because the housemaid has mislaid the Bible. Did you ever read of the
stargazer who fell into an open well at the street corner? Like him, you
may be a great astronomer, a great politician, a great theologian, a
great defender of the faith even, and yet may be a stark fool just in
keeping the doors and the windows of your own heart. 'You shall see a
poor soul,' says Dr. Goodwin, 'mean in abilities of wit, or
accomplishments of learning, who knows not how the world goes, nor upon
what wheels its states turn, who yet knows more clearly and
experimentally his own heart than all the learned men in the world know
theirs. And though the other may better discourse philosophically of the
acts of the soul, yet this poor man sees more into the corruption of it
than they all.' And in another excellent place he says: 'Many who have
leisure and parts to read much, instead of ballasting their hearts with
divine truth, and building up their souls with its precious words, are
much more versed in play-books, jeering pasquils, romances, and feigned
staves, which are but apes and peacocks' feathers instead of pearls and
precious stones. Foreign and foolish discourses please their eyes and
their ears; they are more chameleons than men, for they live on the east
wind.'

2. 'If thine eye offend thee'--our Lord lays down this law to all those
who would enter into life--'pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is
better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than, having two
eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.' Does your eye offend you, my brethren?
Does your eye cause you to stumble and fall, as it is in the etymology?
The right use of the eye is to keep you from stumbling and falling; but
so perverted are the eye and the heart of every sinner that the city
watchman has become a partaker with thieves, and our trusted guide and
guardian a traitor and a knave. If thine eye, therefore, offends thee;
if it places a stone or a tree in thy way in a dark night; if it digs a