'Mine eye affecteth mine heart.'--_Jeremiah_.
'Think, in the first place,' says the eloquent author of the _Five
Gateways of Knowledge_, 'how beautiful the human eye is. The eyes of
many of the lower animals are, doubtless, very beautiful. You must all
have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large,
gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat,
waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye
of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse's head;
the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the
intelligent, affectionate expression which looks out of the human-like
eye of the horse and dog. There are many other animals whose eyes are
full of beauty, but there is a glory that excelleth in the eye of a man.
We realise this best when we gaze into the eyes of those we love. It is
their eyes we look at when we are near them, and it is their eyes we
recall when we are far away from them. The face is all but a blank
without the eye; the eye seems to concentrate every feature in itself. It
is the eye that smiles, not the lips; it is the eye that listens, not the
ear; it is the eye that frowns, not the brow; it is the eye that mourns,
not the voice. The eye sees what it brings the power to see. How true
is this! The sailor on the look-out can see a ship where the landsman
can see nothing. The Esquimaux can distinguish a white fox among the
white snow. The astronomer can see a star in the sky where to others the
blue expanse is unbroken. The shepherd can distinguish the face of every
single sheep in his flock,' so Professor Wilson. And then Dr. Gould
tells us in his mystico-evolutionary, Behmen-and-Darwin book, _The
Meaning and the Method of Life_--a book which those will read who can and
ought--that the eye is the most psychical, the most spiritual, the most
useful, and the most valued and cherished of all the senses; after which
he adds this wonderful and heart-affecting scientific fact, that in death
by starvation, every particle of fat in the body is auto-digested except
the cream-cushion of the eye-ball! So true is it that the eye is the
mistress, the queen, and the most precious, to Creator and creature
alike, of all the five senses.
Now, in the _Holy War_ John Bunyan says a thing about the ear, as
distinguished from the eye, that I cannot subscribe to in my own
experience at any rate. In describing the terrible war that raged round
Ear-gate, and finally swept up through that gate and into the streets of
the city, he says that the ear is the shortest and the surest road to the
heart. I confess I cannot think that to be the actual case. I am
certain that it is not so in my own case. My eye is very much nearer my
heart than my ear is. My eye much sooner affects, and much more
powerfully affects, my heart than my ear ever does. Not only is my eye
by very much the shortest road to my heart, but, like all other short
roads, it is cram-full of all kinds of traffic when my ear stands
altogether empty. My eye is constantly crowded and choked with all kinds
of commerce; whole hordes of immigrants and invaders trample one another
down on the congested street that leads from my eye to my heart. Speaking
for myself, for one assault that is made on my heart through my ear there
are a thousand assaults successfully made through my eye. Indeed, were
my eye but stopped up; had I but obedience and courage and
self-mortification enough to pluck both my eyes out, that would be half
the cleansing and healing and holiness of my evil heart; or at least, the
half of its corruption, rebellion, and abominable wickedness would
henceforth be hidden from me. I think I can see what led John Bunyan in
his day and in this book to make that too strong statement about the ear
as against the eye; but it is not like him to have let such an
over-statement stand and continue in his corrected and carefully finished
work. The prophet Jeremiah, I feel satisfied, would not have subscribed
to what is said in the _Holy War_ in extenuation of the eye. That heart-
broken prophet does not say that it has been his ear that has made his
head waters. It is his eye, he says, that has so affected his heart. The
Prophet of the Captivity had all the _Holy War_ potentially in his
imagination when he penned that so suggestive sentence. And the Latin
poet of experience, the grown-up man's own poet, says somewhere that the
things that enter by his eye seize and hold his heart much more swiftly
and much more surely than those things that but enter by his ear. I
shall continue, then, to hold by my text, 'Mine eye affecteth mine
heart.'
1. Turning then, to the prophets and proverb-makers of Israel, and then
to the New Testament for the true teaching on the eye, I come, in the
first place, on that so pungent saying of Solomon that 'the eyes of a
fool are in the ends of the earth.' Look at that born fool, says
Solomon, who has his eyes and his heart committed to him to keep. See
him how he gapes and stares after everything that does not concern him,
and lets the door of his own heart stand open to every entering thief.
London is a city of three million inhabitants, and they are mostly fools,
Carlyle once said. And let him in this city whose eyes keep at home cast
the first stone at those foreign fools. I will wager on their side that
many of you here to-night know better what went on in Mashonaland last
week than what went on in your own kitchen downstairs, or in your own
nursery or schoolroom upstairs. Some of you are ten times more taken up
with the prospects of Her Majesty's Government this session, and with the
plots of Her Majesty's Opposition, than you are with the prospects of the
good and the evil, and the plots of God and the devil, all this winter in
your own hearts. You rise early, and make a fight to get the first of
the newspaper; but when the minister comes in in the afternoon you blush
because the housemaid has mislaid the Bible. Did you ever read of the
stargazer who fell into an open well at the street corner? Like him, you
may be a great astronomer, a great politician, a great theologian, a
great defender of the faith even, and yet may be a stark fool just in
keeping the doors and the windows of your own heart. 'You shall see a
poor soul,' says Dr. Goodwin, 'mean in abilities of wit, or
accomplishments of learning, who knows not how the world goes, nor upon
what wheels its states turn, who yet knows more clearly and
experimentally his own heart than all the learned men in the world know
theirs. And though the other may better discourse philosophically of the
acts of the soul, yet this poor man sees more into the corruption of it
than they all.' And in another excellent place he says: 'Many who have
leisure and parts to read much, instead of ballasting their hearts with
divine truth, and building up their souls with its precious words, are
much more versed in play-books, jeering pasquils, romances, and feigned
staves, which are but apes and peacocks' feathers instead of pearls and
precious stones. Foreign and foolish discourses please their eyes and
their ears; they are more chameleons than men, for they live on the east
wind.'
2. 'If thine eye offend thee'--our Lord lays down this law to all those
who would enter into life--'pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is
better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than, having two
eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.' Does your eye offend you, my brethren?
Does your eye cause you to stumble and fall, as it is in the etymology?
The right use of the eye is to keep you from stumbling and falling; but
so perverted are the eye and the heart of every sinner that the city
watchman has become a partaker with thieves, and our trusted guide and
guardian a traitor and a knave. If thine eye, therefore, offends thee;
if it places a stone or a tree in thy way in a dark night; if it digs a
deep ditch right across thy way home; if it in any way leads thee astray,
or lets in upon thee thine enemies--then, surely, thou wert better to be
without that eye altogether. Pluck it out, then; or, what is still
harder to go on all your days doing, pluck the evil thing out of it. Shut
up that book and put it away. Throw that paper and that picture into the
fire. Cut off that companion, even if he were an adoring lover. Refuse
that entertainment and that amusement, though all the world were crowding
upto it. And soon, and soon, till you have plucked your eye as clean of
temptations and snares as it is possible to be in this life. For this
life is full of that terrible but blessed law of our Lord. The life of
all His people, that is; and you are one of them, are you not? You will
know whether or no you are one of them just by the number of the
beautiful things, and the sweet things, and the things to be desired,
that you have plucked out of your eye at His advice and demand. True
religion, my brethren, on some sides of it, and at some stages of it, is
a terribly severe and sore business; and unless it is proving a terribly
severe and sore business to you, look out! lest, with your two hands and
your two feet and your two eyes, you be cast, with all that your hands
and feet and eyes have feasted on, into the everlasting fires! Woe unto
the world because of offences, but woe much more to that member and
entrance-gate of the body by which the offence cometh! Wherefore, if
thine eye offend thee--!
3. 'Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight
before thee.' Now, if you wish both to preserve your eyes, and to escape
the everlasting fires at the same time, attend to this text. For this is
almost as good as plucking out your two eyes; indeed, it is almost the
very same thing. Solomon shall speak to the man in this house to-night
who has the most inflammable, the most ungovernable, and the most
desperately wicked heart. You, man, with that heart, you know that you
cannot pass up the street without your eye becoming a perfect hell-gate
of lust, of hate, of ill-will, of resentment and of revenge. Your eye
falls on a man, on a woman, on a house, on a shop, on a school, on a
church, on a carriage, on a cart, on an innocent child's perambulator
even; and, devil let loose that you are, your eye fills your heart on the
spot with absolute hell-fire. Your presence and your progress poison the
very streets of the city. And that, not as the short-sighted and the
vulgar will read Solomon's plain-spoken Scripture, with the poison of
lewdness and uncleanness, but with the still more malignant, stealthy,
and deadly poison of social, professional, political, and ecclesiastical
hatred, resentment, and ill-will. Whoredom and wine openly slay their
thousands on all our streets; but envy and spite, dislike and hatred
their ten thousands. The fact is, we would never know how malignantly
wicked our hearts are but for our eyes. But a sudden spark, a single
flash through the eye falling on the gunpowder that fills our hearts,
that lets us know a hundred times every day what at heart we are made of.
'Of a verity, O Lord, I am made of sin, and that my life maketh
manifest,' prays Bishop Andrewes every day. Why, sir, not to go to the
street, the direction in which your eyes turn in this house this evening
will make this house a very 'den,' as our Lord said--yes, a very den to
you of temptation and transgression. My son, let thine eyes look right
on. Ponder the path of thy feet, turn not to the right hand nor to the
left--remove thy foot from all evil!
4. There is still another eye that is almost as good as an eye out
altogether, and that is a Job's eye. Job was the first author of that
eye and all we who have that excellent eye take it of him. 'I have made
a covenant with mine eyes,' said that extraordinary man--that
extraordinarily able, honest, exposed and exercised man. Now, you must
all know what a covenant is. A covenant is a compact, a contract, an
agreement, an engagement. In a covenant two parties come to terms with
one another. The two covenanters strike hands, and solemnly engage
themselves to one another: I will do this for you if you will do that for
me. It is a bargain, says the other; let us have it sealed with wax and
signed with pen and ink before two witnesses. As, for instance, at the
Lord's Table. I swear, you say, over the Body and the Blood of the Son
of God, I swear to make a covenant with mine eyes. I will never let them
read again that idle, infidel, scoffing, unclean sheet. I will not let
them look on any of my former images or imaginations of forbidden
pleasures. I swear, O Thou to whom the night shineth as the day, that I
will never again say, Surely the darkness shall cover me! See if I do
not henceforth by Thy grace keep my feet off every slippery street. That,
and many other things like that, was the way that Job made his so noble
covenant with his eyes in his day and in his land. And it was because he
so made and so kept his covenant that God so boasted over him and said,
Hast thou considered my servant Job? And then, every covenant has its
two sides. The other side of Job's covenant, of which God Himself was
the surety, you can read and think over in your solitary lodgings
to-night. Read Job xxxi. 1, and then Job xl. to the end, and then be
sure you take covenant paper and ink to God before you sleep. And let
all fashionable young ladies hear what Miss Rossetti expects for herself,
and for all of her sex with her who shall subscribe her covenant. 'True,'
she admits, 'all our life long we shall be bound to refrain our soul, and
keep it low; but what then? For the books we now refrain to read we
shall one day be endowed with wisdom and knowledge. For the music we
will not listen to we shall join in the song of the redeemed. For the
pictures from which we turn we shall gaze unabashed on the Beatific
Vision. For the companionship we shun we shall be welcomed into angelic
society and the communion of triumphant saints. For the amusements we
avoid we shall keep the supreme jubilee. For all the pleasures we miss
we shall abide, and for evermore abide, in the rapture of heaven.'
5. And then there is the Pauline eye. An eye, however, that Job would
have shared with Paul and with the Corinthian Church had the patriarch
been privileged to live in our New Testament day. Ever since the Holy
Ghost with His anointing oil fell on us at Pentecost, says the apostle,
we have had an eye by means of which we look not at the things that are
seen, but at the things that are not seen. Now, he who has an eye like
that is above both plucking out his eyes or making a covenant with them
either. It is like what Paul says about the law also. The law is not
made for a righteous man. A righteous man is above the law and
independent of it. The law does not reach to him and he is not hampered
with it. And so it is with the man who has got Paul's splendid eyes for
the unseen. He does not need to touch so much as one of his eye-lashes
to pluck them out. For his eyes are blind, and his ears are deaf, and
his whole body is dead to the things that are temporal. His eyes are
inwardly ablaze with the things that are eternal. He whose eyes have
been opened to the truth and the love of his Bible, he will gloat no more
over your books and your papers filled with lies, and slander, and spite,
and lewdness! He who has his conversation in heaven does not need to set
a watch on his lips lest he take up an ill report about his neighbour. He
who walks every day on the streets of gold will step as swiftly as may
be, with girt loins, and with a preoccupied eye, out of the slippery and
unsavoury streets of this forsaken earth. He who has fast working out
for him an exceeding and eternal weight of glory will easily count all
his cups and all his crosses, and all the crooks in his lot but as so
many light afflictions and but for a moment. My Lord Understanding had
his palace built with high perspective towers on it, and the site of it
was near to Eye-gate, from the top of which his lordship every day looked
not at the things which are temporal, but at the things which are
eternal, and down from his palace towers he every day descended to
administer his heavenly office in the city.
Your eye, then, is the shortest way into your heart. Watch it well,
therefore; suspect and challenge all outsiders who come near it. Keep
the passes that lead to your heart with all diligence. Let nothing
contraband, let nothing that even looks suspicious, ever enter your
hearts; for, if it once enters, and turns out to be evil, you will never
get it all out again as long as you live. 'Death is come up into our
windows,' says our prophet in another place, 'and is entered into our
palaces, to cut off our children in our houses and our young men in our
streets.' Make a covenant, then, with your eyes. Take an oath of your
eyes as to which way they are henceforth to look. For, let them look
this way, and your heart is immediately full of lust, and hate, and envy,
and ill-will. On the other hand, lead them to look that way and your
heart is as immediately full of truth and beauty, brotherly kindness and
charity. The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be
single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil,
thy whole body is full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in
thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!