(2) The narrow door is the door of renunciation, and it is left for every man to say what in his case must be renounced before he can enter. No sin can go through : the narrow door calls for repentance, and renunciation of evil. No sham can go through : it demands renunciation of acted insincerity, and a humble resolve
* 0. W. Mackintosh, Coillard of the Zamhesiy 191.
ST. LUKE XIII. 24 279
to walk in the truth. No compromising relations with evil can go through, no tenderness for old associations which ignore God, no disposition to fret or pity ourselves ; and hence for some there is no entrance unless they pluck out a right eye, cut off a right hand or a right foot, and enter halt or maimed or blind ratlier than stay outside. To come to the narrow door is to feel that what lies beyond is the one tiling needful, and that it is a good bargain, for the sake of it, to renounce all that has ever been dear to us.
Christ here reminds us that the commonest of all temptations is that of making our religion easy. But the path of serious moral effort can never be other than narrow and arduous. And here, as in other things, it is the first step that costs so much. Someone has said that " though it is hard to become a Cliristian, it is easy to be a Christian." This means, I suppose, that it is the initial stage of a Christian life that is supremely tasking. The struggle is to enter in through the narrow door of renunciation. Christ's purpose here is to make us feel that in the case of every child of man some such struggle is imperative. The old apologue of the choice of Hercules was more profoundly true than was suspected by pagan fathers who taught it to their children. All moral life involves a choice between two distinct alternatives. And Christian life is arduous, because renunciation stands at its threshold ; and no one, however he may seek to do so, can enter the Kingdom of God without the serious effort and struggle im- plied in preferring to the easy way of self-pleasing the rough and dithcult pathway of duty.
^ The whole career of Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress carries out the ideas of the wicket gate and the narrow way leading to life, on which few enter, and in which fewer still persevere to the end. Bunyan realized the gravity and the perils of the spiritual quest in a fashion which is hardly popular to-day. He would have endorsed every syllable of Browning's sentence : " How very hard it is to be a Christian ! " The consecrated life of self-surrender and self-denial taxes to their utmost all the highest powers of the soul.
Let no man think that sudden in a minute All is accomplished and the work is done; —
Though with tliine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun.
28o THE NARROW DOOR
We pervert the Gospel, when we preach it as a broad gate and a smooth way, when we practise it by shunning the thorns and choosing the flowers.^
^ If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and vulgar crowd, is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty. When any society produces an increasing number of literary exquisites, of satirists, sceptics and beaiix esprits, some chemical disorganization of fabric may be inferred. What was it that Mephistopheles lacked ? Not intelligence certainly but goodness.^
2. Look at life and ask what high and noble achievement there is, the doing of which does not make the same severe demands that Christ makes on His followers. Art and science and literature require of their votaries the homage of an undivided heart. Before supreme excellence can be attained in any pursuit or calling the price has to be paid to the uttermost farthing. Professional life is a winnowing, selecting process that works with automatic energy ; and it is a patent fact of observation that in all things requiring strain and effort the few succeed, the many fail Everywhere in every department of human activity the same spectacle meets the eye ; the broad, smooth road of ease and popularity is thronged by the multitudes who are contented to take life as they find it, while the narrow path of strenuous endeavour is trodden by the self-renouncing few.
1] The artist must bring to his work the ardour of the young lover or the missionary. No matter what his artistic organization, if he is satisfied with a few hours' hard work — no matter how hard — and can throw thought of it aside and say he has done enough for the day and will throw aside " shop " ; not for him will be a place on the highest level for all time.*
3. The door, though narrow, is now open. The entrance is without money and without price. There are no conditions imposed by Him who set it open, and one great difficulty is to convince the entrants that there must be no conditions self-