23. But if thine eye be evil--distempered, or, as we should say, If we
have got a bad eye.
thy whole body shall be full of darkness--darkened. As a vitiated eye,
or an eye that looks not straight and full at its object, sees nothing
as it is, so a mind and heart divided between heaven and earth is all
dark.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!--As the conscience is the regulative faculty, and a man's
inward purpose, scope, aim in life, determines his character--if these
be not simple and heavenward, but distorted and double, what must all
the other faculties and principles of our nature be which take their
direction and character from these, and what must the whole man and the
whole life be but a mass of darkness? In Luke
(Lu 11:36)
the converse of this statement very strikingly expresses what pure,
beautiful, broad perceptions the clarity of the inward eye
imparts: "If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part
dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a
candle doth give thee light." But now for the application of this.
JFB.
Picture Study Bible