'Mine eye affecteth mine heart.' - Jeremiah.
Professor Wilson in his Five Gateways. 'And for every human being we
should aim at securing, so far as they can be attained, an eye as keen
and piercing as that of the eagle; an ear as sensitive to the faintest
sound as that of the hare; a nostril as far-scenting as that of the wild
deer; a tongue as delicate as that of the butterfly; and a touch as acute
as that of the spider. No man ever was so endowed, and no man ever
will be; but all men come infinitely short of what they should achieve
were they to make their senses what they might be made. The old
have outlived their opportunity, and the diseased never had it; but the
young, who have still an undimmed eye, an undulled ear, and a soft
hand; an unblunted nostril, and a tongue which tastes with relish the
plainest fare - the young can so cultivate their senses as to make the
narrow ring, which for the old and the infirm encircles things sensible,
widen for them into an almost limitless horizon.'
Take heed what you hear, and take heed how you hear.
Chapter 4 - EYE-GATE
'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 heartbroken 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.'
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.'
'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. . . !
'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!
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 31:1,
and then Job 40 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.'
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,