(1) Among the veils that need to be removed is that of ignorance. We do not mean the ignorance of the deeper things of God. Do you remember how the Apostle speaks of the need of the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, that we may know ? There is a veil of ignorance that has to be lifted.
(2) There is also a veil of prejudice. We remember Nathanael. " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " Philip's answer to him was the only wise answer, " Come and see ! " To the man who looks through yellow glasses, all the world is yellow. Nothing can be done until they are laid aside. If we want God's blessing, there must be the removal of the veil.
(3) And there is the veil of heart-sin. The condition of the vision of God is heart purification. " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." How often we have seen some gross form of sin, some guilty passion, completely shut out from the life all care for spiritual things. We recognize it then ; but it is equally true in the secret recess of the soul. When the sin is hidden there, there also must the cleansing be. And mark that the purifi- cation of the heart is by faith, not by effort. " Purifying their hearts by faith." There is an immediate work of God that can remove the veil.
(4) One thing more — the thickest, heaviest veil of all — has yet to be mentioned. It is the veil of unbelief. " Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? " — the very thing you want to see. We must have faith
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for it, the vision of faith. We must venture to contradict our past experience, and live for a deeper and a better experience, than we have ever had, if our life is to be transformed.
^ Throw a napkin over a mirror, and it reflects nothing. Perfect beauty may stand before it, but the mirror gives no sign. And this is why in a dispensation like ours, the Christian dispen- sation, with everything contrived to reflect Christ, to exhibit Christ, the whole thing set agoing for this purpose of exhibiting Christ, we so little see Him. How is it that two men can sit at a Communion* table together, and the one be lifted to the seventh heaven and see the King in His beauty, while the other only envies his neighbour his vision? Why is it that in the same household two persons will pass through identically the same domestic circumstances, the same events, from year to year, and the one see Christ everywhere, while the other grows sullen, sour, indifferent? Why is it? Because the one wears a veil that prevents him from seeing Christ ; the other lives with unveiled face. How was it that the Psalmist, in the changes of the seasons even, in the mountain, in the sea, in everything that he had to do, found God ? How was it that he knew that even though he made his bed in hell he would find God ? Because he had an unveiled face ; he was prepared to find God. How is it that many of us can come into church and be much more taken up with the presence of some friend than with the presence of Christ ? The same reason still : we wear a veil ; we do not come with unveiled face prepared to see Him.^
3. We behold in a mirror. What is the mirror ? Here are two mirrors.
(1) One is His Word, the Gospel-story which tells —
How He walked here, the shadow of Him Love, The speech of Him soft Music, and His step A Benediction.
This is the precious service which the Evangelists rendered to succeeding ages : they preserved the image of Jesus, painting His sacred form in imperishable colours as He appeared to the men who dwelt beside Him and saw His blessed face and heard His gracious voice. There are no Scriptures comparable to the holy Gospels. They are the shrine of the Incarnate Son of God, and we should be ever searching them, ever returning to them with fresh wonder * M. Dods, How to Become Like Christ, 23.
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and expectation, ever breathing their atmosphere and catching their spirit. They are the mirror of the Saviour's face. The other Scriptures speak of Him ; these reflect Him.
(2) And there is another mirror which reflects Him no less truly and, in a manner, more effectively, forasmuch as it is constantly before our eyes and we cannot help looking into it — the mirror of redeemed lives that wear His likeness and have been fashioned by the Holy Spirit after His image.
^ We have heard of a little child who had been thinking about the unseen Christ to whom she prayed. She was trying to picture to herself what He might be like. By and by she came to her mother with the question, " Is Jesus like anybody I know ? " The question was not an unreasonable one, and it was one to which the child should have received the answer " Yes." Every true disciple of Christ ought to be an answer, in some sense at least, to that child's inquiry.^