' I'lte Life of Charlis Loring Brace, 302
PSALM cxix. 9 419
simple-hearted devotion, ever growing in intelligence, to those grand objects which are dear to Christ and the angels, and the over-shadowing grandeur of which makes obtruding self-conscious- ness impossible. The Apostles advanced by forsaking the tradition of men and clea\'ing unto the word of the Lord, that they might do for the world what could be done in no other way. Luther advanced by bringing men up to the simple record of the New Testament, that they might find a firm footing as they passed into eternity and faced the awful facts of life and destiny. We can advance in the present day only as we come nearer to Jesus Christ, and bring others with us.^
^ The poet sings —
Our lives must climb from hope to hope,
And realize our longinsr, but it is not often that the record of a man's progress towards a pronounced condition of spiritual exaltation is one of uninter- rupted climbing. There are usually some prominent milestones that mark momentous crises in the journey, frequently some definite boundary to which one can point and say, This is where such a one first dedicated himself to the service of God and of his fellows. But with Quintin Hogg one can trace the ever- mounting path back to his earliest days until it is lost in the pure innocence that is God's birth-gift to every little child. There is no apparent genesis of conviction, of dedication. From a child upward he seems to have been imbued with a .sense of service owed to a Wonderful Benefactor, and though of course there must have been times of struugle and of darkness, they were principally of a mental rather than of a spiritual character, causing no interruption of his self-appointed labours and leaving no con- temporary external indications of their presence.^
IL
A Simple Answer
" By taking heed."
1. The answer, like the question of the text, is not perhaps the supremely best, but it is nevertheless very true, and needful to be borne in mind. We should begin by asking, " Wherewithal shall I cleanse my heart ? " and the reply to that is, " If any man be in
* James Stark, John Murker of Banff, 54.
* E. M. Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 35.
420 THE CLEAN PATH
Christ he is a new creature " — renewed in the spirit of his mind after the likeness of Christ. But, allowing that, for the practical uses of life, nothing better could be said to one than this. Take heed to your ways, and direct them according to the Word of God For not a little of the evil of this world arises from the heed- lessness of youth. We did not mean to do wrong. Very few do, at least in the beginning. There may be some who have from the first perverse and evil natures, wholly indisposed to go the right way. But on the whole these are not the common staple of human creatures. Most youths are not wishful to do wrong, but would rather, if it did not cost very much trouble, do right in the main. But they do not think as strenuously about it as they should. They are not very watchful of their conduct, or careful to guide it aright ; and so they fall into a snare. It is this heed- lessness, this inconsiderateness, which does not weigh seriously the step we are going to take, and the consequences it may involve — this is the beginning of many a downward course.' " Oh," we say, " I did not think ; I did not mean any wrong," and we are fain to consider that a sufficient excuse. But it is not a sufficient excuse. We ought to think. God has given us a power of "seeing before and after" that we may direct our steps aright; and it will not serve our purpose that we did not use that power, but blundered into the mire which we should clearly have avoided. The foremost duty of a man is to think what he is about.
^ The best made road wants looking after if it is to be kept in repair. What would become of a railway that had no surfacemen and platelayers going along the line and noticing whether any- thing was amiss ? I remember once seeing a bit of an old Eoman road; the lava rocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart, there were many split by the frost ; here was a great ugly gap full of mud, and the whole thing ended in a jungle. How shall a man keep his road in repair ? " By taking heed thereto." Things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. You do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that things will come to grief. ^
^ One of the greatest of living Englishmen sums up the whole teaching of Goethe, the wisest German of the nineteenth century, in the brief citation: " Gedenko, zu leben," which means literally,
' A. Maclaren.
PSALM cxix. 9 421
"Think, to live." Carlyle translates, "Think of living." But you will all get hold of its meaning if I say that what it comes to is this : " If you would live rightly and well, you must think — think how it is best to live." So that, you see, two of the wisest men of our own time are of one mind with the Psalmist who lived between two and three thousand years before them. He says, " If you would walk in pure and noble ways of life, think of your ways." ^