(2) What will that first apprehension of God, under the new conditions of the other life, be ? There are trustworthy accounts of men who have been utterly overcome at the first sight of a fellow-creature with whose name and work they had for long years associated great wisdom, or goodness, or ability; the first sight of the earthly Jerusalem has endowed more than one traveller with a perfectly new experience in the life of thought and feeling. What must not the first direct sight of God be, the Source of all beauty, of all wisdom, of all power, when the eye opens upon Him after death! "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty " were words of warning as well as words of promise. What will it not be to see Him in those first few moments — God, the Eternal Love, God, the consuming Fire — as we shall see Him in the first five minutes after death !
^[ An Indian officer, who in his time had seen a great deal of service, and had taken part in more than one of those decisive struggles by which the British authority was finally established in the East Indies, had returned to end his days in this country, and was talking with his friends about the most striking experi- ences of his professional career. They led him, by their sympathy and their questions, to travel in memory through a long series of years; and as he described skirmishes, battles, sieges, personal encounters, hair-breadth escapes, the outbreak of the mutiny and its suppression, reverses, victories — all the swift alternations of anxiety and hope which a man must know who is entrusted with command, and is before the enemy — their interest in his story, as was natural, became keener and more exacting. At last he
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 387
paused with the observation, " I expect to see something much more remarkable than anything I have been describing." As he was some seventy years of age, and was understood to have retired from active service, his listeners failed to catch his mean- ing. There was a pause ; and then he said in an undertone, " I mean in the first five minutes after death." x
(3) Distinguish between those who say, " We know nothing," and those who say with the Apostle, " We know in part." When we are only speculating, God will seem to us very incomprehensible, very unknowable; His nature and mode of working do always baffle our understandings : " how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out ! " But then we turn to the revelation of God which has been given us in our Lord Jesus Christ. As we study that, we shall hardly be inclined to complain of necessary ignorance; rather shall we be moved to exclaim with St. Paul that in Christ " are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The impressions concerning God and the Father which we received from the Lord Jesus grow into secure knowledge as they are verified by life and experience, And as we learn what the conditions of human progress and well- being are. How, we ask, can men live without faith and hope and love, and how can faith and hope and love be awakened and preserved without Divine righteousness and encouragement and goodness to which they may respond ?
2. Our fellows. — This chapter is the glorious hymn of love. The religious fervour, the intellectual conquests, the accumulated philosophy of succeeding centuries, have produced nothing nobler than this. You cannot "praise" this perfect utterance. You might as well " approve " the perpetual rainbow over the Fluela Fall or the after-glow in an Alpine sky. The Apostle exhausts the resources of inspired eloquence in exposition of love. And he looks for the maturing, the completion, the perfection of this Christian grace. When such full-blossomed love has come, we shall see with perfect clearness. In proportion as it comes, we shall see better. When love has her perfect work, we shall see so distinctly that the vision may be said to be " face to face." Yes ; that we have always understood. But what is it that we shall see? What but the object of our love — our fellow-man?
1 H. P. Liddon.
388 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT
Towards whom have you exercised love? Your brother-man, your neighbour, your friend, your rival, your foe. Then, as your love deepens, your vision of him will clear. As you think more charitably of him you will understand him better. When love towards him is perfected, you will see him face to face.
U Doubtless the words " face to face " apply primarily to the vision of God in the perfected manhood. But, as the greater includes the lesser, this recognition of God involves the recogni- tion of loved ones.
Tf Pilgrims no longer, nor longer disguised from one another by the suspicions and concealments of this life, nor hidden from each other, as here the most closely linked hearts must be, by the necessary solitude and loneliness of every individual life, in which we must live so largely and, in all our tenderest sensi- bilities, so entirely alone. There hearts shall open to hearts spontaneously as the flowers to the sun, and there soul shall communicate itself to the soul it loves as naturally as the dews nourish the white lilies of the wood. The armour of light, so often blood-stained and torn, is unlaced; the shield and sword laid down at the King's feet, and the soft clothing of peace put on.