134 WALKING BY FAITH
reduce himself to, and therefore below, the level of the beasts that perish; and long before he reached the practical goal of his theory, he would find himself the inmate of a prison or an asylum, to be a standing witness to the world which looks on, that the gospel has reason on its side, as well as religion, when it says, " Walk not by sight, walk by faith."
There are, however, approaches to the walking by sight to which all men are liable. A man walks by sight who makes Mammon his god ; lives for getting and hoarding, or else for spending and squandering ; estimates worth by wealth, and will count himself a happy man if he can but die rich. A man walks by sight who cannot control appetite or passion, cannot put aside the thing good for food or pleasant to the eyes even for the sake of avoiding to-morrow's sickness or this night's remorse, or a life's disgrace ; finds himself again and again yielding to a temptation which he has suffered from or prayed against ; weakly lives and miserably dies the slave of a sin which his better nature condemns and despises, but to which this body of flesh and blood, made his tyrant by long yielding to it, ties and binds him.
It may not be equally evident, but it is true, that another class of faults is traceable to the same cause. A man walks by sight who, under the influence of the subtle impersonal presence which we call the world, allows himself to echo the language, to court the applause, to live for the admiration of other people; losing all the independence and all the manliness of his personal being as it is lived in God's sight here and as he must give account of it to Him hereafter. Thus, not only covetousness or self-indulgence in the lowest sense of the word, but vanity and worldliness and vulgar ambition, all have their root in the walking by sight which St. Paul here disclaims and repudiates for the Christian.
^ Is it not mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them ? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not ; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions. Discon- tented, he spends himself in fruitless toil, and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure |p his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet
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covets. No man can ever hope to own all things. Even the little one does possess is got only with toil, and is held in fear ; since each is certain to lose what he hath when God's day, appointed though unrevealed, shall come. But the perverted will struggles towards the ultimate good by devious ways, yearn- ing after satisfaction, yet led astray by vanity and deceived by wickedness. Ah, if you wish to attain to the consummation of all desire, so that nothing unfulfilled will be left, why weary yourself with fruitless efforts, running hither and thither, only to die long before the goal is reached ?
It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment. And if their utmost longing were realized so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing Him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desire would make them contemn what they had, and restlessly seek Him whom they still lacked, that is God Himself. Best is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God. And 80 the soul says with confidence, " Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." ^
2. There is a special sense in which the Christian walks not by sight. — St. Paul had a particular thought in his mind when he wrote these words. The statement for which the text gives the reason is this: "Whilst, we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord ; for we walk by faith, not by sight." And this accounts for the peculiarity of the expression — not by the help of visible shape or form. The word for " sight " is rare. It is used in Scripture by St. Luke in the narrative of our Lord's baptism : " The Holy Spirit descended in bodily shape like a dove upon him " ; and once again by St. John in his fifth chapter : " Ye have neither heard the Father's voice at any time, nor seen his shape." It is remarkable, therefore, that to each one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — this same word is once applied in Holy Scripture ; for what St. Paul says here he says of our Lord Jesus Christ : " We walk not by the help of seeing His shape or form visibly, but by the help of the spiritual sight of Him, which is the grace of faith." He ^ St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Lovmg God.