1 J. R. Miller.
2 COR. V. 7 143
•^ That heroic and saintly missionary, James Gilmour of Mongolia, was one of those whose sense of the abiding presence of Christ was always vivid and supporting. " No one," he writes, " who does not go away, leaving all and going alone can feel the force of the promise 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,' and when I begin to feel my heart threatening to go down, I betake myself to this companionship, and, thank God, I have felt the blessedness of this promise rushing over me repeatedly when I knelt down and spoke to Jesus as a present companion from whom I am sure to find sympathy."
IV.
One Day we shall Walk by Sight.
Here and now, while we are at home in the body and absent from the Lord, " we walk by faith, not by sight." Therefore, by the implication of the whole surrounding thought, when we leave home in the body and get home to the Lord, we walk by sight, and not by faith. " Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed " ; yes, for they, as they step out of this life, shall see indeed. True, there will be there, and for ever, occasion enough for an immortal exercise of faith. That world, let us be abundantly assured, will have its mysteries as well as this; its calls to the blessed to confide, to rely, as they worship before the throne. But the conditions will be gloriously altered. It will be a faith exercised under sight. It will be the confidence we feel in some immeasurably wiser friend while he carries out his plans in our presence, and our eyes are all the while upon his face, as against the sometimes trying efforts of a confidence in him exercised at a distance from him, and in spite of false rumours of his death, and amidst a thousand accusations and misrepresentations of his purposes and his actions.
^ Death, for the believer, for the follower of Jesus Christ, will be to go to Him, to see Him. We shall walk, amidst the trees of that deathless and sinless Paradise, by sight, not by faith. The disciplinary strain, having done its work, will cease. The rest, the sabbatism, having come to its season, will begin, and grow, and bear its fruit of bliss, and knowledge, and endless readiness for the exercise of the powers of the resurrection, in the vernal
144 WALKING BY FAITH
sunshine of that Sight, that eidos, that most blessed and most beautifying " Object Visible." ^
^ The hope of hopes, the promise of promises, the joy of joys, the crown of crowns, is being with Christ, where He is, that we may see His glory. If Christians in their daily lives, and useful activities, and frequent sorrows would but take this more to heart, how different their whole lives would be, in their level of attainment and in their interpretation of circumstances ! Life is beautiful and desirable, chiefly on account of what it leads to and educates us for. But what will it be, when we see God face to face, in the sinless, tearless land ? Only let Christ be King in our hearts, and our true satisfaction and consolation about everything ; the Friend on whom we lean without knowing it ; the Master from whom we take our orders, and who has given each of us om' task to do. When that is done. He will send for us. Then surely we should have an unspeakable rest flowing into us : we should cease to fear circumstances, we should only fear to miss using and interpreting them properly. We should be always hoping, with a hope that never makes ashamed ; and our joy no man would take away.^
1 Bishop H. C. G. Moule, Christ is All, 93. * Bishop Thorold, Questions of Faith ami Duty.
The Constraint of Love.
2 COR. & GAL. — lO
Literature.
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