shall see God.' 'Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled.' 'Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the
children of God.'--_Matthew_ v. 8, 6, 9.

The cry of the deepest in man has always been, to see God. It was the
cry of Moses and the cry of Job, the cry of psalmist and of prophet; and
to the cry, there has ever been faintly heard a far approach of coming
answer. In the fullness of time the Son appears with the proclamation
that a certain class of men shall behold the Father: 'Blessed are the
pure in heart,' he cries, 'for they shall see God.' He who saw God, who
sees him now, who always did and always will see him, says, 'Be pure,
and you also shall see him.' To see God was the Lord's own, eternal, one
happiness; therefore he knew that the essential bliss of the creature is
to behold the face of the creator. In that face lies the mystery of a
man's own nature, the history of a man's own being. He who can read no
line of it, can know neither himself nor his fellow; he only who knows
God a little, can at all understand man. The blessed in Dante's Paradise
ever and always read each other's thoughts in God. Looking to him, they
find their neighbour. All that the creature needs to see or know, all
that the creature can see or know, is the face of him from whom he came.
Not seeing and knowing it, he will never be at rest; seeing and knowing
it, his existence will yet indeed be a mystery to him and an awe, but no
more a dismay. To know that it is, and that it has power neither to
continue nor to cease, must to any soul alive enough to appreciate the
fact, be merest terror, save also it knows one with it the Power by
which it exists. From the man who comes to know and feel that Power in
him and one with him, loneliness, anxiety, and fear vanish; he is no
more an orphan without a home, a little one astray on the cold waste of
a helpless consciousness. 'Father,' he cries, 'hold me fast to thy
creating will, that I may know myself one with it, know myself its
outcome, its willed embodiment, and rejoice without trembling. Be this
the delight of my being, that thou hast willed, hast loved me forth; let
me know that I am thy child, born to obey thee. Dost thou not justify
thy deed to thyself by thy tenderness toward me? dost thou not justify
it to thy child by revealing to him his claim on thee because of thy
disparture of him from thyself, because of his utter dep