Proverbs 15:11. God, the All-Seeing One

A sermon (Number 177) delivered on Sabbath morning, February 14, 1858, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens, by C. H. Spurgeon.

*“Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?”* — Proverbs 15:11.

You have often smiled at the ignorance of heathens who bow themselves before gods of wood and stone. You have quoted the words of Scripture and you have said, ‐Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not.” You have therefore argued that they could not be gods at all, because they could neither see nor hear, and you have smiled contemptuously at the men who could so debase their understandings as to make such things objects of adoration. May I ask you one question—but one? Your God can both see and hear: would your conduct be in any respect different if you had a god such as those that the heathen worship? Suppose for one minute that Jehovah, who is nominally adored in this land, could be (though it is almost blasphemy to suppose it) smitten with such a blindness that he could not see the works and know the thoughts of man: would you then become more careless concerning him than you are now? I think not. In nine cases out of ten, and perhaps in a far larger and sadder proportion, the doctrine of Divine Omniscience, although it is received and believed, has no practical effect upon our lives at all. The mass of mankind forget God: whole nations who know his existence and believe that he beholds them, live as if they had no God at all. Merchants, farmers, men in their shops, and in their fields, husbands in their families, and wives in the midst of their households, live as if there were no God; no eye inspecting them; no ear listening to the voice of their lips, and no eternal mind always treasuring up the recollection of their acts. Ah! we are practical Atheists, the mass of us; yes, all but those that have been born again and have passed from death unto life, be their creeds what they may, are Atheists, after all, in life; for if there were no God and no hereafter, multitudes of men would never be affected by the change; they would live the same as they do now—their lives being so full of disregard of God and his ways that the absence of a God could not affect them in any great degree. Permit me then this morning, as God shall help me, to stir up your hearts; and may God grant that something I may say may drive some of your practical Atheism out of you. I would endeavor to set before you God, the all-seeing one, and press upon your solemn consideration the tremendous fact that in all our acts, in all our ways, and in all our thoughts, we are continually under his observing eye.

We have in our text first of all, *a great fact declared,—* ‐Hell and destruction are before the Lord;” we have secondly *a great fact inferred,—* ‐How much more then the hearts of the children of men?”

1. We will begin with *the great fact which is declared*—a fact which furnishes us with premises from which we deduce the practical conclusion of the second sentence—‐How much more then the hearts of the children of men?” The best interpretation that you can give of those two words, ‐hell” and ‐destruction,” is I think comprehended in a sentence something like this—*‐Death and hell are before the Lord.”* The separate state of departed spirits, and destruction, *Abaddon,* as the Hebrew has it, the place of torment, are both of them, although solemnly mysterious to us, manifest enough to God.

1. First then, the word here translated ‐hell,” might just as well be translated ‐death,” or the state of departed spirits. Now, death, with all its solemn consequences, is visible before the Lord. Between us and the hereafter of departed spirits a great black cloud is hanging. Here and there the Holy Spirit hath made chinks as it were in the black wall of separation, through which by faith we can see; for he hath ‐revealed unto us by the Spirit” the things which ‐eye has not seen nor ear heard,” and which the human intellect could never compass. Yet what we know is but very little. When men die they pass beyond the realm of our knowledge: both in body and in soul they go beyond our understandings. But God understands all the secrets of death. Let us divide these into several heads, and enumerate them.

God knows the burial-places of all his people. He notes as well the resting-place of the man who is buried tombless and alone as the man over whom a mighty mausoleum has been raised. The traveler who fell in the barren desert, whose body became the prey of the vulture and whose bones were bleached in the sun—the mariner who was wrecked far out at sea and over whose corpse no dirge was ever wailed, except the howling of the winds and the murmuring of the wild waves—the thousands who have perished in battle unnumbered and unnoticed—the many who have died alone amid dreary forests, frozen seas, and devouring snow-storms—all these, and the places of their sepulchre, are known to God. That silent grot within the sea where pearls lie deep, where now the shipwrecked one is sleeping, is marked by God as the death-place of one of his redeemed; that place upon the mountain-side, the deep ravine into which the traveler fell and was buried in a snow-drift, is marked in the memory of God as the tomb of one of the human race. No body of man, however it may have been interred or uninterred, has passed beyond the range of God's knowledge. Blessed be his name, if I shall die and lie where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep, in some neglected corner of the churchyard, I shall be known as well, and rise as well, recognized by my glorious Father as if interred in the cathedral where forests of gothic pillars proudly stand erect, and where the songs of myriads perpetually salute high heaven. I shall be known as well as if I had been buried there in solemn pomp, and had been interred with music and with dread solemnities, and I shall be recognized as well as if the marble trophy and the famous pillar had been raised to my remembrance; for God knoweth no such thing as forgetfulness of the burying-places of his children. Moses sleeps in some spot that eye has not seen. God kissed away his soul, and he buried him where Israel could never find him, though they may have searched for him. But God knoweth where Moses sleeps; and if he knows that, he understands where all his children are hidden. You cannot tell me where is the tomb of Adam; you could not point out to me the sleeping place of Abel. Is any man able to discover the tomb of Methuselah and those long-lived dwellers in the time before the flood? Who shall tell where the once-treasured body of Joseph now sleeps in faith? Can any of you discover the tombs of the kings, and mark the exact spot where David and Solomon rest in solitary grandeur? No, those things have passed from human recollection and we know not where the great and mighty of the past are buried; but God knoweth, for death and Hades are open before the Lord.

And again, further, not only does he know the place where they were buried, but he is cognizant of the history of all their bodies after sepulture or after death. It has often been asked by the infidel, ‐How can the body of man be restored when it may have been eaten by the cannibal, or devoured by wild beasts?” Our simple reply is that God can track every atom of it if he pleases. We do not think it necessary to resurrection that he should do so, but if he so willed it he could bring every atom of every body that has ever died: although it has passed through the most complicated machinery of nature, and become entangled in its passage with plants and beasts, yes, and with the bodies of other men, God hath it still within the range of his knowledge to know where every atom is, and it is within the might of his Omnipotence to call every atom from its wandering, and restore it to its proper sphere, and rebuild the body of which it was a part. It is true, we could not track the dust that long since has moldered. Buried with exactest care, preserved with the most scrupulous reverence, years passed away, and the body of the monarch which had long slept well guarded and protected, was at last reached by the careless hand. The coffin had moldered, and the metal was broken for the sake of its own value; a handful of dust was discovered, the last relics of one who was master of many nations. That dust by sacrilegious hand was cast in the aisle of the church, or thrown into the churchyard and blown by the winds into the neighboring field. It was impossible forever to preserve it; the greatest care was defeated; and at last the monarch was on a level with his slave, ‐alike unknowing and unknown.” But God knows where every particle of the handful of dust has gone: he has marked in his book the wandering of every one of its atoms. He hath death so open before his view that he can bring all these together, bone to bone, and clothe them with the very flesh that robed them in the days of yore, and make them live again. Death is open before the Lord.

And as the body, so the soul when separated from the body is before the Lord. We look upon the countenance of our dying friend, and on a sudden a mysterious change passes over his frame. ‐His soul has fled,” we say. But have we any idea of what his soul is? Can we form even a conjecture of what the flying of that soul may be, and what the august presence into which it is ushered when it is disentangled from its earthly coil? Is it possible for us to guess what is that state where spirits without bodies, perpetually blest, behold their God? It is possible for us to compass some imagination of what heaven is to be, when bodies and souls, reunited, shall be before God's throne enjoying the highest bliss; but I do think that so gross are our conceptions while we are in our bodies that it is almost, if not quite impossible, for any of us to form any idea whatever as to the position of souls while in the disembodied state, between the hour of death and the time of resurrection.

‐This much, and this is all, we know; They are supremely blest: Have done with sin, and care, and woe, And with their Savior rest.”

But the best of the saints can tell us nothing more than this. They are blest, and in paradise they are reigning with their Lord. Brethren, these things are known to God. The separate state of the dead, the heaven of disembodied spirits is within the gaze of the Most High, and at this hour, if so he pleased, he could reveal to us the condition of every man that is dead—whether he has mounted to Elysian fields to dwell forever in the sunlight of his Master's countenance, or has been plunged into hell, dragged down by iron chains to wait in dreary woe the result of the awful trial, when ‐Depart you cursed,” must be the re-affirmation of a sentence once pronounced, and already in part endured. God understands the separate doom of every man's spirit before the great tribunal day—before the last sentence shall have been pronounced, death is open before the Lord.

2. The next word, *“destruction,”* signifies hell, or the place of the damned. That also is open before the Lord. Where hell is and what are its miseries, we know not; except “through a glass darkly” we have never seen the invisible things of horror. That land of terror is a land unknown. We have much reason to thank God that he has put it so far off from the habitations of living mortals that the pains, the groans, the shrieks, the yells, are not to be heard here, or else earth itself would have become a hell, the solemn prelude and the antepast of unutterable torment. God has put somewhere, far on the edge of his dominions, a tearful lake that burns with fire and brimstone; into that he cast the rebel angels, who (though by a license they are now allowed to walk the earth) do carry a hell within their bosoms, and are by and by to be bound with chains, reserved in blackness and darkness forever for them that kept not their first estate, but lifted the arm of their rebellion against God. Into that place we dare not look. Perhaps it would not be possible for any man to get a fair idea of the torments of the lost without at once becoming mad. Reason would reel at such a sight of horror. One moment of listening to the shrill screams of spirits tortured, might forever drive us into the depths of despair and make us only fit to be bound in chains while we lived on earth. Raving lunatics surely we must become. But while God has mercifully covered all these things from us, they are all known to him; he looks upon them; yea, it is his look that makes hell what it is. His eyes, full of fury, flash the lightnings that scathe his enemies; his lips, full of dreadful thunders, make the thunders that now affright the wicked. Could they escape the eye of God, could they shut out that dreary vision of the face of the incensed Majesty of heaven, then might hell be quenched; then might the wheels of Ixion stand still; then might doomed Tantalus quench his thirst and eat to his very full. But there, while they lie in their chains, they look upward, and they see ever that fearful vision of the Most High; the dreadful hands that grasp the thunderbolts, the dreadful lips that speak the thunders, and the fearful eyes that flash the flames that burn their souls with horrors deeper than despair. Yes, hell, horrible as it is, and veiled in many clouds, and covered over with darkness, is naked before the vision of the Most High.

There is the grand fact stated—“Hell and destruction are before the Lord.” After this the inference seems to be easy—“How much more then the hearts of the children of men?”

2. We now come to *the grand fact inferred*.

In briefly entering upon this second part I will discuss the subject thus: You notice there an argument—“How much more then the hearts of the children of men?” I will therefore begin by asking, why does it follow that the hearts of men are seen by God? *Why—how—what—when*—shall be four questions into which we shall divide what we have now to say.

1. *Why* is it so clear that if “hell and destruction are open before the Lord,” the hearts of men must be very plainly viewed by him?

We answer, because the hearts of men are not so extensive as the realms of death and torment. What is man's heart? what is man's self? Is he not in Scripture compared to a grasshopper? Does not God declare that he “takes up the isles”—whole islands full of men—“as a very little thing; And the nations before him are but as the drop of a bucket?” If then the all-seeing eye of God takes in at one glance the wide regions of death—and wide they are, wide enough to startle any man who shall try to range them through—if, I say, with one glance God seeth death and seeth hell through with all its bottomless depths, with all its boundlessness of misery, surely then he is quite able to behold all the actions of the little thing called man's heart. Suppose a man so wise as to be able to know the wants of a nation and to remember the feelings of myriads of men, you cannot suppose it difficult for him to know the actions of his own family and to understand the emotions of his own household. If the man is able to stretch his arm over a great sphere and to say, “I am monarch of all this,” surely he shall be able to control the less. He who in his wisdom can walk through centuries shall not say that he is ignorant of the history of a year; he who can dive into the depths of science and understand the history of the whole world from its creation, is not to be alarmed by some small riddle that happens at his own door. No, the God who seeth death and hell seeth our hearts, for they are far less extensive.

Reflect again, that they are far less aged too. Death is an ancient monarch; he is the only king whose dynasty stands fast. Ever since the days of Adam he has never been succeeded by another, and has never had an interregnum in his reign. His black ebon scepter has swept away generation after generation; his scythe has mowed the fair fields of this earth a hundred times and is sharp to mow us down, and when another crop shall succeed us he is still ready to devour the multitudes and sweep the earth clean again. The regions of death are old domains; his pillars of black granite are ancient as the eternal hills. Death made his prey on earth long before Adam was here. Those mighty creatures that made the deep hoary with their strength, and stirred the earth with their tramplings—those elder born of nature's sons, the mighty creatures that lived here long before Adam walked in Eden—death made them his prey: like a mighty hunter he speared the mighty lizard and laid it low, and now we dig it from the stony tomb and wonder at it. He is our ancient monarch; but ancient as he is, his whole monarchy is in the records of God, and until death itself is dead and swallowed up in victory, death shall be open before the Lord. How old too, is death—old as the first sin. In that day when Satan tempted the angels and led astray the third part of the stars of heaven, then hell was dug; then was that bottomless pit first struck out of solid rocks of vengeance, that it might stand a marvelous record of what God's wrath can do. The fires of hell are not the kindlings of yesterday: they are ancient flames that burned long before Vesuvius cast forth its lurid flame. Long before the first charred ashes fell upon the plain from earth's red volcanoes hell's flames were burning; for “Tophet is prepared of old, the pile thereof is wood and much smoke; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.” If then the ancient things, these old ones, death and hell, have been observed by God, and if their total history is known to him, how much more then shall he know the history of those mere animalcules, those ephemera of an hour that we call men! You are here today and gone tomorrow; born yesterday—the next hour shall see our tomb prepared, and another minute shall hear, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and the falling of the clod upon the coffin lid. We are the creatures of a day and know nothing. We are scarcely here; we are only living and dead. “Gone!” is the greatest part of our history. Scarcely have we time enough to tell the story before it comes to its finis. Surely then God may easily understand the history of a beast when he knows the history of the monarchies of death and hell.

This is the *why*. I need not give further arguments, though there be abundance deducible from the text. “How much more then the hearts of the children of men?”

2. But now, *how* does God know the heart? I mean to what degree and to what extent does he understand and know that which is in man? I answer, Holy Scripture in various places gives us most precise information. God knows the heart so well that he is said to “search” it. We all understand the figure of a search. There is a search-warrant out against some man who is supposed to be harboring a traitor in his house. The officer goes into the lower room, opens the door of every cupboard, looks into every closet, peers into every cranny, takes the key, descends into the cellar, turns over the coals, disturbs the wood, lest anyone should be hidden there. Upstairs he goes: there is an old room that has not been open for years—it is opened. There is a huge chest: the lock is forced and it is broken open. The very top of the house is searched lest upon the slates or upon the tiles someone should be concealed. At last, when the search has been complete, the officer says, “It is impossible that there can be anybody here, for from the tiles to the foundation I have searched the house thoroughly through; I know the very spiders well, for I have seen the house completely.” Now, it is just so that God knows our heart. He searches it—searches into every nook, corner, crevice, and secret part; and the figure of the Lord is pushed further still. “The candle of the Lord,” we are told, “searches the secret parts of the belly.” As when we wish to find something we take a candle and look down upon the ground with great care, and turn up the dust. If it is some little piece of money we desire to find, we light a candle and sweep the house and search diligently till we find it. Even so it is with God. He searches Jerusalem with candles and pulls everything to daylight. No partial search like that of Laban, when he went into Rachel's tent to look for his idols. She put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them; but God looks into the camel's furniture, and all. “Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord.” His eye searches the heart, and looks into every part of it.

In another passage we are told that God tries the reins. That is even more than searching. The goldsmith when he takes gold, looks at it, and examines it carefully. “Ah!” says he, “but I don't understand this gold yet: I must try it.” He thrusts it into the furnace; there coals are heaped upon it, and it is fused and melted till he knows what there is of dross, and what there is of gold. Now God knows to the very carat how much there is of sound gold in us, and how much of dross. There is no deceiving him. He has put our hearts into the furnace of his Omniscience; the furnace—his knowledge—tries us as completely as the goldsmith's crucible tries the gold—how much there is of hypocrisy, how much of truth—how much of steam, how much of real—how much of ignorance, how much of knowledge—how much of devotion, how much of blasphemy—how much of carefulness, how much of carelessness. God knows the ingredients of the heart; he reduces the soul to its pristine metals; he divides it asunder—so much of quartz, so much of gold, so much of dung, of dross, of wood, of hay, of stubble, so much of gold, silver, and precious stones. “The Lord trieth the hearts and searcheth the reins of the children of men.”

Here is another description of God's knowledge of the heart. In one place of Sacred Writ—(it will be well if you set your children to find out these places at home)—God is said to ponder the heart. Now, you know the Latin word *ponder* means *weigh.* The Lord weighs the heart. Old Master Quarles has got a picture of a great one putting a heart into one scale, and then putting the law, the Bible, into the other scale, to weigh it. This is what God does with men's hearts. They are often great, puffed-up, blown-out things, and people say, “What a great-hearted man that is!” But God does not judge by the appearance of a man's great heart nor the outside appearance of a good heart; but he puts it in the scales and weighs it—puts his own Word in one scale and the heart in the other. He knows the exact weight—knows whether we have grace in the heart which makes us good weight, or only pretense in the heart, which makes us weigh light weight when put into the scale. He searches the heart in every possible way, he puts it into the fire, and then thrusts it into the balances. Oh, might not God say of many of you, “I have searched your heart, and I have found vanity therein? Reprobate silver shall men call you; for God has put you in the furnace and rejected you.” And then he might conclude his verdict by saying, *“Mene, mene, tekel—* you are weighed in the balances and found wanting.” This then is the answer to the question, *How?*

The next question was, *What?* What is it that God sees in man's heart? God sees in man's heart a great deal more than we think of. God sees, and has seen in our hearts, lust, and blasphemy, and murder, and adultery, and malice and wrath, and all uncharitableness. The heart never can be painted too black, unless you daub it with something blacker than the devil himself. It is as base as it can be. You have never committed murder, but yet you have had murder in your heart; you may never have stained your hands with lusts and the aspersions of uncleanness, but still it is in the heart. Have you never imagined an evil thing? Has your soul never for a moment doted on a pleasure which you were too chaste to indulge in, but which for a moment you surveyed with at least some little complacency and delight? Has not imagination often pictured, even to the solitary monk in his cell, greater vice than men in public life have ever dreamed of? And may not even the divine in his closet be conscious that blasphemies, and murders, and lusts of the vilest class, can find a ready harbor even in the heart which he hopes is dedicated to God? Oh! beloved, it is a sight that no human eye could endure: the sight of a heart really laid bare before one's own inspection would startle us almost into insanity: but God sees the heart in all its bestial sensuousness, in all its wanderings and rebellions, in all its high-mindedness and pride; God has searched and knows it altogether.

God sees all the heart's imaginations, and what they are let us not presume to tell. O children of God, these have made you cry and groan full many a time, and though the worldling groans not over them, yet he has them. Oh, what a filthy sty of Stygian imaginations is the heart; all full of everything that is hideous when it once begins to dance and make carnival and revelry concerning sin. But God sees the heart's imaginations.

Again, God sees the heart's devices. You, perhaps, O sinner, have determined to curse God; you have not done so, but you intend to do it. He knows your devices—reads them all. You perhaps will not be permitted to run into the excess of riotousness into which you purpose to go; but your very purpose is now undergoing the inspection of the Most High. There is never a design forged in the fires of the heart, before it is beaten on the anvil of resolve, that is not known and seen and noted by Jehovah our God.

He knows, next, the resolves of the heart. He knows, O sinner, how many times you have resolved to repent, and have resolved and re-resolved and then have continued the same. He knows, O you that have been sick, how you did resolve to seek God, but how you did despise your own resolution when good health had put you beyond the temporary danger. Your resolves have been filed in heaven, and your broken promises, and your vows despised, shall be brought out in their order as swift witnesses for your condemnation. All these things are known of God. We have often had very clear proof of God's knowing what is in man's heart even in the ministry. Some months ago whilst standing here preaching, I deliberately pointed to a man in the midst of the crowd, and said these words—“There is a man sitting there that is a shoemaker, keeps his shop open on Sunday, had his shop open last Sabbath morning, took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit out of it. His soul is sold to Satan for fourpence.” A City Missionary, when going round the West End of the town, met with a poor man, of whom he asked this question: “Do you know Mister Spurgeon?” He found him reading a sermon. “Yes,” he said, “I have every reason to know him; I have been to hear him, and under God's grace I have become a new man.” “But,” said he, “shall I tell you how it was? I went to the Music Hall and took my seat in the middle of the place, and the man looked at me as if he knew me, and deliberately told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I sold shoes on a Sunday; and I did, sir. But sir, I should not have minded that; but he said I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit; and so I did take ninepence, and fourpence was just the profit, and how he should know that I'm sure I cannot tell. It struck me it was God had spoken to my soul through him; and I shut my shop last Sunday and was afraid to open it and go there, lest he should speak about me again.” I could tell as many as a dozen authentic stories of cases that have happened in this Hall, where I have deliberately pointed at somebody without the slightest knowledge of the person, or ever having in the least degree any inkling or idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved thereto by the Spirit; and so striking has been the description that the persons have gone away and said, “Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did: he was sent of God to my soul beyond a doubt, or else he could not have painted my case so clearly.”

And not only so, but we have known cases in which the thoughts of men have been revealed from the pulpit. I have sometimes seen persons nudge with their elbows because they have got a smart hit, and I have heard them say when they went out, “That is just what I said to you when I went in at the door.” “Ah!” says the other, “I was thinking of the very thing he said, and he told me of it.” Now, if God thus proves his own Omniscience by helping his poor ignorant servant to state the very thing thought and done, when he did not know it, then it must remain decisively proved that God does know everything that is secret because we see he tells it to men, and enables them to tell it to others. Oh, you may endeavor as much as you can to hide your faults from God, but beyond a doubt he shall discover you. He discovers you this day. His Word is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and “pierces to the dividing asunder of the joints and of the marrow;” and in that last day when the book shall be opened and he shall give to every man his sentence, then shall it be seen how exact, how careful, how precious, how personal was God's knowledge of the heart of every man whom he had made.

4. And now the last question: *When?* When does God see us? The answer is he sees us everywhere and in every place. O foolish man, who thinks to hide himself from the Most High! It is night! No human eye sees you; the curtain is drawn and you are hidden. There are his eyes lowering at you through the gloom. It is a far-off country; no one knows you; parents and friends have been left behind, restraints are cast off. There is a Father near you who looks upon you even now. It is a lone spot, and if the deed be done no tongue shall tell it. There is a tongue in heaven that shall tell it; yea, the beam out of the wall and the stones in the field shall raise up themselves as witnesses against you. Can you hide yourself anywhere where God shall not detect you? Is not this whole world like a glass hive wherein we put our bees? And does not God stand and see all our motions when we think we are hidden? Ah, it is but a glass hiding-place. He looks from heaven, and through stone walls and rocks; yea, to the very center itself does his eye pierce and in the thickest darkness he beholds our deeds.

Come then, let me make a personal application of the matter and I have done. If this is true, hypocrite, what a fool you are! If God can read the heart, O man, what a sorry, sorry thing your fair pretense must be! Ah! ah! ah! what a change will come over some of you! This world is a masquerade, and you, many of you, wear the mask of religion. You dance your giddy hours, and men think you to be the saints of God. How changed will you be when at the door of eternity you must drop the visor, and must announce the theatricals in which you live! How you will blush when the paint is washed from off your cheek—when you stand before God naked to your own shame, a hypocrite, unclean, diseased, covered up before with the gewgaws and the trickery of pretended formality in religion, but now standing there, base, vile, and hideous! There is many a man that bears about him a cancer that would make one sick to see. Oh, how shall hypocrites look when their cancerous hearts are laid bare! Deacon! how you will tremble when your old heart is torn open and your vile pretenses rent away! Minister! how black you will look when your surplice is off, and when your grand pretensions are cast to the dogs! How will you tremble! There will be no sermonizing others then. You yourself will be preached to, and the sermon shall be from that text, “Depart ye cursed.” O brethren, above all things shun hypocrisy. If you mean to be damned, make up your minds to it and be damned like honest men; but do not I beseech you pretend to go to heaven while all the time you are going to hell. If you mean to make your abodes in torment forever, then serve the devil and do not be ashamed of it; stand it right out and let the world know what you are. But oh! never put on the cloak of religion. I beseech you, do not add to your eternal misery being a wolf in sheep's clothing. Show the cloven foot; do not hide it. If you mean to go to hell, say so. “If God be God, serve him. If Baal be God, serve him.” Do not serve Baal and then pretend to be serving God.

One other practical conclusion. If God sees and knows everything, how this ought to make you tremble—you that have lived in sin for many years! I have known a man who was once stopped from an act of sin by the fact of there being a cat in the room. He could not bear even the eyes of that poor creature to see him. Oh, I would you could carry about with you the recollection of those eyes that are always on you. Swearer! Could you swear if you could see God's eye looking at you? Thief! Drunkard! Harlot! Could you indulge in your sins if you saw his eyes on you? Oh, I think they would startle you and bid you pause before you did in God's own sight rebel against his law. There is a story told of the American War, that one of the prisoners taken by the Americans was subjected to a torture of the most refined character. He says, “I was put into a narrow dungeon; I was comfortably provided for with all I needed; but there was a round slit in the wall, and through that, both night and day, a soldier always looked at me.” He says, “I could not rest, I could not eat nor drink, nor do anything in comfort because there was always that eye—an eye that seemed never to be turned away and never shut—always following me round that little apartment. Nothing ever hidden from it.” Now take home that figure. Recollect that is your position; you are shut in by the narrow walls of time, when you eat, and when you drink, when you rise, and when you lie upon your beds; when you walk the streets, or when you sit at home, that eye is always fixed upon you. Go home now and sin against God if you dare; go home now and break his laws to his face and despise him, and set him at naught! Rush on your own destruction; dash yourselves against the buckler of Jehovah, and destroy yourselves upon his own sword! No, rather, “turn you, turn you.” Turn you, you that have followed the ways of sin, turn you to Christ and live; and then the same Omniscience which is now your horror shall be your pleasure. Sinner! If you now do pray, he sees you; if you now do weep he sees you. “When he was yet a great way off his father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him.” It shall be even so with you, if now you turn to God and do believe in his Son Jesus Christ.

A sermon (Number 177) delivered on Sabbath morning, February 14, 1858, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens, by C. H. Spurgeon.

"Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?" — Proverbs 15:11.

You have often smiled at the ignorance of pagans who bow before gods of wood and stone. You have quoted Scripture and said, "Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not." You have argued that such things could not be gods at all, since they could neither see nor hear, and you have looked with contempt on people who could so lower their minds as to worship such objects. May I ask you one question — just one? Your God can both see and hear. Would your behavior be any different if you worshiped gods like those of the pagans? Suppose for a moment that Jehovah — though it is almost blasphemy to imagine it — were struck with such blindness that He could not see our actions or know our thoughts. Would you then become more careless toward Him than you are now? I think not. In nine cases out of ten — and perhaps in a far greater and sadder proportion — the doctrine of divine omniscience, though accepted and believed, has no practical effect on our lives. The mass of people forget God. Whole nations who know He exists and believe He watches them live as if there were no God at all. Merchants, farmers, people in their shops and fields, husbands in their homes and wives in their households, live as if there were no God — no eye watching them, no ear hearing their words, no eternal mind recording their actions. We are practical atheists, most of us. Yes — all except those who have been born again and passed from death to life, whatever their stated beliefs may be, are atheists in practice. If there were no God and no afterlife, many people's lives would never be affected by the change. Their lives are so filled with disregard for God and His ways that the absence of a God could hardly affect them at all. This morning, with God's help, I want to stir your hearts. May God grant that something I say will drive some of your practical atheism out of you. I want to set before you God, the all-seeing One, and press upon your serious consideration this tremendous fact: in all our actions, in all our ways, and in all our thoughts, we are continually under His watchful eye.

Our text presents, first, a great fact declared: "Hell and destruction are before the Lord." It presents, second, a great fact inferred: "How much more then the hearts of the children of men?"

1. We begin with the great fact that is declared — the premise from which we draw the practical conclusion of the second sentence: "How much more then the hearts of the children of men?" The best way to understand those two words, "hell" and "destruction," is something like this: "Death and hell are before the Lord." The realm of departed spirits, and destruction — Abaddon, as the Hebrew has it, the place of torment — are both, though deeply mysterious to us, fully visible to God.

1. First, the word translated "hell" here could just as well be translated "death," or the state of departed spirits. Death, with all its solemn consequences, is visible before the Lord. Between us and the world of departed spirits a great dark cloud hangs. Here and there the Holy Spirit has opened, as it were, small gaps in that dark wall of separation, through which we can see by faith. He has "revealed to us by the Spirit" the things that "eye has not seen nor ear heard," and which the human mind could never reach on its own. Yet what we know is very little. When people die, they pass beyond the reach of our understanding — in body and in soul they go where we cannot follow. But God understands all the secrets of death. Let us divide these into several areas and consider them.

God knows the burial places of all His people. He takes note of the resting place of the man buried without a tombstone just as much as the man over whom a grand mausoleum has been raised. The traveler who fell in a barren desert, whose body became prey for vultures and whose bones were bleached by the sun; the sailor lost far out at sea, mourned only by the howling winds and the murmuring waves; the thousands who perished in battle unnumbered and unnoticed; the many who died alone amid lonely forests, frozen seas, and raging blizzards — all these, and the places where they lie, are known to God. That quiet cave beneath the sea where pearls lie deep, where the shipwrecked sailor now sleeps, is marked by God as the resting place of one of His redeemed. That spot on the mountainside, the deep ravine where a traveler fell and was buried in a snowdrift, is recorded in God's memory as the tomb of one of the human race. No human body, however it was buried or left unburied, has passed beyond the reach of God's knowledge. Praise His name — if I should die and lie where the simple forebears of a village sleep, in some forgotten corner of a churchyard, I will be just as well known and will rise just as surely, recognized by my glorious Father, as if I were buried in a grand cathedral where rows of gothic pillars stand tall and the songs of thousands fill the air. I will be just as well known as if I had been buried with solemn ceremony, laid to rest with music and grand observances, and just as well recognized as if a marble monument and famous pillar had been raised in my memory — for God knows no such thing as forgetting where His children are buried. Moses sleeps in some place no human eye has seen. God took his soul, and buried him where Israel could never find him, though they may have searched. But God knows where Moses sleeps, and if He knows that, He knows where all His children are hidden. You cannot tell me where Adam's tomb is; you cannot point to the sleeping place of Abel. Can anyone discover the tomb of Methuselah and those long-lived people who lived before the flood? Who can say where the once-treasured body of Joseph now rests in faith? Can any of you locate the tombs of the kings, and mark the exact spot where David and Solomon rest in solitary grandeur? No — these things have passed from human memory, and we do not know where the great and mighty of the past are buried. But God knows, for death and Hades are open before the Lord.

Furthermore, God not only knows where people are buried, but He is fully aware of what has happened to their bodies since death. The skeptic has often asked, "How can a human body be restored when it may have been eaten by cannibals or devoured by wild beasts?" Our simple answer is that God can track every atom of it if He chooses. We do not think it necessary for the resurrection that He do so, but if He willed it, He could bring together every atom of every body that has ever died — even though it has passed through the most complex processes of nature and become intermingled with plants and animals, yes, and with the bodies of other people. God knows where every atom is, and it is within the power of His omnipotence to call every atom from its wandering, restore it to its proper place, and rebuild the body it once formed. It is true we could never trace dust that has long since crumbled away. Though buried with the greatest care and preserved with the most careful reverence, years passed, and the body of a monarch — long well-guarded and protected — was at last disturbed by a careless hand. The coffin had rotted, and the metal was broken apart for its own value. A handful of dust was found — the last remains of one who had ruled many nations. That dust, by a disrespectful hand, was scattered in the aisle of a church, or thrown into the churchyard and blown by the wind into a neighboring field. It was impossible to preserve it any longer; the greatest care had failed. At last the monarch was on the same level as his slave — "alike unknowing and unknown." But God knows where every particle of that handful of dust has gone. He has recorded in His book the path of every single atom. Death is so open before Him that He can bring all these atoms together, bone to bone, and clothe them with the very flesh that wrapped them in their earthly days, and make them live again. Death is open before the Lord.

As with the body, so the soul — when separated from the body — is before the Lord. We look at the face of our dying friend, and suddenly a mysterious change passes over him. "His soul has fled," we say. But do we have any real idea of what the soul is? Can we even guess what it is like for that soul to depart, and into what majestic presence it is ushered when it is freed from its earthly bonds? Is it possible for us to imagine what that state is like — where spirits without bodies, perfectly blessed, behold their God? We can form some picture of what heaven will be like when bodies and souls, reunited, stand before God's throne enjoying the highest joy. But I think that, as long as we are in our bodies, our conceptions are so limited that it is nearly — if not completely — impossible to form any real idea of what it is like for souls to exist in their disembodied state, between the hour of death and the time of resurrection.

"This much, and this is all, we know; They are supremely blest: Have done with sin, and care, and woe, And with their Savior rest."

But the best of the saints can tell us nothing more than this. They are blessed, and in paradise they reign with their Lord. Brothers and sisters, these things are known to God. The condition of the dead — the heaven of disembodied spirits — is within the sight of the Most High. At this moment, if He chose, He could reveal to us the state of every person who has died: whether they have risen to dwell forever in the light of their Master's presence, or have been plunged into hell, dragged down by iron chains to wait in dreary suffering for the outcome of the final judgment — when "Depart, you cursed" will be the reaffirmation of a sentence already pronounced and already partly endured. God understands the separate condition of every person's spirit before the great day of judgment — before the final sentence is declared. Death is open before the Lord.

2. The next word, "destruction," refers to hell, or the place of the damned. That also is open before the Lord. Where hell is and what its miseries are, we do not know. We have never seen the invisible horrors except dimly, as through a dark glass. That land of terror is an unknown land. We have good reason to thank God that He has placed it so far from the dwelling places of the living that its pains, groans, shrieks, and cries cannot be heard here — otherwise the earth itself would have become a kind of hell, a grim foretaste of unspeakable torment. God has placed somewhere, far at the edge of His dominions, a dreadful lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Into it He cast the rebel angels, who — though allowed by permission to roam the earth for a time — carry a hell within themselves. They will eventually be bound in chains, held in utter darkness forever, reserved for those who did not keep their first estate but lifted their arm in rebellion against God. Into that place we dare not look. Perhaps no person could grasp a clear picture of the torments of the damned without immediately losing their mind. Reason would collapse at such a sight. One moment of hearing the cries of tortured spirits might drive a person permanently into the depths of despair, leaving them fit only to be bound in chains for the rest of their earthly life. It would surely drive anyone to madness. But while God has mercifully hidden all these things from us, they are all known to Him. He looks upon them — yes, it is His gaze that makes hell what it is. His eyes, full of fury, flash the lightning that scorches His enemies. His lips, full of dreadful power, produce the thunder that now terrifies the wicked. If the damned could escape the eye of God — if they could shut out that dreadful vision of the face of the angry Majesty of heaven — then hell might be extinguished. Then the torments of the condemned might cease. But there, as they lie in their chains, they look upward and always see that fearful vision of the Most High — the dreadful hands that grasp the thunderbolts, the dreadful lips that speak the thunder, and the fearful eyes that flash the flames burning their souls with horror deeper than despair. Yes, hell — horrible as it is, veiled in many clouds and covered in darkness — is naked before the vision of the Most High.

There is the great fact stated: "Hell and destruction are before the Lord." From this, the inference follows easily: "How much more then the hearts of the children of men?"

2. We now come to the great fact inferred.

As we briefly enter this second part, consider the argument: "How much more then the hearts of the children of men?" I will therefore ask: why does it follow that the hearts of people are seen by God? Why, how, what, and when — these four questions will guide what we have to say.

1. Why is it so clear that if "hell and destruction are open before the Lord," the hearts of people must be plainly visible to Him as well?

The answer is that human hearts are far less vast than the realms of death and torment. What is a human heart? What is a human being? Is he not compared in Scripture to a grasshopper? Does not God declare that He "takes up the isles" — whole islands full of people — "as a very little thing; and the nations before Him are but as the drop of a bucket"? If then the all-seeing eye of God takes in at one glance the wide regions of death — and wide they are, wide enough to stagger anyone who tries to explore them — then surely, with one glance God can see through death and hell with all their bottomless depths and boundless misery. He is certainly able to observe all the actions of the small thing called the human heart. Suppose a person wise enough to know the needs of an entire nation and to remember the feelings of countless people. You would not think it difficult for that same person to know the affairs of their own family and understand the emotions of their own household. If someone can extend their authority over a vast domain and say, "I am ruler of all this," surely they can also manage what is smaller. A person who in wisdom can survey centuries will not claim ignorance of a single year's history. One who can plunge into the depths of knowledge and understand the history of the whole world from its creation will not be puzzled by some small matter at their own door. No — the God who sees death and hell also sees our hearts, for they are far less vast.

Consider also that human hearts are far less ancient than these realms. Death is an ancient ruler — the only king whose dynasty has never faltered. Since the days of Adam, death has never been succeeded by another ruler and has never had a gap in his reign. His dark scepter has swept away generation after generation. His scythe has mowed the fair fields of this earth a hundred times and is still sharp enough to cut us down. When another generation succeeds us, he will still be ready to devour the multitudes and sweep the earth clean again. The regions of death are ancient domains. His pillars of black granite are as old as the eternal hills. Death preyed on this earth long before Adam arrived. Those mighty creatures that once stirred the deep with their power and shook the earth with their footsteps — those eldest of nature's creatures that lived here long before Adam walked in Eden — death took them as his prey. Like a mighty hunter he brought down the great lizards, and now we dig them from their stony tombs and marvel at them. Death is our ancient ruler. But ancient as he is, his entire kingdom is recorded in God's knowledge, and until death itself is swallowed up in victory, death remains open before the Lord. How old too is hell — as old as the first sin. When Satan tempted the angels and led astray a third part of the stars of heaven, hell was dug. That bottomless pit was first carved out of solid rock, a marvelous monument to what God's wrath can accomplish. The fires of hell are not newly kindled. They are ancient flames that burned long before Vesuvius cast its glowing lava. Long before the first charred ashes fell on the plains from the earth's volcanoes, hell's flames were already burning. "Tophet is prepared of old; the pile of it is wood and much smoke; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, kindles it." If then these ancient things — death and hell — have been observed by God and their entire history is known to Him, how much more will He know the history of those short-lived creatures we call human beings? We are here today and gone tomorrow. Born yesterday, the next hour may see our tomb prepared, and another minute may bring the words "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and the falling of clods on the coffin lid. We are creatures of a day who know nothing. We are scarcely here — we are only living and then dead. "Gone" is the largest chapter of our story. We barely have time to tell it before it reaches its ending. Surely then God can easily know the history of a person's brief life when He already knows the history of the vast kingdoms of death and hell.

That is the why. There are many more arguments to be drawn from this text, but I need not pursue them further. "How much more then the hearts of the children of men?"

2. But now, how does God know the heart? To what degree and to what extent does He understand what is in a person? Holy Scripture gives us very precise information on this. God knows the heart so well that He is said to "search" it. We all understand what a search looks like. Suppose a search warrant has been issued against a man believed to be hiding a fugitive in his house. The officer enters the lower rooms and opens every cupboard, looks into every closet, peers into every crack, takes the key, goes down to the cellar, turns over the coals, moves the wood, checking whether anyone might be hidden there. Upstairs he goes. There is an old room that has not been opened in years — it is opened. There is a large chest. The lock is forced and the chest is broken open. Even the top of the house is searched in case someone is hiding on the roof. When the search is complete, the officer says, "There cannot possibly be anyone here. From the roof to the foundation I have searched this house thoroughly. I know every corner of it well." This is exactly how God knows our hearts. He searches them — into every nook, corner, crack, and hidden place. And the image goes even further. "The candle of the Lord," we are told, "searches the secret parts of the belly." When we want to find something, we take a candle and look carefully at the ground, turning over the dust. If it is a small coin we are looking for, we light a candle and sweep the house and search diligently until we find it. It is the same with God. He searches every corner with His light and brings everything into the open. His search is nothing like the partial search of Laban, who went into Rachel's tent looking for his idols. She had put them in the camel's saddle and sat on top of them. But God looks into the camel's saddle and everything else. "Can anyone hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? says the Lord." His eye searches the heart and looks into every part of it.

Scripture also tells us that God tests the inner life — and this goes even further than searching. When a goldsmith takes gold, he looks at it and examines it carefully. "Ah," he says, "but I do not fully understand this gold yet. I must test it." He thrusts it into the furnace, heaps coals upon it, and melts it down until he knows exactly how much is dross and how much is pure gold. God knows to the very finest measure how much sound gold is in us and how much dross. There is no deceiving Him. He has placed our hearts into the furnace of His omniscience. That furnace — His knowledge — tests us as completely as the goldsmith's crucible tests gold: how much hypocrisy, how much truth; how much emptiness, how much substance; how much ignorance, how much understanding; how much devotion, how much blasphemy; how much carefulness, how much carelessness. God knows the full makeup of the heart. He reduces the soul to its raw elements — so much worthless material, so much pure gold, so much silver and precious stones. "The Lord tests the hearts and searches the inner life of the children of men."

Here is another description of God's knowledge of the heart. In one place in Scripture — it will be a good exercise for your children to find these passages at home — God is said to weigh the heart. The Latin root of the word weigh means to measure carefully. The Lord weighs the heart. The old writer Quarles pictures a great figure placing a heart on one side of a scale and the Bible on the other, to weigh it. This is what God does with human hearts. Hearts are often puffed up and swollen with self-importance, and people say, "What a great-hearted person that is!" But God does not judge by the outward appearance of greatness or goodness. He places the heart on the scales and weighs it — His own Word on one side and the heart on the other. He knows the exact weight. He knows whether we have genuine grace in the heart, which gives us true substance, or only pretense, which leaves us coming up short when weighed. He searches the heart in every possible way — puts it into the fire and then into the scales. Might not God say of many of you, "I have searched your heart and found only emptiness in it? You are like reprobate silver; I have put you in the furnace and rejected you." And then He might conclude His verdict with the words: "Mene, mene, tekel — you are weighed in the balances and found wanting." This then answers the question: how?

The next question was: what? What does God see in the human heart? God sees far more there than we would think. God has seen in our hearts lust, blasphemy, murder, adultery, malice, wrath, and all manner of uncharitableness. The heart cannot be painted too black — unless you use something darker than the devil himself. It is as base as it can be. You may never have committed murder, yet murder has been in your heart. You may never have defiled yourself with outward acts of impurity, yet the impulse is still there in the heart. Have you never imagined an evil thing? Has your soul never lingered, even for a moment, on a pleasure you were too restrained to pursue — yet which you regarded for a moment with at least some small degree of desire? Has not the imagination sometimes presented, even to the solitary monk in his cell, greater vice than men in public life have ever dreamed of? And might not even the minister in his private study be aware that blasphemies, murderous thoughts, and the vilest desires can find a ready welcome even in a heart he hopes is dedicated to God? The sight of a heart truly laid bare before one's own eyes would be almost enough to drive a person to madness. But God sees the heart in all its brutish desires, in all its wanderings and rebellions, in all its arrogance and pride. God has searched it and knows it completely.

God sees all the heart's imaginations — and what they are, we should not presume to describe in full. Children of God, these have made you cry and groan many times. The person who does not know God does not groan over them — yet he has them too. What a dark pit of wicked imaginations the heart can become when it begins to revel and make carnival over sin. But God sees the heart's imaginations.

God also sees the heart's intentions. Perhaps, sinner, you have determined in your heart to defy God. You have not yet done it, but you intend to. He knows your intentions — reads them all. Perhaps you will not be permitted to go as far into reckless behavior as you plan. But your very plan is even now under the inspection of the Most High. Every scheme forged in the fires of the heart — before it is ever hammered into a firm resolve — is already known, seen, and noted by Jehovah our God.

God also knows the resolves of the heart. He knows, sinner, how many times you have resolved to repent — resolving and re-resolving — and then continued on unchanged. He knows, you who have been sick, how you resolved to seek God when you were ill, and how you abandoned that resolution once good health put the danger behind you. Your resolves have been filed in heaven. Your broken promises and despised vows will be brought forward in their order as swift witnesses against you on judgment day. All these things are known to God. We have often had very clear proof of God's knowledge of what is in a person's heart, even through preaching. Some months ago, while standing here preaching, I deliberately pointed to a man in the crowd and said these words: "There is a man sitting there who is a shoemaker, keeps his shop open on Sundays, had his shop open last Sabbath morning, took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit out of it. His soul is sold to Satan for fourpence." A city missionary, while visiting the west end of town, met a poor man whom he asked, "Do you know Mr. Spurgeon?" He found the man reading a sermon. "Yes," the man said, "I have every reason to know him. I went to hear him, and by God's grace I have become a new man." "But shall I tell you how it happened? I went to the Music Hall and took my seat in the middle of the room. The man looked at me as if he knew me and deliberately told the congregation that I was a shoemaker who sold shoes on Sunday. And I did, sir. But I might not have minded that — except he said I had taken ninepence the Sunday before and that fourpence was the profit. And I did take ninepence, and fourpence was exactly the profit. How he could have known that I truly cannot tell. It struck me that God had spoken to my soul through him. I shut my shop the following Sunday and was afraid to open it, in case he should speak about me again." I could tell a dozen authentic stories of cases that have happened in this hall, where I deliberately pointed at someone without the slightest knowledge of that person — with no hint or idea that what I said was accurate, except that I believed I was moved to do so by the Spirit. And so striking was the description that those people went away saying, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. He was sent by God to my soul without a doubt, or he could not have described my case so clearly."

Not only that, but we have known cases where the very thoughts of people have been revealed from the pulpit. I have sometimes seen people nudge each other because something said struck close to home. I have heard them say as they left, "That is exactly what I said to you when we came in the door." "Yes," says the other, "I was thinking the very thing he mentioned, and he told me of it." If God proves His own omniscience by enabling His poor, ignorant servant to state the very thing a person thought and did — when the servant knew nothing of it — then it is decisively proven that God knows everything that is secret, because we see that He tells it to people and enables them to tell it to others. You may try as hard as you like to hide your faults from God, but without a doubt He will find them out. He finds them out even now. His Word is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" and "pierces to the dividing of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow." On that final day when the book is opened and He pronounces His sentence on every person, it will be seen how exact, how careful, how personal and precise was God's knowledge of the heart of every person He had made.

4. And now the last question: when? When does God see us? The answer is: He sees us everywhere and always. What a foolish person, who thinks to hide from the Most High! It is night. No human eye sees you. The curtain is drawn and you are hidden. Yet His eyes are upon you through the darkness. You are in a faraway country. No one knows you. The restraints of parents and friends are far behind you. Yet there is a Father near you who looks upon you even now. It is a lonely spot, and if you act, no human tongue will tell it. But there is a tongue in heaven that will tell it. Yes, even the walls and the stones in the field will rise up as witnesses against you. Can you hide anywhere that God will not find you? Is not this whole world like a glass hive where we keep our bees? Does not God stand and see all our movements even when we think we are hidden? It is only a glass hiding place. He looks from heaven, through stone walls and rock. His eye pierces to the very center of the earth, and in the thickest darkness He sees our deeds.

Let me make a personal application and then I am done. If this is true, hypocrite, what a fool you are! If God can read the heart, what a pathetic, hollow thing your outward show must be! What a change is coming for some of you! This world is a masquerade, and many of you wear the mask of religion. You go through your days, and people take you for saints of God. How changed you will be when at the door of eternity you must drop the mask and reveal the performance you have been living! How you will blush when the paint is washed from your face — when you stand before God exposed in your shame: a hypocrite, unclean, diseased, having hidden it all behind the decorations and pretenses of outward religious form, but now standing there base, vile, and exposed. There are people who carry within them a hidden corruption that would sicken anyone who saw it. How will hypocrites look when their corrupt hearts are laid bare? Deacon — how you will tremble when your true heart is torn open and your false pretenses stripped away! Minister — how dark you will appear when your robes are removed and your grand claims are thrown aside! How you will tremble! There will be no lecturing others then. You yourself will be preached to, and the sermon will be from this text: "Depart, you cursed." Brothers and sisters, above all things, shun hypocrisy. If you intend to be damned, make up your minds and be damned honestly. But I beg you, do not pretend to be heading to heaven while all the while you are heading to hell. If you intend to make your home in torment forever, then serve the devil and do not be ashamed of it. Stand it right out and let the world see what you are. But never put on the cloak of religion. I beg you, do not add to your eternal misery by being a wolf in sheep's clothing. Show who you really are — do not hide it. If you intend to go to hell, say so. "If God be God, serve Him. If Baal be God, serve him." Do not serve Baal and then pretend to be serving God.

One more practical conclusion. If God sees and knows everything, how this should make you tremble — you who have lived in sin for many years! I once heard of a man who was stopped from committing a sin simply because there was a cat in the room. He could not bear even the eyes of that poor creature to watch him. I wish you could carry with you always the awareness of those eyes that are always on you. Swearer — could you swear if you could see God's eye looking at you? Thief! Drunkard! Immoral person! Could you indulge your sins if you saw His eyes upon you? I think those eyes would startle you and make you pause before you rebelled against His law in God's own sight. There is a story told from the American War, of a prisoner taken by the Americans who was subjected to a refined kind of torture. He said, "I was put in a narrow cell. I was comfortably provided for with everything I needed. But there was a round slit in the wall, and through that opening, both night and day, a soldier always watched me." He said, "I could not rest, I could not eat or drink, or do anything with any comfort, because there was always that eye — an eye that seemed never to turn away or close — always following me around that small room. Nothing was ever hidden from it." Take that image home with you. Remember that this is your position. You are enclosed by the narrow walls of time. When you eat and when you drink, when you rise and when you lie down, when you walk the streets or sit at home, that eye is always fixed on you. Go home now and sin against God if you dare. Go home and break His laws to His face, despise Him, and treat Him as though He were nothing! Rush toward your own destruction. Dash yourselves against the shield of Jehovah and destroy yourselves on His own sword! No — rather, "turn, turn." Turn, you who have followed the ways of sin. Turn to Christ and live. Then the same omniscience that is now your dread will become your delight. Sinner, if you pray now, He sees you. If you weep now, He sees you. "When he was yet a great way off his father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." It will be just the same for you, if now you turn to God and believe in His Son Jesus Christ.