DISCOURSE XXIX.

THE SINGLE EYE.

TITUS I. 15.

UNTO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE.

These words are not literally true; yet, if we interpret them with fairness, we merely make them state the power and advantage of purity. None of us see all things as pure. If we were like the angels, we should see and avoid many things which bear the marks of corruption.

The meaning of the Sacred Writer, is, that the pure are pre-disposed to regard their fellow-men, all things, indeed, with favor and kindness. The same thing is meant by this author, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, where he affirms, that charity "thinketh no evil” and “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." It is also declared in the saying of Jesus: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Such passages show that the divine teachers from whom I quote, read and understood the human heart; and they remind us that the great interpreters of

human nature, in later times, but see and speak in their light; but illustrate and enforce their plain and impressive practical lessons.

We often hear men speak of the wonderful insight of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Dickens, and of the ability and correctness with which they have described the moral life of the good and the bad, or the spiritual rewards of virtue, and the moral retributions of vice. Perhaps some of the very persons who make these observations, do not consider that these authors but follow in the wake of God's ancient ministers and teachers. Perhaps, too, they frequently forget the philosophical instruction of the great poets and moralists which they have professed to admire; and under the power of the false impressions received in early life, undertake to cast odium upon those who abide by this kind of wisdom, by saying that they encourage the wicked to keep on in the course of sin or to say: "We will continue in the enjoyments of iniquity; we will not leave the pleasures and joys of intemperance and crime."

In forming our opinions as to the inward life of men, as to the consequences of virtue or vice, let us not be guided by the dogmas of the creeds, but by the profound observations of the wise teachers of the Bible, by the corresponding reflections of the healthiest minds of modern days, (their disciples and followers,) and by our own carefully sought and attained knowledge from experience.

We can judge from our own experience, and from what we discern in the moral life around us, whether

the philosophy of the Bible is true; or whether the poets, the moralists, and the higher school of divines, of more recent times, like Shakespeare, Burns and Wordsworth, Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, and Coquerel, Martineau and Chapin, portray the moral lives of men in agreement with the philosophy of the Bible.

Taking simply this evidence which is always present to our minds, we immediately perceive the sense of such expressions as these: "Unto the pure all things are pure;" "charity thinketh no evil; "" rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; charity never faileth." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." And just as readily and quickly do we see the meaning of another class of sentences, of which these are the most familiar: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." "The

wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt." "The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." "If thine eye is evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness."

This evidence, too, is but the repetition and confirmation of the lessons recorded in the best books which have been written since the Scriptures were inspired. We see in all the characters drawn by the great writers, the true idea of reward and retribution; and this is not, it is needless for me to say, that they are outward or foreign to the soul, but within, or are the condition of the soul itself. The clear lesson of truth in all these representations, is, that every man, in his

spiritual condition, is just what he has made himself, and that all there is of reward or retribution, lies in his spiritual condition.

"Unto the pure all things are pure." This is the reward of purity. The pure in heart shall see God; shall behold goodness and beauty everywhere; shall have no forebodings of evil; shall anticipate and look for noble and lovely results; shall see sunshine on every hill, loveliness in every vale; the virtue of every thing and every soul; and the promise of perfection in every handiwork of God, and in every child of his spirit. So was it with the Son of God; so was it with the apostle John; so was it with Oberlin; so with Howard.

Not so is it with the corrupt. "If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness." The Jewish priest could see nothing worth saving in the man who had fallen among thieves, and was lying by the wayside half dead. The accusers of the unfortunate woman, looking upon her with an evil eye, stole away from the presence of the Saviour in shame, when he said: "Let him who is without sin among you, cast the first stone at her." The impure do not see the glory of the universe. They do not hear the harmony of nature. They are frightened by the rustling leaf. Every footfall behind them is that of a minister of justice. The murderer sees the apparition of his victim in every vacant room he enters, in every solitary path he walks in. Lady Macbeth could not wash the blood from her hands. The ghost of Banquo confronted and smote with terror the heart of her guilty Lord.

The mind sees its own character in all objects, and in all events; its own spirit in all things, and in all hearts. So with what judgement it judges, it is judged; and with what measure it metes, it receives back again. Those who look upon their kind with envy, or jealousy, or hatred, carry within themselves the punishment for their sin, and must carry it till they outgrow these passions, and stand up and walk with their fellow men in love and friendship. Those who see injustice or mismanagement in the arrangements or the dispensations of Providence, must bear the consequences of their error within their souls; and what is this but a low and miserable condition? Do not men conform to the character of the God whom they acknowledge or worship?

Those who regard their kind with charity and kindness, meet in every man a brother and a friend. Even the heart of the wildest savage will repay the man of love and peace, for his justice and generosity. The insane are not insensible to the power of confidence and affection. The prisoner in his cell listens with tears in his eyes when the good man or the gentle woman speaks to him of his mother's love, and of the love of God which is greater than his mother's. The pirate is subdued and prays for pardon, when the minister of the cross tells him of the Saviour's benevolence.

I have seen a child who had been taught by his mother that all God's creatures are beautiful, play with the reptiles which are almost universally feared. Whenever I have thought of that child, I have thought