The Singing Pilgrim

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." Psalm
119:54.

THE 119th Psalm is said, by many, to consist of detached sentences and
to be rather a casket of gold rings than a chain of united golden
links, yet the position of this verse is somewhat remarkable, for the
verse before it runs thus– "Horror has taken hold upon me because of
the wicked that forsake Your Law." Most of you know for yourselves what
that sentence means, for if you hear a man swear in the streets, your
blood runs chill with horror. And when you think of what has been said
by blasphemers against the Person of our Divine Lord and against the
Divine Truths of Revelation, you are horrified that men should have had
the audacity to think–much less to say–such wicked things against the
Most High God.

David rightly said, "Horror has taken hold upon me," and then he added
our text, as if he would say, "I am horrified that they should break
the Law of God and tread it under foot, for to me it is an intense
delight–'Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my
pilgrimage.' That which is their scorn is my song. What they count
dross is gold to me. How can they treat such precious Truths of God
contemptuously?" He is horrified at the thought that what is, to him,
the very soul of his life, and the life of his soul, should be to them
a castoff and a hate. Surely some connection is visible here–these
rings are evidently linked to each other.

It is well to notice the following verse. David writes, "I have
remembered Your name, O Lord, in the night, and have kept Your Law"–as
much as if he had said–"It is not always daylight with me; but when it
is, Your statutes are my song. My sun is not always above the horizon;
but when it is dark with me and I am in trouble, I do not forget You.
You are still my solace. I remember Your name and I am comforted. If I
may not see Your face, it is a joy to remember Your name, for they that
know Your name will put their trust in You. If I can but remember Your
name when my spirits sink, I shall have my soul stayed and upheld until
the daylight shall again break in upon my spirit." Is there not much
sweetness in this hopeful assurance, much to make our text overflow
with meaning?

And now I invite you to consider the text itself. It seems to me to
talk about three things, three things which concern us. The first is a
pilgrim, who is, secondly, a singing pilgrim. And this brings before
us, thirdly, his songbook–"Your statutes have been my songs in the
house of my pilgrimage."–

"Sweet strains to me Your Laws have been, Sweet music in my heart,
Where on my lonely pilgrimage I sojourn all–apart."

I. First, here is A PILGRIM. David was a type of all who are true
disciples of Jesus. They are all pilgrims. A pilgrim is a person who is
traveling through one country to another. If we are true to our
profession, we are pilgrims with an emphasis, for, first, we belong to
another country. We were not born here as to our highest nature. When
we were born in the most emphatic sense, we were born of another
country altogether–"not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of
God." "Except a man is born again"–"from above," says the margin–"he
cannot see the kingdom of God." We have been born from above. Our birth
makes us citizens of the City which has foundations, whose Builder and
Maker is

God.

We are aliens, foreigners, strangers in this world. One said of old, "I
am a stranger with you, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." And
another said, "I am a stranger in the earth." Indeed, all the faithful
confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Jesus,
our Leader, said, "You are not of the world, even as I am not of the
world." And the beloved Apostle said, "You are of God, little children,
and the whole world lies in the Evil One." We are hurry-

ing through this world as through a foreign land. We are in this
country, not as residents, but only as visitors who take this country
en route to Glory!

Ungodly men live as if they never meant to die. All their plans and
preparations are evidently arranged for tarrying in this country. But
if God has instructed you aright, you know assuredly that you shall die
and you have become familiar with the thought of departing from these
shores. Here you have no continuing city, but are like the
tent-dwelling Patriarchs, who, by their very abodes, confessed that
they looked for a possession yet to be given them. You look not only
upon all other men as mortal, but upon yourselves as such–nor do you
at all regret it–you would not stay here forever if you could! You
know that you are emigrants to the laud of the unsetting sun and these
lands are but traversed on the road to your eternal heritage.

This is a rare knowledge, peculiar to the godly. You may bring an
unconverted man to be conscious of his mortality, but you cannot get
him to realize that he is going to another land. No, he is going, he is
going, he is going where he would not. He is hurried to the land of
confusion and dismay where the shadow of death forever rests on
hopeless spirits. You do not wonder, therefore, that he tries to avoid
the remembrance of this troublesome fact, and that he journeys on with
his eyes shut, trying to forget that his life's voyage will ever end.
To you, dear Friends, your passage through this world is not a transit
to somewhere or to anywhere, for you know where you are going! As Jesus
said to the disciples, "Where I go you know, and the way you know"–you
know which way Jesus went and you know that you will go the same
way–for He has promised that where He, is there you shall be, also.

One of His solemn declarations was, "Because I live, you shall live,
also," and one of His last prayers put this promise into the form of
authority and claim–"Father, I will that they, also, whom You have
given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My Glory." If an
Italian now in England passes through France on his way to Rome, he
stays at Paris, or Lyons, or Marseilles on his journey. But all the
while he is not a Frenchman, he is an Italian. Wherever he stays upon
the road, he says to himself, "This is not Rome. This is not the place
of my nativity. I have no citizen rights here. I am going onward to my
own dear city and I must hasten as best I may until I reach it." That
is the condition of the Chris-tian–his face is steadfastly set to go
to the New Jerusalem–and nothing must detain him.

A pilgrim in the old crusading times started out to reach Jerusalem.
You know how many were stricken with that insanity in those times–I
commend them not, but I use the illustration in all soberness. The
Crusader journeyed on foot across Europe. Whenever he came in sight of
a goodly city, whether it was Vienna, or Constantinople, he stood and
gazed upon the towers, the spires, the balconies. And when he had done
so, he turned to his companion and said, "A fair sight, my Friend, but
it is not the Holy City to which you and I are journeying." So,
whenever God brings us to any place, however pleasant or delightful it
may be, it is for us to say, "A fair sight and God be thanked for it,
but it is not the Golden City."

Our gardens are not Paradise; our homes are not the Father's house on
high; our comforts are not our Heaven; our resting places are not the
everlasting rest! We must not rest contented here below. We have not
come to that promised land of which God has spoken to us in His
Covenant. If we were mindful of the place from which we came out, truly
we have had many opportunities to return–but we are not mindful of
it–our whole desire lies in the opposite direction! Our citizenship
rights and civic privileges connect us with a city whose jeweled walls
and shining streets are waiting for our coming! Our Captain cries to
us, "Forward." Beyond the river our possessions lie. In another land is
our everlasting abode. We are, then, pilgrims born in another country,
passing through this world to an inheritance beyond.

A pilgrim's main business is to get on and pass through the land as
quickly as he can. You will remember how Israel desired to pass through
the land of Sihon, King of Heshbon, and Moses offered these terms–"Let
me pass through your land. I will go along by the highway. I will
neither turn unto the right hand nor to the left: only I will pass
through on my feet." Sihon would not allow them to pass on these
conditions–neither will the world grant us a similar privilege. The
tribes had to fight their way and so must we. All we ask is a road. We
may also beg the loan of six feet of earth for a sepulcher, but all
else we will forego if we may the better proceed towards our
inheritance! Not how to stay here in comfort, but how to pass through
the land in holiness is our great question.

Sometimes a home sickness is upon us and then we are weary of this
wilderness and pine for the land which flows with milk and honey. We
hear the inviting heralds and the songs of those who hold high festival
in the palaces above and we groan, being burdened, and long to end the
days of this, our banishment–

"Let me go, oh speed my journey, Saints and seraphs lure away. Oh, I
almost feel the raptures That belong to endless day. Often I think I
hear the singing That is only heard above. Let me go, oh speed my
going, Let me go where all is love!"

As pilgrims, it is true in our case that our relatives are not, the
most of them, in this country. We have a few Brothers and Sisters with
us who are going on pilgrimage and we are very thankful for them, for
good company cheers the way. It is pleasant when Christiana can take
her dear friend, Mercy, with her, and when her boys, Matthew and James,
can go and Mr. Greatheart with them. Though, if necessary, Christian
must leave Christiana and all the rest behind if they will not go with
him–still it is much more pleasant to see them going on pilgrimage
with us. Yet the majority of those dear to us are already over yonder.
If I may not say the majority by counting heads, yet certainly in
weight the great majority will be found to be in the far country.

Where is our Father? Where but in Heaven? And where is our Elder
Brother? Is He not there, too, at the right hand of God? And where is
the Bridegroom of our soul? The truest and best Bridegroom with whom we
are joined in a marriage union which death cannot sever? Where, I say,
is the Bridegroom of our souls? We know right well! And may not the
bride desire the happy period of the home-bringing–the joyous marriage
feast, the supper of the Lamb? Where our Father is and where Jesus is,
must necessarily be our own country–and we are exiles till we reach
it! If we have a clear eye for spiritual relationships, see what a host
of our nearest and dearest ones have gone across the river, already,
and are in Glory! Multitudes, multitudes are there! We are come unto
"the general assembly and Church of the First-Born, whose names are
written in Heaven."

Let us, therefore, go on with great speed! Let us not think to tarry
here, for our best friends and kindred have entered into their rest,
and it becomes us to follow after them. And, you know, a man who is a
pilgrim reckons that land to be his country in which he expects to
remain the longest. Through the country which he traverses he makes his
way with all speed. But when he gets home he abides at his leisure, for
it is the end of his toil and travail. What a little part of life shall
we spend on earth! When you and I have been in Heaven 10,000 years, we
shall look back upon those 60 years we spent here as nothing at all! We
will think of their pain as a pin's prick, their gain a speck, their
duration the twinkling of an eye!

Even if you have to tarry 80 or 90 years in this exile, when you have
been in Heaven a million years, the longest life will seem no greater
than a thought and you will wonder that you said the days were so weary
and the nights so dreary, and that the years of sickness drug such a
weary length along! Ah me, eternal bliss, what a drop you make of our
sea of sorrow! Heaven covers up this present grief and so much overlaps
it that we could fold up myriads of such mourning and still have
garments ofjoy enough to clothe an army of the afflicted! We make too
much of this poor life–and this fondness costs us dearly. Oh for a
higher estimate of the Home country, with its delights forevermore!
Then would the trials of a day exhale like the dew of the morning and
scarcely secure an hour of sorrow.

We are only here for enough time to feel an April shower of pain–and
then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May!
Therefore let us not make the most of the least, and the least of the
most! But let us put things in their order and allot to this brief life
its brief consideration–and to everlasting Glory its weight of happy
meditation! We are to dwell throughout eternity with God! Is not that
our Home? That is not a man's residence into which he enters at the
front door and in a moment passes out at the back and is gone, never to
return, as though it were a mere passage from one street to another!
And yet this is about all that Believers do as to this poor world. That
is a man's home where he can sit down at his ease and look on all
around him as his own and say–

"Here will I make a settled rest, While others go and come, No more a
stranger or a guest, But like a child at home."

Yes, this shows that we are pilgrims, because we are here for so short
a space compared with the length of time we shall spend in the dear
country beyond!

One thing that always marks us as pilgrims is this–that we are treated
by the people of this land as strangers. Different races of men reveal
their nationality by their speech, their dress, their manners and their
habits. That which is perfectly natural in a Dutchman seems ridiculous
to a Frenchman; while the customs of a Chinaman horrify a Briton! As we
who are of the hill country pass through these lowlands, the people
discover our foreign character and take a wondering interest in us,
sometimes of a friendly sort, but more often of a hostile kind. They
marvel from where we are and, as they cannot make us out, they often
come to the conclusion that we are acting a part and are nothing better
than hypocrites and pretenders. They, of course, are honest, and all
who are not like they must be false and contemptible! This suspicion
and ill will does not happen to all professors, but more or less it
falls to the lot of all genuine Christians.

They cannot be hid and yet they cannot be understood, for their life is
hid. Gladly would they pass incognito through the land, but the men of
the world will not have it so. They soon discover the pilgrim strangers
and they think them very odd. I suppose they are so, ifjudged by the
customs of the world. We do not drop into the ways and customs of the
ungodly, for our Master said to us, "Have no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." Therefore, in
this world, the true Christian is as strange as a Red Indian in
Cheapside. People do not understand the saints–they cannot make them
out–for they are constructed upon different principles from other men
and often do things which men count foolish, unmanly and absurd.

The laws which govern them are not such as the world esteems. Hence it
happens that the ungodly forge a strange name for a Christian–they
cannot make heads or tails of him and so they set him up in their
chamber of horrors, and fix a nickname upon him. They declare right
positively, "He is mad." Blessed madness! Another time they say, "He is
a hypocrite." One cries, "It is cant!" Another, "It is fanaticism!"
Those are all expressions by which the world shows that it cannot make
us out. Are you surprised when they use such titles? You ought to be
very much surprised if they do not use them! If the utterly worldly man
says, "I perfectly understand you," then say to yourself, "Then I am
like you, for if I had been different from you–if God's Grace had
given me a different way of thinking–you would have been sure to find
fault with me."

Oh, never be afraid of the world's censure, Brothers and Sisters! Its
praise is much more to be dreaded! When Socrates was told, "Such a man
speaks well of you today," the philosopher was by no means gratified,
but concluded that he must have done something amiss that such a fellow
should speak well of him. Take censures out of a foul month to be your
highest praise, but praises out of such mouths are worse than abuse. We
are strangers, speckled birds, curious creatures–beings that are twice
born–who have a new life which is an enigma to ungodly men. "The wind
blows where it wills, and you hear the sound thereof, but can not tell
from where it comes, or where it goes. So is everyone that is born of
the Spirit." He is an unaccountable person. "You cannot tell from where
he comes or where he goes."

He who finds redemption and eternal life in Jesus is judged to be a
strange, out-of-the-way being! He who looks for his happiness in the
world to come is made, thereby, a pilgrim, and that is to men of this
world a sort of gypsy life– fictitious, romantic, absurd and
unpractical! We who are, indeed, such, accept our appointed condition
and the scorn which often comes with it! And from now on we break loose
from bonds of time and sense to seek another country–that is, a
heavenly–

"Cheerful, O Lord, at Your command

I bind my sandals on.

I take my pilgrim's staff in hand,

And go to seek the better land,

The way Your feet have gone." II. But now, secondly, according to our
text, the Believer is A SINGING PILGRIM–"Your statutes have been my
songs in the house of my pilgrimage." He does not say "my song," only,
but "my songs," in the plural, as if he had been a great singer, given
to singing, which proves that pilgrims to Heaven are a merry sort of
people, after all! They have their trials–some trials more than those
which other men know–but then they have their joys and among these
joys are sweet delights such as worldlings can never taste! On the
whole, Moses is right in his judgment of the Lord's people: "Happy are
you, O Israel." "Blessed are the people," says the Psalmist, "that know
the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Your
Countenance."

Holy pilgrims are happy! Theirs is not the caravan of despair, but the
march of those who go from strength to strength. I hear a voice
objecting, "You give a rose color to facts, for some religious people
are very gloomy." I dispute not the fact. For sure, some days are dark,
and yet day is not the time of darkness–even at noontide he may
dim–and yet noon is not the hour of gloom. On earth all men must eat
some bitter herbs, whether they eat the paschal lamb or not. Moreover,
all are not truly godly who profess to be so. They fancied they were
religious and, therefore, felt themselves bound to keep up the
profession–surliness and gloom are part of the buttressing by which
they keep up the flimsy structure of their piety. Their religion is not
real and so they make it terrible.

If your cheek is painted, you know that its ruddy line may yield to a
handkerchief or to a drop of perfume and, therefore, you keep your
distance and appear reserved. The countryman's rubies are not so soon
dissolved. The roses of good health are not so speedily uprooted. I
have known people who painted themselves up as Christians and they felt
it incumbent upon them to look very demure, or else their paint would
have come off. They thought that they must add melancholy to their
profession to imitate holiness. False notion! The gloom betrays the
child of darkness. "But we measure people's piety by the length of
their faces," says one. Do you? So do I and I like them short–the
shorter the better! Those who draw very long faces do it as a matter of
pretense and this is to be utterly condemned, for Jesus says that the
Pharisees had such countenances that they might appear unto men to
fast, but they were hypocrites to the core!

Let me tell you for a certainty–for I have the experience of many to
back me up in it–that there is a quiet, rippling rill of intense
comfort in a Christian's heart, even when he is cast down and tried.
And, at other times, when trials are lightened, there are cascades of
delight, leaping cataracts of joy whose silver spray is as pure as the
flash of the fountains of Paradise! I know that there are many here
who, like myself, understand what deep depression of spirit means, but
yet we would not change our lot for all the mirth of fools or pomp of
kings! Our joy no man takes from us–we are singing pilgrims–though
the way is rough. Amid the ashes of our pains live the sparks of our
joys, ready to flame up when the breath of the Spirit sweetly blows on
them.

Our latent happiness is a choicer heritage than the sinner's riotous
glee. When suffering greatly and scarcely able to stand, I was met by
one who has long enjoyed good health and unbroken prosperity. His mind
is coarse and his tongue rasps like a file. He is always fond of
expressing his rational ideas as proof that he is a superior person.
With sarcastic politeness he stood before me and said, "Dear, dear,
what a sufferer you are! But it is what may be expected, for whom the
Lord loves, He chastens." I had barely time to admit that the
chastening had been severe before he added, "You are very welcome to
love which shows itself in that fashion. For my part, I had rather be
without it and enjoy the use of my limbs. I can do better without your
God than with Him."

Then the hot tears scalded my eyelids and forced themselves a passage.
I could bear the pain, but I could not endure to hear my God spoken
evil of. I flamed up in indignation and I cried, "If instead of having
pain in my legs I had a thousand agonies in every limb of my body I
would not change places with you! I am content to take all that comes
of God's love. God and His chastening are better than the world and its
delights." Truly I know it to be so! My soul has a greater inner
gladness in her deep despondency than the godless have in their high
foaming merriments. Yes, and even pain is tutor to praise and teaches
how to play upon all the keys of our humanity till a more complete
harmony comes from us than perpetual health could have produced!

Was not Herbert right when he wrote of man's double powers of grief and
then found in them double fountains of praise?–

"But as his joys are double, So is his trouble.

He has two winters, other things but one: Both frosts and thought do
nip And bite his lips

And he of all things fears two deaths alone. Yet even the greatest
griefs May be reliefs,

Could he but take them right and in their ways. Happy is he whose heart
Has found the art

To turn his double pains to double praise." You that are lowest down in
the scale of visible joy. You that are broken in pieces like wrecks
grinding upon rocks. You that are a mass of pain and poverty–you will
give your Lord a good word, will you not? You will say, "Though He slay
me, yet will I trust Him." At our worst, we are better off than the
world at its best! Godly poverty is better than unhallowed riches! Our
sickness is better than the worldling's health. Our abasement is better
than the sinner's honors. We count it better that we suffer pain like
to the torture of death than that we bathe in pleasure–when that
pleasure is the effect of sin. We will take God at all the discount you
can put upon Him! And you shall have the world and all the compound
interest which you are able to get out of such a sham. God's people
sing! They are the children of the sun, birds of the morning, flowers
of the day!

Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. We
hear a music which never ceases, full-toned and ascending high–and its
soft cadences are with us in the night when darkness thickens upon
darkness–and the heart is heavily oppressed. "Sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing." Know you that paradox? Some of us have learned it, now,
these many years. It seems that the Psalmist had times of very special
delight–high days and holidays, or, as the old records write–"gaudy
days," days of overflowing joys. "Your statutes have been my songs." He
was not always singing–at least not at his highest pitch. But there
were many brave times when he poured forth a song! If you and I cannot
always sing, we do, sometimes, turn to that sweet amusement and while
away the time.

Remember how John Bunyan represents Mr. Ready-to-Halt, Mr. Feeble-Mind
and all the rest of them? When they had cut off Giant Despair's head,
they danced, and Ready-to-Halt played his part upon his crutches! Yes,
we have our merrymaking, Brothers and Sisters, at which angels find
themselves at home! Pilgrims can sing and touch the lively string. When
the Lord kills Giant Despair for us, we have our Psalms and Te Deums,
and we praise the Lord upon the high-sounding cymbals! When we are
brought from deep distress, our God deserves a song, and He shall have
it, too. The heathens tune their hymns to great Diana or to Jove, and
surely the living God shall not lack for praise!

Our hearts are poured out with as great delight and merriment as when
the wine vats overflow. We know nothing, now, of the spirit of wine,
for it is evil–but the wine of the Spirit–ah, that is another thing!
It fills the heart with a Divine exhilaration which all the dainties of
the world can never bestow! The singing pilgrim is a man who has a
world of joy within Him and is journeying to another world, where, for
Him, all will be joy to a still higher degree. He sings high praises
unto God and blesses His name beyond measure, for He has reason to do
so, reason which never slackens or lessens! Oh that we were always as
we are, sometimes, then would our breath be praise! David remembered
his best times. He says, "Your statutes have been my songs." He
remembered that he sang and sang often.

I want some of you who are troubled, tonight, to rest with us awhile
and remember when you were the Lord's choristers and sang as heartily
as any of the company. You have hung your harps on the willows. That is
a bad thing to do, but it is better to hang your harp on the willows
than to break it, for it may be taken down and used again for the
Lord's Glory. Jesus, who has a tender heart for mourners, will see you,
again, and your heart shall rejoice! Think not that the past has
devoured all your happiness–hope lives, peace abides and joy is on the
wing! Recall those sweet songs you loved to sing. Recall them, I say,
and find in them arguments for renewed praise! If you cannot graze in
the pastures of delight and feed upon new joys, ruminate upon the old
ones and get from them rich nutriment for praise. Think of happier
days, and be happier. Listen to the echoes of yours former Psalms and
begin to sing again!

The thing that has been is the thing that shall be. "The Lord has been
mindful of us, He will bless us." The Psalmist bears his testimony that
though, now, he may be mourning, yet he did once sing. I wish that
Christians, whenever they feel discouraged and doubting, would not
begin telling everybody, "Oh, I am bowed down," without also saying, "I
was not always so. For years I was free as a bird and did not envy an
angel! Nor shall I always be sorrowful. I shall wear my plumes again
and fill the air with my songs. I am not going to be always bowed down.
I have sackcloth on my loins today, but I remember when I was dressed
in silken apparel and rejoiced before the Lord. My sackcloth will not
last long. 'Weeping may endure for a night,' it is the time for dews.
'But joy comes in the morning.' That is the time for sunlight and for
bird singing–and so it will be with me."

Recollect what you used to do, dear Friend, in the heyday of your
faith–and tell others what you used to do that they may not think you
have always been a knight of the rueful countenance! Do not let the
Hill Mizar and the Her-monites be quite forgotten. When "deep calls
unto deep," say–"I will remember Your former loving kindnesses and

joys long past, and so will I put my trust in You." Well may every
pilgrim to Heaven be a singing pilgrim because he is getting, every
day, nearer to the land where it is all singing! There are many
delights in Heaven, but the main thing about Heaven is the adoration of
God. Oh, if I might once adore with my whole being, I would never ask
to do anything else, forever, but to melt away in reverent worship of
the blessed God!

Oh, what singing that will be, when you will sing your best, your heart
made perfect to sing worthily in accord with the place and theme! Oh
for the music which is all harmony and no discord! What music that will
be when all the dear voices which have been hushed, which we can hardly
think of, now, without a tear, will all ring out clearly the praises of
God–when all the myriad voices that have gone before will join in full
chorus–when all shall be perfect and all shall be there and shall
praise God forever! Come, Pilgrim, sing, for you are going to sing
forever!

Now, rehearse your blessed anthem! Sing unto the Lord now, since you
are to sing unto the Lord world without end–

"Such songs ha ve power to quiet The restless pulse of care And come
like the benediction That follows after prayer. And the night shall be
filled with music And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their
tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away."

III. Now, I must come to a close, for time admonishes me, and the last
head was to be THE SONGBOOK–"Your statutes have been my songs in the
house of my pilgrimage." The Bible is a wonderful book. It serves a
thousand purposes in the household of God. I recollect a book my father
used to have, entitled, "Family Medicine," which was consulted when any
of us fell sick with juvenile diseases. The Bible is our book of family
medicine. In some houses, the book they most consult, is a "Household
Guide." The Bible is the best guide for all families. This Book may be
consulted in every case and its oracle will never mislead. You can use
it at funerals. There are no such words as those which Paul has written
concerning the resurrection of the dead! You can use it for
marriages–where else can you find such holy advice to a wedded pair?

You can use it for birthdays. You can use it for a lamp at night. You
can use it for a screen by day. It is a universal Book! It is the Book
of books and has furnished material for mountains of books! It is made
of what I call, "bibline," or the essence of books. I am preaching to
you tonight as a man without books. I cannot get at any of my books,
for they are all packed away! But I have a library here in having this
one volume, which is, in fact, a number of books bound together! This
one Book is enough to last a man throughout the whole of his life,
however diligently he may study it. It seems that David, when he was a
pilgrim, used the part which he had of this blessed Book as a songbook.
It was nearly all history. What could he find to sing of there? He sang
the wars and victories of the God of Israel!

You and I have a bigger book than David had–can we say that, as
pilgrims, we use this blessed Book for songs? Truly we ought to do so,
for this is the Book that started us on pilgrimage. The blessed
teachings of this Book, sent home by the Holy Spirit, made us flee from
the City of Destruction and made us seek the road that leads to eternal
life. We sing about this Book, for it is "perfect, converting the
soul." It turned our feet from dangerous ways of folly, sin and shame.
By the lessons of this Book–

"Grace taught our soul to pray,

And made our eyes o verflow," and, therefore, we sing of the gracious
statutes of the Lord!

We use this Book for a songbook, as pilgrims, because it tells us the
way to Heaven. We often sing as we come to a fresh spot on the route
and bless God that we find the road to be just as we have read in the
way-book, just as our Divine Master said it would be! Well may we sing
a song of gratitude for an Infallible Word. We love this Book because
it speaks of other pilgrims who have gone this way. It is a Book full
of stories of the worthies of old, of whom it tells us–

"Once they were mourning here below,

Who wet their couch with tears,

They wrestled hard, as we do now,

With sins, and doubts, and fears." It is very delightful to us to read
and know how they conquered–and to learn that all true pilgrims who
keep to the high road will conquer! So we sing of Gideon, of Barak, of
Jephthah, of David, and, above all, of the great Prince of Pilgrims who
went that way!

We love this Book because it describes the life and death of the Prince
of Pilgrims, even our Lord Jesus! Many a sweet song we get concerning
Him, as we rehearse the story of what He did and suffered for us here
below and what He is doing for us now! This Book tells us the
privileges of pilgrims, both here and hereafter, and of the care which
the Lord of Pilgrims shows towards all who seek the better country.
Best of all, if better can be than what we have said, already, we love
this Book because it tells us of the place to which we are going. Oh,
how it paints that city, not in many words, but in suggestive similes!

How wonderfully it talks to us of our abode! Why, if it said no more
than, "they shall be with Me where I am, that they may behold My
Glory," we would know enough of Heaven to make our hearts dance for
joy! To be with Jesus where He is! To behold His Glory! This is bliss
pressed down and running over, more than our hearts can hold! Have you
ever seen the heavenly country? Have your eyes ever been permitted to
rest upon it? "No," says one, "certainly not. 'Eye has not seen, nor
ear heard.'" A very nice text, Brother. Go on with it; go on with it!
You may make God say what He does not mean if you quote only half a
text! He says, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God
has prepared for them that love Him; but God has revealed them unto us
by His Spirit."

Hence we know these joys by Revelation and that is the best of
knowledge! The eye has not seen, but we have done with seeing with eyes
when we deal with spiritual things! Our ears have not heard–these are
poor deaf things. At best they only hear mortal sounds! But we have an
inward function, faculty, power of hearing without ears! God does not
speak in audible tones to his children and yet He speaks to them and
they hear Him! We have a spirit which dispenses with fleshly faculties
when it comes to dealing with God. He has revealed to us somewhat of
the joy of communion with Christ; somewhat of the joy of conquered sin;
somewhat of the joy of beholding His face and praising and blessing His
name. We know, already, somewhat of the joy of being made like He and
one with Him–and all this sets our feet on the top of Mount Clear–and
puts the telescope to our eyes. And if our hand is steady, as, thank
God, sometimes it is, we see the City and we long to enter it! "Your
statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage," because
there I read of what is to be my Home when pilgrim days are over and I
shall see the Master face to face!

Now, dear Hearers, do you sing out of this holy Book? A country may be
judged by its songs and so may an individual. Do you sing the Song of
Songs? Are God's statutes royal music for you? A wise man once said
that he would permit anybody to make the laws of a country if he had
the making of the ballads, for these kindle the spirit and fashion the
character. What do you sing, Brothers and Sisters? What do you sing? I
leave that question as a heart-searching one– what do you sing? Or are
you one that never sings at all? Poor Soul, how do you live here and
where will you live hereafter? Where must non-singers go? God give you
a singing heart and may you sing unto the Well-Beloved a song touching
the Well-Beloved and keep on singing it "till the day break and the
shadows flee away." God bless you. Amen.
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The Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus