But, on the other side, it is not so hard as it looks to go in, and it is not so easy as it seems to stop out.  For there are two men in every man—­a better and a worse; and what pleases the one disgusts the other.  The choice which each of us has to make is whether we shall do the things that are easiest to our worst self, or those that are easiest to our best self.  For in either case there will be difficulties; in either case there will be antagonisms.

But it is good for us to make the effort, apart altogether from the end.  If there were no life eternal at the far end of the road which at this end has the narrow gate, it would contribute to all that is noblest and best in our characters, and to the repression of all that is ignoble and worst, that we should take that lowly position which Christ requires, and by the heroism of a self-abandoning faith, fling ourselves into His arms.

Remember, too, that the strait gate, by reason of its very straitness, is in the noblest sense wide.  If there were anything else required of a man than simply self-distrust and reliance on Jesus Christ, then this great Gospel that I am feebly trying to preach would be a more sectional and narrower thing than it is.  But its glory is that it requires nothing which any man is unable to bring, that it has no invitation for sections, classes, grades of culture or intelligence or morality, but that in its great cosmopolitanism and universality it comes to every man; because it treats all as on one level, and requires from each only what all can bring—­knowledge of themselves as sinners, and humble trust in Jesus Christ as a Saviour.  It is narrow because there is no room for sin or self-righteousness to go in; it is wide as the world, and, like the capacious portals of some vast cathedral, ample enough to receive without hustling, and to accommodate without inconvenience, every soul of man.

II.  Notice the contrast of the two roads, which, in like manner, points the exhortation to choose the better.

The one is broad; the other is narrow.  Which, being turned into plain English, is just this—­that the Christian course has limitations which do not hamper the godless man; and that on the path of godlessness or Christlessness there is a deceptive appearance of freedom and independence which attracts many.

‘Narrow is the road.’  Yes, if you are to be a Christian, you must have your whole life concentrated on, and consecrated to, one thing; and, just as the vagrant rays of sunshine have to be collected into a focus before they burn, so the wandering manifoldnesses of our aims and purposes have all to be brought to a point, ‘This one thing I do,’ and whatsoever we do we have to do it as in God, and for God, and by God, and with God.  Therefore the road is narrow because, being directed to one aim, it has to exclude great tracts on either side, in which people that have a less absorbing and lofty purpose wander and expatiate at will.  As on some narrow path in Eastern lands, with high, prickly-pear hedges on either side, and vineyards stretching beyond them, with luscious grapes in abundance, a traveller has to keep on the road, within the prickly fences, dusty though it may be, and though his thirsty lips may be cracking.