The Cow Path
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home, as good calves should,
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer, the calf is dead;
But still behind he left this trail,
And thereon hangs my moral tale.The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way,
And then a wise bell-weather sheep
Pursued that trail oer dale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-weathers always do,
And from that day oer hill and glade
Through those old woods a path was made.And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because twas such a crooked path;
But still they followdo not laugh
The first migrations of that calf.The forest became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath that burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The village road became a street,
And this, before men were aware,
A citys crowded thoroughfare.
And soon a central street was this
In a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Followed the wanderings of this calf.Each day a hundred thousand strong
Followed this zigzag calf along;
And oer his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one poor calf, three centuries dead.
For just such reverence is lent
To well established precedent.A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach.
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.They follow in the beaten track,
And in and out, and forth and back,
And still their devious paths pursue,
To keep the paths that others do,
They keep the path a sacred grove
Along which all their lives they move
And how the wise old wood-gods laugh, [sic]
Who saw the first primeval calf.(Author unknown)
Comment
We are sorry for the next to the last line but it is found in the original. The poem does have an amusing but important lesson: Do we following what has always been done without questioning whether it is Gods will or not? Do we search to discover whether a given teaching or practice is Scripturalor whether it may be the carry-over of past unscriptural ways? Let us learn a lesson from the calf and examine what we say and do in light of God’s own Word! (Isaiah 8:20; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 15:12-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:15).