rue
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 tempt