Further, this look of which my text speaks is the condition on which Time prepares for Eternity.

The Apostle is speaking about the effect of affliction in making ready for us an eternal weight of glory, and he says that is done while, or on condition that during the suffering, we are looking steadfastly towards the ‘things that are not seen.’  But no outward circumstances or events can prepare a weight of glory for us hereafter, unless they prepare us for the glory.  Affliction works for us that blessed result, in the measure in which it fits us for that result.  And so you will find that, only a verse or two after my text, Paul, using the same very significant and emphatic verb, writes inverting the order of things, and says ’He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.’  So that working the thing for us, and working us for the thing, are one and the same process.  Or, to put it into plain English, our various duties and circumstances here will prepare the glory of Eternity for us if they prepare us for the glory of Eternity.  But only in the measure in which these outward things do thus shape and mould our characters do they work out for us ‘an exceeding weight of glory.’

It is often thought that a man has been so miserable here that God is sure to give him future blessedness to recompense him.  Well! ’that depends.’  If he has used his miserableness as he will use it when he lets the light of ‘the things not seen’ in upon it, then, certainly, it will work out for him the blessed results.  But if he does not, then, as certainly, it will not.  Whilst there are many ways by which character is hammered and moulded and shaped into that which is fit to be clothed upon with the glory that is yonder, one of the foremost of these is the passing through things temporal with a continual regard to the things that are eternal.  If you want to understand to-day you must bring Eternity into the account, and if you want to use to-day you must use it with the light of the eternal world full upon it.  The sum of it all is, brethren, that the things seen cannot be estimated in their true character, unless they are regarded in immediate connection with the things that are unseen; and that the things seen will only prepare an eternal weight of glory for us when they prepare us for an eternal weight of glory.

II.  And so, I note that this look at the things not seen is only possible through Jesus Christ.

He is the only window which opens out and gives the vision of that far-off land.  I, for my part, believe that, if I might use such a metaphor, He is the Columbus of the New World.  Men believed, and argued, and doubted about the existence of it across the seas there, until a man went, and came back again, and then went to found a new city yonder.  And men hoped for immortality, and believed after a fashion—­some of them—­in a future life, and dreaded that it might be true, and discussed and debated whether it was, but doubt clouded all minds, until One, our Brother, went away into the darkness, and came back again, in most respects as He had gone, and then departed once more to make ready a city in which all who love Him should finally dwell, and to which you and I may be sure that we shall emigrate.  It is only in Jesus Christ that the look which my text enjoins is possible.