power to choose what he likes and to reject what he does not like.
Even beasts, and birds, and reptiles do the same. They choose and
appropriate the foods they like. They mate together according to the
same free will, which is their love. Birds select their roosting
places, and construct their nests where and how they will. "Foxes have
holes;" but this is so because God first made the caverns in the
rocks, and the foxes afterward chose them for their habitations. Every
unit in the whole animate world, not only chooses the place of its
abode, but also the modes and means of its subsistence. Even plants in
a state of nature conform to this general law. Shall man, born to
glorify God and enjoy him forever, be cut short in the free exercise
of his will? I cannot believe it. But I do believe that the brightest
saint in heaven is where he is because it was first his will to go
there; and being there, it is forever his will to stay.

I am not ignorant of the arguments advanced by the other side. Many
good, but, I believe misguided men, hold the opinion that man is so
depraved as to his will, so lost to all sense and understanding of
what is good, that he is wholly incapable of choosing the right and
shunning the wrong. But I believe the Lord knows just what man can do
and what man cannot do. And it is a thing self-evident to my mind that
Goodness and Wisdom has never yet commanded man to do anything that is
out of man's power to do.

Let us grant that man is dead in trespasses and sins, as Paul
represents him. But does not Jesus say: "My words are spirit and they
are life"? The Lord's words have LIFE in them; and if man will but
hear them with his natural ear, as you now hear me speak, and then be
not a forgetful hearer, but be a doer of the Word; this man shall be
blessed in his deed; and soon be filled with the new life of God.

The text opens in these words: "Enter ye in at the narrow gate." This
is impossible for any one to do without his knowing what the narrow
gate is, and where it is. Whilst we have no direct and positive
information upon this point in connection with the text, we still may
learn something by noticing into what it opens. The narrow gate opens
into the narrow way, and this leads to LIFE. The narrow gate and the
narrow way are one. I mean by this that entering the narrow gate means
making a start in the direction of a good life, and walking in the
narrow way is progress in a good life. But where is the