The second of Bishop Beveridge’s Resolutions comprises this utterance,—after the expression of a longing that he could be ever on the mount, taking a view of the land of Canaan, for then what dreams and shadows would all things here below appear to be,—“Well! by the grace of God, I am resolved no longer to tie myself to sense and sight, the sordid and trifling affairs of this life, but always to walk as one of the other world; to behave myself in all places, and at all times, as one already possessed of my inheritance and an inhabitant of the New Jerusalem;—by faith assuring myself I have but a few more days to live below, a little more work to do, and be admitted to a nearer vision and fruition of God, and see Him face to face.” And thus, although at present here in the flesh, the believer’s resolve is to look upon himself as more really an inhabitant of heaven than abiding (for here we have no continuing city) upon earth. In the words of _l’exilé_ of Lamennais, “La patrie n’est point ici-bas; l’homme vainement l’y cherche; ce qu’il prend pour elle n’est qu’un gite d’une nuit.” Happy they, exclaims Pascal in his _Pensées_, whose tears are shed, not at the evanescence of all things earthly and perishable, but when they remember Sion—_dans le souvenir de leur chère patrie_—the heavenly Jerusalem, after which they sigh continually in the weariness of their exile. But as Schiller’s Thekla replies to Neubrunn’s comment on “the journey’s weary length,”— “The pilgrim, travelling to a distant shrine Of hope and healing, does not count the leagues.” John Foster describes the Israelite indeed, who is a pilgrim indeed, as resembling a person whose eye, while he is conversing with you about an object or a succession of objects, should glance every moment towards some great obstacle appearing on the distant horizon. “He seems to talk to his friends in somewhat of the manner of expression with which you can imagine that Elijah spoke, if he remarked to his companion any circumstance in the journey from Bethel to Jericho, and from Jericho to the Jordan; a manner betraying the sublime anticipation which was pressing on his thoughts.” To other pilgrims the vision of the land that is very far off may be, as Professor Maurice puts it, not so clear as they wish; but it is more clear than their vision of anything which lies about them; and without it all would be shadow and darkness. “There, in that state, must lie all that they dream of and hope for.” “There only they must live, or have no life.” “When they pray ‘Thy kingdom come,’ they ask that the Great Shepherd will lead them and their brethren out of a land of pits, a thirsty wilderness, a valley of the shadow of death, to a peaceable habitation and a sure dwelling-place.” There is a bleak desert, in the words of one who wrote sacred songs, though himself no sacred poet,—