The Ideal Life

Clairvoyance

 

" 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” — 2 Cor. iv. 18.

 

“Everything that is is double.''

 

Hermes Trismegistus.

 

Look not at the things which are seen." How can we look not at the things which are seen? If they are seen, how can we help looking at them? "Look at the things which are not seen." How can we look at things which are not seen? Has religion some magic wishing cap, making the solid world invisible, or does it supply some strange clairvoyance power, seeing that which is unseen?

 

This is one of these alluring paradoxes which all great books delight in, which baffle thought while courting it, but which disclose to whomever picks the lock the rarest and profoundest truth. The surface meaning of a paradox is either nonsense, or it is false. In this case it is false. One would gather, at first sight, that we had here another of these attacks upon the world, of which the Bible is supposed to be so fond. It reads as a withering contrast between the things of time and the things of eternity — as an unqualified disparagement of this present world. The things which are seen are temporal — nowhere, not worth a moment's thought, not even to be looked at.

 

In reality this is neither the judgment of the Bible nor of reason.

 

There are four reasons why we should look at the things which are seen : —

 

1. First, because God made them. Anything that God makes is worth looking at. We live in no chance world. It has been all thought out. Everywhere work has been spent on it lavishly — thought and work — loving thought and exquisite work. All its parts together, and every part separately, are stamped with skill, beauty, and purpose. As the mere work of a Great Master we are driven to look — deliberately and long — at the things which are seen.

 

2. But, second, God made me to look at them. He who made light made the eye. It is a gift of the Creator on purpose that we may look at the things which are seen. The whole mechanism of man is made with reference to the temporal world — the eye for seeing it, the ear for hearing it, the nerve for feeling it, the muscle for moving about on it and getting more of it. He acts contrary to his own nature who harbours even a suspicion of the things that are seen.

 

3. But again, thirdly, God has not merely made the world, but He has made it conspicuous. So far from lying in the shade, so far from being constituted to escape observation, the whole temporal world clamours for it. Nature is never and nowhere silent. If you are apathetic, if you will not look at the things which are seen, they will summon you. The bird will call to you from the tree-top, the sea will change her mood for you, the flower looks up appealingly from the wayside, and the sun, before he sets with irresistible colouring, will startle you into attention. The Creator has determined that, whether He be seen or no, no living soul shall tread His earth without being spoken to by these works of His hands. God has secured that. And even those things which have no speech nor language, whose voice is not heard, have their appeal going out to all the world, and their word to the end of the earth. Had God feared that the visible world had been a mere temptation to us, He would have made it less conspicuous. Certainly He has warned us not to love it, but nowhere not to look at it.

 

4. The last reason, fourthly, is the greatest of all. Hitherto we have been simply dealing with facts. Now we come to a principle. Look at the things that are seen, because it is only by looking at the things that are seen that we can have any idea of the things that are unseen. Our whole conception of the eternal is derived from the temporal.

 

Take any unseen truth, or fact, or law. The proposition is that it can only be apprehended by us by means of the seen and temporal. Take the word eternal itself. What do we know of eternity ? Nothing that we have not, learned from the temporal. When we try to realise that word there rises up before us the spaceless sea. We glide swiftly over it day after day, but the illimitable waste recedes before us, knowing no end. On and on, week and month, and there stretches the same horizon vague and infinite, the far-off circle we can never reach. We stop. We are far enough. This is eternity !

 

In reality this is not eternity ; it is mere water, the temporal, liquid and tangible. But by looking at this thing which is seen we have beheld the unseen. Here is a river. It is also water. But its different shape mirrors a different truth. As we look, the opposite of eternity rises up before us. There is Time, swift and silent; or Life, fleeting and irrevocable. So one might run over all the material of his thoughts, all the groundwork of his ideas, and trace them back to things that are temporal. They are really material, made up of matter, and in order to think at all, one must first of all see.

 

Nothing could illustrate this better, perhaps, than the literary form of our English Bible. Leaving out for the present the language of symbol and illustration which Christ spoke, there is no great eternal truth that is not borne to us upon some material image. Look, for instance, at its teaching about human life. To describe that it does not even use the words derived from the temporal world. It brings us face to face with the temporal world, and lets us abstract them for ourselves. It never uses the word “fleeting” or “transitory”. It says life is a vapour that appeareth for a little and vanisheth away. It likens it to a swift post, a swift ship, a tale that is told.

 

It never uses the word " irrevocable" It speaks of water spilt on the ground that cannot be gathered up again — a thread cut by the weaver. Nor does it tell us that life is " evanescent." It suggests evanescent things — a dream, a sleep, a shadow, a shepherd's tent removed. And even to convey the simpler truth that life is short, we find only references to short things that are seen — a handbreadth, a pilgrimage, a flower, a weaver's shuttle. The Bible in these instances is not trying to be poetical : it is simply trying to be true. And it distinctly, unconsciously recognises the fact that truth can only be borne into the soul through the medium of things. We must refuse to believe, therefore, that we are not to look at the things which are seen. It is a necessity; for the temporal is the husk and framework of the eternal. And the things which are not seen are made of the things which do appear. " All visible things," said Carlyle, " are emblems. What thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly speaking, is not there at all. Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea and body it forth" {Sartor Resartus, p. 49). And so John Ruskin : — " The more I think of it I find this conclusion more impressed upon me — that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think ; but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one."

 

II. From this point we can now go on from the negative of the paradox to the second and positive term — " Look at the things which are not seen." We now understand how to do this. Where is the eternal? Where are the unseen things, that we may look at them? And the answer is — in the temporal. Look then at the temporal, but do not pause there. You must penetrate it. Go through it, and see its shadow, its spiritual shadow, on the further side. Look upon this shadow long and earnestly, till that which you look through becomes the shadow, and the shadow merges into the reality. Look through till the thing you look through becomes dim, then transparent, and then invisible, and the unseen beyond grows into form and strength. For, truly, the first thing seen is the shadow, the thing on the other side the reality. The thing you see is only a solid, and men mistake solidity for reality. But that alone is the reality — the eternal which lies behind. Look, then, not at the things which are seen, but look through them to the things that are unseen.

 

The great lesson which emerges from all this is as to the religious use of the temporal world. Heaven lies behind earth. We see that this earth is not merely a place to live in, but to see in. We are to pass through it as clairvoyants, holding the whole temporal world as a vast transparency, through which the eternal shines.

 

Let us now apply this principle briefly to daily life. To most of us, the most practical division of life is threefold : the Working life, the Home life, and the Religious life. What do these yield us of the eternal, and how?

 

I. The Working Life. To most men, work is just work — manual work, professional work,...