here are plenty of us--alas! alas! that it
should be so--to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there
in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be, my brother,
that the properly blessed thought of a divine eye resting upon you
should be to you like the thought of a policeman's bull's-eye to a
thief? Why should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and
strength-giving of all convictions--'Thou God seest me'? The little
child runs about the lawn perfectly happy as long as she knows that her
mother is watching her from the window. And it ought to be sweet and
blessed to each of us to know that there is no darkness where a Father's
eye comes not. But oh! to the men that stand before bestial idols and
have turned their backs on the beauty of the one true God, the only
possibility of composure is that they shall hug themselves in the vain
delusion:--'The Lord seeth not.'

I beseech you, dear friends, do not think of His eye as the prisoner in
a cell thinks of the pin-hole somewhere in the wall, through which a
jailer's jealous inspection may at any moment be glaring in upon him,
but think of Him your Brother, who 'knew what was in man,' and who knows
each man, and see in Christ the all-knowing Godhood that loves yet
better than it knows, and beholds the hidden evils of men's hearts, in
order that it may cleanse and forgive all which it beholds.

One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be
manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ. Do you like that thought?
Can you stand it? Are you ready for it? My friend! let Jesus Christ
come to you with His light. Let Him come into the dark corners of your
hearts. Cast all your sinfulness, known and unknown, upon Him that died
on the Cross for every soul of man, and He will come; and His light,
streaming into your hearts, like the sunbeam upon foul garments, will
cleanse and bleach them white by its shining upon them. Let Him come
into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all
these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like
phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the 'Sun
of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, floods your soul, leaving
no part dark, and turning all into a temple of the living God.'

A COMMON MISTAKE AND LAME EXCUSE

'... He prophesieth of the times that are far off.'--EZEKIEL xii. 27.

Human nature was very much the same in the exil