to one’s own will.  Entrance is not of compulsion, but of choice.  Life and death are set before the sinner’s eyes.  The Bread of Life and the Water of Life are placed within his reach.  The Lord calls, saying:  “Why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread; and your labor for that which satisfieth not?  Come ye to the waters:  and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”

But some may ask:  “What is it to enter in at the narrow gate, and how is the sinner to know when he is entering?” I answer that when the sinner obeys God’s holy truth from the heart he is then entering in by the narrow gate.  His obedience must be to God’s Word, not to man’s word.  Obedience to man’s word takes man through the wide gate into the broad road that leads to destruction.  Repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are the two steps that take us in spirit through the narrow gate.  But these two acts and exercises of the mind and heart mean immensely more than is generally imagined.  Many seem to think that repentance means no more than simply to confess that one is a sinner in a sort of general way, and that faith is simply a confessed belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.  But God’s Word teaches far otherwise.  I will here quote some of our Lord’s sayings which apply to repentance:  “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  This points to repentance.  Again:  “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”  Self-denial is repentance; and every true penitent goes through the narrow gate with the cross on his shoulder, because the cross symbolizes the divine truth upon which the love of self and the love of the world is crucified.  I am not afraid to repeat in your ears the words of Jesus.  He has left them on record, that all who will heed them in the meek and teachable spirit of a little child may be lifted out of the mire and filth and darkness of a sinful life into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

If salvation is anything it is everything.  This world, with all its fleeting show and short-lived pleasures, is nothing in the comparison.  Salvation, or the life to which the narrow way conducts us, is so glorious, so ineffably exalted above the loftiest conceptions of the human mind, that the prophet Isaiah could justly say:  “Since the beginning of the world none have heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, besides thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.”  Brethren, friends, we know not fully what is prepared for all who wait upon the Lord, that is, who do his will.  But Jesus tells us that he is gone to prepare a place for us, and that he will come again and receive us to himself, that where he is there we may be also.  We shall enter into his joy, the joy of the Lord.  He will come to every one of us at death.  He will then raise our redeemed souls into the life of heavenly