Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you: don't turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.
So, too, I think it should be in our general conduct. With regard, for instance, to our words; the course of speech generally is, on the one hand to say too much, or on the other hand to say too little; to be silent when the wicked are before us, or else to be rash with our lips and betray a good cause through our rashness in defending it. There is a time to speak, and there is a time to be silent, and he that judgeth well will mark his opportunities and take the middle course. He will neither be garrulous with advice that is not required, nor will he be cowardly and dumb when he ought to bear testimony for his Master. The same holds good with regard to zeal. We have some abroad nowadays whose heads are very hot. They will be doing this, and that, and I know not what beside, all in the twinkling of an eye. They talk as if they would turn the world upside down, whilst it is their own brains that need first to be turned into a right condition. They foment revivals, but not revivals such as we should approve of their revivals are blown up like bladders with mere human excitement and playing upon men’s passions, and this brings true zeal into contempt. Theirs is a fire which burns down the house instead of burning in the grate and warming the household. But shall we therefore not be zealous? God forbid! Shall we fall into the opposite extreme of those who fold their arms and say, “Why make this noise? God will do his own work; things will go well enough; let us be quiet; let us sleep as do others”? Brethren, there is a middle course of true, sensible, prudent zeal adhering to the truth and never believing that people can be converted by lies, however earnestly bawled into their ears; walking within the bounds of God’s truth, and being persuaded that the best seed to sow is that which God puts into the basket of his word, and that sinners are not to be saved by rash statements nor by extravagant declamation, but that they are brought to Christ, as they were of old, by the simple telling out of the story of the cross affectionately, and by the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Here, again, “turn neither to the right hand nor to the left.”
