These truths are, I believe, the very necessities of fact, but a man does not therefore, at a given moment, necessarily know them.  It is absolutely necessary, none the less, to his real being, that he should know these spiritual relations in which he stands to his Origin; yea, that they should be always present and potent with him, and become the heart and sphere and all-pervading substance of his consciousness, of which they are the ground and foundation.  Once to have seen them, is not always to see them.  There are times, and those times many, when the cares of this world—­with no right to any part in our thought, seeing either they are unreasonable or God imperfect—­so blind the eyes of the soul to the radiance of the eternally true, that they see it only as if it ought to be true, not as if it must be true; as if it might be true in the region of thought, but could not be true in the region of fact.  Our very senses, filled with the things of our passing sojourn, combine to cast discredit upon the existence of any world for the sake of which we are furnished with an inner eye, an eternal ear.  But had we once seen God face to face, should we not be always and for ever sure of him? we have had but glimpses of the Father.  Yet, if we had seen God face to face, but had again become impure of heart—­if such a fearful thought be a possible idea—­we should then no more believe that we had ever beheld him.  A sin-beclouded soul could never recall the vision whose essential verity was its only possible proof.  None but the pure in heart see God; only the growing-pure hope to see him.  Even those who saw the Lord, the express image of his person, did not see God.  They only saw Jesus—­and then but the outside Jesus, or a little more.  They were not pure in heart; they saw him and did not see him.  They saw him with their eyes, but not with those eyes which alone can see God.  Those were not born in them yet.  Neither the eyes of the resurrection-body, nor the eyes of unembodied spirits can see God; only the eyes of that eternal something that is of the very essence of God, the thought-eyes, the truth-eyes, the love-eyes, can see him.  It is not because we are created and he uncreated, it is not because of any difference involved in that difference of all differences, that we cannot see him.  If he pleased to take a shape, and that shape were presented to us, and we saw that shape, we should not therefore be seeing God.  Even if we knew it was a shape of God—­call it even God himself our eyes rested upon; if we had been told the fact and believed the report; yet, if we did not see the Godness, were not capable of recognizing him, so as without the report to know the vision him, we should not be seeing God, we should only be seeing the tabernacle in which for the moment he dwelt.  In other words, not seeing what in the form made it a form fit for him to take, we should not be seeing a presence which could only be God.