' G. JIatheson, Words by the Wayside, 17. "J. Reudul Harris, Life of F. W. Crosslcy, 165.
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experience more and more the warm, cherishing, quickening sunlight, the light of God's countenance, shining on, gladdening, and glorifying the life. We escape, too, all that is bitter in the school of discipline, all harm, all loss, all death. Nothing malign, nothing sorrowful, can lurk for a spirit in the path in which it is guided by the eye of God ; while the life-path brightens as it travels, opening into a sphere of boundless activity, of glorious beauty, of perfect blessedness, as it nears the bounds of the eternal world.
^ My parents founded every action, every attitude, upon their interpretation of the Scriptures, and upon the guidance of the Divine Will as revealed to them by direct answer to prayer. Their ejaculation in the face of any dilemma was, " Let us cast it before the Lord ! " So confident were they of the reality of their intercourse with God, that they asked for no other guide. They recognized no spiritual authority among men, they subjected themselves to no priest or minister, they troubled their consciences about no current manifestation of " religious opinion." They lived in an intellectual cell, bounded at its sides by the walls of their own house, but open above to the very heart of the uttermost heavens.^
4. God's guidance meets all possible circumstances and con- ditions. The eye has infinite capability of expression, and speaks all languages. It thus meets and fits any character, in all its feelings, and in all its circumstances, every moment. And yet it is actually personal. Other " guidings," such as laws, or books, or commands, are general, and the same to everybody. The look of " the eye " is essentially individual ; it brings the Guider and the guided into the closest association : " I will guide thee with mine eye."
^ Of all bodily organs the most expressive is the eye. I can read in the eye of a friend far more than he utters with the tongue. It is the most accurate of all the heart's dial-plates. It can express joy or grief, entreaty or reproof, approval or dislike. Parents and children, or brothers and sisters, living in the same home, can hold conversations with each other, even in the presence of strangers, by the language of the eye. Small signs pass be- tween them thus which a stranger neither sees nor understands. And just so, those who live in close intercourse with God learn to ^ Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 14.
94 THE GUIDING EYE
read what may be called the glances of His eye, small indications of His will which strangers to heart-fellowship with Him cannot read at all.^
5. God's guidance is unerring ; it never fails. We read in the Old Testament that God guided His people in various ways — by angels, by dreams, by visions, by prophets, by priests, by Urim and Thummim, by signs and wonders. Although God no longer guides man by these special or extraordinary agencies, yet we may be as certain of God's guidance now as though we saw Him in the heavens with His eye upon us and His finger pointing to the course He desires us to take. By an instinct, by an impression, by a sense of duty, by an exercise of judgment, by the advice of others, by a book, by a sermon, by a passage of Scripture, by helping us in one direction, by hindering us in another — these are the ordinary methods or agencies by which God is -ever guiding those who obey His guidance. We are as a vessel being steered to port. There is One with us whose eye is always on the compass, and whose hand, so to speak, is always on the wheel of life. By His eye and by His hand every movement of a man's life is guided. That hand and that eye are hidden, are unnoticed ; but night and day they are in action, ever performing their guiding work till we reach the haven of God's everlasting rest. We may make false moves at times, at times appear to get out of our providential track ; but somehow, so long as the Divine eye is upon us and the Divine hand directs us, we go not far astray, and in the end reach our God-appointed port.
^ Keble recalled to men the teaching of Bishop Butler on the moral nature of the evidence by which spiritual convictions were reached. To the mere reason, this evidence could not get beyond suggestive probabilities ; but these probabilities were used, by the living spirit of man, as an indication of the personal Will of God, which could be read by the soul that was in tune with that Will. So probabilities became certitudes. "I will guide thee willi mine Eye," was Keble's favourite example of the mode in which Divine truth touched the soul. By deep glimpses, by rare flashes, by a momentary glance, the Eye of God could make us aware of Truths far beyond the understanding of reason. Such Truths possessed authority, which we could not dissect or critic<illy examine.
' G. H. Knight, Abiding Help/or Changing Days, 30.
PSALM XXXII. 8 95
They were revelations of the mind of Him with whom we had to deal.i