n it, but our security is that
we shall always be guided by infallible and loving wisdom. We have
learned a chief article of human wisdom if we have learned to leave
to-morrow to God and faithfully follow Him to-day. A road as it lies in
the distance often looks impassably steep, but as we approach and walk
it step by step, we find it almost level and fairly easy.

2. This light was to guide, not their conduct, but their movements. All
men need similar guidance. All men have practical matters to determine
which often greatly perplex them; they must make a choice between one or
other course of action that is possible. Steps which will determine
their whole subsequent life must be taken or declined; and for the
determining of such alterations in the place or mode of their life there
is often felt great need of a guidance which can be entirely relied
upon. Sometimes, indeed, our course is determined for us, and we are not
consulted in the matter; as the pillar of fire was silent, assigning no
reasons, condescending to no persuasion or argument, but simply moving
forwards; passing over rugged and steep mountain ridges, past inviting
and sheltered glens, offering no present explanation of the route, but
justified always by the result. So we often find that our course is
determined apart from our own choice, wishes, judgment, or prayers. But
this we commonly resent, and crave a guidance which shall approve itself
to our own judgment and yet be infallible; which shall leave us our
freedom of choice, and yet carry us forwards to all possibilities of
good. In fact, we would rather have our freedom of choice and the
responsibility of guiding our own life, with all its risks, than be
carried forward without choice of our own.

This is the great distinction between the light which Christ is and the
light by which the Israelites were led from day to day. They had an
external means of ascertaining promptly which way they should go. Their
whole life was circumscribed, and its place and mode determined for
them. The guidance offered to us by Christ is of an inward kind. A God
without might seem perfect as a guide, but a God within is the real
perfection. God does not now lead us by a sign which we could follow,
though we had no real sympathy with Divine ways and no wisdom of our
own; but He leads us by communicating to us His own perceptions of right
and wrong, by inwardly enlightening us, and by making us ourselves of
such a disposit