Things Seen and Things Unseen
T. M. Herbert, M. A. 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… Here is a paradox: our eyes, are they not made to look at things that are to be seen? Direct them to what is unseen, is that wisdom? But there is truth in many a paradox. What did Paul mean? It is the truest of metaphors that the soul has eyes as well as the body. Your eyelids may close, and leave your soul all the freer to gaze on the world within — the world of thought and feeling. Paul did not, indeed, employ only his body in his various activities; but the energy he exhibited was sustained by his keen gaze on spiritual realities, which "eye hath not seen, or ear heard." I. THE TRANSITORINESS OF ALL THINGS SEEN, THE PERPETUITY OF THINGS UNSEEN. The text exhibits a truth wider than perhaps we all suspect. 1. Take your home. There is the visible house, garden, etc.; but they alone do not make the place home; because to other people, who come and see the same things, it is not home. Then what have you there which they have not? You have the dear associations and fond attachments of many happy years. Those two things make a place home; on the one hand, the house and its belongings; on the other hand, the associations of years. The one set, "the things seen," and the other, "the things unseen." 2. Take the inmates of that home. Their forms, once so familiar to our eyes, may have lain for years in their graves; but the love and fidelity, the minds and hearts which animated them, these God has taken — they cannot die. They live and glow with unfading brightness though their bodies have crumbled away — "for the things which are not seen are eternal." 3. Now these are but striking examples of a principle which runs all through our life. Mere lapse of time cannot change love, it may live and grow, though the visible object of it is no more. The seen is not all, or half; but as shadow to substance; sign, to thing signified. II. FIXING THE VIEW ON THINGS TEMPORARY OR ETERNAL. This far-reaching truth has very practical bearings. It seems most obvious that the thoughts and affections of spiritual beings should be set, not on the transitory objects which perish in the using, but on those underlying verities, sublimities, spiritual realities, which abide. Set your heart on a flower, a day will blight your joy. Employ your faculties and interests on the marvellous laws and forces which produce it, and your interest will be called forth perpetually. So let your heart be set on human beauty; it is but a question of a little longer time, and you will be weeping over its loss. But let your affections fix rather on charms and graces of character, and you may have a good hope that you will find them again unchanged, imperishable, like your own recollections. So, again, fix your whole soul on material wealth, and the good things of earth, or on anything you can see: your happiness is a mere question of years. Pursue honour, fidelity, truth, beauty of soul, especially in the living form of God revealed, eternal truth, eternal beauty; He is unseen, the invisible source and fountain of what we behold now, and shall behold hereafter. (T. M. Herbert, M. A.) 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.