Even some forms of Christianity have shown little disposition to overflow. There has long been and still is a type of Christianity which fixes its eye on heaven and abandons earth. It is indifferent and acquiescent in regard to the affairs of this life, with no surge of passion for their purification and ennoblement. This attitude has found expression in a hymn of John Wesley’s which was once sung in its entirety but which, where it still lingers in our present collections, survives in a repeatedly and severely abridged form. 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.