Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2058
“Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.” Proverbs 4:25.
THESE words occur in a passage wherein the wise man exhorts us to take care of all parts of our nature which he indicates by members of the body. “Keep your heart,” says he, “with all diligence. For out of it are the issues of life. Put away from you a disobedient mouth, and perverse lips put far from you. Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove your foot from evil.”
It is clear that every part of our nature needs to be carefully watched, lest in any way it should become the cause of sin. Any one member or faculty is readily able to defile all the rest, and therefore, every part must be guarded with care. We have selected for our meditation the verse which deals with the eye. These windows of light need to be watched in their incomings, lest that which we take into our soul should be darkness rather than light. And they need to be watched in their outgoings, lest the glances of the eye should be full of iniquity, or should suggest foolish thoughts. Hence the wise man advises, “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.” Have eyes and use them. Using them, take care to use them honestly.
Some persons are always as if they were asleep. They go though the world moping about, seeing nothing or seeing men as if they were trees, with a sight which is not sight but blindness. The shadows of this transient life impress them and that is all—they have never awakened yet to the true life and its solemn realities. They have never seen anything in very truth—for it is faith that sees and of faith they have none. That which is apart from faith is not visible to the soul, however clear it may be to the eye. We have thousands around us who need to be startled out of that slumber in which they see the fabrics of their dreams and the unsubstantial fancies of the hour.
They say, “We see,” but scales are on their eyes. I fear we have such in all our congregations, lulled to sleep even by the preacher’s tones, to whom the fact of coming to their accustomed seat and listening to the usual hymns tends rather to confirm them in a sluggard’s slumber than to stir their souls to action. O you Sluggards, may God awaken you by Divine Grace, lest He arouse you by the thunderbolts of His vengeance! It is time that your eyes began to look right on and your eyelids straight before you.
Many others are somewhat awake mentally but they are not looking right on, neither do their eyelids look straight before them. They are staring about them, star-gazing, wondering what will be seen next—always ready, like the Athenians, to hear and see some new thing. They move, it is true, but it is in a labyrinth which leads to nothing—in a circle which ends where it began. They toil and slave but it is all in the shadow land—of substantial work they do nothing. An active idleness, a diligent laziness is all that their life is made up of. For, as yet, they have no purpose—no purpose worth being the aim of an immortal soul.
An arrow will never strike the mark if it travels in a zigzag direction. And the man whose life has no aim whatever, who pursues this, and then that, and then the other, what will he achieve? Are not many like “dumb driven cattle,” going, they know not where? They have never yet discovered that this life is a preface to a life of a more Divine mold. They do not regard the present as the lowly porch of the glorious edifice of the future. They have not thought that time is but the doorstep of eternity, a thing of small account, save that it is linked with the endless ages.
And so they seek after this, and then after that, and then after the other. And always after that which is too poor, too trifling to be the object of a mind capable of fellowship with God. How many there are whose spirit is agitated by a mere nothing, resembling—
“Ocean into tempest tossed To float a feather or to drown a fly”! To beings who lead such purposeless lives we would address the words of the wise man, “Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you.” Have something to do and do it. Have something to live for and live for it. Get to know the right way and, knowing the right way, keep to it with full purpose of heart and concentration of faculty.
O Man, see where you are going and go that way with your eyes open, resolutely marking every step as you take it. Look where you ought to look and then follow your eyes which shall thus be useful outriders to your life and help to make your way safe and wise. When you have sent your eyes before you to make sure of the way, it will be safe to follow. Look before you leap and only leap when looking bids you do so. If a man is to let his eyes look right on and his eyelids straight before him, then he is to have a way, and that way is to be a straight way—and in that straight way he is to persevere.