With all his goodwill the grave gatekeeper could not say that the way to
the Celestial City was other than a narrow, a stringent, and a
heart-searching way. 'Come,' he said, 'and I will tell thee the way thou
must go.' There are many wide ways to hell, and many there be who crowd
them, but there is only one way to heaven, and you will sometimes think
you must have gone off it, there are so few companions; sometimes there
will be only one footprint, with here and there a stream of blood, and
always as you proceed, it becomes more and more narrow, till it strips a
man bare, and sometimes threatens to close upon him and crush him to the
earth altogether. Our Lord in as many words tells us all that. Strive,
He says, strive every day. For many shall seek to enter into the way of
salvation, but because they do not early enough, and long enough, and
painfully enough strive, they come short, and are shut out. Have you,
then, anything in your religious life that Christ will at last accept as
the striving He intended and demanded? Does your religion cause you any
real effort--Christ calls it _agony_? Have you ever had, do you ever
have, anything that He would so describe? What cross do you every day
take up? In what thing do you every day deny yourself? Name it.
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