PSALM XXIII. 3 431
from negative restraint. The latter may be no more than the rebuke or cry of our own alarmed conscience. Laws written involuntarily upon our heart operate upon our fears. Guidance appeals to our faith.
" I will guide thee with mine eye " is a promise to God's people which goes far ahead of conscience, and so universally is it intended to be enjoyed that it was given even long before the coming of our Lord.
But there is no guidance of this highest kind without the eager and abiding desire for it — a desire strong enough in its faith and intensity to survive during the severest trial and suffering.
Direct, Divine, personal guidance is the privilege of the sanctified. There is a poise of the spirit which God, when truly sought, produces. It is without bias from "self" or other influence, and may be as sensitive to Divine impressions as the photographer's film is sensitive to the light. Its possession is rare, yet how to possess it is an open secret. The conditions are of the simplest order — a real preference for the will of God, and an approach to Him by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Inbred or inherited sin is no other than a born preference for our own way. Actual sin is the carrying out of this preference into practice. Holiness, on the other hand, is a " born-from-above " preference for the will of God, resulting in love and everyday good works. When the will of God is thus preferred and practised, sin has no longer a place within us !
God's perfect guidance is perfect holiness. He cannot guide us in, or into, sin. No wonder that Paul prayed, " That ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will " ; or, that, living in the centre of it, John could exclaim, " Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ " ; and again, " Whosoever abideth in him, sinneth not." ^
2. The means and methods of Divine leadership are many. The Great Leader is like a wise human leader, and He adapts His ministries to the nature of the child and the character of the immediate need. Let us mention two or three of these varied methods of leadership as we find them in the Word of God.
(1) Here is the first : " And the Lord spake thus to me with
a strong hand." It is the speech of a young prophet, and it
describes a leading of God. Let us apprehend the figure. The
counsel of the Lord has come to Isaiah like a strong hand, as some-
^ F. W. Crossley, in Life by Rendel Harris, 165.
432 GOOD GUIDANCE
thing he could not escape. The intuition was laid upon him like an arrest. What was the nature of the counsel ? He was called upon by the Lord to separate himself from his nation by a solemn act of detachment. He was commanded to confront his people, to oppose them, to leave the majority and stand alone. He was bidden to prophesy the unpleasant and even to predict defeat. We know how such men are regarded — they are denounced as unpatriotic, as devoid of national feeling and fraternal ambition. The young prophet shrinks from the task ; he is tempted to silence and retirement ; he meditates retreat ; but the Word of the Lord came to him "with a strong hand." The imperative gave him no freedom ; heaven laid hold on him with holy violence ; the invisible gripped his conscience as a man's arm might be gripped, until it ached in the grasp. This was the kind of leading that came to Saul as he journeyed to Damascus. It was the kind of violent arrest that laid hold of John Bunyan as he played on Elstow green.
^ Of dogma Cromwell rarely speaks. Eeligion to him is not dogma, but communion with a Being apart from dogma. " Seek the Lord and His face continually," he writes to Eichard, his son : " let this be the business of your life and strength, and let all things be subservient and in order to this." To Eichard Mayor, the father of his son's wife, he says : " Truly our work is neither from our own brains nor from our courage and strength ; but we follow the Lord who goeth before, and gather what He scattereth, that so all may appear to be from Him." Such is ever the refrain, incessantly repeated, to his family, to the Parliament, on the homely occasions of domestic life, in the time of public peril, in the day of battle, in the day of crowning victory ; this is the spirit by which his soul is possessed. All work is done by a Divine leading. He expresses lively indignation with the Scottish ministers, because they dared to speak of the battle of Dunbar, that marvellous dispensation, that mighty and strange appearance of God's, as a mere " event." ^
(2) Here is a second method of leading : " I will guide thee with mine eye." How startling the change : We pass from the grip of the hand to the glance of an eye, from a grip as severe as a vice to a touch as gentle as light. We pass from a nipping frost to a soft and cheering sunbeam. We find the word in the ^ John Morley, Oliver Cromwell, .55.