Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill.
Complain no more; for these, 0 heart,
Direct the random of the will
As rhymes direct the rage of art.
The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart The strain and purpose of the string,
For governance and nice consort Doth bar his wilful wavering.
The dark hath many dear avails;
The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales.
With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.^ ' £. W. Moore, Lift Transfigured, 126. * Sidney Lanier.
The Seen and the Unseen.
»»7
Literature.
Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 151.
Albertson (C. C), College Sermons, 9.
Bright (W.), Morality in Doctrine, 102.
Bushnell (H.), Sermons on Living Subjects, 268.
Chadwick (G. A.), Pilate's Gift, 171.
Crawford (T. J.), The Preaching of the Cross, 357.
Davies (D.), Talks vnth Men, Women and Children, iv. 311.
Drummond (H.), The Ideal Life, 127.
Gray (W. A.), Laws and Landmarks of the Spiritual Life, 11.
Greenhough (J. G.), in Th« Divine Artist, 61.
Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 248.
Illingwortli (J. R.), Sermons Preached in a College Chapel, 32.
lugram (A. F. W.), Under the Dome, 186.
Leckie (J.), Sermons, 350.
Little (W. J. K.), The Light of Life, 200.
Macfarland (C. S.), Spiritual Culture and Social Service, 101.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv. 200.
Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, ii. 128.
Parkhurst (C. H.), The Pattern on the Mount, 211.
Eeid (J.), The Uplifting of Life, 94.
Christian World Pulpit, lii. 248 (H. S. Holland) ; Ivii. 228 (G. Body) ;
Ixxviii. 374 (R. Mackintosh). Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., xi. 290 (W. Burrows).
m9
The Seen and the Unseen.
The things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal.— 2 Cor. iv. 18.
The Apostle looked on the things that are temporal as not looking on them, but as looking straight through, on the thing eternal, which they represent and prepare. He looked on them just as a man looks on a window-pane, when he studies the landscape without. In one view he looks on the glass. In another he does not. Probably enough he does not so much as think of the medium interposed. Or, a better comparison still is the telescope ; for the lenses of glass here interposed actually enable the spectator to see, and yet he does not so much as consider that he is looking on the lenses, or using them at all ; he looks only on the stars. So also the Apostle looks not on the things that are temporal, even while admiring the display in them of God's in- visible and eternal realities. He looks on them only as seeing through ; uses them only as a medium of training, exercise, access to God. Their value to him is not in what they are but in what they signify.
^ It is a true use of things temporal, that they are to put us under the constant all-dominating impression of things eternal. And we are to live in them, as in a transparency, looking through, every moment, and in all life's works and ways, acting through, into the grand reality-world of the life to come.^
^ Crathie, 29th Oct. 1854. — This has been a heavenly day of beauty — the sky almost cloudless ; the stones on the hill side so distinct that they might be counted ; the Dee swinging past with its deep-toned murmur. I preached before the Queen and Eoyal Family without a note the same sermon I preached at Morven ; and I never looked once at the royal seat, but solely at the con- gregation. I tried to forget the great ones I saw, and to remember the great Ones I saw not, and so I preached from my heart, and with as much freedom, really, as at a mission station.^
* Horace Bushnell. 2 m'g qj Norman Madeod, ii. 38.
119
120 THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
I.
The Seen is Girdled by the Unseen.
1. There are two worlds — the world of sense and the world of spirit; and the world of spirit surrounds, enspheres, and inter- penetrates the world of sense. We speak as if the world of sense came first, and the world of spirit came after ; whereas the truth is that the world of spirit is about us now, though the veil of sense hangs between. We imagine that we dwell in time here, and shall dwell in eternity hereafter ; while the fact is, we dwell in eternity here, though we take a little section of it and call it time.
Each of these two worlds must be discerned by its own faculty. One is made up of places, people, circumstances, possessions — the physical; the other of ideas, feelings, affections, expectations — the spiritual. We are conscious of the house we live in, the faces that look at us, the tasks we do, the afflictions that befall us. We are conscious also of the sins that are past, of the love we have tasted, of the aims we cherish, of the sorrow that wounded our hearts. Both worlds surround us, one of them tangible like water, the other intangible like air. We see one with our eyes, we feel the other with our soul.
God keeps His holy mysteries