'Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed
thereto according to Thy word.'--PSALM cxix. 9.
There are many questions about the future with which it is natural for
you young people to occupy yourselves; but I am afraid that the most of
you ask more anxiously 'How shall I _make_ my way?' than 'How shall I
_cleanse_ it?' It is needful carefully to ponder the questions: 'How
shall I get on in the world--be happy, fortunate?' and the like, and I
suppose that that is the consideration which presses with special force
upon a great many of you. Now I want you to think of another question:
'How shall I _cleanse_ my way?' For purity is the best thing; and to be
good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other.
So my object is just to try and urge upon my dear young friends before
me the serious consideration for a while of this grave question of my
text, and the answers which are given to it.
If I can get you once to be smitten with a passion for purity, all but
everything is gained. But I shall not be content if even that is the
issue of my pleading with you now, for I want to have you all
Christians. And that is why I have asked you to listen to what I have to
say to you on this occasion.
I. So, first, we have here the great practical problem for life:
'Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?' Or, in other words,
'How may I live a pure and a noble life?'
It is a question, of course, for everybody: it is _the_ question for
everybody, but it is more especially one for you young people. And I
wish to urge it upon you for two or three reasons, which I very briefly
specify.
First, I desire to press upon you this question, because, as I have
said, you are under special temptations not to ask it. There are so many
other points in your future unresolved, that you are only too apt to put
aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be
of more pressing and immediate importance. And you have the other
temptation, common to us all, but especially attending you as young
people, of living without any plan of life at all. The sin and the
misery of half the world are that they live from hand to mouth, knowing
why they do each single action at the moment, but never looking a dozen
inches beyond their noses to see where all the actions taken together
tend; and so being just like weathercocks, whirled round by every wind
of temptation that comes to them. If they are good or pure they are so
by accident, by impulse, or because they have never been tempted. They
have no definite plan or theory of life which they could put into words
if anybody asked them on what principles, and for what end, and towards
what objects they were living. And as everybody is tempted into such an
unreflecting way of life, so you especially are tempted to it, because
at your age judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and
passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and
it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the
new joys that are flooding in upon you. And therefore I want you to stop
and for a moment think whether you have any plan of life that bears
being put into words, whether you can tell God and your own consciences
what you are living for.
And I urge this question upon you for another reason--because it is
worth while for _you_ to ask it. For you have still the prerogative that
some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your life's course
is to take. The path that you are going to tread lies all unmarked out
across the plain of life. You may be pretty nearly what you like. Life
is before you, with great blessed possibilities; it is behind some of
us. All the long years which you may probably have are all plastic in
your hands yet; they are moulded into a rigid shape for men like me. We
have made our beds, and we must lie on them. You have your life in your
own hands; therefore, I beseech you, while you have not to ask this
question with the bitter meaning with which old men that have made their
paths, and made them filthy, have to ask it--'How shall an _old_ man
cleanse his way, and get rid of the filth?'--consider how you may secure
that your way in the untrodden future shall be clean, and do not rest
till you get an answer.
And I press it upon you for another reason, because you have special
temptations to make your ways unclean. It is a fearful ordeal that every
young man and woman has to face, as he or she steps across the dividing
boundary between childhood and youth, when parental authority is
weakened, and the leading-strings are loosened, and the young swimmer is
as it were cut away from the buoys, and has to battle with the waves
alone. There are hundreds of young men in Manchester, there are many of
them here now, who have come up into this great city from quiet country
homes where they were shielded by the safeguards of a father's and a
mother's love and care, and have been flung into this place, with its
every street swarming with temptation, and companions on the benches of
the university, at the desks, in the warehouses, and the workshops,
leading them away into evil and teaching them the devil's
alphabet--young men with their evenings vacant and with no home. Am I
speaking to any such standing in slippery places? Oh, my young friend!
there is nothing in all these temptations, the fascinations of which you
are beginning to find out, there is nothing in them all worth soiling
your fingers for; there is nothing in them all that will pay you for the
loss of your innocence. There is nothing in them all except a fair
outside with poison at the core. You see the 'primrose path'; you do not
see, to use Shakespeare's solemn words, 'the everlasting burnings' to
which it leads. And so I plead with you all, young men and women, to lay
this question to heart; and I beseech you to credit me when I say to you
that you have not yet touched the gravest and the most pressing problem
of life unless you have asked yourselves in a serious mood of deep
reflection, 'Wherewithal shall I cleanse my way?'
II. So much for the first point to which I ask your attention. Now,
secondly, look at this answer, which tells us that we can only make our
way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. 'By taking heed
thereto.'
That seems a very plain, simple, common-sense answer. 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 anything was amiss? I remember once seeing a bit of
an old Roman road; the lava blocks were there, but for want of care,
here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven
them apart; there they were 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.
And so, at first sight, my text simply seems to preach the plain truth:
if you want to keep your road right, look after it. But if you look at
your Bibles, you will see that the word 'thereto' is a supplement, and
that all that the Psalmist really says is 'by taking heed.' And perhaps
it is to himself rather than to his 'way' that a man is exhorted to
'take heed.' 'Take heed to thyself' is the only condition of a pure and
noble life.
That such a condition is necessary, will appear very plain from two
considerations. First, it is clear that there must be constant
watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have
got into And it is also plain, if we consider what sort of creatures we
are that have got into it.
First, it is plain if we consider what sort of a world this is that we
have got into. It is a world a great deal fuller of inducements to do
wrong than of inducements to do right; a world in which there are a
great many bad things that have a deceptive appearance of pleasure; a
great many circumstances in which it seems far easier to follow the
worse than to follow the better course. And so, unless a man has learned
the great art of saying 'No!' 'So did not I because of the fear of the
Lord'; he will come to rack and ruin without a doubt. There are more
things round about you that will tempt you downwards than will draw you
upwards, and your only security is constant watchfulness. As George
Herbert says:--
'Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw.'
And that is what will happen to you, as sure as you are living, in spite
of all your good resolutions, unless you back up those resolutions with
perpetual jealous watchfulness over yourselves. 'Keep thy heart with all
diligence.'
And the same lesson is pealed out to us if we consider what sort of
creatures we are that have got into this world all full of wickedness.
We are creatures evidently made for self-government. Our whole nature is
like a monarchy. There are things in each of us that are never meant to
rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions,
desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a
man, and there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended
to be supreme and sovereign: the reason, the conscience, the will.
There is a deal of pestilent talk which one sometimes hears, amongst
young men especially, about 'following nature.' Yes! I say, 'Follow
nature!' and nature says, 'Let the man govern the animal!' and 'Do not
set beggars on horseback,' nor allow your passions to guide you, but
keep a tight hand on them, suppress them, scourge them, rule them by
your reason, by your conscience, and by your will.
Suppose a man were to say about a steamship, 'The structure of this
vessel shows that it is meant that we should get a roaring fire up in
the furnaces, and set the engines going at full speed, and let her go as
she will.' Would he not have left out of account that there was a
steering apparatus, which was as plainly meant to guide as are the
engines to drive? What are the rudder and the wheel for?--do they not
imply a pilot? and is not the make of our souls as plainly suggestive of
subordination and control? Doth not nature itself teach you that you do
not follow, but outrage, nature, when you let your passions rule, and
that you only then follow nature when you bow the whole man under the
dominion of the conscience, and when conscience stands waiting for the
voice of God?
'Unless above himself he can erect
Himself, how mean a thing is man!'
You are called upon by the very world that you have come into, and by
the very sort of person that you yourself are, to exercise that
perpetual watchfulness which is the only condition of cleansing your
way. There must be a strong guard on the frontier, which shall examine
all the thoughts and purposes and desires that would pass out, and all
the temptations and seductions that would pass in; and take care that
none shall pass which cannot bring the King's warrant, 'Keep thy heart
with diligence.' 'Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By
taking heed thereto.'
III. This constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by
God's Word. 'Taking heed thereto, according to Thy word.'
The guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions
from headquarters, and not choose and decide according to their own
phantasy, but according to the King's orders. Or to use another
metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern,
and the lantern and light is the Word of God.
That brings me to say, and only in a word or two, how inadequate for the
task of regulating our own lives our own watchfulness is. Conscience is
the captain of the guard, and there is only one judgment in which
conscience is always and infallibly right, and that is when it says, 'It
is right to do right; and it is wrong to do wrong.' But when you begin
to ask conscience, 'And, pray, what _is_ right and what _is_ wrong?' it
is by no means invariably to be trusted; for you can educate conscience
up or down to almost anything; and you can warp conscience, and you can
bribe conscience, and you can stifle conscience. And so it is not enough
that we should exercise the most watchful care over our course, and
decide upon the right and the wrong of it by our own judgments; we may
be fearfully wrong notwithstanding it all. It is not enough for a man to
have a good watch in his pocket unless now and then he can get Greenwich
time by which he can set it, and unless that has been secured by taking
an observation of the sun. And so you cannot trust to anything in
yourselves for the guidance of your own way or for the determination of
your duty, but you must look to that higher Wisdom that has condescended
to speak to us, and give us in this Book the revelation of its will. Men
rebel against the moral law of the Bible, and speak of it as if it were
a restraint and a sharp taskmaster. Ah, no! It is one of the greatest
tokens of God's infinite love to us that He has not left us to grope our
way amidst the illusions of our own judgments, and the questionable
shapes of human conceptions of right and wrong, but that He has declared
to us His own character for the standard of all perfection, and given us
in the human life of the Son of His love the all-sufficient pattern for
every life.
So I need not dwell at any length upon the thought that in that word of
God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is
the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guide. A guide of conduct
must be plain--and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about
the doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality. A guide
of conduct must be decisive--and there is no faltering in the utterance
of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of
application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance--and
the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a
measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute
details, but deals with large principles. The morality of the Gospel, if
I may so say, is a morality of centres, not of circumferences; of
germinal principles, not of special prescriptions. A guide for morals
must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations
and centuries to work into men's consciences, and to work out in men's
practice, _a portion_ of the morality of that Book. People tell us that
Christianity is worn out. Ah! it will not be worn out until all its
moral teaching has become part of the practice of the world, and that
will not be for a year or two! The men that care least about Christian
doctrines are foremost to admit that the Sermon on the Mount is the
noblest code of morality that has ever been promulgated. If the world
kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the
Millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine-hundredths of all
the sorrow, of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. Here is the
guide for you, and if you take it you will not err.
My dear young friend! did you ever try to measure one day's actions by
the standard of this Book? Let me press upon you this: Cultivate the
habit--the habit of bringing all that you do side by side with this
light; as a scholar in some school of art will take his feeble copy, and
hold it by the side of the masterpiece, and compare line for line, and
tint for tint. Take your life, and put it by the side of the Great Life,
and you will begin to find out how 'according to Thy word' is the only
standard by which to set your lives.
IV. And now I have one last thing to say. All this can only be done
effectually if you are a Christian. My psalm does not go to the bottom;
it goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author
admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a
weary business. It is no use to tell a man, 'Guard yourself, guard
yourself,' nor even to tell him, 'Guard yourself according to God's
word,' if God's word is only a _law_.
The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own
watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same, and so there
may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue
the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. You want a power outside
of you to steady you. The only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to
have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and
pull at that. You get that eternal guard and fixed point by which to
hold in Jesus Christ, the dear Son of God's love, who has died for you.
You want another motive to be brought to bear upon your conduct, and
upon your convictions and your will mightier than any that now influence
them; and you get that if you will yield yourself to the love that has
come down from heaven to save you, and says to you, 'If you love Me,
keep My commandments.' You want for keeping yourself and cleansing your
way reinforcements to your own inward vigour, and you will get these if
you will trust to Jesus Christ, who will breathe into you the Spirit of
His own life, which will make you 'free from the law of sin and death.'
You want, if your path is to be cleansed--the youngest of you, the most
tenderly nurtured, the purest, the most innocent wants--forgiveness for
a past path, which is in some measure stained and foul, as well as
strength for the future, to deliver you from the dreadful influence of
the habit of evil. And you get all these, dear friends! in the blood of
Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin.
So, standing as you do in the place where two ways meet, and with your
choice yet in your power, I beseech you, turn away from the broad, easy
road that slopes pleasantly downwards, and choose the narrow, steep path
that climbs. Better rocks than mud, better the painful life of
self-restraint and self-denial than the life of pleasing self.
Oh! choose the better portion, choose Christ for your Leader, your Law,
your Lord! Trust yourselves to that great sacrifice which He made on the
Cross, that all the past for you may be cleansed, and the future may be
swept clear; and, so trusting, be sure He will be with you, to keep you
and to guide you into the path which His own hand has raised above the
filth of the world; the path of holiness, along which you may walk with
feet and garments unstained till you come to Zion, 'with songs and
everlasting joy upon your heads,' and bless Him there for all the way by
which He led you home.