i. Now.
"Now we see in (by means of) a mirror, darkly."
St. Paul's meaning is explained in an illustration. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man I put away childish things." With the humility of true wisdom and the sweetness of a large understanding, he reckons the attainments of this life as no more than childish acquisitions, when compared with that which we shall reach when we are home. Our powers are undeveloped, immature, juvenile, in this life; our spiritual in- sight is therefore defective, and our knowledge only preparatory or initial.
1. In {or by) a mirror. — When St. Paul lived and wrote, mirrors were not made of glass, as the Authorized Version of this passage erroneously suggests, but of some metal. The best, being made of silver, were costly, and it took a good deal of skill and labour to make the surface of the metal quite even. And however well made a mirror might be, it was always in danger of losing its clearness by exposure. St. Paul and his readers were not of the class that could indulge themselves in costly articles of luxury. A cheap and inferior mirror was better than nothing ; but we can picture to ourselves what the mirrors used by the humbler classes were like, if we recall the reflections of ourselves which we have casually seen in tarnished and uneven surfaces of metal.
Let any one imagine himself to be before such a mirror, with a friend standing by him. He can see the friend's face reflected as if he were looking through the mirror. But the face, so seen, will be distorted and dim, and if he desires to examine any feature accurately he will be baffled, so that the face will be in some respects an enigma or puzzle to him. What a contrast he will perceive, if he turns his head, and looks at the actual face of the friend at his side ! Then he will see and know his friend, as his friend who was not using the mirror was seeing and knowing him.
Thus St. Paul's similitude is to be explained. His words, literally rendered, are — " For we see now through a mirror in
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an enigma (or puzzle), but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know as fully as I was known." He is comparing the blurred and confusing reflection of an object with the object as seen directly. And he uses this image to illustrate what he assumes to be puzzling in the ways of God as we can now apprehend them.
What we see at present is a sort of reflection of truth, not the very truth itself. A mirror may be very useful ; but it can never give the accurate idea of the very figure, the very person, presented in it. If its copy of the person be ever so accurate, still it is not defective only, it is also misleading : the right side has become the left, and the left hand in the picture is awkwardly performing the functions of the right hand in the original : thus the effect produced is different, however carefully represented the details and the particulars. A mirror, too, can hold but one image at a time : if it be preoccupied by one figure, it is unavail- able for another. And if, in addition to these essential defects of accuracy and limitations of capacity, there be also the slightest flaw in the glass or cloud upon the surface, there is an end at once of all beauty and of all truth in the representation, and what was before only defective becomes now a distortion and a caricature. And how much more expressive would be the figure in the Apostle's days, when not glass but stone or metal was commonly used for the purpose spoken of; when the colouring therefore of every object must have been lost in the reflection, and nothing would remain but a meagre and blurred outline to carry to the eye the impression of face or figure or landscape !
2. Darkly. — That is, as the margin tells us, "in a riddle." The original is identical with our English word " enigma." What a mirror is to the eye a riddle is to the ear, only that the latter expresses more clearly the incompleteness of our knowledge, and the necessity that it should be thus partial. But just as a re- flection implies a reality, so a riddle involves an answer. What we know of God comes to us wrapped in mystery ; it comes as an answer to our needs, but in giving this answer it raises new questions for our solution — questions which St. Paul tells us by this very phrase we cannot hope now altogether to solve. We see God and Divine things amid the perplexities and contra-
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dictions of this imperfect state, part, surely, of the clouds and darkness which are round about Him ; we behold Him through life's great riddle, and though the dimness which it brings rises ever before us from this lower earth like a mist, those who look for Him see the far-off shining of His face, and know the maze is not without its clue, that His Hand, strong and tender, holds the thread of the Divine love, from which, while we hold it fast, neither life nor death, neither things present nor things to come, shall be able to separate us.