Setting Out on a Long Journey

AS my readers are aware, I am setting out soon on a long journey and by the time this issue is in the hands of many of my readers I will have commenced the first stage. Naturally the prospect of setting out on such a journey awakens many thoughts and I may be permitted to lay before my readers some of these. The journey on which I am setting out, however, is short in comparison with a greater journey on which we all have set out already and as no one can contemplate setting out, without preparation, on a voyage even to New York, which, in these days of swift travel, is not so distant as it was fifty or sixty years ago, so ought preparation for the greater journey engage our serious attention.

1. The Preparation.
   The shortest journey requires preparation and the longer it is the more consideration it requires. There are not many who fail to prepare for a voyage to New York, but there are thousands upon thousands who are quite unconcerned about their preparation for the greatest of all journeys. God has not left us without knowledge as to what we need for this journey. If we are to see His face in peace we must be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and it is only through believing in Him that we can obtain this righteousness. The faith that receives Him is His own gift so man has nothing to glory in in this matter.

2. The Passport.
   In a journey to other countries one has to possess himself of a passport. This passport is issued by His Majesty’s Foreign Secretary. An unauthorised individual has no right to issue a passport to any one and if he did the recipient would find it utterly useless when he most required it. The passport is carefully scrutinised by the Alien Officers of the country to which one is going and if it is not in correct form there is no admittance into the country. A photograph with a description of the bearer forms part of the passport. We need a passport for admittance into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ for unless a man is born again he cannot enter into that kingdom. No intellectual attainments, or sentimental religion beginning with emotionalism and ending there, will do. If we have not the change announced by the Lord Jesus as indispensable we need not deceive ourselves by thinking we are meet for the kingdom of heaven.

3. The farewells.
   No one who sets out to cross the ocean can be altogether free from emotion. Loved ones are left behind and even the prospect of a return does not do away with the ever present thought that many a change may take place before the hoped for re-union. But on the greatest of all voyages the farewells may be taken for ever. It is a very solemn thing when a godly father or mother takes farewell of their offspring never to meet them again. This solemn and sobering thought has been blessed to many and the bedsides of dying parents have been places where God has more than once met with weeping children. Happy are those who in parting have the assurance that all is well. They are bound together in the bundle of life and they can look forward to a happy eternity where partings are forever at an end.

4. Drawing out from the shore.
   I well remember the peculiar sensation I felt the first time I crossed the ocean, as the great liner drew out from the shore and turned her bow to the mighty waste of waters over which we were to sail for days on end. One cannot easily master that feeling—many thoughts come surging through the mind. What has that ocean in store for me? Are there storms to be met that will shake my confidence? Will everything go well? Such thoughts rise and seek the mind’s attention with persistent insistence. There is a certain feeling of mystery about the sea even though it be a well-explored and charted ocean and even though thousands have voyaged over it before. But it being the first time for you the knowledge that ships are crossing and recrossing that ocean every day cannot altogether rob you of that feeling. So when the time comes when the Lord’s people draw out from the shore into that world of mystery beyond is it any wonder that at times, like Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress, they are at a loss as to what is happening. If one has confidence in the Master, however, all things will be different. He has sailed over that mysterious ocean and, while no ship that has once left the shores of time ever returns, the believer is safe in the Master’s hands. There are no shipwrecks reported when He is in charge and the passengers may confidently say: “All is well.”

5. The Ocean.
   One who has never sailed over the ocean may think it must be very uninteresting. It is not so. There is a marvellous variety with a sameness which is characteristic of God’s works. The vastness of the waste of waters with the great monsters of the deep and the myriad inhabitants of the same which have their dwelling there bring before one’s mind the greatness of the Creator who has measured the waters of the seas in the hollow of His hand and sends food in time convenient to the myriads of creatures in the sea. Yet, as one of the Puritans put it, there was a time when He who created these mighty oceans and the flowing rivers had to say: “I thirst” and no water was given Him to drink.

6. The prospects on the other side.
   When one sets out across the ocean he has generally the prospect of meeting many friends who give him a very hearty welcome. It may be a brother or a sister and in such a case how affectionate the greetings are—parted for a time and now meeting again. But how infinitely more wonderful is the meeting when the Lord’s people reach the other side of life’s mysterious ocean! What a Friend is waiting! How beautiful is the home He has prepared for them, that death-free, sorrowless, sinless, tearless city where the peace of God forever reigns. With what amazement will some of them open their eyes to behold the glory of their Saviour and hear for the first time the heavenly music, the song which in its volume is like the sound of many waters. But how unspeakably solemn is it for those who shall reach that shore—Friendless, Homeless, and Hopeless. There are thousands sailing out on the great ocean of time with no friend to meet them, no home to receive them and having no hope for eternity that it will ever be otherwise.

7. Safe arrival in port.
   When one has crossed the ocean for the first time it is with pleasurable feelings land is sighted. High expectancy and delight in feeling the solid ground beneath one’s feet with the captivating sense of newness in all one sees around produce sensations that are not easily described. So shall it be with the Lord’s people. All the storms that swept over life’s troubled seas are at an end and they have reached the haven they desired to see:—

Then are they glad, because at rest
And quiet now they be:
So to the haven he them brings
Which they desired to see.
Oh! that men to the Lord would give
Praise for His goodness then,
And for His works of wonder done
Unto the sons of men.

—Metrical Psalms, cvii. 30-32.

The ingratitude of rejecting Christ must me as high in the rank of sins as the Person slighted is in the rank of Beings.—Stephen Charnock.

Men who are spiritually sick cannot sweat out their distemper with working. He does not gain much that turns his meat into his medicine.—John Owen.