Friday, October 26, 2007

We shall see Him as He is



Our minds often revert to Christ as he was, and as such we have desired to see him. Ah! How often have we wished to see the babe that slept in Bethlehem! How earnestly have we desired to see the man who talked with the woman at the well! How frequently have we wished that we might see the blessed Physician walking amongst the sick and dying, giving life with his touch, and healing with his breath! How frequently too have our thoughts retired to Gethsemane, and we have wished our eyes were strong enough to pierce through eighteen hundred and fifty years which part us from that wondrous spectacle, that we might see him as he was!

We shall never see him thus; Bethlehem’s glories are gone for ever; Calvary’s glooms are swept away; Gethsemane’s scene is dissolved; and even Tabor’s splendors are quenched in the past. They are as things that were; nor shall they ever have a resurrection. The thorny crown, the spear, the sponge, the nails-these are not. The manger and the rocky tomb are gone. The places are there, unsanctified by Christian feet, unblessed, unhallowed by the presence of their Lord. We shall never see him as he was. In vain our fancy tries to paint it, or our imagination to fashion it. We cannot, must not, see him as he was; nor do we wish, for we have a larger promise, “We shall shall see him as he is.”

From a sermon entitled "The Beatific Vision ," delivered January 20, 1856.

Photo by Calum Davidson; some rights reserved.

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