Pilgrim Street

by Hesba Stretton
Golden Inheritance Series #3
Available from Amazon or Inheritance Publications
*****
Pilgrim Street chronicles the short life of Tom Haslam. It opens with his young brother Phil telling a judge how he knew that Tom wasn’t guilty of the theft for which he was in jail. Tom gets out thanks to the Mr. Hope, the judge, and a Christian policeman, Banner, takes him under his wing. Banner tells Tom of the awful eye of God, that God sees everything, and hates sin. He emphasizes the consequences of disobedience to God’s law.

Tom worked hard to make an honest living to please Mr. Hope, the Pendleburys, and Banner, but mostly in fear of the all-seeing God. He rented a cart, and went about Pilgrim Street and others selling herrings, potatoes, and some others. One day a servant girl gave him a much larger coin than she thought she had, and Tom only gave her the difference for the smaller coin. Later she realized her error, and came back, but Tom insisted that she was wrong. When she called a policeman, Tom ran. He went to another city where he was not known and tried to make a living, but he was unable to earn anything. He came to exchange his nice clothes for rags, became very ill, and eventually returned to his friends in Pilgrim Street to die, as he thought. He found that Banner had paid the difference of his debt, not wanting to charge him with theft. The Pendleburys nursed him back to health, and Mr. Hope came by. He told him that he had a Father, besides the one Tom hated and feared, who was still in jail. This Father loved him, and wanted to forgive his sins. Tom understood. “Ah,” he cried, “I was afraid of God! He always seemed angry, and I’d no heart to serve Him. But the Father will help me to be like His Son, and keep His commandments, and my duty to God, and my duty to my neighbor.”

When he was better, he went and took out his savings to pay his debt to Banner, and met his earthly father, just out jail. He took Tom’s savings, and led Tom a hard life. Tom decided to love his earthly father, and constantly asked his heavenly Father for his earthly father’s salvation. Tom’s father died in a fire he had kindled as an act of revenge, but not before Tom had tried to rescue him. “Let me go!... I’m his son, and he is my father. He is my father, I tell you,” he said to the firemen, who would have pushed him back, “and he doesn’t love God!”

Before the end of Tom’s life, he has many conversations with those who love him, encouraging them to love their heavenly Father. Their lives are all changed, and readers will also find their heartstrings touched, and will also be encouraged to love their Father.