Tf Through all the complexities of Christ's mind and mission, how essentially single His spirit and simple His method — rare as morning air., limpid as spring water, clear as a running brook, ever standing in the truth, utterly veracious and sublimely superior to worldly policy ! Is not this, indeed, the meaning of that choice beatitude — among those beatitudes with their seven- fold colours like a rainbow round the throne of Christ — " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " ? Not the " im- maculate " — it would be superfluous to say, " Blessed are the holy " — but rather those of pure intent and single spirit, free from duplicities in their motives. " Blessed " in that trueness of spirit which gives vision, that honest and unadulterated child- heart which enables us to see our Father-God and the Good everywhere.2
If clearer vision Thou impart,
Grateful and glad my soul shall be ;
But yet to have a purer heart Is more to me.
Yea, only as the heart is clean
May larger vision yet be mine, For mirrored in its depths are seen
The things divine.3
1 P. C. Ainsworth, The Blessed Life, 132.
2 R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 90.
* Walter C. Smith, Poetical Works, 478.
9o THE PURE IN HEART
II.
The Condition of the Vision.
There are three distinct kinds of sight. There is, first of all, physical sight, which depends chiefly on bodily organs, and which merely enables us to distinguish material objects from one another. Then, secondly, there is mental sight — the sight of the scientist and the poet. This faculty helps men to discover analogies and resemblances and connexions between dissimilar and distant things ; and hence it gives rise to the metaphors and similes of poetry, and leads to the discovery of the laws of nature. It was the faculty of mental vision, for example, that led to the establish- ment of the widest scientific generalization, by suggesting to Newton that perhaps the earth might exercise the same influence of attraction upon the moon as it did upon a falling apple. Then, thirdly, there is spiritual sight, which belongs to the man of faith and pure heart. Spiritual vision enables men to see Him who is invisible.
Tf I care not whether God's self -revelation in the conscience be called an immediate vision of God in the experiences of con- science, or whether it be taken as an inference drawn from the data they supply. It is the truth contained in them ; with one man it may be only implicitly felt in their solemn and mystic character ; with another, explicitly and immediately seen emerging from them as they come, and making him the Seer of God rather than the reasoner about Him. In any case, the constitution of our moral nature is unintelligible, except as living in response to an objective Perfection pervading the universe with Holy Law.1
1. God cannot be seen by the eye of sense. Of course, we know that ; we admit it at once ; and yet men have an idea that God was nearer to the patriarchs, and the people in the early days who, in a vision or in some way or other — we hardly know how — did see God ; and though they do not know what heaven is, they think that somehow or other, by and by, in another state, they will see and consciously have a sensible vision. It cannot be. " Eye hath not seen," and eye can never see. And God is not seen by reason. Doubtless if reason were freed from all
1 James Martineau, A Stiidy of lleligion, ii. 28.
ST. MATTHEW v. 8 91
clogs and hindrances and drawbacks, if it worked with perfect clearness and completeness, we might reason about God; but even so we should conclude and argue and infer ; we should not see. Nor by imagination. Imagination may do a great deal, but the danger with regard to it is that we deceive ourselves, that we worship our own fancies, and that the image below us is one which we see in a mirror, and which we ourselves have, so to speak, created. And God cannot be seen by means of traditional knowledge, though that is very good. One hopes that religious knowledge will continually be handed on from parents to children, and that the children are being taught in all that is good, and that they learn that God is infinite and eternal and omniscient ; and well indeed that so they should learn. But they do not see Him by that process. And faith — faith can do a great deal. It has a marvellous power of transporting us beyond ourselves, and beyond the world of the seen and tangible; but faith itself is op- posed to sight, and though faith can trust and obey, it cannot see.
Tj You know that your friend is never seen by the eye of the body ; you can discern a form, a figure, a countenance, by which you know that he is near ; but that is not the friend you love ; you discern him spiritually ; you understand his inner character ; you know his truth, his nobleness, his affection, his charity — all these the eye of sense cannot see. A stranger does not see him thus ; he sees only the visible form and feature which imperfectly represent the qualities of mind and heart which you know ; but you see in that friend things which were invisible to the other. It is in this sense — in understanding the truth and goodness, in feeling the pity and charity, in holding communion with the loving spirit of the Father — that Christ speaks of seeing God.1