The Narrow Way by Sunday School Times

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 8, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 10.

The Narrow Way

By Sunday School Times

BUT was there ever a way so roomy, so magnificently spacious? The largest souls that ever lived have found it more than ample for all their going. What room there is in it perpendicularly, straight up! To a man who was walking in it, and whom it had led into much outward constraint, they said, "Your room is very narrow." "Aye," he answered, "but it is very high." It has a clear, unobstructed view of the sky. Over the broad way are the overarching trees of lust or desire or intrigue or ambition or self. You get only broken glimpses of the heavens there. For days and months and years you do not see them at all, and clear and whole you never do see them. But so long as the soul is really in the narrow way, the path of consecration, of love, of service, there is nothing that interrupts the upward look. In fact, the narrower the path, the farther the reach and the clearer the vision. So deep amidst cañons, so constricted, seems our life, so shut in and shut out, that we feel as if we were down at the bottom of a well. And down at the bottom of that well the stars come out. It is a telescope, and shuts off the confusing earthlights, allowing only the celestial lamps themselves to shine in. What glimpses of heaven have been caught in this "Royal Gorge" of the narrow way! It was here that Bunyan got his vision of the pilgrim on his journey heavenward. Here Milton soared to the heights of his great argument. To Luther, driven in, and almost distracted by the countless oppositions and disasters of his struggle for the soul's liberation, it was given here to look up and see the invisible pillars of God's grace and power which uphold the heaven. Hemmed in by the rocky coast and unquiet waves of Patmos, here John beheld the New Jerusalem. There are no such visions in the broad way; it is all one glare of conflicting lights and baffling mists. You never suspect that the stars are above it. There is no upward reach.—Sunday School Times.