SAVIOUR. Thus your bodily eye is again the instrument of opening your intellectual eye, whilst your intellectual eye is again the instrument of leading you to the knowledge and love of JESUS CHRIST, the MANIFESTED and ONLY TRUE GOD; of teaching you the true wisdom of life; of enabling you to gain the victory over yourself and the powers of darkness; and thus of finally introducing you to all that purity of regenerate and all-conquering love, to which is extended the blessed promise, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of GOD,” [Rev., ii. 7.].
But whilst I am thus pointing out to you the uses, resulting from the organ of bodily sight, I must not forget to warn you of some mischiefs and dangers to which you are exposed from its abuse. Allow me then to observe, that the eye of the body, like every other bodily sense, will require the watchfulness and control of some principle superior to itself, as a security against its exaltation to a pre-eminence, which, if not checked, may prove destructive, not only of your temporal, but your eternal interests and happiness. It is impossible, in the compass of a letter, to note all the instances, in which bodily vision may be thus your deceiver and betrayer; but there is one of such magnitude that I cannot pass it over in silence, and perhaps
