The Eye, a Similitude 2
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3. "Keep me as the apple of the eye." Does it not mean, "Keep me from little evils, the dust and grit of this evil world"? Your eye needs not to be guarded so much from beams as from motes. You would not say, "It is only a tiny grain of dust, therefore let it enter into my eyes." By no means. The smallest grain that floats in the summer’s breeze will vex and irritate, and cause the scalding tears to flow, and you know by painful experience how much suffering you may endure from a grain of sand which you could scarcely see. Be this your prayer, then -- "Lord, keep me from what the world calls little sins; Lord, keep me from what my callous conscience may make me think to be little sin. Save me, Lord, from thoughts orimaginations, for these are the eggs of which greater mischiefs are hatched. Keep me, Lord, from words which to carnal minds might seem but air, but which, in your sight are weighty matters, especially as coming from your children, who have been brought up to understand the law of your mouth." I like to see the Christian show the rigidity of that Puritan, who said that he could not even in a word swerve from the truth he believed, though there were a living or an opportunity of preferment to be got by complying. "Oh, but," said another, "others have made long gashes in their consciences: could not you make a little nick in yours?"
Ah, you know what those "little nicks in the conscience" always come to! When once you begin the rent, how swiftly it runs from the top to the bottom of your conscience! Beware of nicks of the conscience; let your prayer be, "Lord keep me! Keep away from me those sins the wrong of which I hardly know, but whose wickedness and woefulness are open before you. Let me never trifle with a sin because it does not look so black or cause such shame as some other iniquities." Christians will too often indulge wrong habits and tolerate doubtful customs, until transgressions seem to them as if they were unavoidable, and sincerely would they persuade themselves that they are harmless. There was an officer who kept in his housea leopard, a tame leopard, which had been born in captivity, and had never known what liberty was. It had grown up as tame as a domestic cat, until one day, when the master was asleep, it gently licked his hand. Now, it so happened that he had cut the skin during the day, and a little blood oozed out as the creature’s tongue was drawn repeatedly over the wound.
The taste of the blood roused the wild demon spirit of the beast at once, and had it not been promptly shot, its once beloved master would have been its victim. In like manner those little household sins which look not like the fell destroyers that they are, will one of these days reveal their true nature, and you will have to chase them from your soul, and drive them to their native haunts. It is not fit that they should lodge under your roof. Chase them away before they put you into greater danger. They must be doomed or you will have no peace. They must be destroyed, for your life is in jeopardy.
When the thief cannot break in at the door himself, he finds a child, and puts him through the little window, and then the great door is speedily opened. Thus do little sins open the door for a great sin. Men who have appeared to be proof against open temptations to commit a crime, have often been duped by fallacious allurements. The temptations have come in the garb of virtue, and their disguise has not been cast aside until the way of escape has been cut off. "Keep me, then, as the apple of the eye," means, "keep me from little things that defile, and little flaws that disfigure or utterly deface godliness of character."
4. Do you not think, brethren, that the sensitiveness of the organ of visionmay suggest another lesson to be drawn from this prayer, "Keep me as the apple of the eye"? That is to say, make my heart tender, and my conscience quick and impressible. There is nothing more sensitive than the eye.If anything were moved near your hand or arm in the dark, you might not feel its motion, but the eye is keenly perceptive even of a current of air. It is affected by anything passing near it, as you may readily notice for yourselves. God has made the pupil of the eye thus sensitive for its own protection, that it may shrink from rash exposure. So, if we are kept as the pupil of the eye, we shall be endowed with this peculiar faculty, a tender sensitiveness that shrinks with nervous trepidation from the presence of evil. If the eye grew dull and callous instead of being impressible, it would be in immediate danger, and probably would be soon destroyed. The sensibility of the eye is its own protection: it forecasts the peril and avoids it. Our hearts, my brethren, must in like manner to some extent carry within themselves, by God’s grace, their own instincts of self-protection. Wesley seized on this thought, and paraphrased it aptly when he wrote the verse - "Quick as the apple of an eye, O God, my conscience make; Awake my soul when sin is near, And keep it still awake."
Are there not some men whose senses are never exercised to discern good and evil? They walk in such darkness that they stumble on a sin before they detect it in their path, or a ponderous temptation will roll on them and overturn them without their once perceiving the headway it was making, and the necessity of making their escape. There are some nostrils that would not be disgusted at the foulest smells, nor would they be regaled though the daintiest perfumes were loading the air with their fragrance. But there are other nostrils quick and delicate, which soon perceive the noxious odor; it frets their sense while it pollutes the air.
The insensitive are exposed to all kinds of miasma and pestilence because they perceive not the danger; while those to whom the effluvium is repulsive would shun it forthwith, and never rest until the noxious matter that might have bred disease is removed. We need a spiritual sensibilitythat shall be quick and apprehensive of the faintest smell of sin. Only feel that it is loathsome, and you will easily convince yourselves that it is dangerous. You will not require the minister to come down and admonish you of his suspicions, or exhort you to forbear the first indications of a wrong practice. You will not need a mother or father to say, "My dear child, that is a treacherous step you are about to take." The conscience should be a ready indicator; if in good keeping it would be a wonderful tattle-tale. It will startle you from your lethargy. It will arouse you as with an alarum, for it will cry aloud, "You are going astray; you are falling into error; you are wandering after evil; you are setting yourself to do iniquity." God give us this sensitiveness. I do delight to see it in young converts. Ah, some of us in the early stages of conviction were half afraid to put one foot before another for fear of doing wrong.
O that you could keep up that tenderness of heart! It ought to increase.
Do your diligence to keep the heart holy, for out of it are the issues of life. With some of you I fear there is a degree of dulness that does not betoken the refinement of your taste in spiritual things. We ought, as we get nearer to heaven, to become more and more jealous of approximation or contact with anything that defiles, abhorring the very trail of the serpent; shuddering at even the appearance of sin; loathing the atmosphere that is corrupted by evil conversation. Keep me, then, like as you keep the eye through its own sensitiveness.
5. Should we not make it our prayer, too, that God will keep us as the eye ought to be kept?It should be single. "The light of the body is the eye: therefore, when your eye is single, your whole body is full of light; but when your eye is evil, your whole body is full of darkness." Keep me single-minded, Lord, consecrated wholly, and devoted alone to you.
The eye should be clear. Any speck on its retina would obscure our view of the landscape. With "an inlet, so small," as one of the poets writes, "that a grain might close it." The eye needs to be cleansed. God has provided arrangements for this without disturbing the beautiful mechanism of the little orb. Take heed, beloved, that the eye of faith is kept clear. We need to be sprinkled with the precious blood, and washed with clean water full often, that we may be always pure, consciously sanctified. The clean water you know is the cleansing water which came with the blood from the heart of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God; thereby the conscience is purged, and the heart made clean, actively and passively sanctified unto God. The eye needs to be far-seeing. It is a great pity when the eye can only see a short distance. We strain our natural eye to see some ship far out at sea, that looks perchance like a speck on the horizon, or we want to stretch our vision far over mountain and valley, river and lake, from some lofty Alp, compassing the entire prospect at a glance. But oh! it is well when our soul can take a wide view, and embrace the grand perspective which revelation unfolds, free from cloud and vapor, not pestered with the cares of the day so as to obscure the immortal joys that await our arrival at the city of the blessed; not earth-bound, and absorbed by incidents that transpire within the tick of this clock, but prospecting the fields of light beyond, where moments, hours, days, years, and centuries of years are unknown. Raise your eyes, Christians. May be you shall catch a glimpse of the better land, "Where everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers; Death, like a narrow stream, divides That heavenly land from ours." May the Lord keep us as the apple of the eye, sensitive, clean, clear, single-eyed, and far-seeing.
My brethren, the eye is kept and preserved as an ornament. Certainly the most expressive feature of the human body is the eye, and it is the most capable of making the countenance beautiful. Take away the eye from that fair face - that eye of hazel or of blue, or that dark eye that looks you through and through and burns your heart as with coals of fire - how dull, unimpassioned, and senseless it would that face be! "A beautiful eye," it has
been somewhere said, "makes silence eloquent; a kind eye makes contradiction assent; and an enraged eye makes beauty itself to be deformed; for it is this little member which gives life to every part about us." Take the sparkling eye away from the sweetest face, and how sadly you have marred it. Your marble statues, some of them almost seem to speak, fail to convey the impression of life, because there is no eye. That lack of eye is lack of all that is lifelike. Let every Christian pray God that, as the eye is the ornament of the body, he may be kept as an ornament to the Christian church. What are the ornaments of the church of God? Are they the wealthy and respectable members? or are they the learned and intellectual members? These, my dear friends, are ornaments from man’s too carnal point of view; they will often secure the most notice among their fellows, but they are not ornaments from God’s point of view unless there is something higher to commend them than the accidents of rank or education.
The greatest ornaments of the Christian church are those that labor most diligently, those that pray the most fervently, those that are most filled with love, those that are most Christ like in temper and disposition, the most humble, the most teachable, the most patient in suffering, the most persevering in service, those who commend the gospel of the grace of God by their entire life and conversation - such are the ornaments of the church of God. And the eye of faith sheds luster on all other features of character. I tell you, that when spirits more pure than ours go round about the church and count the towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, it never enters into their thoughts that one part of the building was smeared withthe yellow hue of wealth; or that another part of the building was decorated after the classic manner of Corinth and Athens; they only think of the jasper light and of the sapphire glow of spirituality and holiness as it flashes bright in the sunlight of God over hearts that have been sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Pray that you may be made an ornament of the church, your light shining before men, being kept as the apple of the eye to shed luster on the saints around, and in your degree to irradiate this dark world.
The eye is not only an ornament, but its function in the body is of the greatest usefulness. How sad a privation is the loss of sight, or to lose even a portion of its power how grievous the detriment! The eye is in some respects the most useful part of the mechanism of our bodies; it benefits all our limbs. So, brethren, ought we to be profitable and conducive to the good of others. When we pray, "Keep me as the apple of the eye," it behooves us to remember the real interest that attaches to our preservation. Are we worth keeping? Not certainly if we are of no use. Who cares to spare and keep a tree that brings forth no fruit? or who is zealous to keep an eye that does not see? I suppose those who wear glass eyes would rather not lose them, but I would be bound to say they do not prize them as if they were as tributary to their pleasure and profit as ours are whose eyes are of God’s making, and answer his ends. A genuine Christian will pray to be useful - to be not like a glass eye, a mere counterfeit for appearance sake; but being of God’s workmanship in Christ Jesus, that he may be preserved with all his faculties in full vigor, lest his strength should be impaired and spoiled, and his capacity to show forth the praises of God, and minister to the welfare of the church, dimmed or utterly extinguished.
My next remark you will perhaps think strange and quaint, but as I have not restricted myself to the immediate sense of the metaphor, as limited by the context, I may be allowed to speak of that which relates to the eye. It occurs to me that Solomon has made this shrewd remark, "The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness;" and would venture to give this a spiritual turn, and, in beseeching the Lord to keep me as the apple of the eye, would entreat him to keep me in the head, that is, to preserve me in Christ Jesus. Of what use were the eye of a man if it were not in the head? It would have no vitality if it were taken away from the glorious position of honor which is given to it in the countenance of the living man. So if we could be divided from our living Head - if we, as members of Christ, could be separated from him, it would be all over with us.
When we are united to him, as the branch is to the vine, we flourish, we bring forth fruit; but if we are separated from him we are like the dead withered branches that are gathered up and cast behind the wall where all the rubbish is ignobly burned. The best believer in the world would be only fit for the burning if he were divided from Christ his living Head. "Because I live you shall live also." So it stands. Christ’s life is our life. The life of the brain is the life of the optic nerve; the eye lives because the brain lives, and because of its place in the Head. The life of Christ is the Christian’s life.
You live because of your connection with Christ - because of your vital indissoluble gracious and eternal union with Jesus Christ your covenant Head. Be this then your prayer, "Lord, let me abide in Christ, and may his words abide in me. Let my thoughts abide in him; may I meditate much on him - may my meditation of him be sweet. Let my purposes and resolves abide in him. May I be determined to follow him wherever he goes, to be and to do always in his strength. May my desires always be towards him, desiring to know him and to be found in him - he himself being the summit of all my hopes and the crown of all my delight. O let my whole soul be in him! Then shall I be useful, then shall I be an ornament of the body, then shall I be preserved and kept."
I commend this prayer to every believer here. You will often need it: you may need it tonight before you get home. Pray it in the pew now, that you may have protection from sin - even as you pass along the streets- that you may be preserved to your own door. I have met with people who have broken their leg on their own stairs: mind you do not fall into sin in your own house, where you think you are safest, and at times when you could least suppose that you would be in danger. The Lord support you, and keep you as the apple of the eye.
Alas! there are some here to whom this prayer is nothing; they are not Christ’s, they have not believed in him. Here is another prayer for you. It is this: "Lord, save me, or I perish." The fitness of the prayer is obvious, for the reflection appended to it is true. You are near perishing. If you died tonight you must perish forever. "Lord, save me." He can do it, he will if you pray to him. His precious blood is shed for the remission of sin. He is always willing to bless sinners. "Lord, save me, or I perish." Once saved, you may pray to be kept; and he will keep you. "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen."
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