"For I perceive that ye are in the paths of righteousness." (Alma 7:19)

The word "path" is a very old word that comes into the English language from Sanskrit by way of Iran. It comes from a root word that means to go, go along or come upon. Its early uses had the sense of a narrow path or a one-by-one path. It also has the sense of being a way from one land to another.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines path as "a way or track formed by the continued treading of pedestrians or animals, rather than one deliberately planned or made; a narrow unmade and usually unenclosed way that people on foot can use."

In the April 1969 general conference, Presiding Bishop John H. Vandenberg gave a wonderful talk, "Our Path in Today's World." In it he quotes some verses from "The Calf-Path," by Sam Walter Foss:

One day through the primeval wood

A calf walked home as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew,

a crooked path as all calves do

The trail was taken up next day

by a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bellwether sheep

Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep.

And drew the flock behind him, too,

As good bellwethers always do

And from that day, o'er hill and glade,

Through those old woods a path was made.

Each day a hundred thousand route

Followed this zigzag calf about

And o'er his crooked journey went

The traffic of a continent.

For men are prone to go it blind

Along the calf path of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun

To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,

And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue

To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,

Along which all their lives they move;

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,

Who saw the first primeval calf.

In Alma's teachings to the people in Gideon, he perceives not only that they are in the paths of righteousness, but that they "are making his paths straight." This is crucial, for we know that the Lord "cannot walk in crooked paths" (Alma 7:20). For "his paths are righteous ... (for) the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him" (2 Nephi 9:41). For the Holy Ghost "showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter" (2 Nephi 31:9).

When man walks in his own path, it will be crooked. When he walks in the path that God has laid out for him, it will be straight.