JUDICIAL BLINDNESS OR HARDNESS.
A term used to denote moral incorrigibility and spiritual blindness (Mark iii :5). "Being grieved for the blindness—hardness--of their hearts." So (Rom. xi :25). "Blindness—hardness—in part hath happened to Israel" (Eph. iv A). "Because of the blindness—hardness—of their hearts" (2 Cor. "Their minds were blinded"—hard (-fled; and elsewhere. In other expressions God is declared to be the cause of such hardness and blindness ( John xii:4o). He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts; which seems to be contradictory to Matt. xiii :15, where the people themselves are said to have closed their own eyes; and so Acts xxviii :27. These seeming con tradictions are very easily reconciled by taking the phraseology in its true import : (a) "Set the eyes of this people"—prophesy such flowing times, such abundant jollity, that the peo ple, devoting themselves to gormandizing, may be inebriated with the very idea ; and still more with the enjoymcnt itself when it arrives.
0)) God, by giving plenty and abundance, affords the means of the people's abusing his goodness, and becoming both over-fat with food, and intoxi cated with drink; and thus, his very beneficence may be said to make their heart fat, and their eyes heavy.
(e) While, at the same time, the people by their own act, their overfeeding, become unwieldy— indolent—bloated—over-fat at heart; and, more over, so stupefied by liquor and strong drink that their eyes and ears may be useless to them; with wide open eyes, "staring they may stare, but not perceive ; and listening they may hear, but not un derstand"; and in this lethargic state they will con tinue ; preferring it to a more sedate, rational con dition, and refusing to forbear from prolonging the causes of it, lest at any sober interval they should see truly with their eyes, and hear accurately NS ith their ears; in consequence of which they should be shocked at themselves, be converted, be changed from such misconduct, and God should heal them, should cure these blinding effects of dissoluteness (comp. Is. ; xxviii).