---

Full of eyes they are, these living creatures, not only before and behind, but within and without. Within every living creature perceives itself, scrutinises its own inner mysteries, and knows its own instincts and feelings and passions and ambition and hope and purpose. All these it has eyes to see in their manifold combinations even as it moves on and acts. And eyes without, not absorbed in introspection, but rather, and at the same moment at which it searches the deep things of the spirit, and by the same act it has eyes without, eyes that see so far away into the heart of things, eyes that gaze upon all the amazing scenery of the world about it, eyes that look upon the face of the eternal God. Full of eyes! What a surprising characteristic of nature for us! Our modern feeling about nature, derived from unphilosophic popularised science of the day, pronounced that nature is eyeless, that it works in the dark, that its laws are blind to its issues and action. Nature crushes and ruins the distinction between good and bad and right and wrong, and knows not what it does. Rivers run blindly down in their grooved channels; the seas beat blindly against blind rocks; the winds moan in blindness round the blind walls of the hills. The whole earth is blind. The heavens are vacant of any vision; they tell us we have put out their eyes. And this has happened, we know, because we have dropped God and His Christ out of their own creation. We have tried to look at it as if they were not there. We are compelled, in order to accomplish certain analytical issues essential to scientific investigation, to omit the spiritual factors of the universe from our immediate calculations. But then this abstraction is confessedly only for a purpose that is partial and incomplete in itself, and the danger lies in this, that when once this partial purpose of science is satisfied we forget to restore what our abstraction had eliminated. And then we look up and out and are appalled — for lo, God has vanished out of the natural scene! It is all empty of His presence of His will! It is purposeless, it is mechanical, it is blind — so we cry in our dismay! How could God be expected to appear in the shape of a material phenomenon, and yet only so could our scientific methods of research come upon Him. So it is that the world is blind, is godless to this pseudo-science. Look at nature with the eyes of a spirit, according to the rules and methods of spiritual vision; bring into play the organs that belong to a spiritual world, and lo! it is no longer sightless and meaningless and dark; it has become full of eyes within and without. In every portion of it there is a light, a purpose, a hope. The soul of man becomes conscious of a spirit that is abroad and about him on every side, and which fills his earthly house with the presence of Him he knows and who knows him. On all sides of him in this natural life here on earth he dimly perceives by the inspiration of a fellow feeling the living creatures full of eyes within and without, who unite with him in uttering the one phrase, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! Full of eyes within and without. Our common humanity — that too should become full of eyes. Every faculty, every capacity in us which before had passed under Christ's sway while it was of the earth earthy was always blundering into the dark, should discover that the quickening power of the Spirit has brought out one great boon — the gift of eyes — the capacity to see. That is the triumph of grace — that it enables this natural gift of man, his reason, to see where before he could not see. Grace gives it eyes, and reason henceforward can join in the hymn of adoration. It looks within and it looks without, and everywhere it now recognises the triple law of the spiritual life, the triple evidence of the threefold God! And thus made full of eyes to see, it, too, sings its song, Holy, holy, holy! And not reason only, but conscience gains eyes; the natural conscience lifted and transfigured perceives what it had never seen hitherto. It sees, for instance, the higher possibility of purity to which it had been wholly dark; it sees that purity holds the secret of true growth, for man and for woman all alike and both equally, which was never suggested to it until Christ opened its eyes. It detects the powers inherent in humiliation, in self-sacrifice, and in brotherly service. Therefore, where before it expected only weakness, it now perceives strength; the glories that lay concealed in virtues that it deemed passive and petty and effeminate are now disclosed to it. The darkness should always be turning into light as the fulness of grace spreads throughout the dim surface of human life, and touches it all with glory. Full of eyes! A question appropriate to Trinity Sunday for each one of us is, Do we use our human capacities with better precision than we did? Do we use them over the larger surface of life? Do we see more than we used to of God's counsels for us here, of man's obligations, of our own possibilities and calls and duties? Grace should be for ever raising our ordinary capacities to a higher power, enriching their insight, fertilising their judgment. Is it so? Ask yourselves. Your imagination, for instance, is it more full of eyes than before? Does your imagination bring the sorrow of the world before you as if it were your own case, as a bitter sorrow, as a personal disgrace, for which you abhor yourself in dust and ashes? And your sympathies, are they more alert, quicker than once they were? Ah, the sins! They, too, stand out, now that you have eyes to see them, with a worse ugliness and a more rooted, stubborn repugnance. You had not thought yourself so bad, so base, so selfish, but now the light is thrown on you. You have eyes to see all the black wrong.

(Canon Scott Holland.)

---

---

KJV: And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

WEB: Before the throne was something like a sea of glass, similar to crystal. In the midst of the throne, and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes before and behind.