Oh, dear brethren! our consciences tell us what different people we should be if habitually there shone before us that great, solemn issue to which we are all tending.  Variations in the atmosphere there will always be, and sometimes the distant outlines will be clearer and sharper than at others, and the colours will shine out more distinctly.  But surely it should not be that our vision of the Eternal should be like the vision that dwellers amongst the mountains have of the summits.  They say that some of the great peaks of the world are swathed in mist all day long, and that only for a few moments in the morning, or for a brief space in the evening, does the solemn summit gleam rosy in the light.  And that, I am afraid, is very much like the degree in which most of us look at ’the things that are not seen’ and so we are feeble, and we do not understand ’the things that are not seen’; and we do not get the good out of them.

Dear brethren, let us turn away our eyes from the gauds that we can see, and open the eyes of our spirits on the things that are, the things where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.  Surely, surely, it is madness that when two sets of objects are before us, the one lasting for a moment, and then dying down into black nothingness, and the other shining on for ever; and when our ‘look’ settles whether we shall share the fate of the one or of the other, we should choose to gaze with all our eyes and hearts at the perishable and turn away from the permanent.  Surely, if it is true that the things which are seen are temporal, common-sense, and a reasonable regard for our own well-being, bid us look at the eternal ‘things which are not seen,’ since only so can the light and the momentary afflictions, joys, sorrows, or circumstances, work out for us, and work us for ’a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’

TENT AND BUILDING

   ’For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle
   be dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made
   with hands, eternal in the heavens.’—­2 COR. v. 1.

Knowledge and ignorance, doubt and certitude, are remarkably blended in these words.  The Apostle knows what many men are not certain of; the Apostle doubts as to what all men now are certain of. ’If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved’—­there is surely no if about that.  But we must remember that the first Christians, and the Apostles with them, did not know whether they might not survive till the coming of Christ; and so not die, but ‘be changed.’  And this possibility, as appears from the context, is clearly before the Apostle’s mind.  Such a limitation of his knowledge is in entire accordance with our Lord’s own words, ’It is not for you to know the times and the seasons,’ and does not in the smallest degree derogate from his authority as an inspired teacher.  But his certitude is as remarkable as his hesitation.  He knows—­and he modestly and calmly affirms the confidence, as possessed by all believers—­that, in the event of death coming to him or them, he and they have a mansion waiting for their entrance; a body of glory like to that which Jesus already wears.