SERMON VIII.

SLOWNESS IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

PSALM cxix. 25.

“My soul cleaveth unto the dust.”

THESE words express with great intensity of humiliation a consciousness which is universal among all sincere Christians. I mean, the power of the world and of the body over the soul. Such people desire to serve God with a free, growing, spiritual service; but they often feel impotent, slothful, and sluggish. They strive, but make no speed; toil, but make little way: they feel as if they were laden with a great weight, and that weight were powerfully attracted to the earth; and the earth clings to them, and they to it, as by a kindred nature. In all their sorrows, joys, thoughts, cares, hopes, labours of this world, they feel vivid, quick, and untiring; as a bark upon the sea, which, in all its wanderings and flights, is never weary: but in the service of God, in obedience, repentance, prayer, 135love, worship, they move with a dull, heavy pace. They are conscious that earth has more part in them than heaven; for out of the dust were we taken, and dust we are. And so, says the Book of Wisdom, “the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things.”⁶²⁶²   Wisdom ix. 15. The more they are awakened to the knowledge of God, the more they feel their tardiness of spirit. But this does not arise only from the sympathy, so to speak, between our nature and the dust, of which, in the beginning, we were made; for a sinless humanity would cleave not to the dust, but to God. It has a special token of the fall in it. The consummation of this fallen sympathy is the wages of sin, that is, death itself; “unto dust shalt thou return.” The curse laid upon the serpent is a proof of this: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”⁶³⁶³   Gen. iii. 14. And this original curse is not taken off from him even in the redeemed world: when all creation shall have peace, yet still, as the Lord said by Isaiah, “dust shall be the serpent’s meat;”⁶⁴⁶⁴   Is. lxv. 25. that is, humiliation and banishment from God. This slowness and sluggishness, 136 therefore, in spiritual obedience, is a special proof of the power of the fall still abiding upon us, and of our proneness to linger and hold fast by earth and its attractions. We will not, however, go into so large a subject as this opens, but take only one point in it; I mean, the slowness of spiritual growth, which is so great a humiliation and distress to sincere minds, or, as they believe and express it, the stubborn earthliness of their nature.

I do not mean to say, that this is not often a very just cause of distress and fear: for some people practise great deceits upon themselves, and, while they keep up a round of religious usages, really give themselves a full and unbridled range of earthly pursuits, enjoyments, aims, and thoughts. But we will not speak of them, nor of any who by their own inconsistency and indolence hinder the gracious inspirations and workings of God in their hearts. Let us take only the case of those who sincerely and faithfully endeavour to follow and comply with His grace in them; whose pure desire is to grow in the spiritual life; and whose chiefest and greatest distress is the consciousness of manifold hindrances, obstinate faults, want of religious affections, of earnestness, zeal, perseverance, delight in God, and the like; or, in one word, of the little advance they make in the life 137of spiritual obedience. No words give fuller utterance to their complaint than these: “My soul cleaveth unto the dust.”

1. One cause of this disheartening and saddening feeling is, that people aim at models and examples which are too high for them. It may be asked, How is this possible, when the standard set before us is the life of our Lord Himself, and He with His own mouth said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect?”;⁶⁵⁶⁵   St. Matt. v. 48. And again, St. John says, “every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure;”⁶⁶⁶⁶   1 St. John iii. 3. and “he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.”⁶⁷⁶⁷   Ib. 7. What standard can be higher than this? and are we not, by Divine command, bidden to aim at it?

Now we must distinguish between the perfection of the great Example which it is our duty to imitate, and the proportions in which our actual lot, strength, and calling, admit of such an imitation. Clearly the example of our Lord would seem to exact of us, at once, to be no less than sinless. But no one so understands the precept of imitation. It lifts up a pattern, and it prescribes a tendency, which is to govern our whole life. But the measures and proportions in which that tendency may be realized are not only infinitely 138various in detail, but are no less ordained and distributed of God than His gifts of grace. The apostles He called to the closest likeness to their Lord in holiness, love, suffering, toil for His elect, utter forsaking of the world, and even to an imitation of His passion: so also all martyrs, evangelists, and successors of the apostles, who have been called out of the world to convert it, and be spent for it: so all who have been specially called to lives of sanctity, to a full devotion of themselves, for life, to works of charity and mercy, to labours of spiritual learning, prayer, and repentance: and in like manner through all the manifold shades of the religious life, until we enter upon the confines of the world and its works, its powers and offices, households and homes. “Every man hath his proper gift of God: one after this manner, another after that.” Every one has his vocation; and his vocation is of God. Our vocation is the measure of our powers, and fixes the proportions of our duty. This is the first thing to be tried and ascertained. When any are called wholly to forsake the world, their duty is plain. They are set to imitate the life of Christ with all their strength, and with all possible conformity of inward and outward circumstance. This applies chiefly and directly to pastors who are united to the Chief Shepherd in His work of love and self-denial. 139It is true, also, of great multitudes who are, by God’s loving tenderness, called to the peace and happiness of a devout life of prayer and mercy, sheltered from distraction. But the rest,—that is, the great body of the visible Church, with whom we have now to do,—are called to attain each one the fullest measure he can of the mind and spirit of Christ, under the proportions and conditions of his state. For instance, rulers, statesmen, ministers of human law, merchants, men of labour and action, of business and the arts of life, parents, husbands and wives, children still in subjection, servants, and the poor of Christ’s flock—all these are limited and restrained by a multitude of necessities: they are perpetually under a “present distress;” and they must serve their state, and through their state serve God. This makes many things impossible to them, many things disproportioned to their vocation; and to such things they are therefore not called.

One remark is to be made on all this. There is one example for all, the life of Christ; one tendency wholly unlimited, in the direction of which all must press towards His example; but the standard, that is, the manner and measure in which we are permitted to advance in that tendency, is of God. He proportions it by His providence and His grace. All we can do, and the 140holiest thing we can do, is to apply and mould ourselves entirely upon the lot He has meted out to us. For in so doing, it is impossible to say what Christians may not attain. There is a Divine mystery and paradox about our probation: so that some who are called to the lives of apostles may be lowest in the imitation of Christ; and some who are called to the service of the world are closest in their likeness to His perfection. The tendency, therefore, is the same in all; the grace and power of indefinite advance is offered to all; to decline it, or to use it slackly, to be wanting on our part in zeal and perseverance, is our sin. And yet, after all, there are mysteries of proportion and vocation, which flow from the fountain of all mystery, the election of God; thither we may trace them upward, but there we must stay our search, and worship Him in love and silence.

The practical rule, therefore, to be drawn from this is, that we ought to measure our actual lot, and to fulfil it; to be with all our strength that which our lot requires and allows. What is beyond it, is no calling of ours. How much peace, quiet, confidence, and strength, would people attain, if they would go by this plain rule. We read in the lives of great servants of God, how they fasted, prayed, and laboured; how many dangers they encountered, sought, and suffered; 141how many works of love they fulfilled;—how many difficulties they overcame; and our heads are sometimes turned with a wish to do the like. Or, to bring this nearer home; we see persons called out from common duties and relations, gifted with aptitudes and powers, placed in the midst of ripe opportunities, devising and accomplishing works of charity, piety, and mercy; and we are moved with a desire to bid farewell to our homes, and disquieted with the thought that we are doing nothing, so long as we are not like them. We forget the parable of the talents, and Who it is that both distributes them and will take account. Now this is one very common and very needless cause of discomfort to sincere people; and perhaps chiefly to the most sincere, who, as they have a more earnest desire to advance, have also a quicker sympathy with higher and more devout examples. We may take, then, this comfort, that the standards or visible forms of the spiritual life are various, and are appointed to us by God Himself; and that the power of tending towards the perfect holiness of Christ is as full and unlimited to us in our commonplace life, as it could be in any other; nay, is more certainly free to us in that way of life, because it is our own, that is, because so God has ordained it for us.

2. But perhaps it may be said, “This is not 142my distress. I have no desire to go out of my lot into disproportioned habits; but I do not comply with this tendency of which you speak. This is the point where I ‘cleave to the dust.’ I make no advance in the spiritual life.” In answer it may be said, that we are too hasty in looking for signs of advancement. In one sense, indeed, we cannot be too impatient; I mean, we cannot too much desire to become sinless. But whatever may be our desire, patience is our duty. The dealings of God are wonderful. “The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.”⁶⁸⁶⁸   St. James v. 7. God has a seed-time, and a burial, sometimes long and strange, of the germs of spiritual life, before the feast of in-gathering is fully come. What a miracle is the gift of regeneration, which awaits its ripeness in the morning of the resurrection. What to all eyes more sickly than the soul, more dead than the body? So through all our spiritual life there is an order and a cycle of seasons and changes—“seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night.”⁶⁹⁶⁹   Gen. viii. 22. All things move on in a procession of measured and temperate advance, obeying some eternal law of the Divine will, adjusted to the conditions of the Divine image as it is in us; and by this law all 143anomalies will be one day solved. The Divine hand never moves like ours, in a lawless haste. Even seeming exceptions have their proper laws, unknown to us. For it is most true that sometimes it has pleased God to anticipate in a moment of time, (as when, by one act, He created the fruit-tree having its seed in itself,) the growth and ripeness of years: such was the repentance of David, the bitter weeping of St. Peter, the conversion of St. Paul. So, a single word, or a moment of intense agony, or the aspect of a holy countenance, or realities which, as this world neither sees or knows, so neither will it believe, have been known to work at once the perfect and abiding conversion of a sinner. But such things in the spiritual world are as lightning in the world of nature. The day and the night are not illuminated by sudden streams of fire, but by steady lights, and by their slow gradual ascents. This reveals the gentleness, as the other the sovereignty, of God. It is by this same even and stedfast law, that the spiritual world, or the sanctification of the soul in man, advances to its ripeness. We must not look out for the harvest when we have only cast the seed, nor for the vintage when we have but yesterday bound up the vines. The sin that dwells in us is strong and stubborn, and the very law of our sanctification is, that we should be cleansed from it through the persevering 144struggle of our will, and the entire hatred of our spiritual nature. God does not cleanse us as if we were dead and passive. Perhaps this would best suit our indolence, but not our destiny of bliss. He made us without our act; but He will not save us unless we be fellow-workers together with Him. For when He made us, “man became,”—not a clod of helpless, lifeless earth, but “a living soul.”⁷⁰⁷⁰   Gen. ii. 7. This is our wonderful being; and this shews why sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. It is the direct abdication of living powers, of the living soul given to us of God. It is spiritual suicide, a wilful return into dust and death. This, then, gives us the law of our probation, and reveals to us why all growth in grace is slow; because it is to be attained by the progressive and persevering action of our moral nature, under the conditions of the fall, and against the antagonist powers of temptation. There are, without doubt, deeper reasons still, which we shall one day know; for we mistake in thinking that perfection is to be found only in the ultimate form and fulness of any creature. Every stage has its perfect beauty; as childhood, youth, and manhood. Indeed, what is the fulness of the creature? what ultimate and changeless form has any finite being? Our perfection, it may be, is eternal growth; everlasting 145approach to the Infinite, which is for ever inaccessible. So it is in the life of grace. The stages of trial have, we may believe, each one of them, a peculiar character and acceptance in the sight of God.

But besides this, there are some very clear and open reasons why our growth is suffered to be slow. Nothing so lays the axe to the root of pride. We would fain be to-day as pure as angels; but before to-morrow, it may be, we should lift up ourselves as Satan. The consciousness of sin is very galling and humbling; we chafe and complain of it: but is all this trouble a sincere and tranquil sorrow from the pure love of God? By no means. Sin betrays us into a thousand faults, and into habitual follies; it hurts our self-love, and mortifies our vanity. It would be so graceful to be a saint; so lovely in the eyes of others; so soothing to ourselves. O, the depth of the craft and of the wiles of the Devil! Even our holier aspirations he taints, and turns against our souls. There is infinite compassion and infinite care in leaving our sins to be our shame and scourge; lest God’s best gifts should be our snare, and life itself our death. Truly our souls cleave unto the dust, not as we complain, but as we are little aware. We are often most earthly when we believe ourselves to be most spiritual. So hard is it to open our ears. 146Well might the prophet cry thrice, “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.”⁷¹⁷¹   Jer. xxii. 29. The faults and inward temptations which still cleave to us are, doubtless, a lighter evil and a less danger than elation and self-confidence. We do not make advances in zeal, fervour, devotion, charity, self-denial; and we complain of it. Of whom do we complain? Not of God, for He gives more grace than we ever take and use; not of Satan, for that would be to accuse our probation; not of sin, for it is an abstraction, and has no personal existence; not of ourselves, because we are the supposed complainants. What, then, is our complaint? It is, that we are what we are. But complaints will not make us better; they will not increase our faith, deepen our humility, quicken our hope, break our pride; for no man ever yet became humble only by complaining; and the one and only cure which can break our pride would also take away our complaints; and that is, true humility, and a perfect conformity to the will of God; enduring and rejoicing to be just as He would have us; and believing that whatsoever messenger of Satan buffet us, His grace is sufficient for our stay. This, then, is a direct answer for all sincere minds. Persevere in patience and obedience, and cast “all your care upon Him.” “Take no 147thought for the morrow.” “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Get the day well over and done with an upright and open heart, and leave tomorrow and growth to Him who alone “giveth the increase.” Do not be cast down because you feel no religious emotions,—such as warmth of thankfulness and kindling of love to God, peace, delight in prayer, and the like. This is very blessed, when God sees good to give it; but there is something better for us, and more pleasing to Him; and that is, persevering obedience, patience in prayer and praise, under discouragements, infirmity, and darkness, even as if we were forsaken. He loves our love, but He loves our persevering trust above all our sensible emotions. The deepest teachers in this high wisdom bid all sincere Christians to be thankful when they are led rather by this path of the Cross, though they seem to cleave painfully to its rugged ways, than by the smoother and brighter avenues of His kingdom. Leave all this in His hand. The cup and the baptism are of His sole dispensing. If we choose, it may be, we shall even by choosing do amiss.

3. But perhaps it will be said again, “This would be all very well, if I were not conscious of positive faults, and sometimes even of falling back into those of which I have repented. It is not 148only that I do not advance in devotion, but I am still in ‘the dust of death:’ positive evils are alive within me, and I often see them even more active than before.” Now this may be, and will be true, if we give over to watch, and to obey the light of conscience. But, speaking still to sincere minds, it may be said, that we are no sure judges of this matter. A growing consciousness of sin is no certain sign of growing sinfulness; but, on the contrary, a probable sign of growing sanctification: as sinfulness grows, insensibility increases; as the soul is sanctified, its keen discernment of sin is strengthened and enlarged. At first sight, then, it is more probable that the very cause of complaint ought to be a cause of encouragement. For let us bear in mind that the same Will which, in wisdom, has ordained the law of slow growth for our spiritual life, has also, in love, ordained a slow perception of our sinfulness. Some have ventured to pray without limitation and without fear, that God would shew them their inward sinfulness as He sees it: a prayer well intended, but withal very rash. It shews how little we know of the hatefulness of sin in the sight of God; how faint a consciousness we have of our own deformity. If such a prayer were granted, if we could see ourselves as an object of sight in all the leprosy and death of our sin, we should perhaps 149perish in despair. Nothing but a divine eye, or an eye pure from sin, can look without fear and peril upon such a vision of horror as a soul fallen from God. Our faith, hope, and love, are so feeble, that a revelation of what we are, would perhaps drive us to the end of Judas, and give us our portion with him in “his own place.” It would seem incredible to believe, impossible to hope in forgiveness, and fear would cast out love. Now, in this there is great and tender compassion; it is only little by little, in measure and gentle degrees, that He reveals to us what we are in His eyes; and even that He makes known by giving us His grace, so that we see what we are as we cease so to be. We see ourselves in reflection, cast behind us, as the reality passes away; we discern what we were by becoming what we are. Of what we were, and of what we see, we have indeed a consciousness by way of recollection; but what we are, by God’s mercy to us, is never fully realised. Sickness is full of self, but health has no self-contemplation. Therefore, let it be supposed that we do far more clearly see, far more keenly feel our sinfulness; that is not a proof that we are more sinful, no, nor that we are still as sinful as before; but rather that an awakened discernment, and an intenser hatred of evil issuing from a real endowment of divine grace, has made us perceive with a truer 150 and fuller sense the sins which once were our own.

This will be clearer by examples. What reveals our pride, and makes us hate it, but the beginnings of humility? What makes anger a torment, but the love of meekness? What makes self-indulgence contemptible, but a desire to suffer hardship? What makes want of love, or coldness in prayer, an affliction, but a sense of the blessedness of God’s presence? What makes the thought of declension, or standing still, or cleaving to the dust, to be a misery and a sorrow, but the aspiration of a heart quickened with the spirit of perseverance, and panting to press onward to the face of God? This is the secret way in which the presence of God, sanctifying the soul in man, reveals Itself; not by direct self-manifestation, but by its effects. As in sight and hearing: we perceive external objects, and not our own faculties: the eye does not see itself, but lights and shades; the ear does not hear itself, but harmonies and discords; still less can the eye or ear perceive the true percipient within, which is ourselves. So is it with the Holy Spirit of God. He reveals all things besides, while He conceals Himself. He reveals past sins of thought, word, and deed: the unholiness of childhood, youth, and after years; present sinfulness of imagination, heart, and 151will; pride, hardness, impurity, impatience, sloth, softness, anger; want of zeal, thankfulness, love, and devotion: all these He sets before the soul in clear array. But He hides meekness, gentleness, self-mistrust, self-contempt, charity, sorrow for sin, self-accusation, and the like: these things are most hidden from those who have them in the largest measures. They are seen of angels, confessed by men; but unknown, disbelieved by those in whom they dwell; the gift of humility by itself alone conceals them all: so that such persons are sure to think themselves to be the least advanced, who, in truth, are most advanced; as they are ever the first who believe themselves to be the last. Speaking, then, still of sincere Christians, it may be said that these complaints of conscious and abiding faults, so long as they are not willingly indulged, and this increased sense of inward sinfulness, is no sign of cleaving to the dust; but rather that God in love is drawing them on. He is making known to them the fall as it exists in their inmost life, in prelude to making them conscious partakers of the bliss for which they are already unconsciously being prepared.

But as the whole of this subject is so nearly akin to the dangers of a self-contemplative state, the surest and best remedy for such complaints will be found in practical rules; of which the 152two following may, by God’s blessing, be found useful.

1. The first is, to reduce our self-examination to definite points. It is a hurtful mistake to give way to feelings which have no definite and ascertained foundation; by which I mean, general feelings of dissatisfaction with our state; vague discomfort at what we have been, or still are; excited emotions as to our coldness, deadness, insensibility, and so on. Like sweeping confessions, these are of little use, spring from no real self-knowledge, and issue in no real amendment. The only feelings which are good and trustworthy are those which arise upon definite and certain facts, either of our past life or of our present consciousness. These are penitential; the others seldom or never really are. For repentance is sorrow founded on the consciousness of distinct acts of sin. The best and safest course, then, is to confine our self-examination, at least for awhile, to particular points; and for a time to cast aside all other feelings and thoughts about ourselves. Now the proper subjects of repentance and confession are chiefly these: definite acts of sin, whether in deed, in word, or in thought, in which there has been a full and deliberate consent of the will. It is this consent which constitutes the act; the form of it is indifferent. 153Whether it issue in deed or in word is all one; and whether it issue outwardly or be suppressed within, as in thought, yet if the will deliberately consent, it is all the same. Our will is our moral nature, as our life is our natural being. All circumstances or consequences are only the modes of its acting, or the forms of its manifestation. A proud act, a proud word, or a proud thought, deliberately indulged, all alike make us guilty of pride, though not in equal degrees. It is bad to harbour the thought, worse to indulge it in word, and worst of all in act; but these differ not in kind, but only in degree. This applies equally to every kind of sin, If we can trace any of these in ourselves, they are tokens of cleaving to the dust, and subjects worthy of sorrow. But it is vague and useless to complain generally, that we are proud, and the like; for that really, in the end, only leads us away from specific self-examination and specific repentance. But besides these three degrees of sin, there is still another over which we must watch, and that is, wrong feelings indulged for any length of time. It is impossible to fix: a measure of time, by hours or minutes; for the acts of our moral nature cannot be told upon a dial. But if we suffer these feelings to dwell in us long enough for us to reflect upon them, they become deliberate, and so tend to become habitual. As 154 such they are a direct resistance to the Spirit of love, joy, and peace; and, therefore, become actual sins and specific matter of repentance. Now if we can trace in ourselves the increase of these indulged feelings in frequency, duration, or power, we may justly fear that we are not advancing. But if not, then let all other feelings of fear, discouragement, and sadness, be cast away as temptations against faith, hope, and love, the three great gifts of the Holy Spirit,—the three fountains of obedience and perseverance. There is an unclean Spirit of sadness, which is a special enemy of Christians; and the most subtil of all, because so like an angel of light. It is he that comes and personates the angel of repentance, to lead us into deeps, where we may “be swallowed up of overmuch sorrow.”⁷²⁷²   2 Cor. ii. 11. This is “the sorrow that worketh death;”⁷³⁷³   2 Cor. vii. 10. but “we are not ignorant of his devices.”

2. And, then, having reduced our self-examination to definite points, let us, from the sins we have so detected, choose out some one against which to direct our chief watchfulness and strength. Whatever be our besetting sin, let us take that; be it our worst, or our oldest, or the sin we oftenest commit. With that for awhile let our whole contest lie. As the king of Syria commanded 155the captains of his chariots, “Fight with neither small nor great, but only with the king of Israel;”⁷⁴⁷⁴   1 Kings xxii. 31. so let us turn the whole of our care, watchfulness, and recollection, upon that one. The benefit of such a rule is, that it strengthens our self-discipline, by bringing it all to bear at once upon one point. Our chief danger is vagueness, and the weakness of wandering up and down without aim, plan, or perseverance. In this way we shall overcome no sin. Like an army making scattered and unsupported attacks over the whole seat of war, instead of concentrating its strength, by solidity and unity of force, for some decisive stroke; so when people try to overcome all their sins at once, they are overcome themselves by each in turn. And, further: the self-discipline required to conquer one sin is as full and as complete as if we were engaged against the whole array. The very same habits of mind are all called into action, and a twofold good is the result; first, that while we are consciously engaged only with one, we really are, at the same time, more effectively keeping down the rest; and next, that when one is mastered, the whole principle of self-discipline has gained the victory over the whole principle of sin. In conquering one, we have virtually conquered all. In taking the king, we 156have scattered all the host. Great conversions even of hardened sinners have been wrought by the observance of a single rule. We read of some whose whole change of life began by saying once a-day, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” or by kissing the ground every day, and saying, “Tomorrow I may be dead;” or by coming to a friend or spiritual guide every time they committed some one particular sin; all the rest being for a time left without discipline, and seemingly, because really it could not be, without care. If, then, people would take selfishness, or personal vanity, or impatience in argument, or bitter words against others, or indulged envy, or any sin of the senses or of the thoughts, or the like, and whensoever they commit it, make it known to some one whom they may choose, they would find, by God’s grace, that their whole religious life would put off the moody, complaining, disheartening emotions which overcloud their faith, and become definite, practical, and cheerful. We should then have a mark by which to know the ebb and flow of the tide; and we should leave no room for temptations, which when they sadden our hearts, shake our filial trust in God.

Of course in giving these two rules so barely and nakedly, I leave to be understood all that belongs to the higher sources of help and strength. 157 I suppose that people of sincere minds, such as I have spoken of, will make these self-examinations and confessions on their knees, and that they will not resolve with any confidence in their own power, but will offer their resolutions with special prayers for aid, at some solemn time, as in the Holy Communion, to God. Our only hope, not only of advancement in the spiritual life, but of perseverance and of stedfastness, is in fellowship with Him. In our ignorance we know not what is best for us. “There be many that say, Who will shew us any good?”⁷⁵⁷⁵   Ps. iv. 6. But one thing we do certainly know to be good: “It is good for me to hold me fast by God;”⁷⁶⁷⁶   Ps. lxxiii. 27, Psalter in Book of Common Prayer. and then nothing can fail. Whatsoever be our trial, we know that “going through this vale of misery, we may use it for a well,” whereon at noon, in the burden of the day, as at Sychar, we may sit and rest with our Lord; and that, by His presence and help, we shall “go from strength to strength, till we appear every one of us before” His face in Zion. For He is “the way” foretold by the prophets: “Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”⁷⁷⁷⁷   Isaiah xxx. 21. 158For “an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.”⁷⁸⁷⁸   Isaiah xxxv. 8.