In a world denied by sin, blighted by the curse, in the embrace cf the wicked one, its course disobedience, its doom approaching, strangership characterized the holy, sinless, blessed Lord. Nor can His true followers find this world to be anything but a barren wilderness, and their lot that of strangers, because they are away from home on the pilgrimage that proclaims they "seek a better country" fulfilling Heb. 11:13 by embracing "heavenly promises," viewing by faith the approaching glory and hastening thither with hearts "set on things above," where Christ is, sharing His earthly pathway and proving that "the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not."

Lev. 25:23 lends sweetest encouragement. The High and Lofty One, the Lord of Glory, still confides to loyal hearts the loving assurance; "Ye are strangers and sojourners with Me." We take no heavenward steps alone. He gives His company to those who walk apart with Him. On the Emmaus road we read that "Jesus Himself drew near and went with them." "Lo I am with you alway" insures such companionship by the way "even to the end," that our hearts may well "burn within us" while "He talks to us and opens to us the Scriptures."

His desire to have us share His strangership our hearts should prize and respond to in the words of the Psalmist; Midst "prayers… and tears… I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner" (Psalm 39:12). "I am a stranger in the earth" (Psalm 119:19).

The attractions of companionship with the heavenly Stranger induces separation from the world, and godly living, as 1 Peter 2:11 contemplates. "Fleshly desires which war against the soul," we readily "abstain from," who company with Him and occupy the place of sacred privilege as children in the "household of God" (Eph. 2:19), where no strangership obtains.

"No more strangers and foreigners," but at home in that dear circle of the Father's love, we may even now and all the while we are journeying heavenward as a "holy" and "royal" priesthood, minister "acceptable sacrifices" Godward, and before men, we may "show forth the virtues of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvelous light," thus responding to the divine appeal to "strangers and pilgrims" to evidence that the One "disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God," is the "preciousness" that attracts our hearts away from even the brightest and best of transient earthly objects, impelling us to sing;

" 'Tis the treasure we've found in His love
That has made us now pilgrims below."

E. J. Checkley