e is a more pointed one than
the ordinary one for 'seeing.' It is translated in other places in
the New Testament, _'Mark'_ them which walk so as ye have us for
an ensample, and the like. And it implies a concentrated, protracted
effort and interested gaze. A man, standing on the deck of a ship,
casts a languid eye for a moment out on to the horizon, and sees
nothing. A keen-eyed sailor by his side shades his eyes with his
hand, and shuts out cross-lights, and looks, and peers, and keeps his
eyes steady, and he sees the filmy outline of the mountain land. If
you look for a minute, not much caring whether you see anything or
not, and then turn away, and get your eye dazzled with all those
vulgar, crude, high colours round about you here on earth, it is very
little that you will see of 'the things that are not seen.'
Concentrated attention, and a steadfast look, are wanted to make the
invisible visible. You have to alter the focus of your eye if you are
to see the thing that is afar off.

There has to be a positive shutting out of all other things, as is
emphatically taught in the text by putting first the not looking at
'the things that are seen.' Here they are pressing in upon our
eyeballs, all round us, insisting on being looked at, and unless
we resolutely avert our eyes, we shall not see anything else. They
monopolise us unless we resist the intrusive appeals that they make
to us. We are like men down in some fertile valley, surrounded by
rich vegetation, but seeing nothing beyond the green sides of the
glen. We have to go up to the hill-top if we are to look out over the
flashing ocean, and behold afar off the towers of the mother city
across the restless waves. Brethren, unless you shut out the world
you will never see the things that are not seen.

Now, as I have said, the Apostle regards this conscious effort at
bringing ourselves into touch, in mind and heart and faith, with 'the
things that are not seen' as being a habitual characteristic of
Christian men. I am very much afraid that the present generation of
Christian people do not, in anything like the degree in which they
should, recreate and strengthen themselves with the contemplation
which he here recommends. It seems to me, for instance, that we do
not hear nearly as much in pulpits about the life beyond the grave as
we used to do when I was a boy. And, though I confess I speak from
limited knowledge, it seems to me that these great motives which lie
i