of his presumption he bade them bring forth the sacred vessels from the Temple at Jerusalem; ’and the king and his princes and his concubines drank in them and praised the gods.’  So we take the sacred chalice of the human heart, on which there is marked the sign manual of Heaven, claiming it for God’s, and fill it with the spiced and drugged draught of our own sensualities and evils, and pour out libations to vain and false gods.  Brethren!  Render unto Him that which is His; and see even upon the walls scrabbled all over with the deformities that we have painted there, lingering traces, like those of some dropping fresco in a roofless Italian church, which suggest the serene and perfect beauty of the image of the One whose likeness was originally traced there, and for whose worship it was all built.

III.  And now, lastly, look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light.

Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that were looking upon them.  They were hugging themselves in the conceit, ‘the Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.’  And all the while, all unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all.  Not a finger is lifted, not a sign to the foolish worshippers of His presence and inspection, but in stern silence He records and remembers.

And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of putting a solemn truth?  There 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.