with the cause. The spring of all lay in his conscious recognition of
his relation to God and God's to him. From that, of course, followed
that he 'prepared,' according to the Authorised Version, or 'ordered,'
according to the Revised Version, 'his ways.' There is an alternative
rendering of the word rendered 'prepared' or 'ordered' given in the
margin of the Authorised Version, which reads, 'established his ways.'
Both the ideas of ordering and establishing are contained in the word.

Now that fact, that the same word means both these, conveys a piece of
practical wisdom, which it will do us all good to note clearly and
take to heart. For it teaches us that whatever is 'ordered' is firm,
and whatever is disorderly, haphazard, done without the exercise of
one's mind on the act, being chaotic, is necessarily short-lived.

The ordered life is the established life. The life of impulse, chance,
passion, the life that is lived without choice and plan, without
reflection and consideration of consequences, the following of nature,
which some people tell us is the highest law, and which is woefully
likely to degenerate into following the _lower_ nature, which
ought not to be followed, but covered and kept under hatches--such a
life is sure to be a topsy-turvy life, which, being based upon the
narrowest point, must, by the laws of equilibrium, topple over sooner
or later. If you would have your lives established, they must be
ordered. You must bring your brains to bear upon them, and you must
bring more than brain, you must bring to bear on every part of them
the spiritual instincts that are quickened by contact with the thought
of the All-seeing God, and let these have the ordering of them. Such
lives, and only such, will endure 'when all that seems shall suffer
shock.' 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'