flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." By " the things which are not seen" must be meant the love and favour of God, the renovation of our invv^ard man, the glory and felicity of heaven. The latter of these are the objects towards which the Christian turns his principal attention. Not that he neglects the concerns of this world; this would be absurd and criminal; but his great end and aim* is to obtain an inheritance beyond the grave : even while he is most actively employed in secular concerns, he looks through them all to this grand object, and labours incessantly to secure it.]
To this he is led by the transitoriness of earthly things —
[The things of this world perish with the using. If they be not withdrawn from us, we must soon be taken away from them ; nor will so much as one of them remain to be enjoyed in the future world. But spiritual things remain for ever. If we secure the love of God now, it shall abide with us to all eternity. An interest in the Redeemer's merits, and a title to all the glory of heaven, shall never be taken away from us. Death, so far from terminating our enjoyments, will bring us to the full possession of that glory, of which our present fore- tastes are an earnest and pledge. The Christian, seeing the infinite disparity between these things, determines to make invisible things the supreme objects of his regard, and com- paratively disregards all that can be oiFered to the eye of sense.]
In this pursuit he is aided by his afflictions, as will appear, if we consider,
II. The privilege he enjoys —
The Christian has troubles as well as others —
[The very conduct he observes with respect to temporal things has a tendency to involve him in trouble. The world cannot endure to see their idols so disregarded, and their conduct so reproached. One would have supposed from the account given us of his sufferings, that Paul must have been the vilest miscreant that ever lived^ : but the more we resemble him in holiness, the more shall we resemble him in sufferings also. Our enemies indeed will not professedly persecute us for our holiness ; they will assign some specious reason. Elijah shall be called " The troubler of Israel ;" Paul, " The man who turns the world upside down ;" and Christ shall be punished as a blasphemer and an enemy to civil government. But the
^ This seems to be the import of aico-n-ovvTwy. " 2 Cor. xi. 23—27.