Who shall lead me through the wilderness? There are many ways, many false ways, many cross ways, and but one that is the right way: How shall I hit my way to heaven, the right way that leads [there]? And who will show me and lead me in this way? Here Trust answers, Christ will do it; I lean upon Him to be my Moses to lead me in the way that I should go: “You will guide me with Your counsel” (Psalm 73:24). Christ has gone the way before His saints, and He will show them His steps to direct them. Therefore the apostle exhorts, “Run the race—looking to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2), as for encouragement, so for direction; follow not the footsteps of the sheep only, but follow the footsteps of the Shepherd, and walk on as He walked before you. But how shall I find the way, or the steps wherein Christ walked? “It is not in name that walketh, to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). “How can a man understand his own ways?” (Proverbs 20:24). There are many hard and intricate cases, where I may be at a stand, and not know which way to take: their answer is, as Psalm 143:8, “In thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul to thee,” and v. 10: “Thy Spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness”; I trust that “thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and bring me to glory” (Psalm 73:24).

—Richard Alleine
A Rebuke to Backsliders and a Spur for Loiterers (London: John Hancock, 1684), 57-58.

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