While a fire is confined to one man's house, even if it burns that house to its foundation, all other dwellings are unharmed; but when it lays hold of surrounding buildings, all the city is endangered. When an evil thought is confined to a man's own spirit, kept within the limits of thinking or desiring, though it may char his own soul with the blackness of perdition, the evil ends with himself. But when he allows his thought to become words, he kindles a fire outside himself which may go on burning even after he has forgotten it himself. Verse 25. Let them be fixed upon right objects. . . . Be well skilled in Moses' optics (Heb. xi. 27). Do as mariners do that have their eye on the star, their hand on the stern. A man may not look intently upon that he may not love.--_Trapp._ Like one ploughing, who must not look back.--_Cartwright._ Had Eve done so she would have looked at the command of God, not at the forbidden tree. Had Lot's wife looked straight before her instead of behind her, she would, like her husband, have been a monument of mercy. . . . In asking the way to Zion, be sure that your _faces are thitherward_ (Jer. i. 5). The pleasures of sin and the seductions of the world do not lie in the road. They belong to the bye-paths. They would not, therefore, meet the eye looking right on.--_Bridges._ Verse 26. Lift not up one foot till you find firm footing for another, as those in Psa. xxxv. 6. The way of this world is like the vale of Siddim, slimy and slippery.--_Trapp._ The habit of calm and serious thinking makes the difference between one man and another.--_Dr. Abercrombie._ The feet of the soul are generally understood to be the affections. And surely we have need to ponder the path of them before we give away to them. St. Bernard maketh the two feet to be nature and custom, for, indeed, by them we are much carried, and great need we have to ponder the path of them, so that they do not lead us amiss.--_Jermin._ The best time to ponder any path is not at the end, not even in the middle, but at the beginning of it.--_Arnot._ Verse 27. It is as if the royal way was hemmed in by the sea, and a fall over either side were danger of drowning. Some are too greedy; others ascetic. Some are too bold; others too diffident. Some neglect the one Mediator; others seek more mediators than one. Some flee the cross; others make one. Some tamper with Popery; others, from dread of it, hazard the loss of valuable truth.--_Cartwright._ * * * * * * CHAPTER V.