And so you shall THE DAY IS AT HAND "See Truth's white banner floating on before, [Applause.] III With gratitude to the Spartan band who have sat out this full evening, I make an end. It is tomorrow, and my up-hill task of the twelfth hour is done. May the moral fast of New York City come to its feast at last, and with acclaim, that none can measure now, the midnight pass over into the morning! "Seeing the Unseen" THE BACCALAUREATE SERMON "He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” Hebrews, 11:27. THE Letter to the Hebrews was both an argument and an appeal. With its array of fact and its august consolations, there was blended an unfaltering and personal trust in God. That confidence in and commitment to Him is of the very essence of true religion: Religion is either the fulfilment of a real relationship, or it is a fond dream. The spirit of constancy is so sustained and illuminative thro this whole writing as to make it, concerning faith, the classical source both of definition and instance. Not in any special phase or exercise, but absolute and generic, faith is affirmed as the basis of life and the warrant of all rational hope. The book deals with the apparent vicissitudes of an ever-moving process, and at the same time with the consistency and constancy of Him who guides it,-mutability and the immutable God. By broad retrospect it would prepare souls to recognize and meet ungrievingly the disciplines of change. At the eleventh chapter the argument proper culminates with the resonant citation of preeminent believers, women and men. Certain of the venerable roll are named, souls of altitude that greeted the Sun from afar, and then, 'time failing,' groups and classes are summoned, of those, who, having won their rest, make up the celestial part of that holy alliance and PHENOMENA SECONDARY 113 comradeship in which all souls are one who love and seek the will of God. Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses' (paprúpes doubly, in that they were once the spectacle who now are the spectators)—we are to have the tremendous appeal increased. The clenching thought is that these veterans are to have their work perfected in those better things provided for later days and riper faith. Fascinating and rewarding as the whole analysis and the various aspect of this great epistle must be found, we are bound now to press in toward that core-idea which rules it all. What was that “wherein the elders had witness borne to them?" What is the theorem upon which this chapter moves ? Why, at the outset, it is given,— a definition which inspires our whole instinct of flight, and lifts our eyes past the hills, past the path of the eagles, up the ways of the angels! "Now faith -(and right there the writer leaves the ground and takes the wings of the morning) "faith is the proving of things not seen”—the “ assurance of things hoped for." Faith is itself a proof, a conviction. This eleventh chapter is that proposition amplified by instance. It begins at the beginning (as Genesis and John begin) with "the word of God." We know "that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear," that is, (as the Greek noun "pavoμévwv" suggests), "that which we look upon did not come from phenomena." Spirit and life are behind phenomena. First-cause precedes second causes. Word is back of world. The seen is the result of the unseen. The Creation is a creation, and over and thro it the Creator lives and moves, and the creature who knows this and so lives joins the triumphs of such as are here enrolled. At It is upon the thought that our text condenses, that this roster of great and effectual men proceeds. the point where we station our present study Moses is the immediate instance. Our text analyzes his life and sums it. Unmatched and solitary that life stands above all the lives of the old Testament: forty years in Egypt, forty years in Midian, forty years in the Wilderness,-" endurance," all the way from Nile side to Pisgah top! Such enduring, under such burdens, borne by such a man, must be accounted for! It must have "assurance" and "proof" under it. And thus the writer to the Hebrews (and so to all souls perplexed by ages of transition and mental disturbance) states this epitome of all that Moses was and did-strikes the chord in which all his life was set -"He endured as seeing Him who is invisible." From first to last his life was one of displacements-it was also one of submissions because of convictions. He accepted the loneliness of leadership. He became therein a type, at once of the sorrow and the grandeur of a prophetic soul. He did not fear Egypt's king; for face to face he knew the Blessed and Only Potentate. The "King eternal immortal, invisible," made poor both the riches and the wrath of Pharoah. This contrast is contained in our text, but the very Greek states even more broadly the secret of faith—it is generic not personal-"Tov yap ȧópaтov as opŵv"—"as seeing the unseen,”— God, and all else secured in God, the ruler, and the whole realm beyond present vision. We keep both the euphony and the paradox of the holy page when we say that faith is the sight of the unseen. That then shall be our present theme. Transcendental as the statement is, it announces the real wisdom and the real life of the soul. All uplifted and uplifting souls have endured as seeing the unseen. Oh, that this penetrative beam of truth might scatter the vagueness with which we think of Faith! It is the vision of the invisible- the "heavenly vision." This "conviction of things not seen" (v. I.) is a test and organon. What the eye is to sense, that confidence in God is to the soul! Sense is not the last of us, we are hyper-physical - we were made to touch the impalpable, to hear the inaudible, to see the unseen. It is this idea of the soul's true function and self-prophecy FAITH IS IN A PERSON 115 that speaks in many another New Testament expression. The very word åópara marks that great statement in the first chapter of Romans, "the unseen things of Him are seen by the things made." Nature is a telescope! Paul speaks of Christ as "The image of the unseen God." "The things seen are for a while and the things unseen are forever." If we "have the eyes of our hearts enlightened" we shall look for the reality that underlies the the apparent, and find that "Earth's crammed with Heaven." Faith is a "spirit of seeing," spiritual "second sight." Faith is logical. It reasons from the consistency of God. The child clutches his father's hand in the night, knows him, trusts him to guide and so walks homeward thro the dark, and "we go by faith, not what we see." It is faith to go out "not knowing whither," because we know with whom. us ours Faith is always this — confidence in and commitment to a person. Faith is not guessing, it is not arguing, it is not taking chances,— it is trusting someone who is trustworthy. Trust is more than a persuasion from visible evidence, it is self-proving. It is not merely one emotion or attitude out of many, it is a distinct and vital connection with what lies beyond the boundary of the five senses. It is "the masterlight of all our seeing;" for it is the response of our life to His life who gave and who made the outer light the universal parable of the inner. Soul at last can be satisfied only with soul. We "thirst for the living God", and surrendering to the compulsions of an irresistable hope we find suddenly that faith is the guide of reason. Without faith reason is not a safe guide. Certainty is more than sight, it is insight. All progress, all skill, comes by trusting ourselves to that next step which is ever just beyond present knowledge. It is not as a mere optigraph of Heaven that these scriptures are holy; but because they prompt that trust in a trustworthy God, which is life. |