March 6
There is Easy Going in Bypath Meadow
In the Hour of Silence"Cursed be the man . . . whose heart departeth from the Lord,"—Jeremiah 17:5.
HOW numerous are the points of departure from God! Directly opposite experiences and circumstances may prove equally disastrous to my truest and inmost being: success and misfortune; the mind and the body; company and solitude; self-pleasing and self-denial. Each day, each minute, brings with it its own allurements to a lower plane. It reminds me of the poet's couplet—
"And every tuft of broom gives life To plaided warrior armed for strife."
And how plausible and specious the points of departure are! The heart is deceitful above all things, Jeremiah goes on; it has a hundred arguments to urge in favour of yielding to the temptation. Does not Bypath Meadow always seem to lie close by the King's Highway? Does it not promise always the easiest going? And yet despair and death are there.
For how terribly momentous and fatal the points of departure are! More and more they diverge from the good land which the Lord our God careth for, and from the pilgrim road to the Celestial City. Deeper and deeper they plunge into ravines and forests and quagmires—a salt land and not inhabited. Until the conscience is seared. Until the heart is hopeless. Until faith is gone and honour dies. Until the man is lost.
O God, preserve my feet in Thy good ways of peace! O God, have mercy on me who have wandered far, and restore me to the paths of righteousness, for Thy Name's sake!