The Heavenly Pilgrimage

THE LARGER OUTLOOK: The Heavenly Pilgrimage (Continued)

"May you, as did Greatheart, that doughty guide and warrior of Bunyan's allegory, safely lead the pilgrims onward."

Editor of the "Review and Herald"

 

Now, admirable and important as is crusading, there are cautions we must observe. We must guard against a mistaken view, which ever resides in the human heart, that the worth of a crusade is to be measured simply by the number of those brought onto the path. We forget that when the travelers come to the heavenly gates they are weighed as well as counted. A failure now to do the same can bring only incalculable harm to the pilgrimage. A mixed multitude brought woe and death to an ancient company bound for Canaan.

The chief mark of these synthetic pilgrims is their desire for a new outlook rather than a new heart, for new friends rather than a new spirit. Such have no weight. They are easily blown about by every wind of doctrine, and thus sometimes create grave hazards on the highway. We need to make sure that all who are salvaged from the valley shall be properly accoutered at induction centers before being started on their pilgrimage. The counsel of an ancient guide is to put on the whole armor of God. Without that armor a pilgrim will be found wanting, when weighed on the heavenly scales.

All this points up the need of keeping in good repair the fences along the sides of our heaven- bound path. The purpose of a fence is to divide between and set apart, to protect against illegal entry, and to raise a barrier against pitfalls and precipices. And all this we constantly need if we are to maintain a distinctive path for our pilgrimage. There is ever the temptation to take down the fence, or to let it disappear from lack of repair. A passive attitude is all that is needed. Time, the elements, and the termites will relentlessly accomplish the destruction of the most firmly constructed fence, if it is not guarded.

Two stones, hewed by the hand of God and "laid at the time the ancient pilgrimage to Canaan began, mark off the path from the land of the enemy. On that line, and with the stones as a foundation, the Advent guides have prayer fully and sometimes painfully erected a fence. There is always a temptation to lower the fence here and there in order to simplify the task of the crusaders and to secure greater accessions. To respond to that temptation is to endanger the pilgrimage. Our objective should be not to lower the fence to meet the low level of someone outside but to lift him up by the grace of God to the height required to' come over to the elevated path. And the very experience of being lifted up best enables the novitiate to realize that the path to heaven is really raised high above earth.

But the fence has a value also for those already walking on the path. The higher the road leads, the greater the distance to the valley below. Now, no fence can keep the willful from scaling it and plunging over. The fence is not for the willful but for the weak and for the youthful pilgrims whose step may not yet be steady. Many are the faltering travelers who, in irresolute moments, have found reinforcement to their .wills and a corrected sense of direction by a sight of the sturdy fence.

So long as this pilgrimage is to be distinctive, there must be a fence. So long as the road is kept high above the valley, there -must be a fence. But the clay we lower the road to the level of the valley, there is need for neither a fence nor a pilgrimage. The price of progress toward heaven is separation and elevation.

Along the road stand certain distinctive structures whose architecture, viewed functionally, is strikingly different from any edifice in the surrounding country. Some of these structures serve ,to tutor future guides, and to pre pare youthful travelers for the pilgrimage by giving them a clear sense of direction. Other of these edifices provide pages of inspiration for the pilgrims and ammunition for their crusades. Still others carry on within their walls a work of binding- up the wounds of the travelers and of the inhabitants of the valley. They serve also as doorways through which men may move from the valley onto the heavenly road. They are sometimes described as a right arm that reaches out to draw men into the path of life.

Throughout our pilgrimage certain clangers have threatened these edifices. Against these dangers we must be on guard. There is ever present in the air a subtle suggestion that the architecture be remodeled to blend more harmoniously with the public buildings in the valley. We successfully resist that suggestion only 'as we remember that we-reared our edifices, and at great sacrifice, for a unique purpose, and that the blueprints, divinely drawn, had that purpose in mind. The halls of these distinctive structures must never become broad paths, linking us to the valley. They must ever remain corridors to heaven.

And now let me offer a closing word of caution. Because we are to be different and separate from the valley dwellers, some have mistakenly thought that we may largely ignore, if not view with contempt, certain technical training that the world gives to its guides. The piety of such thinking is offset by its fallacy, as if the higher we rise above the world in spiritual living, the lower we may fall beneath it in intellectual tutoring.

I am sure that the accent of Eden should be in our voices as we exhort the pilgrims onward. I am equally sure that the accent of good English should be there also. And it is a sorry fact that the absence of the latter causes some pilgrims to be unimpressed by the former. We need not know of the rise and fall of empires in order to believe the awesome truth that God cloeth all things according to His good pleasure; but how much more effectively we can present that truth to pilgrims and valley dwellers alike if we can draw from all history. We need no knowledge of dead languages to commune with the living God; but devout guides through all the whole Christian Era testify that a knowledge of such languages aids us greatly in communing with Moses, Isaiah, Paul, and John.

I think we make a fatal mistake if we proceed to show our abhorrence and fear of the deification of human reason—so manifest in earthly guides—by minimizing the mind and its training. That is an insult to the God who gave us our minds; it is also a threat to our success as guides. The more highly trained the pilgrims, the less impressed they will be with poorly trained guides. God gave us our heads as well as our hearts. He expects us to discipline both for His glory.

The guides of the Advent Movement should be masters of history, logic, language, and every branch of learning that can make them better able to lead. An ancient guide declared that we should be all things to all men. I think this requires, among other things, that we increase our breadth of learning, that we may be able better to reach all minds. We have no commission to confine our crusading endeavors to one side of the road. One of the earliest and most prominent of our guides^ the venerable James White, declared that the advent guides should "know everything."*

There is nothing in the spirit or genius of our pilgrimage that calls for us to substitute sentiment for sense, or emotions for intellect. It is a false antithesis to set heart against head. One is almost tempted to think that the antithesis has been created by those who focus exclusively on the ancient dictum, that "much study is a weariness to the flesh." But such should remember that the nonstudious guide soon becomes a weariness to the flesh of all who must listen to him.

On the guides rest the high privilege, honor, and responsibility of making straight paths for the pilgrims, of cheering them with hope and holy song, of lighting the path with a glory from heaven that reflects from their faces, of keeping all eyes fixed ever on the glittering gates at the end of the road, and of wielding the sword in defense of the faith once delivered unto the saints.

May you, as did Greatheart, that doughty guide and warrior of Bunyan's allegory, safely lead the pilgrims onward. And may your end be like his, for of him it was written that as he passed ahead through the Jordan, all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

 

 

* Said James White, in an address before the Gen eral Conference, March n, 1873: "And now, because we think the Lord is coming soon, and that there is but little time to obtain an education, to make up our minds to gather a little here and there, and be content to get along in this way, I think is a grand mistake. Dr. Clarke said, 'A Methodist minister should know everything;' so I say of our ministers. And if any cla_ss of men can be strong in the word of God, I think it is Seventh-day Adventists. If opposition is good to keep the rust off, they have plenty of that. If exercise in new fields is good, they have plenty of that. And God has helped in bringing out the great truths of our message. God has helped to bring out these great truths in a manner that we need not be ashamed of." —Review and Herald, May 20, 1873.


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Editor of the "Review and Herald"

 

June 1950

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