Our best impulses, our faith, our hope, our love, our zeal--all need to be constantly controlled and restrained or directed. For this serves the word of God. The locomotive may chafe continually against the track as if in effort to set itself free; yet without the track it would swiftly plunge itself into perdition. How good and beneficial is that restraining, directing, controlling track! So is the word of God to us, a track and a guidance. It checks and it balances; it impels and restrains. Our sentiments and notions would run wild, as the branches of the vine would waste their strength in luxurious tangles of shoots and tendrils, were it not for the pruning knife, the word of God. (John 15:2, 3.) Our religious zeal would soon run riot and lead us into all manner of follies and extravagances if we should leave the word of God. [70]

      August 17, 1905.

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