Again and again will you be obliged to retrace your wayward steps, and water your path with the tears of bitter repentance and regrets. Again and again will the world so bedim your eyesight and bewilder your thoughts that you shall have lost sight of heaven and plunged in its vanities. And the heart-work too is not yet all done. You must yet keep up the warfare with corruption. You must yet keep up the struggle of grace and fight the fight of faith. "The journey is too great for you." There may be years of conflict yet before you. There may be fiery trials in reserve. Light as may seem the enterprise now, you will find it great enough before you get to heaven. 'Twill seem great when sorrow and disappointment shall gather round us, and when the hours of fierce temptation give way only to the hours of deepest darkness; 'twill seem long when the cross seems ever to stand by the roadside, and when year after year we get no clearer views of heaven, our home. Great is the journey; and we shall feel it so when onward and onward we travel, and our companions one by one drop at our side, till we are left to tread our way alone. 'Twill be great when the dependencies of life fail, and the calamities of life shall thicken around us. When the hopes of earth shall wither, and the friendships of earth shall vanish; when the past shall appear as vanity, and the heart shall recoil from the future; when fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and all the loved ones of our early days, shall have vanished from our sight, and no long familiar voice shall speak to us in the solitudes of earth's wilderness; then, as we stagger on, with our staff trembling in our hand, shall we feel that the journey is too great for us. You may say that it will be short to some of us; that even now the sandals are loosening and the city is coming nearer. Yes, some of us will not journey long. But short as may be that journey, it is too great for you. For remember how it winds up with the death-groan, the faintness, the weakness, the sinking, the dimness, the muffled farewell. Great journey this through the dark valley and through the wild surges--_too great_ for us. We cannot explore the pathway; 'tis dark and dubious. We have seen multitudes set foot upon it, and they all turned pale. The pilgrims have not come back to us to tell us of it, but we know enough about it to know that the journey is "too great for us." Yet, brethren, we are all hurrying thitherward. Are we strong enough? What shall sustain us in the desert? Behold, God has supplied us with his gifts. Behold, ye who are desponding, ye who are wayworn, ye who are despairing beneath the juniper-tree, the cruse of water is beside you. Rise and eat, for the journey is too great for you. Oh, who of us will not gladly come?