A FAMOUS Alpine climber, Mr. Harold Spender, tells of an unexpected climax to one of his feats.
With two companions he had scaled one of the most difficult peaks, and descending found refuge from the storm and night, in the cottage of a goats-herd. The three men, half-frozen, and exhausted with the long and terrible strain, but glowing with triumph, crouched before the fire.
The goats herd’s wife, a dull, old woman, stood looking at them silently for a while, and then pronounced a single word:
“Pourpuoi?” (“Why?”)
Spender declares that he and his companions looked at each other with an expression of surprise on each face. They had risked health and strength, and life itself. “Why?” What had they gained?
There was no answer. The one word struck, as if upon a blank wall, awakening their consciousness of useless struggle and suffering and danger.
The snow fell outside, and the mist shut out the hills. They did not talk to each other. Each was asking himself the question, “Why?”
There are other heights in the world, besides those in the Alps, which men try to scale to as little purpose.
The man who gives his life to the gathering of millions; the young wife who spends her husband’s hard-earned wages in aping women of fashion; the college boy who is struggling to show his manliness by leading the fast men of his class; the religious hypocrite who desires to be thought pious by his fellows—all are climbing barren heights, at the top of which is neither profit nor honor.
Most of us have tried some of this Alpine-climbing in our day, till some honest, discerning soul, like the goats-herd’s wife, stood in our path with the searching and solemn query— “Why?”
“Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight, itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live.” Isa. 55:2, 32Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. 3Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. (Isaiah 55:2‑3).
ML 04/16/1922