XXV.

From the Seen to the Unseen.

2 COR. iv. 16-18:

"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

THERE is a form of Character, most peaceful in itself, most healthful in its influence, chiefly shown in composure of mind, in promptitude and evenness of spirit, with that insight into the nature and the bearings of things which confers a ready power of seeing them as they are, and dealing with them according to the order of their real importance. This frame of character depends on the balance and proportion of the faculties; it is produced by the happiest blending of mental and of spiritual qualities. It is not Intellect alone; it is not Goodness alone; but the constant and active co-operation of a lucid mind, a discerning spirit, a prompt and gentle heart.

The only single expression in our language capable of completely conveying it is the word Wisdom, perhaps the highest term that can be applied to a moral being. Indeed, the Apostle's account of the attributes of Wisdom is a perfect delineation of the spiritual largeness to which we refer: "The wisdom. that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy," Christ's mind was of that order; not impulsive, not subject to strong agitations from passing things; not shaken by events however trying, by insult however rude, as though any possible part of God's providence could take a thoughtful spirit by surprise; never admitting even the temporary predominance of unqualified emotion, of untempered views of life and destiny; of that largeness which stands prepared for all things, capable of passing from what is greatest to what is least without abruptness or violence to nature, dwelling in that calm wisdom which is never at the mercy of circumstance, cast out from the comfort and direction of guiding principles.

This is the form which all spiritual greatness assumes; and it stands essentially opposed to passion, to feverish excitement, to storms of emotion, to the tyranny of accident or fortune, to transient and unruly affections.. It is never strange with God; it has long looked beneath the surface, and known the whole coming

order of His ways. We call this repose of spirit; but all such repose is the opposite of inaction, for peace is the fulness of power. Human intercourse affords nothing so strengthening as the influence of minds of this order. To be near them is like feeling the protection of a strong hand, a kind voice, a consoling and assuring word in the agitations of childhood. The perturbations of disordered minds sink insensibly to rest in the presence of one who looks on God with that prepared eye of insight and of trust-who never meets His ways with bewildered confusion—of whom, if ever given up to emotion, we perceive that it is not because faith and reason are taken by surprise, or the balance lost, but because, like Christ at the grave of Lazarus, the heart for a time is permitted to have its way; for in all such moments of intense emotion the true heart is only taking in the full value of what is vanishing from earth, that love, faith and reason may still possess it as type, prophecy and earnest of eternal mercies. How poor and unfitting the common consolations and precepts of life are at once perceived to be when offered to minds of this class! They have meat to eat that we know not of. They have long since built upon the rock, anticipated the great spiritual passage from the Seen to the Unseen, and given their trust to God; and their consolation, when they are tried and desolate, is not again to lay bare the roots of faith, but so "to do, to desire to do, the will of their Father," as to live upon its fruits.

That it is the tendency of every portion of God's ways to produce in us this "wisdom" of the spirit, is seen in the provisions of experience to extend our range of thought and interest, to give distance permanence and reality to purpose, motive, and expectation. By many an experimental lesson, by many an instructive disappointment, by many a natural but deceptive confidence painfully rectified, by many a veil suddenly dropped on the brightness of promise and the joy of possession, by many a simple pleasure and pure affection found to be more precious than all the world besides, does God lead us to this Wisdom; and to receive these teachings is the province of the spiritual understanding, and indeed constitutes the whole of the higher education of man. Whatever tends to that enlargement of nature which discerns in the Present the seeds of the Future, in the affections of Earth the promises of Heaven, in the Seen the symbols of the Unseen, is of God's most tender care for the spiritual growth of His children. Now everything in the divine ordering of our life would seem to have this direction: to teach us to value things not only for what they now are but for what they mean, for what they disclose of God's intent, for the eternal treasure that is folded in them; and whoever of us is not advancing in this Wisdom is manifestly open to the charge of great natural unteachableness, or of great spiritual negligence. For what are the several stages

of human life from infancy to age but so many breakings of the shell, so many tests of the transitory and of the abiding, so many passages from the Seen to the Unseen, until God widens around us His own Eternal Being, and our reliance at last is upon no circumstance, but simply upon those inward springs which we know can never fail because they depend upon the faithfulness of the Father of our spirits, in whom their life is? When all things dear and sacred here are valued as earnest and part-fulfilment of heavenly things, of things kindred in their nature to those experienced now but infinitely richer, then our souls. are beyond the reach of accident or event, they are safe with their God, and the worst that can befall them is that they have to be tested, they have to live by faith, they have to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

It is characteristic of the stage of childhood that it lives completely in the things that are Seen—that not yet are they sometimes the shadows, sometimes the fore-gleamings, of the Unseen. Hence its peace, for it has not yet outgrown its small world, and no aspiration spoils contentment: and hence its vehement sorrow, for the emotion of the time exhausts its being. Its joy and its trouble are both entire, because for the time they are its all, with no unsatisfied ideal to break the one, with no clear-eyed hopes to relieve the other. This is the only period within which, without guilt or