Stages of spiritual progress.
"The very journeys to the temple, often toilsome and hazardous, take on a certain sacredness from memory, imagination, and desire, insomuch that they can say that 'the highways to Zion are in their hearts.' They remember how they wept with vague, almost joyful emotion as they passed through the valley of Baca, and how they went 'from strength to strength,' that is, grew stronger and stronger, more and more joyful, as they topped the hills round about Jerusalem." Illustrate by the growing excitement we feel when nearing home after a time of prolonged absence. Every mile finds us more and more anxious to catch a sight of familiar scenes. It might be reasonably expected that the long and trying journey would make the pilgrims feel weary and indifferent. Instead of that, their souls master their circumstances, and they are brighter and more cheerful at the end than at the beginning. So do we see aged Christians who, for sunny faces and happy ways altogether, put to shame young beginners in the pilgrim path. They have evidently gone "from strength to strength."
I. SPIRITUAL PILGRIMS MUST "KEEP ON." According to the figures of the text, they must not be stopping, or idling, or taking up any interests on the way; day by day, persistently, they must be going forward; every day getting a day's march nearer Zion. A pilgrim must just "keep on." So we are called to "patient continuance in well doing;" to day-by-day persistent goodness; and this of itself may become wearisome. It is the hardest thing given us to do, this keeping on, day by day, in the same scenes, and doing the same work. But it is never really a mere keeping on. We may not realize the joy of it, but the fact is that, in keeping on, we are going "from strength to strength."
II. IN "KEEPING ON," SPIRITUAL PILGRIMS FIND THEMSELVES EVER BETTER ABLE TO KEEP ON. Every difficulty overcome means a higher strength to overcome difficulties. Every joy felt in a spiritual triumph is cheer for dealing with new anxieties. Every day of Christian life is a step; from it we get power to take a step higher. The man who has lived well his Christian life today is in fact, and ought to be in feeling, a stronger man to live his Christian life tomorrow. And so, making the day's experience a step up, he finds power and joy increasing as he nears the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. A Christian life may be exhausting for the body, but "as the outward man perishes, the inward man is renewed day by day."—R.T.