04.017. The Unseen World

There is a world of the unseen. Here are the highest verities and realities. Genesis 1:1 : “In the beginning God.” The Invisible God, infinitely greater than all He made. The things no sense can perceive are the great things. No force is visible. We can see phenomena, but not their cause. Gravitation, light, and heat, electricity, and magnetism; all these are invisible. Life no man ever saw, nor thought, nor desire, nor love.

There is a sense of the unseen. Hebrews 5:14. “We look,” etc. Imagination is the sense of the invisible. Memory is the sense of a vanished past; Hope, of an unseen future; Reason, of truth; Conscience, of right and wrong. These senses may be cultivated and exercised, so as to become far more acute and keen of perception; or dulled and blunted and seared into insensibility.

There is an experience of the unseen. “We walk,” etc. Holy men and women have lived in the unseen world and walked with the unseen God. e.g., Pastor Gossner and his mission work--“Ringing only the prayer bell”; George Muller, Hudson Taylor, Quarrier, etc.

There is an effect of the unseen upon the seer. “The inward man is renewed.” The tendency of things seen is to exalt the carnal. God gives us the Sabbath to exercise our spiritual senses; so, of the Word of God, to introduce us into hidden mysteries; Prayer, to acquaint us with an unseen God. “Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”

There is an effect of the unseen upon the seen. Our affliction, however heavy, becomes light in comparison with the eternal weight of glory. Our habit ought to be to weigh every experience in God’s scales, where earthly things weigh light, and heavenly things heavy. Then we should reverse many of our present judgments, and learn to give things their true value.

The only things in the universe that can work harm to us or good for us are the unseen forces. Nothing material, visible, tangible, is to be dreaded, nor can it be utilized largely. It is the unseen forces, that lie behind phenomena, that alone represent Power.

Our most valued senses are not the five physical, but the five spiritual: Reason, the sense of truth; Conscience, the sense of right; Imagination, the sense of the invisible; Memory, the sense of the past; Sensibility, the sense of the morally beautiful.

All true estimates depend on comparison. We must learn to measure and weigh by God’s own standards. Worldly things put in heaven’s scales weigh light; heavenly things in worldly scales weigh light--but the latter is a false estimate.

The disciple of Christ is one who lives, sees, walks, in the unseen world. There alone faith reaches her greatest triumphs. And for the sake of our discipline in the power of seeing invisible things, God often constrains us to walk by faith when sight no longer avails.