it.  Shut up that book and put it away.  Throw that paper and that picture into the fire.  Cut off that companion, even if he were an adoring lover.  Refuse that entertainment and that amusement, though all the world were crowding upto it.  And soon, and soon, till you have plucked your eye as clean of temptations and snares as it is possible to be in this life.  For this life is full of that terrible but blessed law of our Lord.  The life of all His people, that is; and you are one of them, are you not?  You will know whether or no you are one of them just by the number of the beautiful things, and the sweet things, and the things to be desired, that you have plucked out of your eye at His advice and demand.  True 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 temptation and transgression.  My son, let thine eyes look right on.  Ponder the path of thy feet, turn not to the right hand nor to the left—­remove thy foot from all evil!