Soon after my conversion, in the year 1881, I spent a holiday with my father at a watering place in the West of England, where he was engaged in Bible-carriage work. On the day I returned home two evangelists called, who accompanied us to the railway station. As the train moved, one of them stepped up to the carriage window and said, “Keep the blinkers on. Goodbye.” For a time I was left puzzling over what he could mean, until I remembered that “blinkers “are to keep a horse looking one way—straight before it; to prevent its attention being taken with objects to the right or to the left, or things coming up behind. They were words fitly spoken, and oft remembered with profit.
Solomon may have had the same idea when he wrote: “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left; remove thy foot from evil” (Prov. 4:25-27).
Keep the blinkers on, and keep them on all the time: the danger lies in taking them off, even for a moment. No carter or farmer with his wits about him, would remove the blinkers from the head of his horse while still harnessed to his cart. Many a good horse, whose owner laughed at the mere suggestion of it “playing up,” has done so when the blinkers were taken off, and smashed his cart and harness.
The young colt in its training dislikes its freedom interfered with. You see it shake the head and prance about and try to get the blinkers loose. The spirited creature must be subdued, and the master have his way. His patience and perseverance gains the day, and though the restriction at first felt irksome, the master has carrots and oats for his colt besides blinkers. “Be not as the horse, which has no understanding”; think it not hard of the Lord to say, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” We are in His service through infinite grace; and if He bids us turn our eyes from the delusive pomp and glitter of this world, let us do so with good will and cheerful heart; for we shall find that His restrictions are not irksome in view of the compensating privileges and blessings of obedience.