Mirage—that illusion of lake or land or cliff, or other desired thing, which lures men on and on—sometimes to their death. It has been seen in the North. Stefanson, in one of his books on Arctic expedition, says that “at most seasons of the year one is considerably troubled by mirages, perhaps more in summer than in winter, but in winter also. . . . On my hunts . . . I was deceived not so much by the mere appearance of objects out of all natural proportion as by their apparent motion and their disappearances and reappearances on the level snow surface.”
Once, when he wanted a grizzly in October (when bears would normally be in their holes), he thought he saw one, but after an hour’s search found only a marmot’s tracks.
“In things of this sort,” comments Stefanson, “there is always a certain amount of suggestion. The main reason for such self-deception is that one sees things under circumstances that give no idea of the distance, and consequently one has no scale for comparison. The marmot at 20 yards occupies as large a visual angle as a grizzly bear at several hundred, and if you suppose the marmot to be several hundred yards away you naturally take him for a bear.”
He describes also one of those remarkable mirages or appearances of land that have deceived many Arctic explorers. The fog, lifting suddenly, showed land with cliffs which dropped below the horizon when they tried to approach them.
Byrd, too, in “Discovery,” pictures his first mirages: “A huge berg loomed astern, where we knew none existed. For fully 20 minutes it stood on the horizon with the sun shining on its cliffs. Then the sea seemed to swallow it. When we looked again it was gone. An hour later a mirage lifted a pinnacled berg on our quarter, and the same mysterious lie was solemnly repeated.”
A mirage is an illusion—a delusion—a false impression—a fixed misconception. Many in desperate spiritual need have sought the water of life where there was none. In untold anguish men have struggled for the life that is sustained by draughts of deep, sweet water. They have found no water in human deserts, but when they have given up all hope, they have seen the One who came to this world in search of those who will receive Him. To all such He gladly gives the water of life, of which they may drink and never thirst.
Whosoever drinks of the water of this life shall thirst again, but as the Lord Jesus said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:1414But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)).