'They shall come to Zion.' It is one great distinctive characteristic
and blessedness of the Christian conception of the future that it takes
away from it all the chilling sense of strangeness, arising from
ignorance and lack of experience, and invests it with the attraction of
being the mother-city of us all. So the pilgrims are not travelling a
dreary road into the common darkness, but are like colonists who visit
England for the first time, and are full of happy anticipations of
'going home,' though they have never seen its shores.
That conception of the future perfect state as a 'city' includes the
ideas of happy social life, of a settled polity, of stability and
security. The travellers who were often solitary on the march will all
be together there. The nomads, who had to leave their camping-place
each morning and let the fire that cheered them in the night die down
into a little ring of grey ashes, will 'go no more out,' but yet make
endless progress within the gates. The defenceless travellers, who were
fain to make the best 'laager' they could, and keep vigilant watch for
human and bestial enemies crouching beyond the ring of light from the
camp-fires, are safe at last, and they that swallowed them up shall be
far away.
Contrast the future outlook of the noblest minds in heathenism with the
calm certainty which the gospel has put within the reach of the
simplest! 'Blessed are your eyes, for they see.'