Adventure—a word of many colors! To one it may bring memories of a mellow moon rising from a southern sea; while within another's thought flares up a splendid vision of northern lights glorifying northern skies,—for almost ever do we seek adventure down the distances.
Yet, oddly enough, the Latin from which the word is derived means "to come to." And truly the great adventure of the prodigal son, in the story related by our Master, was not the selling of his goods and the careless, wanton departure to a distant land; not the riotous living, nor yet dull despair amid the feeding swine, though there have been many who have called similar experiences by the name of romantic adventure,—the feverish dishonesty of gambling, perhaps, or companionships where laughter was as the crackling of thorns in the fire. Before his healing came, the writer had, when in the depths, attempted some such pitiful word jugglery. But after the lights seen in a dripping dusk at the end of alleys, should it not make the heart of a man leap to come out into the world dawn on the white highway of Christian Science, with one clear star to follow? When the prodigal left the human hates and lusts and fears behind him and, beyond the depths of humiliation, glimpsed the blue haze of the homeward hills—that was his great adventure.
There was another of olden days, Jacob,—renamed Israel,—who went afar at the urge of a human impulse, seeking what he might find of good. As he lay in the wilderness, stars for a canopy, stones for a pillow, it came to him that heaven and earth were indeed at one; that radiant right ideas were always at hand to help a man wherever he might be wandering. And with the voice of strong assurance echoing in his ears he arose as from sleep to call the place Bethel, realizing that even "the wings of the morning" could never bear him outside the portals of the house of God. Then and there he uttered a prayer that was a promise,—a promise that was a prayer,—asking that he might come again to his father's house in peace. Keen of vision was he who was afterwards called a prince of God, and he knew full well the rightful end of all pure, brave adventuring.
