Proverbs 8:20

I lead in the way of righteousnses.

Substance the inheritance of the saints

I. Jesus leads in the way of righteousness--

1. By leading them into His holy, strict, and condemning law.

2. By implanting sincerity and uprightness.

II. Jesus leads in the midst of the paths of judgment. These paths of judgment are when He, with His holy eye, scrutinises the heart and brings to light its secret workings. He leads by setting up a court of judicature in the heart, arraigning the soul at its bar; not with vengeance, as punishing a criminal, but as a parent, after the child has been playing truant all day.

III. Jesus causes the soul to inherit substance. Something solid, weighty, powerful, real, and eternal. Power and life and feeling, and the blessed kingdom of God set up with authority in the soul. A substantial religion--something that is dropped into the soul from His own blessed self, something that comes out of Himself, and out of the fulness of His own loving heart, to make them rejoice and be glad. (J. C. Philpot.)

In the midst of the paths of Judgment.

The golden mean

In this country, if you walk in the middle of the street in the town, or in the middle of the road in the country, you are exposed to danger from horses and vehicles, for which that part of the road was reserved, and therefore side-paths and pavements have been provided, where you can take refuge from the traffic. It is different in the East. There the roads are so badly made, and so little frequented, that you are always safest in the middle. There is a rock, perhaps, on this side, and a precipice or a ditch on that, and the edges of the road are always so rugged and uneven that only the well-worn track in the middle is available for easy travelling. And from this condition of Eastern roads has arisen the moral lesson that the middle of the path of conduct is the safest and the best. The sentiment may be exemplified in everything moral and religious. The Greeks of old always spoke of the golden mean between two extremes, and were fond of proving that truth and safety always lay in the middle. The wise man speaks of the paths of judgment. These paths are oft either side of the way of righteousness, which is the middle; and they are called paths of judgment because, if you stray into them off the strait and narrow way of righteousness, you will meet with dangers and evils that will assuredly punish you. The virtues that yield the blessings of life are in the middle, between the vices that wreck and blight your life. A little too much on the one side or the other makes all the difference in the world; and so close to each other do the evils you have to avoid come, that narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. The side-path may, therefore, be smooth and pleasant, but it leads to danger. The middle of the road may be rough and difficult, but it is safe--the way of righteousness, between the paths of judgment. (H. Macmillan,D. D.)