A Stranger on the Earth

Genuine admiration of the cross of Christ - imbuing a man with the evangelical spirituality which is the lack of the age, and which alone has been found powerful enough to alienate us from the world at every point - makes him, there can be no reason to doubt, what the psalmist calls himself, "a stranger on the earth" (Ps. 119:19). Living by that faith which does not, and from the nature of things cannot, in this life "receive the promises, but sees them afar off, and is persuaded of them and embraces them," and realizes the splendidly dominating power of them, the man wakens up to the clear consciousness, and sees no reason for withholding the confession: "I am a stranger and a pilgrim in the earth" (Heb. 11:13); "a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were" (Ps. 39:12). 
It is of some importance to vindicate this aspect of the Christian life from those objections which intelligent and average healthy-minded men of the world are not unnaturally apt to raise against it, as abnormal, melancholy, ascetic, adverse to the cultivation of friendship, and to such interest in the affairs of our own age as that religion must be false which would forbid. 
There can be no doubt that the protestation, "I am a stranger on the earth," or "I am a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers were," has a certain air of melancholy about it, a quiet tone of loneliness. The very reference to the "fathers" gives it an air of the antique or the archaic. It has a little in it, one would say, of the ring of a voice grown old before its time. It is the utterance of a man longing for sympathy and finding little; a man occupied with interests and prospects and desires which obtain no favor in the eyes of those around him. He descends into himself, and discovers there matters of trial and sorrow, which the world in its levity is ignorant of; and he looks forth into futurity, and there he apprehends materials of anxiety and hope to which the world is content to close its eyes. He looks upward to the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, and as one who has been awakened to the knowledge of his responsibility to the King, he realizes that he has business in the court of heaven that the world knows not of. And looking round upon the very world itself, and perceiving its condition of wretchedness and danger as itself sees it not, his feelings towards that world are unintelligible and unacceptable to it. Whether he look within or around, whether he look forward or upward, he is sensible of emotions in which the thoughtless and ungodly world cannot sympathize; and quietly and with something no doubt of mournfulness in his heart, realizing that he is separated in spirit from the vast mass of his fellow-men, he gives expression to the fact in the somewhat pathetic protestation: "Well, well, I am a stranger now, and a sojourner as all my fathers were." 
It is not that he regrets it. This is not the language of querulousness or of discontent. The fact of his separation and estrangement from the world is not unwelcome to him. It is his deliberate choice that it should be so. Or rather it is the inevitable result of a choice that he has deliberately made already, and which he is not repenting of, but repeating. Be the issue what it may, this at least is certain, "I am a stranger on the earth." I have come forth and am separate: and "I am a stranger on the earth." My chief desires and my chief distresses alike tell me that I have lost the sympathy of the world. My deepest sorrows arise from sin; from finding that I am myself so unlike to God; from so frequently displeasing God; from having so little heart to seek or to enjoy fellowship with God; from having so little ability to worship and love and serve God; from beholding so little of the light of his countenance, and seeing so seldom his glorious goings in the sanctuary. My deepest desires are for glorious views of the Son of Man, whom the Holy One of Israel has made strong for himself and for me - strong for the magnifying and manifesting of the glory of God, and for the justifying and renewing of me, a sinner. My peace and joy now are when Messiah, in his infinitely precious righteousness, rises to my view as a shield and hiding-place; my refuge and my deliverer; when in spiritual faith I see the Father reconciling me unto himself, searching all my heart and meeting all my case; telling me that he can be righteous in freely loving me, a lost, rebellious, polluted sinner; and that I can be safe and blessed in fully trusting him, the Just and Holy One. My heart is then opened in its depths, and the light of grace and glory passes through it. And though that light reveals my heart's wickedness, it testifies also its free salvation in the love and righteousness of God my Savior; though it discloses deep springs of evil and depravity, thus humbling me more and more, it yet gives me a relief from the anguish which the shutting in of that depravity upon the soul to fester there, never fails to create. But this is a light which the world knows not of: the things which it discloses both in me and in my God; in me, the sinner, unrighteous and depraved; in God, the Just and Holy One of Israel; are things which the world sees not, and will by no means believe though a man declare it unto them: the distressing exhibitions of sin and bondage and death in me, which the searching light of the Lord affords; and the disclosures of righteousness, liberty, and life in Christ, my living head and treasure, which the same light reveals; of these things the world is ignorant, - they are "foolishness unto them, neither can they know them, for they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
But the world's joys and distresses are as much foolishness to me. To mourn, as they mourn, the loss of some perishing portion; to joy, as they joy, in the obtaining of some fleeting idol; I now regard as foolishness indeed. I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. Our judgment and our desires are at variance; and that on no secondary or subordinate themes of interest. On the vital and primary objects of desire, or matters of distinguishing and fundamental interest, we are at variance. The shadow with them is the substance with me; and the shadow with me is the substance with them. They behold me pursuing something which they do not see at all; and little wonder (I excuse them) though that seems to them absurd enough: while I see them following what I know to be a phantom and a dream. Little wonder, then, if a deep and very practical alienation has arisen between us, a separation realized and ratified on both sides. We are fatally and forever strangers; "I am a stranger on the earth."   Hugh Martin