, murder, would stigmatize the character of the guide who would prove untrue to his trust, and mislead those who were depending upon his guidance.

THOUSANDS ARE FOLLOWING BLIND GUIDES

There are thousands of travelers to-day who are following blind guides. It is a serious matter indeed. They are listening to the counsel of those who are leading them to certain ruin. How strange, how sad, that men and women will permit themselves to be thus led! In the majority of cases, they have not asked nor sought the credentials of the one who professes to be their guide. They have not compared his offers to serve them, with the standard, to see if he be a competent guide. Why so careless?

I refer to spiritual travelers, who want to go through this difficult, sinful world to the heavenly country. To reach that land eternal requires careful direction during the whole journey. The guidebook, which is the standard, the test of efficiency, is the Bible.

All guides who offer to lead men and women through the darksome vale and over the rugged mountains that intervene between the present and yonder home, must allow their credentials, their knowledge and instruction, to be proved by the standard guide,—the Bible. If they do not agree, the assumed guide is not safe. He can never bring us to the home land for which we sigh. Should he vary in only one point, he is not to be trusted. A lack in one essential will mean eternal ruin and loss.

Is your guide a safe one? Is he following the plain word of God, or is he running after the luring will-o’-the-wisp of higher criticism, church creed, or individual opinion? It will pay you to investigate before you go farther in your journey. Be serious, be devotional, in this question of paramount importance. A good rule by which to measure your investigations, is Isa. 8: 20: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”