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(to children): —

1. The gate of healing. What would you say is the key of that gate? Is it not our need? What, e.g., would give you admission into any hospital? Would it not be your need of the help that could be obtained there? Just so is it with Jesus, the good Physician. We have no claim except His own exceeding love and our exceeding need. There are no incurables so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned.

2. The door of hope. The key for that is promise. You may read about it in the "Pilgrim's Progress" (Christian and Hopeful in Doubting Castle).

3. The door of help. The key is sympathy. Sympathy, as the meaning of the word implies, understands the situation. "Thou shalt not oppress a stranger," was one of God's commands to the Israelites, "for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." That was sympathy as the key to the door of help. They knew what it was to be strangers in a strange land, and therefore they could understand how a stranger among themselves would feel, how he would appreciate a friendly spirit, and how sensitive he would be to any coldness of treatment. Is it not His sympathy that makes Jesus the perfect Saviour?

4. The door of communion. For that we need two keys, just as in your house doors two keys are required to open them — the key that turns the lock and the key that lifts the latch. Prayer and obedience are the two keys.

5. The door of change, that door that stands at the end of "the well-trodden path to the grave." What is the key for this door? We have none. God keeps it in His own hands.

(J. B. Mayer, M. A.)

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KJV: Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.

WEB: Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter: the one which keeps faith.