Surround the path we go:
Though painful and distressing,
Yet there’s a rest above;
And onward still we’re pressing,
To reach that land of love.”
The object of such a pilgrim is progress—or, rather, progress is the means to an end; and the end is not yet, is not here, but will surely come, and come quickly, and will not tarry. There is a wicket gate towards which they are making progress, and it is the portal of a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They who professedly sojourn here as in a strange country, who obey the call to go out into a place which they shall after receive for an inheritance; who confess, and act on the confession, that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth; they that say and do such things declare plainly that they seek a country, a better country—that is, a heavenly.
Chaucer’s “old style” conveys a meaning the world can never be too old to learn:
“Here is no home, here is but wyldyrnesse.
Forth, pilgrime! forth, best out of thy stalle!
Look up on hye, and thonke God of alle;