III. Now notice, again, the condition on which the fulfilment of this
confidence depends.

'The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His
way.' The fact of our being sinful only makes it the more imperative
that God should speak to us. But the condition of our hearing and
profiting by the guidance is meekness. By meekness the Psalmist means, I
suppose, little else than what we might call docility, of which the
prime element is the submission of my own will to God's. The reason why
we go wrong about our duties is mainly that we do not supremely want to
go right, but rather to gratify inclinations, tastes, or passions. God
is speaking to us, but if we make such a riot with the yelpings of our
own kennelled desires and lusts, and listen to the rattle and noise of
the street and the babble of tongues, He

'Can but listen at the gate,
And hear the household jar within.'

'The meek will He guide in judgment; the meek will He teach His way.'
Some of us put our heads down like bulls charging a gate. Some of us
drive on full speed, and will not shut off steam though the signals are
against us, and the end of that can only be one thing. Some of us do not
wish to know what God wishes us to do. Some of us cannot bear suspense
of judgment, or of decision, and are always in a hurry to be in action,
and think the time lost that is spent in waiting to know what God the
Lord will speak. If you do not clearly see what to do, then clearly you
may see that you are to do _nothing_.

The ark was to go half a mile in front of the camp before the foremost