The Oberlin Evangelist

LECTURE XXIII.

December 2, 1840

A SINGLE AND AN EVIL EYE

by the Rev. Charles G. Finney

Modernized by Cliff Collins

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:22-23)

In this discussion I will show:

I. What does a good (single – KJV) eye mean?

II. What does a bad (evil – KJV) eye mean?

III. A good eye will insure knowledge of truth and duty.

IV. A bad or an evil eye will insure darkness and delusion, concerning both doctrine and duty.

I. What does a good eye mean?

This language here is figurative. By a good or a bad eye, the Savior is talking about a state of mind. “The lamp of the body”, He says, “is the eye: Therefore, if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light”. We know that our physical eye can deteriorate so much that we could see double, or objects become so blurry or foggy that it can deceive and mislead us. When Jesus referred to a good eye, He was talking about an eye in its perfect state; an eye that sees objects exactly as they are, with such clarity that our minds receive correct information concerning the things we are looking at.

When we apply this analogy to us, it must represent the supreme and ultimate intention of our mind. When our ultimate goal or intention is good, and it should be good, we can say that the eye of our mind or heart is good. For our mind has its eye on just one great absorbing object. This state of mind implies the following:

1. It implies supreme love for God. Of course, if our mind has only one great absorbing goal or end in view, and that goal is right, the end must be supremely to honor, please, and glorify God. This certainly implies supreme love for God.

2. This state of mind implies unselfish love for Him. Unless this love is unselfish; that is, unless we love God for whom He is, for His own sake, and not for the sake of making ourselves happy; honoring Him is not our supreme or ultimate end. Our own happiness is really our goal, and the love and service of God is merely a means to promote our selfish end.

3. This state of mind implies a state of entire consecration. When Christ said, “if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light”, He was talking about a state of entire consecration to God. We can see this from the passage that follows, where He says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (V. 24) It is very clear, that our mind’s eye is not right, unless we dedicate and devote our selves to the love and service of God. A good eye can mean nothing less than a state of entire consecration to God.

II. What does a bad eye mean?

A bad or an evil eye has double vision. When we apply this analogy to us, it means that we view everything through a selfish medium. Our mind has two objects in view. It has a legal intention to serve God, but it also has an ultimate intention to serve self. By a legal intention to serve God I mean, that this intention is not based on a supreme, unselfish love for God, which aims at honoring and glorifying Him as an ultimate goal. Rather, a legal intention is an intention to serve God as the means of increasing our own happiness. In this situation, our ultimate intention is self-interest, and the intention to serve God is only a means to our ultimate end or goal.

III. A good or a single eye will insure a knowledge of truth and duty.

1. The passage we are examining today clearly teaches us that a good or a single eye will insure a knowledge of truth and duty. “If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light”. Light means knowledge, truth. Now when Christ says, “if your eye is good your whole body will be full of light”, what less can He mean than that the soul that has a good eye, shall be rightly instructed in all that it needs to know.

2. The following will be the natural result of a good eye:

(1.) A good eye will produce honest inquiry.

(2.) A good eye will produce earnest, diligent inquiry.

(3.) A good eye will secure the right and the best use of the necessary means of knowledge.

(4.) A good eye will produce unfailing perseverance in acquiring knowledge.

(5.) The state of our will won’t interfere with our perception of truth and evidence.

(6.) The state of our will, will contribute to our ability to see, and insure that we receive the evidence, when it is within our reach.

(7.) In this state of mind, we will not be resist or quench the Holy Spirit. Instead, we will seek and devoutly cherish His influences.

(8.) We will obey the Holy Spirit’s instructions. We will heed His slightest motions. We will deliver our whole soul up to His guidance.

(9.) If we are in the same state of mind that God, Christ, and the inspired writers were, we will naturally understand them. If you have the same goal that God has, if you deeply sympathize with God and you are in the same state of mind that He is in, the language he uses to express His own state of mind will be, to you, the most intelligible language possible. Who does not know that people who possess the same spirit, not only adopt the same or similar words to express their ideas and feelings, but they also naturally understand each other’s language perfectly? They understand each other perfectly. However, those who have a different state of mind can’t understand them. The more they differ, the less they understand. As a result, the Bible is a very unintelligible and uninteresting book to an impenitent sinner. To a Christian who has little experience, and even less religion, the Bible is largely unintelligible, and he takes comparatively little interest in it. However, to the Christian who lives in a state of entire consecration to God, it is not only one of the most intelligible, but also the most interesting book in the universe.

(10.) In this state of mind, your experiences will be such that the teachings of the Bible, and especially the most spiritual portions of the Bible, will become clear to you. Whenever someone addresses you on a subject that you have had a lot of experience with, and he speaks in a way and uses words that agree with your experience, you will find it very easy to understand the speaker or the writer. However, the more he departs from your experience, the less sense he makes. In fact, his experience can be so foreign to your experience it seems like he is speaking to you in an unknown tongue, because, you do not understand what that person is saying any farther than it agrees with your experience. Words are only signs of ideas; and suppose words are used which are signs of ideas that are not in your mind, you do not get, and cannot possibly get any information from that kind of teaching. To you it is no teaching at all.

(11.) This state of mind will insure great communion and great power with God. The soul that lives in a state of entire consecration to God, can come to Him with as much confidence, and with indescribably more assurance than a child will ever be able to come to an earthly parent. If you have ever been in this state, you know this from your own experience. When you live all the time in a state of deep communion with God, you feel the strong confidence and assurance that you know how He feels, by your own experience. Thus, you know how Christ feels. You know why He gave His life for sinners; and you are aware, that you are willing yourselves to make up in your bodies the sufferings that remain, and to lay down your lives for the world, and for the Church of God. In this state of mind, I say, you will have great power with God, and you will prevail.

IV. A bad eye will insure darkness and delusion, concerning both doctrine and duty.

1. The second part of our passage today clearly teaches this: “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness”. Notice! The whole body will be full of darkness! Darkness means error and delusion. Now, using these words, the Savior must have intended to teach that a selfish mind would be, and should be, full of error and delusion, concerning doctrine and duty. And, in context, a selfish mind is a mind that is not entirely consecrated to God. Instead, selfish considerations influence that person.

2. Darkness and delusion will be the natural and inevitable result of this state of mind:

(1.) Selfishness will prevent seeking; especially honest, diligent, and persevering seeking.

(2.) This state of the will, will prevent the person from perceiving and receiving evidence. Few people seem to be aware of the extent of the will’s influence over decisions that involve their understanding. Over the years, I have had many opportunities to observe how the mind develops this way, and I have often been astonished to see the extent that the will influences human opinion. I’m sure almost all of you have observed that under circumstances of strong excitement, it is almost useless to reason with someone against their prejudices. I have painfully observed repeatedly, that prejudice, a committed state of mind, and many other considerations and things, will so influence our will, that it completely blocks out the light of truth from our understanding. On many subjects, it seems next to impossible to convince a man against his will; while, on the other hand, a man will believe almost anything that he wants to believe. And the willingness of the human race to quickly believe subjects that agree with the state of their wills, especially those doctrines and things that they really want to believe, is as surprising as their resistance to believe those subjects that oppose their wills. It is amazing to hear infidels and skeptics contend, that human belief is involuntary, and that men must believe what they do believe, when the fact, that human opinion and belief is voluntary on almost every subject, is as obvious to anybody paying attention, as almost any fact of human history.

3. A person under the influence of a bad eye, that is, a person who has a selfish heart, will not practice the truth. Therefore, he can’t teach it. There are many truths, which can be seen and understood no further than other truths are first seen and understood. And you can never understand many truths any further than you experience them.

Take, for example, the subject of temperance. Suppose you preach strict temperance principles to a person who has always been in the habit of freely drinking hard liquor. Now there are certain things that you can make him understand. If he has been a habitual drinker, you can describe to him the feelings of a drunk and he will understand you; because he has lots of experience on that subject. Words are symbols of ideas; and they will mean nothing more to him, than the ideas formed by the words in his mind. Therefore, you can make him understand something about the evil of drunkenness. Yet, if he has been in the habit of getting drunk for as long as he can remember, you can’t, no matter what words you use, so contrast the experience, follies, and health of a drunk, with those of a strictly temperate man, so that he will understand you. He doesn’t know what temperance is. He doesn’t know what health is. He doesn’t know anything about the state of mind that naturally results from temperance and good health. Perhaps, you can convict him of the great evils of intemperance from the fact that he has experience on that part of the subject; and in this way you can get enough light in on his mind, that he decides to sober up. Now, the more sober, temperate, and healthy he becomes, the more his experience will enable you to contrast temperance with intemperance, until you can fully impress his mind with both sides of the question; and thus lodge in his mind the full weight of the momentous considerations in favor of temperance.

In this whole process, it is easy to see that he must begin with the A, B, C’s of both the doctrines and the experience of temperance. First, break his habit of drinking hard liquor, and after a while, he is better prepared to see and feel the indispensable need of universal temperance. Break him off from everything that intoxicates, and his experience will soon enable him to understand the importance and need to break off from all non-nutritious stimulants in his diet. Once he has abandoned all of these, his experience will soon enable him to understand the importance of selecting healthy and nutritious foods. This experience will naturally prepare his mind to understand the importance of universal cleanliness and chastity, the strictest subjection of his appetites and tendencies, to the great and universal law of temperance. And as he reforms step by step, every step puts him in a new position to see, feel, understand, and appreciate arguments in favor of more reformation.

Now what is true on the subject of temperance holds true on nearly every practical question; and that is especially true on subjects that pertain to personal holiness. If a person will not practice, he cannot learn. Talk to an impenitent sinner about entire sanctification. Holiness is so completely foreign to his experience, that he does not understand you at all. Talk with him about his sins, his convictions, his fears, misgivings, and every subject that is a matter of experience with him, and he will understand you; but talk to him about entire sanctification, and he will have no clue what you mean. Therefore, the only possible way to deal with him is to begin on those subjects that he has had experience with, and thus you will gradually bring him to see and to feel that it is an evil and bitter thing to sin against God. This will lead him to see, admit, and experience the doctrine of repentance. Now proceed, step by step, to lead him forward, and as his experience grows, his capacity of understanding about sanctification, and the desirableness and indispensable need of sanctification, will be perceived and felt by him. The more he practices, the more he will learn. If he stops and he refuses to follow truth any farther in practice, that is where the clouds of darkness will surround him. And it is only as he goes forward, from step to step, practicing or experiencing one truth after another, as they are presented to him, that he can possibly come to an understanding and knowledge of the truth. Therefore, please remember, that he who will not practice will not learn. In other words, unless his eye is good, his whole body will be full of darkness.

4. To one who has a bad eye, selfishness makes the Bible unintelligible. To that person, it is a sealed book. It is uninteresting, hard to understand, self-contradictory, and it is anything and everything, but interesting and understandable. The fact is, its Author and the inspired writers, were not selfish. Therefore, to a selfish mind, they speak in an unknown tongue.

5. A selfish person will not only not understand the Bible, but many times, he will naturally understand the Bible to mean the direct opposite of what it really means. The fault is not in the Bible, nor in its Author, but the fault comes from his selfish state of mind. For example: when God speaks about being angry with His enemies, if the sinner has never experienced anything but selfish anger, he naturally thinks that God’s anger is just like his anger. And, whenever God speaks of having any state of mind, or doing anything, sinners naturally interpret this language by their own experience. Therefore, God says, “You thought that I was altogether like you”. (Psalms 50:21) Because selfish people naturally want to, they interpret the words of the Bible by their own experience, they ascribe the same motives, affections, and passions to God, that they themselves have experienced, not understanding that all these states of mind in God are truly and infinitely unselfish.

It is a familiar and a true saying, that people judge others by themselves. To a truly holy mind, the Bible is not only the most interesting, but the most intelligible book in the world; while infidels exclaim that it is blasphemy to ascribe such feelings and conduct to God; and therefore, the Bible must be a false publication that maliciously damages God’s character. Now the only remedy for this is to become unselfish. If they will only begin to obey the truth, as far as they can understand it, and then practice one truth after another until they come into that state of mind that the inspired writers were in, they will then understand the Bible, and not until then.

6. A person, who has a bad eye, will not have the Spirit of God to enlighten his mind concerning the truth, and therefore, he will never understand it.

REMARKS.

1. A selfish minister is a blind leader of the blind. This is the mildest language that truth or inspiration can use, concerning an ambitious, a compromising, a man fearing, and, in short, a selfish minister. His eye is evil. His whole body, as Christ is true, including his mind, is full of darkness on spiritual subjects.

2. Such a minister will certainly mislead his flock in many areas. He sees no truth spiritually, and therefore, he can’t safely be trusted as a spiritual guide. In fact, to trust him leads to ruin and death.

3. Selfish minds are very willing to allow selfish ministers to lead them, since they naturally see eye to eye. Having similar experiences, they will naturally understand each other. A carnal church will naturally be pleased with a carnal minister. A carnal minister will not see the defects of a carnal church. Therefore, they will be able to walk together, because they agree. (See Amos 3:3)

4. The doctrine of today’s passage applies to the preparation and delivery of sermons. If a minister's eye is good, he will naturally select sermons that are suited to his people. He will naturally discuss them in a way, and deliver them in a manner, that will edify the people; simply because that is the purpose of his preaching. Having his eye focused on the holiness of the Church and the glory of God, it will be perfectly natural for him to prepare and deliver sermons, and do everything in a way that will tend to edify and sanctify the people. But if, on the other hand, his goal is to secure his salary, play the orator, or promote any selfish interests whatever, he will naturally select subjects, prepare, and deliver them, in a way that is suited to the goal he has in mind. If his eye is good, he will be full of light concerning the way he does his work. If his eye is bad, he will be full of darkness, and he will do everything else, but edify and sanctify his people.

5. This doctrine applies to every decision involving your duty. In selecting occupations, looking for directions in life, seeking a companion for life, or addressing any other question of interest and duty, if your eye is good, your whole mind will be full of light. You will only take into account those considerations that will properly influence your decision on that question. On the other hand, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness; and your decision on a question will certainly turn on selfish considerations that should have no influence in deciding that question.

6. If you are not aware that you have a good eye, you can’t safely go forward in anything. If you have already made up your mind on a question of doctrine or duty, and have not made your decision under the influence of a good eye, you may be, and probably are, in some important respects, completely wrong. If in selecting your direction in life, your occupation, what kind of business to pursue, where you should live; if you have made a bargain, or you have done anything selfishly or under the influence of a bad eye; as certain as Christ is true, your whole body is full of darkness. You must review every step you made.

Perhaps you may object, saying that many individuals are highly enlightened, hold true opinions, and are very orthodox, who are still quite selfish. To this I will answer, from both my own experience and the word of God, that those people hold the truth only in words. They don’t really know what they are saying, or whether what they insist is true. They are deceived, and you who make the objection are deceived concerning them, if you think they know the truth.

7. From this subject, it is easy to see why the opinions of the Church and the ministry are so divided. It is because they are so sectarian and selfish in their spirit. It is selfishness, and nothing but selfishness, that divides the Church. When the Church comes to have a good eye, her watchmen and her members will then see eye to eye; because her body will then be full of light.

8. From this subject, you can see the only true way of promoting real Christian Unity. It is useless to talk about destroying sectarianism by destroying creeds. Creeds may perpetuate, but they are not the cause of sectarianism. Selfishness, and nothing but selfishness is its cause. Let universal love and a good eye prevail, and sectarianism will disappear. Destroy a sectarian spirit, let it be replaced by love, and Christians will then be in a state of mind to examine their differences of opinion honestly. They will be able to come to such mutual explanations, and so honestly and thoroughly weigh each other’s opinions and arguments, that their opinions will almost completely agree. But should there still be differences of opinion concerning any issue, it would be the last thing on their mind, to withdraw from communion with each other, and divide into sects and separate denominations.

9. From this subject it is easy to see why ministers often feel like they can’t preach. They feel as if they have nothing to say. They are at a loss to know what to preach. They don’t have enough interest in any subject to enable them to preach on it. When they have fallen into a selfish state of mind, their whole body is full of darkness.

10. How infinitely important it is, that we should always remember this truth, that a bad eye, or a selfish intention, always brings the mind into great darkness. How many are there, even in the Christian Church, to whom the Bible is a sealed book? How many are here tonight, who are in great darkness concerning truth, doctrine, and their duty? How many minds here resemble an ocean of darkness?

11. How many people today have a lot of confidence in their opinions? How many are ready to risk their souls on the truth of their opinions? How many have made up their minds on the most important and solemn subjects; and while under the influence of selfishness, they enter the Christian Church hugging their delusions? How many are following the guidance and instruction of those who are perhaps as much under the dominion of a bad eye, as they are themselves, and whose mind is as full of darkness as their own? Thus, they go on, unsuspectingly, while Christ assures them in the most solemn manner, that if their eye is bad, their whole body is full of darkness. Still, they don’t believe it. They have the highest confidence in their own opinions and in the safety of their state. And so, they march forward, with a kind of mad assurance, into the depths of hell!