most friendly manner. If I have betrayed my neighbor, and caused him to suffer loss by craft, or bribery, or false testimony, who knows of it? It is all hidden under the mantle of the law. If I avail myself of all kinds of underhand practices in buying and selling, if I lie and cheat in business, who can find me out? So far no one has detected me. If I fish in troubled waters and make unlawful profit here and there, who can accuse me of it? If I amuse myself with all sorts of evil thoughts and desires, and wilfully entertain them, who knows anything about it? No one can suspect me of such a thing. If I entertain an unlawful intimacy and commit many sins in secret, not a soul can know of it; no one can read my guilt on my forehead. My husband thinks that I am true to him at all times; my parents believe that I have not lost my first innocence, that I know not what sin is; in the presence of others I am able to act as if I could not bear the sight of a certain person; all is kept quiet; there is not the least suspicion of anything, etc. So thinks the sinner. But, continues the Wise Man, “he understandeth not that His eye seeth all things;” that the eye of the omnipresent God beholds all things, and that the all-knowing Judge allows nothing to escape Him, but writes everything down in His great account-book: “And he knoweth not that the eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the sun, beholding round about all the ways of men, and the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts of men, into the most secret parts.”[1]
Then we shall be known as we are. Shown by a simile. These words suggest to me a very apposite simile. Why does the Wise Man say that the eye of God is brighter and more piercing than the sun? Mark what I am going to say. In winter when the sun hardly shines and everything is covered with a mantle of snow, all things on earth appear to have the same white color and outward appearance, so that one is easily deceived in his judgment of them. There stands a tree in the garden; I have no doubt that it is a very fruitful tree, but in reality it is dead and useless. You imagine you see a beautiful pillar on a house, but it is nothing better than a long, black chimney, covered with snow. You think you have a fine, level road before you, but it is only a ravine filled with snow. But wait till the sun comes out again and melts the snow; then you will see all those things as they really are. My dear breth-
- ↑ Non intelligit quoniam omnia videt oculus illius. Et non cognovit quoniam oculi Domini multo plus lucidiores sunt super solera, circumspicientes omnes vias homlnum, et profundum abyssi, et hominum corda, intuentes in absconditas partes.—Ecclus. xxiii. 28.
