The Eternal Not Opposed to the Present

“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.”—2 Corinthians iv. 18.

We sometimes speak of Time as a river, and of Eternity as the ocean into which it flows. Whatever truth there may be in this comparison, and I cannot doubt that it conveys a truth to some minds, it certainly is very likely to mislead us. It connects itself—I will not say with the thought, but—with a kind of vague impression, that while we are here in this world, we are floating down the stream of Time, and that Death first brings us into contact with Eternity. A number of phrases which have crept from popular discourses into scientific works on theology, and have at last become a portion of its ordinary dialect, embody this notion. You will perceive that the words I have just read to you suggest a very different one. St. Paul says that things seen are temporal (πρόσκαιρα); the things unseen eternal. He does not describe one as present, the other as future. He does not tell us that here he is only among passing things, that hereafter he shall be among permanent things. He feels that he is in the midst of both, here on this earth. The visible world is about him; he has senses wherewith to take it in, a heart capable of enjoying it. He has an invisible world also about him; his senses do not take it in; his heart tremblingly confesses it, sometimes would fly from it altogether. Nevertheless he is sure that he has faculties for conversing with that invisible world; he is sure that his heart will not be content with any other. He is not truly a man, except so far as these faculties are awake, so far as they have their proper objects, so far as his spirit is occupied with that which satisfies it. His senses may be alive, but he is not alive except he has something which they do not testify of. Nay, properly speaking, they are not alive; their reports are confused, irregular, inconsistent; they cannot look the world in the face; they are simply overpowered by it, unless he is up and at work, to direct and govern them.

But how can he attain this power over them? Who will uphold him? Who will show him that other world to which he belongs, of which he thinks he is an inheritor, but which seems full only of indistinct phantoms? This, St. Paul teaches us, is the very end of God’s Revelations. To show men that Kingdom which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive; to show it them, that they may have their home in it; that they may acknowledge it as their own proper dwelling-place,—this is the purpose of all those Divine discoveries which the Bible records; especially of that last discovery which the Son of God made when He took flesh, when He preached, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;” when He suffered the sharpness of death, that He might open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

For He opened to men the nature of God. He showed them the Image after which they were created. There had been righteous kings and righteous subjects. He revealed that Righteousness from which the Righteousness of both had been derived. There had been men who had taught Truth, and who suffered for Truth. He could say, “I am the Truth.” He could exhibit the fulness of Truth both in Teaching and in Suffering. There had been stout fighters on earth; there had been Messengers of Peace. He unveiled the perfect untroubled Peace, which is in the midst of tribulation. There had been hearts full of Joy, hearts full of Sorrow. The Divine Joy was seen in its perfection in the Man of Sorrows.

The Kingdom of God, therefore, which Christ preached, which He said was at hand, which He manifested, is called the Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost. These are no longer qualities in the minds of men, subjected to the accidents of those minds. They belong to the Substance of God.

I. The first words of St. Paul require no verbal confirmation or illustration. The truth of them is demonstrated to every man by every year, day, hour of his existence on earth. Spring and autumn witness of them alike. He hears them as much in the songs which welcome the newborn infant into the light as in the knell over the departed man. But supposing these words, “Things seen are temporal,” were changed into the words, “Things present are temporal,” I believe that instead of the conscience of human beings going along with them, it would utter its deep groan, its solemn protest against them. I can bear to contemplate the vicissitudes of the seasons; the death of the old, the birth of the new; I can perceive in this change and variety an infinite beauty, which it would be an unspeakable calamity to lose, just because I am sure that this beauty is not for an hour or an instant; that belongs to the permanent; that it will not pass away. I can bear to see the fading of a particular flower, let it be ever so bright and glorious, because I know that the brightness and glory are not for a season; that they have not ceased to be, will not cease to be. And if it is so in natural things, what clearer and fuller assurance is in our hearts, that no one sympathy, no one affection, no gentleness, no faith, hope, or love, no devotion to truth, which has been seen in any human creature can ever perish. It may, alas! be temporary—be but for a season—in that man who has exhibited it. It may be a flash of light followed by a thicker darkness, a darkness to be felt. But the light has been there, and it has made known something which is deeper than the foundations of the earth. It came from God; it belongs to God. Come about what will to the outside of things, this unseen thing—this which has been present to me, which I have felt, experienced, conversed with,—this shall not sink into the grave of nature, shall never be numbered among its trophies. The resurrection of Christ affirms to all generations that it shall not. The Spirit who works to quicken, preserve, and restore, is the pledge that it shall not. These echo and fulfil the oath of the Eternal Father that it shall not.

Yes, the emblems of decay and death—of decay and death to the shrines of all that has been dearest and most precious to us—are not intolerable, because only the things seen are temporal; because when we pierce through the sensible veil and ask for that which is, we meet with that concerning which St. Paul declares, “This is not for a season; this is eternal.”

II. And if it would be utterly oppressive to think of the present as belonging only to Time, so I think we should be lost in hopeless perplexity if we identified Eternity with an interminable past or an interminable future. Is the eternity behind that course of ages, perhaps to be extended indefinitely, during which Geologists find the earth passing through its different mutations before it became fitted to be the abode of man? I do not lament the strength of the evidence that such ages were. Thank God for permitting us to hear of them, if it were only because the dreariness of the contemplation drives us to think of that which was, of that fixed, unchangeable love which presided over these changes, and was to bring forth a divine and satisfactory Creation at last. What repose amidst all that long struggle of life with death, to hear the sounds, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men!”

And if we want this relief from the Eternity behind, oh, the distraction, the anguish which the heart and understanding of men experience in trying by the aid of dates and myriads of numbers to meditate the Eternity before! It is an appalling, crushing process, and it is not an honest one. And therefore, after a while it is discarded. No one perseveres in it, however much he may feel the importance, the necessity, of bringing Eternity before him. He feels that he is weltering amidst hopeless contradictions; he may try to keep up the sense of endlessness, by supplying continual fuel to his fears; but he cannot. He casts it off as a phantom of superstition, even though there is a perpetual witness within him that phantoms and superstitions belong to Time and Sense; that Eternity is the great Reality, which alone gives reality to that which he sees.

And is it not, brethren, the revelation of the same Word Who was before all worlds; the same Son Who dwelt in the bosom of the Father, and delighted to accomplish His purposes of creative love,—is it not this which makes the thought of ages out of ages to come, not a vision of despair, but an ever new unfolding hope? To think of Him as the eternal ground of all things, from Whom they come, by Whom they consist, in Whom they shall be gathered up; Who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the same when He said, “Let there be light,” as when He prayed in the garden, “Let this cup pass from Me;” the same when He rose from the dead, and said, “Peace be unto you;” the same in His care of the Church and Universe through every period; the same when He shall come again in the glory of His Father to judge the quick and the dead,—this is possible; this is an eternity which we can contemplate. For in it is included the endurance and permanence of every person and thing that the Word has created and redeemed. Out of it proceed those cheering and wonderful messages: “Of that which the Father has given Me I will lose nothing;” “Given a ransom for all, to be testified in due time;” “Those that sleep in Christ shall God bring with Him.”

Such an Eternity is not cast in the mould of time; not an interminable series of years; but a solid possession for each moment; a treasure which we are to claim now, that we may hold it, into whatever new circumstances life or death may bring us.

III. St. Paul speaks of looking at, of looking into, the things which are unseen and eternal. That he regards as the highest privilege, as the proper occupation of a man. No one knew better than he did that a man cannot be always busy with the future; that he ought not to be; that he would be a useless, restless, bad man, if he were. We have work to do here; we have work to do now; and it must be done, and whoso shrinks from it, or does it with a half heart, because he is dreaming of good things to come elsewhere, sins against God. But we do not turn men away from any one task or toil which is laid upon them, when we tell them that they have a right to look into eternal things; that they are living, moving, having their being in the midst of these things. It is steady, habitual converse with these which makes men free and bold to act; which causes their acts to be the result of deliberate purpose, not of sudden impulse; which takes them out of the sway of what is visible and changeable, that they may rule it and make it an instrument of fulfilling the purposes of its Creator. If we bid a poor toiling brother occupy himself with the thoughts of death, and of that which shall happen to him after death, we sometimes give him comfort, because he associates death with the thought of rest. But ofttimes we seem to mock him, for what opportunity has he to speculate about that which is to be, when that which is presses upon him with such a weight? But the teacher is not a mocker who says to him: “There is a world of invisible treasures about thee upon which thou mayest enter at once, though thou wilt not exhaust them in millions of years. That which is close beside thee is more precious than that which is afar off. That which is thy own, and which thou mayest claim as thine, is worth all the tangible things which thou couldst grasp, if thou hadst a hundred hands.” I say, he who bears this message tells the poor man a secret by which he may be raised from a serf into a free human being.

And what he speaks to one who is busy with manual toil, and who is ground to the earth with poverty, is just what the man who has most leisure for all intellectual pursuits, who has all outward enjoyments within his reach, wants to hear as much. The leisure to think about all manner of things which present themselves to his eye and ear may be the very temptation to forget that he himself is infinitely more wonderful than they are—this power of exploring a vast circumference of objects may be that which prevents him from seeking for a centre. His facilities for obtaining that which he can call his own, and from which he can exclude others, may make him utterly ignorant of that which is his own, of that which makes his life a reality and not a shadow. And so the busy professional man may become a slave to his work, at last a slave to the mere material advantages which his work procures; the man who has a world of treasures at his command may become a slave of those treasures, and may discover that they are always escaping him when he wants to turn them into use. And both will become feverish and restless, incapable of fulfilling their common tasks heartily; incapable of drawing delights from the things which they would count it their greatest calamity to lose. This dependence on outward circumstances is what a heathen contemporary of St. Paul, who had probably never heard his name, pronounced the real servitude; expressing his thankfulness that his own birth, in a state of outward, nominal servitude, had been one means of teaching him to rise out of it.

IV. So much Epictetus can tell us. Such lessons we have heard from our childhood; they have become very commonplaces to us. What further message can an Apostle bring to us? One that shall make us willing to turn from the things visible that hold us captive, to the invisible things that will make us free. For let us not hide the truth from ourselves. We cling to the one because we are afraid of the other. There is a Conscience which makes cowards of us all. I do not like to venture into those dark chambers of my soul’s imagery. “I expect to find nothing there but grisly shapes, recollections of the past, anticipations of the future, which will haunt me in all my works and pleasures. What charms have you for laying these spectres?—what poppy or mandragora that will dull or destroy this sense of an ever-present Self,—an eternal Self, which may make a Hell for me in the midst of Paradise? Oh, draw me not away from a region in which I can hear some soothing melodies, can see some visions of loveliness, however soon they may pass away, only that you may bring me to a region where there is only just light enough to show me the shadows that are cast from my own body! If I am to dwell with those shadows, and with those only, for ever, let me have something else to gaze upon while I can.” This, brethren, is the true cause why we cannot profit by the noble teaching of Epictetus; why we could not profit by St. Paul’s, if he had only told us to look at the things which are unseen and eternal. Men tremble at eternity, whether they think of it as present or to come; they must tremble at it, unless there comes forth from it a Gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation. It is no sham terror, begotten by the arts of priests, which I feel when the thought flashes on me, “I am an eternal being. I cannot shake eternity from me. It belongs to me; it goes with me where I go; it stays with me where I stay.” Death then has no look of repose; if it is a sleep, it is, as Hamlet guessed, a sleep full of frightful dreams. It stands out, in no poetical allegory, in stern fact, as the twin-sister of Sin; they seem to be the powers, the realities of the universe. I shall think them so unless I can hear a voice from heaven saying to me, “No; they are not the powers, the realities of the universe! They are the contradictions of its order; the lies against its Author. And He has Himself come down into this earth of ours, in this flesh of ours, to struggle with them, vanquish them, trample upon them, that you may do the like.”

Unless I believed that the voice which bade me turn away from the visible things to invisible, eternal things, was a voice which said, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest;” unless I believed that when I turned my eyes round to look at the eternal things which are near me, I should find not the dark Demon of Self, but Christ the deliverer from Self; unless I thought that His death proclaimed a real conquest of Sin and Death, His resurrection an actual new birth and new life to our race, I dare not invite any one to abandon the coarsest, most sensual gratifications, however ignominious and shameful I may esteem them, however sure I may be of the end to which they will lead; I should have nothing solid to offer in exchange for them.

But if I may speak of a Lamb of God that has taken away the sin of the world; if I may affirm that He is with us, and is ready to give us that eternal life which was with the Father, and which He has manifested to us; I can boldly ask one and all of you to look at, and to look into, the things which are unseen and eternal. For I am sure God is Himself urging us, helping us, to claim this the great privilege of our humanity. I am sure His Spirit is with us always, to educate us into those exercises of inward affection, faith, and trust, to which naturally we are disinclined, as we are to every manly effort, however great may be the after-reward of it. I am sure that if we do walk among things temporal as if the eternal treasures were about us, and as if we were resolved not to lose them, they will unveil themselves to us more and more. The Love and the Goodness and the Truth which lie at the foundation of the universe will come out to us through all the thick clouds which our selfishness and the selfishness of men have raised to hide them from us. We shall learn that we have all such a property in them as we have in the air and the light; that there is in them the power to assimilate us to their own nature, to make our acts in conformity with them. And then, with what opened eyes shall we look on the things which are visible and temporal! With what living beauty will they be clothed; a beauty cast upon them from that deeper, permanent world which they encircle! How will all the fixed order, and the orderly alternations of Nature, speak to us of an enduring Majesty, of an Unchangeable Truth, which can yet exhibit itself in infinite varieties, can catch and appropriate every passing, momentary light, can reflect itself in the ocean or in the dewdrop! And how will the endless flux and reflux of life, or what is called life, in cities, drive us to seek, in our daily walks, in our ordinary tasks, for something in which we may rest, for a home and peace that outward tumults cannot interrupt. Surely, if we seek, we shall find. Every face, however furrowed with sorrow, or distorted by passion, or stupefied by self-indulgence, will be a witness to us of Eternity. For the sorrow, the passion, the self-indulgence of which that face testifies, are the enemies with which each of us—because he is a spiritual being, because he is the citizen of an eternal kingdom—has to wrestle day by day. If we think they have triumphed in one or another, that thought may make us tremble for him and for ourselves. But it must not make us forget that Christ has died to redeem that man’s spirit and ours, to vanquish his enemies and ours. To lose that faith is to make the visible things which God has given us richly to enjoy, our prison-house; to make the invisible things which we shrink from, and yet confess, our perpetual torment. To hold it fast is to wait for the full revelation of that Eternal Life which is in the Son of Man; to look not for a new Heaven only, but a new Earth, wherein dwelleth Righteousness.