THE PILGRIM ON EARTH

HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg D.Div

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Hebrews 11:13

Let me be a pilgrim treading every day the road to the Celestial City — a glorious and heavenly city!

Then the promises of God will be my staff. I shall be persuaded of their truth. I shall embrace them. I shall lean hard upon them. In their strength, I shall walk the narrow way, with a stout and merry heart. I shall know Him whom I have believed — how trustworthy He is, how faithful, how unfailing.

And stranger hood will be written over all my nature. I have another birth, another Lord, another being — than the man of the world does. I speak another tongue. I have other purposes, other energies, other hopes. I would be glad if he linked himself with me — but I dare not identify myself with him.

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And an irrevocable farewell will separate me from my old way of life, and my former thoughts and ways. Truly, I might have had the opportunity to return to the country from which I set out. But I have lost relish for it now. I have ceased to find a supreme attraction in it.

And well I may, for such prospects will lure me on. God has prepared a glorious city for me! The Heaven in front of me is radiant with the lights and glories of the New Jerusalem. I am “stepping westward.” I am climbing Christward. I “can never be at rest, until I regain my ancient nest.”

Surely, surely, the pilgrim’s compensations are immeasurably greater than his losses. There are Interpreters’ Houses, Palaces Beautiful, and Delectable Mountains, and Lands of Beulah, on the way; and, at last, there is the gate of the City, where the bells ring for joy when the traveller arrives!