9. For how dark, how uncomfortable, how forbidding is the prospect on the opposite side? A strait gate! A narrow way! And few finding that gate! Few walking in the way. Besides, even those few, are not wise men, not men of learning or eloquence. They are not able to reason either strongly or clearly; they cannot propose an argument to any advantage, they know not how to prove what they profess to believe; or to explain even what they say they experience. Surely such advocates as these, will never recommend, but rather discredit the cause they have espoused. 10. Add to this, that they are not noble, not honourable men: (if they were, you might bear with their folly.) They are men of no interest, no authority, of no account in the world. They are mean and base, low in life; and such as have no power, if they had the will to hurt you. Therefore there is nothing at all to be feared from them: and there is nothing at all to hope. For the greater part of them may say, _silver and gold have I none_: at least a very moderate share. Nay, some of them have scarce food to eat or raiment to put on. For this reason, as well as because their ways are not like those of other men, they are every where spoken against, are despised, have their names cast out as evil, are variously persecuted, and treated as the filth and offscouring of the world. So that both your fears, your hopes, and all your desires, (except those which you have immediately from God) yea, all your natural passions continually incline you to return into the broad way. III. 1. Therefore it is, that our Lord so earnestly exhorts, _Enter ye in at the strait gate_. Or (as the same exhortation is elsewhere expressed) _Strive to enter in_. ♦Ἀγωνίζεσθε εἰσελθεῖν. Strive as in an agony. _For many_, saith our Lord, _shall seek to enter in_, indolently strive, _and shall not be able_. 2. ’Tis true, he intimates what may seem another reason for this, for their _not being able to enter in_, in the words which immediately follow these. For after he had said, _Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able_, he subjoins, _When once the master of the house is risen up and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without_ (♦ἄρξησθε ἔχω ἐστάναι. Rather, _Ye stand without_; for ἄρξησθε seems to be only an elegant expletive) _and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us: he shall answer, and say unto you, I know you not. Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity._ Luke xiii. 26, &c.