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1. Our life is an education; not a mere probation, or trial of what we are to be and to do, but a training of our lives and characters into as great likeness as is possible to the perfect life and character of God, revealed to us in Christ. It is a great truth, helping us to see many things in their true light; above all, helping us to understand the meaning of our life, and its relation to the will of God. The human father is too often but a deceiving type through which to try to understand the Divine Father. Still, even those who have had least to thank their earthly parents for should be able to rise to the idea, however imperfect, of a wise, righteous, unselfish fatherhood, and to picture to themselves a man who should show these qualities in his relation to his children. And thinking of such an one, could you think of him as content that they should simply go their own way, seek their own pleasure, indulge their own whims, let loose their own tempers and desires, and own no authority, and recognise no purpose in life, and believe in no will higher, more experienced, more just than their own? All that is truest and most useful in the discipline and training which an earthly father, who knows his relation to his family and is faithful to it, bestows on his children, is based on something that is eternal in the heavens, that exists as the true rule of fatherhood in the mind of God the Father. Is it not involved in the very idea that God is our Father that there should be in His mind a design for each of us? And is it not inseparable from such a design that there should be much in it that is not naturally easy and pleasant? The pain has been inevitable because the true end of life has been kept in view, above all temporary and petty objects that lie in the way to that end. The end could not be reached by one ignorant, untrained, undisciplined, unaccustomed to obey or to learn. In the training for the higher life it is not all plain and smooth. Least of all is it so at the beginning. This is the meaning of the "strait gate" and the "narrow way" that "lead to life." They are strait and narrow, because they lead to life, because they lead us on to a definite purpose of God for us that is not laid down at random, not shaped by chance, but is the result of love and foresight, and must, like all things that are high and good, be worked out not carelessly and easily, but with patience and thought and toil. 2. If we believe in this Divine purpose of our life, if we believe that the object of it is to train us into more perfect union with our Father, to educate us to fill our place as His children in His family, surely it will be our wisdom to try to learn what it is and to fulfil it. How are we to do this? Not through self-will; of that we may be sure. 3. There are two great errors into which those who are failing of God's plan may have fallen, or be falling. There is the error of being self-confident, impatient of all authority, advice, control, even of such control (a parent's, for instance) as is one of God's own ordinances, one of the abiding bonds of human life, which cannot be broken without the family or the society in which it is broken suffering loss, and at last dissolution. And there is the error of yielding absolutely to some authority (other than a natural authority) to which you submit your own reason and conscience, and for which you resign your own responsibility. We should beware of either of these errors. And lest we fall into them, we should use our reason and our conscience diligently in striving to find out the will of God for us; and if ever it seems hard to find, then there is the refuge of work and of prayer to resort to, until the dawn of light and peace. 4. It is a great thing to trust God; to have faith in Him and in His goodwill and loving purpose for us, really to believe that we are children in His family, and scholars in His school Such faith is the root of strength, hope, patience and courage in human life.

(R. H. Story, D.D.)

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KJV: Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.

WEB: Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am Yahweh your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way that you should go.