Chafer (L. S.), True Evangelism, 54.
Doda (M.), Christ and Man, 200.
Goodrich (A.), in Tixe Sermon onthe Mount, iii. 105.
Gun-aulus (F. W.), Paths to the City of God, 70.
Hutton (J. A.), At Close Quarters, 181.
Jones (J. D.), The Unfettered Word, 101.
McAfee (C. B.), Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, L63.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Matthew i.-viii., 342.
Maq.herson (W. M.), The Path of Life, 64.
Manning (H. E.), Sermons, i. 77.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 42.
Morison (J.), A Practical Commentary on the Gospel according to
St. Matthew, 110. Parker (J.), The City Temple, ii. 169. Pearson (A.), Christus Magister, 264. Pierson (A. T.), The Making of a Sermon, 54. Raleigh (A.), From Dawn to the Perfect Day, 62. Smith (W. C), The Sermon on the Mount, 308. Southouse (A. J.), The Men of the Beatitudes, 203. Stuart (A. M.), The Path of the Redeemed, 1. Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 565. Thome (H.), Notab'e Sayings of the Great Teacher, 49. Wilson (R-), The Great Salvation, 185. Christian World Pulpit, xliii. 6 (P. M. Roes); liv. 136 (M. Dods) ;
lvii. 113 (J. Stalker); lix. 171 (C. Gore).
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Choosing a Road.
Enter ye in by the narrow gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it.— Matt. vii. 13, 14.
1. There is a certain inevitable movement of human beings implied in the whole of this passage. Our Lord regards the multitudes around Him as all in motion — none quiescent, none fixed and centred. This transiency and mutability of human life can neither be doubted nor denied. We are not dwellers, we are travellers. We are all on the way, staff in hand, loins girt, the dust on our sandals.
And the myriad feet are echoing that trod the way before In a vague and restless music evermore.
Ahead of us there is the cloud of a vast company travelling ; behind, the clamour of those who follow in our track ; each one pressing forward, never resting, not in sleep, not in daytime, not in stillest night.
2. Similarly, moral progress is also constant. This is a far more serious and important kind of progress. If we could stay our spirits amid this universal vicissitude, and keep them in fixed conditions, the outward change would be of less moment. But the moral progress is as constant as, and infinitely more important than, any change that can be apprehended by the senses. This is the tremendous thing, that each one of us is being saved or lost, that each one is putting on the image of God, the eternal beauty, and wearing more and more the everlasting strength, or losing both, falling into vileness and weakness, although it may be by slow or even imperceptible degrees. It is a solemn thought that the one process or the other is going on in every one of us, without the intermission of a day or an hour. Our souls as well
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i96 CHOOSING A ROAD
as our bodies are on pilgrimage ; our spirits as well as our feet are on the way. And here the question arises : What way ? How many are there to choose from ? Two ; only two. The way of the many or the way of the few.
L
The Way of the Many.
The world speaks of numerous ways. It specially favours a via media. But here our Lord, with more than a touch of austerity in His tone, declares there is no middle way. He puts the antithesis sharply and nakedly. There is a wide gate, and there is a narrow gate; there is a broad way, and there is a straitened way ; and there are just two ends, destruction and life. At one or other of these ends every man shall arrive, and what end it will be depends upon the road he travels.
1. The entrance is wide. — We have taken the broad way first, if for no other reason than that it is the broad way. It is the most manifest and obtrusive, and the nearest to us naturally. Let us begin at the beginning of it. It has a gate. A gate is a place of entrance — to a city, or a field, or a country. As a religious term it means the beginning of a course or onward career. Being a figure, there is no need to attach to it a narrow inelastic mean- ing, but it does point to the great moral truth that there are critical and decisive points in life to which men come. There are gates of decision, narrow or wide, through which they pass into the course that lies within. It might indeed be said that we enter upon the broad way when we are born : that birth is the wide gate, and natural life the broad way. There is truth in that ; but it is only a half truth. It is also true that we may be born in the narrow way, may pass, as it were, through the strait gate in our nurture as infants ; we may tread the narrow way in our Christian training, and leave it only by our own act and choice. Manifestly, our Lord is not entering here upon that question. He is speaking to reasonable and responsible men of their acts of choice, in the decisive times and places in life. He is speaking of the entering in at either gate of those who know