Here is an incident about some boys at play that illustrates the point now before us.
"How to Walk Straight." A light snow had fallen in a certain village, and some of the village boys met to make the best use they could of the new fallen snow. It was too dry for snowballing, and was not deep enough for coasting; so they thought they would improve the occasion by playing at making tracks in the snow.
There was a large meadow near by, with a grand old oak tree standing in the centre of it. The boys gathered round the tree, and stood, on opposite sides, each one with his back against the tree. At a given signal they were to start, and walk to the fence opposite to each of them; and then return to the tree, and see which had made the straightest track.
The signal was given. They started. They reached the fence, and returned to the tree. "Now, boys, who has made the straightest track?" said one of the boys, named James Allison.
"Henry Armstrong's is the only one that is straight at all," said Thomas Sanders.
"I don't see how we all contrived to go so crooked, when the meadow is so smooth, and there is nothing to turn us out of the way," said one of the boys.
And then, looking to their successful companion, they said—"Tell us, Harry, how you managed to make so straight a track?"
Now mark what Harry said:—"I fixed my eye on yonder tall pine tree on the other side of the fence towards which I was to walk, and never looked away from it till I reached the fence."
The other boys were walking without any particular aim in view. No wonder that their walk was crooked. After the apostle Paul became a Christian, he made one of the straightest tracks through this world to heaven that ever was made. And he made it in just the same way in which Harry Armstrong made his straight track through that meadow. We have seen what Harry said of his track through the snow; now see what St. Paul says of the way in which he made his straight track through this world to heaven. This is what he says:
"One thing I do; forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God, in Christ Jesus," Phil, iii 13,14. This was just what the racer used to do in the ancient games, when he fixed his eye on the prize and pressed right forward till he reached it. And it was just what Harry Armstrong did in his play. He fixed his eye on the big pine tree and never turned to the right hand or to the left till he reached it. The apostle Paul fixed his eye on Jesus, and made a straight track through the world till he reached the glorious heaven where Jesus dwells. And, in doing this, the great apostle was only practising the lesson of duty taught by the voice that speaks from the Transfiguration scene. "Hear him," said that voice. And if you and I listen to it, and obey it, as St. Paul did, it will lead us to follow him as he followed Christ; and then we shall make a straight path through this world to heaven, as he did in his Christian course. There is success in doing this.