30. I have chosen the way of truth. People do not drop into the right way by chance; they must choose it, and continue to choose it, or they will soon wander from it. There is a doctrinal way of truth which we ought to choose, rejecting every dogma of human devising; there is a ceremonial way of truth, detesting all the forms which apostate churches have invented; and then there is a practical way of truth, the way of holiness, to which we must adhere whatever may be our temptation to forsake it.
Thy judgments have I laid before me. What he had chosen he kept in mind, laying it out before his mind’s eye. People do not become holy by a careless wish; there must be study, consideration, deliberation, and earnest inquiry. The commands of God must be set before us as the mark to aim at, the model to work by, the road to walk in. If we put God’s judgments into the background we shall soon find ourselves departing from them.
Here again the sixth stanzas of the third and fourth octaves ring out a similar note.
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