r for the devastation of Italy; but our King, at a greater
expense, has built a road for a different purpose, that the banners of
heavenly dominion might come down over it, and all the redeemed of
earth travel up over it.

Being a King's highway, of course it is well built. Bridges splendidly
arched and buttressed have given way and crushed the passengers who
attempted to cross them. But Christ, the King, would build no such
thing as that. The work done, He mounts the chariot of His love, and
multitudes mount with Him, and He drives on and up the steep of heaven
amid the plaudits of gazing worlds! The work is done--well
done--gloriously done--magnificently done.

II. Still further: this road spoken of is a clean road.

Many a fine road has become miry and foul because it has not been
properly cared for; but my text says the unclean shall not walk on
this one. Room on either side to throw away your sins. Indeed, if you
want to carry them along, you are not on the right road. That bridge
will break, those overhanging rocks will fall, the night will come
down, leaving you at the mercy of the mountain bandits, and at the
very next turn of the road you will perish. But if you are really on
this clean road of which I have been speaking, then you will stop
ever and anon to wash in the water that stands in the basin of the
eternal rock. Ay, at almost every step of the journey you will be
crying out: "Create within me a clean heart!" If you have no such
aspirations as that, it proves that you have mistaken your way; and if
you will only look up and see the finger-board above your head, you
may read upon it the words: "There is a way that seemeth right unto a
man, but the end thereof is death." Without holiness no man shall see
the Lord; and if you have any idea that you can carry along your sins,
your lusts, your worldliness, and yet get to the end of the Christian
race, you are so awfully mistaken that, in the name of God, this
morning I shatter the delusion.

III. Still further, the road spoken of is a plain road. "The wayfaring
men, though fools, shall not err therein." That is, if a man is three
fourths an idiot, he can find this road just as well as if he were a
philosopher. The imbecile boy, the laughing-stock of the street, and
followed by a mob hooting at him, has only just to knock once at the
gate of heaven, and it swings open: while there has been many a man
who can lecture about pneumatics, and chemistry, and tel