In and by Things Temporal are Given Things Eternal
H. Bushnell, D. D. 2 Corinthians 4:18 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… There is a great deal said about looking away from the things of time to the things of eternity; and Paul, I suppose, is credited with this idea on the score of the language here cited. Whether he would accept the credit is more doubtful. It certainly is no conception of his that we are to ignore the temporal, and go clear of it, in order to being fixed in the eternal. It is not to literally look away from temporal things in order to see the eternal, but it is to see the temporal in the eternal, or through it and by means of it. Paul, I am sure, had no Other conception. By not looking at the temporal things, he means simply not fastening our mind to them, or upon them, as the end of our pursuit; for he calls them "things that are seen," which implies that, in another and more simply natural sense, they are looked at, for how can they be things seen if they are not? I. There is, then, I am going now to show, A FIXED RELATION BETWEEN THE TEMPORAL AND THE ETERNAL, SUCH THAT WE SHALL BEST REALISE THE ETERNAL BY RIGHTLY USING THE TEMPORAL. Things temporal he saw a great deal more penetratingly than any mere worldly mind could; saw far enough into them to discover their unsolidity and their transitory consequence, and to apprehend just so much the more distinctly the solid and eternal verities represented by them. Things and worlds are passing — shadows all that pass away. The durable and strong, the real continent, the solid landing-place, is beyond. But the present things are good for the passage, good for signs, good as shadows. So he tramps on through them, cheering his confidence by them, having them as reminders, and renewing, day by day, his outward man by what of the more solid and glorious future is so impressively represented and captivatingly set forth in them. He does not refuse to see with his eyes what God puts before his eyes. He rejoices that the invisible things of God, even His eternal power and Godhead — all the truths eternal — are, from His creation, clearly seen. He loves society also — rejoices in its new prospects now that the eternal kingdom of the Lord Jesus is set up in it. And, what is more than all, the Son of God Himself has come out in His eternity to be incarnate in these scenes, and live in them and look upon them with His human eyes. And so these all are hallowed by the enshrining, for a time, of His glorious divinity in them, becoming temporalities redolent of His eternity. Our apostle looked thus on the things that are temporal as not looking on them, but as looking straight through on the things eternal, which they represent and prepare. He looked on them just as one looks on a window-pane when he studies the landscape without. In one view he looks on the glass, in another he does not. Thus it is a true use, I conceive, of things temporal that they are to put us under the constant, all-dominating impression of things eternal. And we are to live in them as in a transparency, looking through every moment, and in all life's works and ways acting through, into the grand reality world of the life to come. II. Having gotten our conception thus of the apostle's meaning, as well as a good argument from his religious habit and character to prove it, let us next CONSIDER THE FACT THAT ALL TEMPORAL THINGS AND WORKS ARE ACTUALLY DESIGNED OR PLANNED FOR THIS VERY OBJECT — Viz., to conduct us on, or through, into the discovery of things eternal. Every existing thing or object in the created empire of God, all forms, colours, heights, weights, magnitudes, forces, come out of God's mind covered all over with tokens, saturated all through with flavours of His intelligence. They represent God's thought, the invisible things of God; and an angel coming out into the world, instead of seeing nothing in them but only walls, would see God expressed by them, just as we are expressed by our faces and bodies. The invisible things of God, all His eternal realities, would be clearly seen. No, we do not become worldly by looking at things temporal, but by not looking at them closely enough, and with due religious attention. How different, for example, would they be if we could but stay upon them long enough, and devoutly enough, to see the prodigious workings hid in them. We should find them swinging and careering in geometric figures, weighed and spaced in geometric proportions; and what are these but thoughts of mind and laws of thought, eternal in their very nature? There is yet another and more popular way in which these temporal and visible things carry forces and weights of eternity with them — they are related as signs or images to all the most effective and most glorious truths of religion. They are all so many physical word-forms given to make up images and vocables for religion, for which reason the Scripture is full of them, naming and describing everything by them — by the waters and springs that quench our thirst, by the bread that feeds our bodies, by the growing corn in its stages, by the tares that grow with it, by the lilies in their clothing, by the hidden gold and silver and iron of the mountains, by the sea, the storms, the morning mist, the clouds, the sun, etc. Our complaint, therefore, that temporal things hide the eternal, and keep them out of sight, is much as if one should complain of telescopes hiding the stars, or window-panes shutting out the sun, or even of eyes themselves obstructing the sense of things visible. There is a way, I know, of handling these temporals coarsely and blindly, seeing in them only just what a horse or a dog might see. A brutish mind sees only things in things, and no meanings. But it cannot be said, without the greatest wrong to God, that He has given us these temporalities to live in for any such use. Spirituality of habit and thought could not be made more possible, or the lack of it more nearly impossible. Hence, also, the fact so often remarked, that forms, colours, objects, scenes, have all a power so captivating over childish, and indeed over all young, minds. The child or youth thinks not of it, and yet the power of the fact is on him. The real and true account of the fact is that the eternals are in the things looked on so eagerly by these young eyes, shining out, filling them with images, starting their thoughts, kindling fires of truth and eternity in their spirit. Again, it is the continual object and art of all God's management, temporal and spiritual, secular and Christian, to bring us into positions where we may see, or may rather be compelled to see, the eternal things of His government. So little reason have we to complain, as we do continually, that our relations, occupations, and works take us away from the discovery of such things, and leave us no time or capacity for it. Thus, at our very first breath, we are put in what is called the family state. In the providence of it we live. By the discipline of it we learn what love is, in all the severe and faithful and tender offices of it. And so, as it were from the egg, we are configured to the eternal family state for which we are made. So, also, if we speak, or revelation speaks, of an unseen government or kingdom, where we get the very form of the thought from our outward kingdoms below. Meantime the ordinance of want and labour, and all the industrious works and cares of life — fearful hindrances, we say, to any discovery of God — what are they still but works and struggles leading directly into His very seat? What do you do in them, in fact, but just go to the earth and the great powers of nature, to invoke them by your industry, and by your labour sue out, as it were, from them the supply you want? And when you come so very close to God, even to the powers and laws which are His reigning, everlasting thoughts, what temptation have you to lift your suit just one degree, and make your application even to God Himself! His scheme of providence, also, is adjusted so as to open windows on us continually in this earthly house of our tabernacle, through which the building of God, not made with hands, may be the better discovered. God is turning our experience always in a way to give us the more inward senses of things, acting always on the principle that the progress of knowledge, most generically and comprehensively regarded, is but a progress out of the matter view into the mind view of things; for all the laws, properties, classifications of objects, as we just now saw, are thoughts of God made visible in them, so that all the growth of knowledge is a kind of spiritualising of the world — that is, a finding of the eternal in the temporal. For God will not let us get lodged in the temporal, but is always shoving us on to what is beyond. Besides, once more, we have eternals garnered up in us all, in our very intelligence; immortal affinities which, if we forget or suppress, are still in us; great underlaid convictions, also, ready to burst up in us and utter even ringing pronouncements; and, besides, there is an inevitable and sure summons always close at hand, as we know, and ready for its hour, whose office it is to bring the great eternals near and keep them in power. Here, then, we are all going on — or in, rather — to be unsphered here, and reinsphered, if we are ready for it, in a promised life more stable and sufficient. The eternal has been with us all the way, even when we could not find it. Now it is fully discovered, and become our mansion state. The fugacities are left behind us. The eternal things are now most distinctly seen, and the temporal scarcely seen at all. So that, as we now look back on the old physical order, it was arranged, we see, to be a kind of transparency, and we were set in among and behind its objects and affairs, before open windows, as it were, there to look out on the everlasting and set our life for it. Two things now, having reached this point, let me ask you to note, or have established. 1. First, that you are never to allow yourself in the common way of speaking, that proposes to look away from the things of time, or calls on others to do it. Never speak as if that were the way of an unworldly Christian, for it is not. The unworldly Christian, if he has the true mettle of a great life in him, never looks away from the things of time, but looks only the more piercingly into them and through. He does not expect to find God beyond them, but in them, and by means of them. God help you rather to be manly enough to use the world as it is, and get your vision levelled for eternal things in it and by it. You will come up unto God by uses of mastery, and not by retreat and feeble deprecation. 2. Another correspondent caution, secondly, needs to be noted, and especially by those who are not in the Christian way of life. They inevitably hear a great deal said of spiritual-mindedness, and they see not any meaning to give it which does not repel them. What are called spiritual things appear to them to be only a kind of illusion, a fog of mystic meditation or mystic expectation, which the fender, less perceptive believers press out thin, because they have not strength enough to body their life in things more solid and rational. The spiritually-minded person spiritualises temporal things and the temporal life by nothing but by just seeing them in their most philosophic sense. He takes hold of the laws, finds his way into the most inmost thoughts, follows after the spirit force everywhere entempled, and puts the creation moving at every turn in the supreme order of mind. If this be illusion, God give us more of it. The spiritual habit is, in this view, reason, health, and everlasting robustness. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. WEB: while we don't look 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.