The statement of the Apostle implies, with reference to " the things which are not seen," much more than a mere conviction of their existence, however lively and sincere. It implies also an earnest and steadfast contemplation of them — a turning of the thoughts to them, a fixing of the affections on them, and a bend- ing of our aims and efforts to the attainment of them. The word here translated " look at " is in other passages translated by the expressions " take heed," " mark " " consider," or " observe atten- tively," and sometimes it means to aim at or to pursue. Indeed, as has been observed, our English word " scope " is derived from it, which signifies the general drift or purpose of a man's conduct — the mark he aims at, or the end he has in view. When Christians, therefore, are said to " look at the things which are not seen," the meaning evidently is, that they look at these things with earnest attention, with eager desire, with steady contempla- tion, as the marksman looks at the target which he seeks to hit, or the racer looks at the goal which he is striving to reach.
^ During the greater part of his illness be would have chosen to live, and he was hopeful, as we were hopeful, until within a few days of the last. Then he became glad to go. Though de- voted doctors and nurses did all that skill and care could do, the walls of the Dwelling-House of that ardent spirit grew thin and
128 THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
more thin. One morning he beckoned to us to come nearer, and he tried to put into words a state of vision he had been in when he appeared to be neither sleeping nor waking. He had looked into the Book of Creation, and understood that the whole could be comprehended — made plain from that other point of view which was not our earthly one. " A glorious state," he called it, and we looked on the face of one who had at last seen " true being " when he said, " Now I see that great Book — I see that great Light." i
^ I remember standing once on a high Swiss pass, the ledge of a perpendicular precipice, where I waited for the morning view. There was nothing as I gazed ahead but mist — mist puffing, circling, swirling, like steam from the depths of some tremendous caldron. But I watched, and there was a break for a moment far down to the left, and a flash of emerald green ; it was meadow-land. Then there was a break to the right, and a cluster of houses appeared, with a white church steeple you could almost have hit with a well-aimed stone. Then they were covered, and the mist hid the scene as before, till it parted again, this time in front ; and there was blue sky, and against the blue sky a vision of glittering snow peaks. So it went on, peep after peep, rift after rift, here a little and there a little, till at last, as if worked on unseen pulleys the mist curtain slowly drew up, and from east even unto west there stretched the chain of the Italian Alps, sun-smitten, glorious, white as no fuller on earth could white them. Have your faces to the sunrise. Be ye children of the dawn. Then " though the vision tarry, wait for it ; because it will surely come, it will not tarry." Though the revelation be fragmentary here, it will be perfect hereafter. Now we see through the mists darkly, then, when the mists have vanished, face to face, with the eyes that are purged by God's Spirit, in the light that streams from His throne.^
' Mrs. Watts, in George Frederic Watts, ii. 323.
* W. A. Gray, Laws and Lamdmarks of the Spiritual Life, 22.
Walking by Faith.
2 COR. & GAL.
Literature.
Bersier (E.), in Foreign Protestant Pulpit, i. 1.
Cuckson (J.), Faith and Fellowship, 3.
Darlow (T. H.), Via Sacra, 3.
Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 94.
Evans (R W.), Parochial Sermons, 191.
Moule (H. C. G.), Christ is All, 81.
Nicoll (W. K.), The Garden of Nuts, 161.
Norton (J. N.), Gold£n Truths, 377.
Paget (F. E.), Sermons for Special Occasions, 1.
Robertson (S.), The Rope of Hair, 175.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xii. (1866), No. 109.
Sturrock (J. B.), Our Present Hope and Owr Future Home, 9, 15.
Wagner (C), Courage, 33.
Westcott (B. F.), The Incarnation and Common Life, 362.
Woodrow (S. G.), Christian Verities, 1.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxv. 244 (J. LI. Davies) ; lii. 43 (C. Voysey) ;
Ivi. 136 (A. H. Bradford) ; lix. 235 (C. S. Macfarland). Churchman^s Pulpit : Ascension Day, viii. 506 (A. M. Mackay). Preachers' Monthly, vii. 65 (C. J. Vaughan).
Walking by Faith.
For we walk by faith, not by sight.— 2 Cor. v. 7.
1, St. Paul describes the mood in which, possessed of the Christian hope, he confronts all the conditions of the present and the alternatives of the future. We are of good courage at all times, he says. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from home as far as the Lord is concerned — at a distance from Him. This does not mean that fellowship is broken, or that the soul is separated from the love of Christ ; it means only that earth is not heaven, and that St. Paul is pain- fully conscious of the fact. This is what is proved by ver. 7 : We are absent from the Lord, our true home, for in this world we are walking through the realm of faith, not through that of actual appearance. There is a world, a mode of existence, to which St. Paul looks forward, which is one of actual appearance , he will be in Christ's presence there, and see Him face to face. But the world through which his course lies meanwhile is not that world of immediate presence and manifestation ; on the contrary, it is a world of faith, which realizes that future world of manifesta- tion only by a strong spiritual conviction ; it is through a faith- land that St. Paul's journey leads him. All along the way his faith keeps him in good heart ; nay, when he thinks of all that it ensures, of all that is guaranteed by the Spirit, he is willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.