---

"The way of Thy commandments." To many people not an attractive road! It is suggestive of fences, and trespassing boards, of curbs and restraints. "The way of Thy commandments." Through the Christian Scriptures the way becomes steeper and more uninviting to the natural man as the centuries move along. The gradient of the moral ideal becomes increasingly precipitous. You may get up the lower and earlier slopes, but when you get to Amos and Hoses and Isaiah the track becomes exceeding steep, until when you get to the Lord Himself the radiant ideal lifts itself sheer and clear as the Matterhorn. "I looked then after Christian to see him go up the hill, where I perceived he fell from running to going, and from going to clambering upon his hands and his knees because of the steepness of the place." Yes, the way becomes very steep as we draw near the Lord! Take the teachings of our Lord, map out the way of His commandments, make a contour map of the road, and you will find that you are face to face with a shuddering ascent, an ascent so stiff and steep that some declare it to be the dream of a visionary, the moral prospectus of a fanatic, proclaiming imperatives which are unpractical and impracticable. The moral ideal of Jesus is just overwhelming; so much so, that many do with it as the Swiss did in the olden times with the Alps, build their houses with their backs to the towering heights, and they face the lowlands of human expediency and moral commonplace. Now, let me remind you that the word "heart" has a much wealthier significance than we commonly attach to it to-day. The symbolic significance of the word in our own day is confined almost exclusively to the emotions. If we say that a man has a big heart we do not refer to the range of his thought, but to the quality of his sympathies. If we say that a man has no "heart" we mean that the channels of feeling are as dry as a river-bed in time of drought. Nay, we even bring the brain and the heart into distinct and isolated positions. We say that a man has not very much brain, but that he has a very big heart. Now all these modern distinctions must be laid aside when we seek the interpretation of the Word of God. I am not aware that the word "brain" or "brains" ever occurs in the Bible. According to the primitive physiology of those times the heart was the mysterious seat of thought as well as of feeling. The heart was "the seat of man's collective energies, the very focus of his personal life." Moral speed will come with spiritual enlargement. "I will run . . . when Thou shalt enlarge my heart." When Thou shalt enlarge my thought. Many of us go slowly because we do not see far. There is no long range of purpose in our eyes, and therefore our feet are sluggish. Our imaginations are not peopled with the glories of attainment, and therefore there is no eager haste in our steps. Napoleon got his men over the Alps by richly sharing with them the promises and purposes of the campaign. Their eyes were filled with the resplendent riches of Italian cities even while they were contending with the stupendous obstacles of the trackless wastes of snow. Their thoughts included the sunny Italian plains as well as the grimness of the immediate toil, and that forward-cast of the eyes gave strength and inspiration to their labours. "I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou shalt enlarge my" thought, when my mind is filled with Thy blessed purposes, when even now the eyes of my imagination rove over the celestial fields, and when even now I feel something of the warmth and liberty of the coming noon. The ultimate purpose is not obscure. "All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you." "We have the mind of Christ." Our minds may be expanded to take in the glorious purpose, and eyes that are held in that vision will most assuredly communicate buoyancy and speed to the feet. Look at the Apostle Paul. The far-off goal was always flinging its kindly ray upon the immediate task. Aye, that is the enlarged mind, which in its inclusive range gives hospitality to the ultimate, and brings the glory of the far-away to relieve the burdensomeness of the present task. That's the way to get over the hill, and to get over it at a run! What is the philosophy of it? It is this. Small and exclusive thinking is like a closed and tiny room, in which the inmates become asphyxiated, and reduced to lassitude and languor. Large thinking oxygenates the powers, it lets in the vitalizing wind from the far-stretching moors of truth, all the faculties are toned and braced into strenuousness, and they can move in difficult ways with ease. It may be, too, that further enlargements are required before the desired speed is obtained. "I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou shalt enlarge my motions." The mill will not work if the mill-race is empty! The weakness of many a life is explained by the poverty of its emotions; the emotional energy is only that of a reduced and languid stream, and there is no power to run the mill. There are lives that are seemingly destitute of any great capacity to be deeply stirred. Their storms are only "storms in a tea-cup"; they have nothing of the terrific movement of the disturbed sea. They cannot be moved into mighty indignation like the Apostle Paul; "who is made to stumble and I burn not?" They cannot be constrained into passionate love;" I could wish that myself were separated from Christ for my brethren." They cannot be upheaved by sullen sorrow, nor made to dance in ecstatic joy. Now see the consequence. We must not expect much speed where there is little feeling. The insensitive are not the strenuous, rather are they the victims of sluggishness and sleep. The man who has no emotional wealth will never be found among the pioneer runners in the moral way. He requires enlargement before he can run! And this very enlargement is provided for us in the grace of God. "I will take away the stony heart and I will give thee a heart of flesh." That miracle has been performed in innumerable lives. Love has been born where indifference reigned. And so it is also with the third primary element in the contents of the heart, the factor of the will. Many of us crawl and faint in the paths of the moral ideal because our wills are weak and irresolute. We can run for a while, but we fail in the "long run." We are good for a hundred yards, but we are spent at the mile. We begin well, but the end is very near. Our wills are something like the batteries of those portable electric night-lights, good for so many flashes, and good for nothing more. We have volitional spasms, succeeded by a forceless lethargy. We shall "run the way" of His commandments when God shall enlarge our wills. And that is just one of the wonderful resources of grace. "It is God that worketh in you to will," to enlarge your will, to fill it with all needful power, to make it adequate to the attainment of the far-off goal. We shall be "strengthened with all might by His Spirit in the inner man," and "our sufficiency" shall be "of God."

(J. H. Jowett, M. A.)

---

---

KJV: I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.

WEB: I run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free. HEY