Poems of Experience/The Goal
All roads that lead to God are good;
What matters it, your faith, or mine;
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.
The kindly life in house or street;
The life of prayer, and mystic rite;
The student’s search for truth and light;
These paths at one great junction meet.
Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless love, that led to it.
What matters that one found his Christ
In rising sun, or burning fire;
If faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the truth sufficed.
Before our ‘Christian’ hell was brought
To edify a modern world,
Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire by its own thought.
A thousand creeds have come and gone;
But what is that to you or me?
Creeds are but branches of a tree,
The root of love lives on and on.
Though branch by branch proves withered wood,
The root is warm with precious wine;
Then keep your faith, and leave me mine;
All roads that lead to God are good.