s one watches--it is evil, one is certain of it.
Nearer and nearer to the house it creeps--it is by the window--it
rises to look in, and one shudders to think of those inside who
suddenly see _that_ looking at them through the window. But there is
no one there. Fatigue changes to triumph; caution is dropped; it
goes and returns with seven worse than itself, and the last state of
the place is worse than the first (Luke 11:24-26). Is this leaving
the real? One critic will say it is, "No," says another man, in a
graver tone and speaking slowly, "it's real enough; it's my story."
But have we left the text too far? Then let us try another passage.
Here is a funeral procession, a bier with a dead man laid out on it,
"wrapped in a linen cloth" (Matt. 27:59), "bound hand and foot with
grave-clothes" (John 11:44)--a common enough sight in the East; but
who are they who are carrying him--those silent, awful figures,
bound like him hand and foot, and wound with the same linen cloth,
moving swiftly and steadily along with their burden? It is the dead
burying the dead (Luke 9:60). Add to these the account of the three
Temptations--stories in picture, which must come from Jesus himself,
and illustrate another side of his experience. For to the mind that
sees and thinks in pictures, temptation comes in pictures which the
mind makes for itself, or has presented to it and at once lights
up--pictures horrible and once seen hard to forget and to escape. No
wonder he warns men against the pictures they paint themselves in
their minds (Matt. 5:28; cf. Chapter VII, p. 154). Add also the
other pictures of Satan fallen (Luke 10:18) and Satan pushing into
God's presence with a demand for the disciples (Luke 22:31). Are we
to call these "visions"--the word is ambiguous--or are they
imaginative presentments of evil, as it thrusts itself on the soul,
with all its allurements and all its ugliness? "Visions" in the
sense that is associated with trance, we shall hardly call them.
They are pictures showing his gift of imagination.

Lastly, on this part of our subject, let us remind ourselves of the
many parables and pictures and sayings which put God himself before
us. Here is the bird's nest, and one little sparrow fallen to the
ground--and God is there and he takes notice of it; he misses the
little bird from the brood (Matt. 10:29; cf. Luke 12:6). Here again
is quite another scene--the rich and middle-aged man, who has
prospered in everything and