How happy is the pilgrim's lot!
How free from every anxious thought,
From worldly hope and fear!
Confined to neither court nor cell,
His soul disdains on earth to dwell,
He only sojourns here.
His happiness in part is mine,
Already saved from self-design,
From every creature-love;
Blest with the scorn of finite good,
My soul is lightened of its load,
And seeks the things above.
The things eternal I pursue,
A happiness beyond the view
Of those that basely pant
For things by nature felt and seen;
Their honors, wealth and pleasures mean
I neither have nor want.
I have no babes to hold me here,
But children more securely near
For mine I humbly claim;
Better than daughters or than sons,
Temples divine, of living stones
Inscribed with Jesus' name.
No foot of land do I possess,
No cottage in this wilderness,
A poor, wayfaring man;
I lodge awhile in tents below,
Or gladly wander to and fro
Till I my Canaan gain.
Nothing on earth I call my own:
A stranger to the world unknown,
I all their goods despise;
I trample on their whole delight,
And seek a country out of sight,
A country in the skies.
There is my house and portion fair,
My treasure and my heart are there,
And my abiding home;
For me the elder brethren stay,
And angels beckon me away,
And Jesus bids me come.
I come,--thy servant, Lord, replies--
I come to meet Thee in the skies,
And claim my heavenly rest!
Now let the pilgrims' journey end,
Now, O my Saviour, Brother, Friend,
Receive me to thy breast.
As expressed in this hymn and still more in that spiritual classic, the "De Contemptu Mundi" of Bernard of Cluny, such a piety is not without its pathos and beauty and lofty idealism, but it is not Christianity.
It is only the pale bloodless spectre of Christianity. Christianity is a torrent. It is a fire. It is a passion for brotherhood, a raging hatred of everything which denies or forbids brotherhood. It was a brotherhood at the first. Twisted, bent, repressed for nearly twice a thousand years, it will be a brotherhood at the last.
Does Christianity mean Socialism? It means infinitely more than Socialism. It means Socialism plus a deeper, diviner brotherhood than even Socialism seeks. It abhors inequality. It always has abhorred inequality. It seems almost inexplicable that the censors in these days of panicky attempts at suppression of incendiary ideas have not put under the ban such words as these:
"My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
* * * * *
He hath showed strength with his arm:
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.
He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of low degree.