2 Corinthians 4

1. THEREFORE seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but 2 have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to 3 every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that 4 are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine 5 unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your 6 servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 7 face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of 8 the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; 9 we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not 10 destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also 11 of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal 12 flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, 13 according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken: we also believe, and 14 therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.—

Not only will our fellowship with Christ show itself in our characters, and beauty born of that communion “shall pass into our face,” but we are also called on, as Paul puts it here, to make direct conscious efforts for the communication of the light which we behold. God hath shined in our hearts, that we might give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Away with all veils! No reserve, no fear of the consequences of plain speaking! Our power and our duty lie in the full exhibition of the truth. We are only clear from the blood of men when we make sure that if any of it be hid it is hid, not by reason of obscurity or silence on our parts, but only by reason of the blind eyes, before which the full-or-bad radiance gleams in vain. All this is as true for every one possessing that universal prerogative of seeing the glory of Christ as it is for an apostle. The business of all such is to make known the name of Jesus; and, if from idleness, or carelessness, or selfishness, they shirk that plain duty, they are counteracting God’s very purpose in shining on their hearts, and going far to quench the light which they darken. Then, Christian men and women, you are bound to manifest what you believe, and to make the secret of your lives, in so far as possible, an open secret. Show Him forth, not your own emotions about him. Self-respect and reverence for the sanctities of our deepest emotions forbid our proclaiming these from the house-tops. Let these be curtained from all eyes but God’s, but let no folds hang before the picture of your Saviour that is drawn on your heart. See to it that you have the unveiled face turned toward Christ to be irradiated by His brightness, and the unveiled face turned toward men, from which shall shine every beam of the light which you have caught from your Lord. A. M.

1-4. The first two verses of this chapter contain the principles of the Christian ministry; they embrace its motives—a sense of mercy and a sense of hope; they declare its straightforwardness, its scorn of craft and secrecy, its rejection of pious frauds and adroit casuistry. The connection of these two verses with the third is through the word “every.” For a reply suggested itself to Paul’s mind from some objector: “Every man’s conscience has not acknowledged the truth of the message, nor the heavenly sincerity of the messengers.” To which the apostle answers, The exceptions do not weaken the truth of the general assertion; to every man whose heart is in a healthy state, to all but the blinded, the gospel is God’s light; and those to whom it is not light are themselves dark, for the obscurity is in themselves and not in the truth. And then, having replied to this objection, Paul proceeds with the same subject, the apostolic ministry. F. W. R.

2. To every man’s conscience. In the original structure of the soul there is an unwritten revelation which accords with the external revelation of Scripture. Within the depths of the heart there is a silent oracle which needs only to be rightly questioned to elicit from it a response in accordance with that voice which issues from the lively oracles of God. In one word, the appeal of Scripture to the unbiased conscience or consciousness of man is, in great part, direct, immediate, irresistible. Caird.—It can not be that the ministrations of the truth are powerless upon the conscience, or the appeals of the gospel without effect upon the mind. It can not be that the providence of God in vain seconds these ministrations, or to no purpose adds its enforcements to the truth. Experience has proved that uniformly in these circumstances thought is awakened, and feeling more or less deep is kindled, and that men have evidence within them of the reality of that mighty agency which works upon the mind and heart in connection with a preached gospel. E. M.

3. Here the same image of the veil is again recurred to. It ought to stand, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to them that are perishing.” A.—Instead of reading, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost,” we may read, without violating any of the rules of the language, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid by these perishable objects, by which,” etc. The same word is used by Christ when he urges that we labor not for meat which perisheth. There is no veil on the gospel as in the days of Moses. If there is any veiling, it is done by the god of this world interposing those “perishable objects” that he may secure the destruction of the soul. W. A.

4. These are strong words, but they are those of the Holy Ghost; and no words are too strong to represent the absence of all spiritual light in most of those who live amid the clear shining of Christian day. It is an incantation, and the illusory process is ascribed to the evil one. Part of the malady, and its most fearful symptom, is that the blind man does not know that he is blind. J. W. A.—An awful thought! “The light of the glorious gospel” is shut out by ourselves from our lives, apart even from immortality. For worldliness does not consist merely in distinct acts, nor in thoughts of transgression, but it is the spirit of a whole life, which hides all that is invisible, real, and eternal, because it is devoted to the visible, the transient, and the unreal. Christ and the world can not exist in the same heart. Men who find their all in the world—how can they, fevered by its business, excited by its pleasures, petrified by its maxims, see God in his purity, or comprehend the calm radiance of eternity? F. W. R.

5. A rush for your praise or dispraise of us! only receive Jesus Christ, and esteem highly of him, and it is enough. We preach not ourselves, says the apostle, but Christ Jesus the Lord. That is our errand, not to catch either at base gain or vain applause for ourselves, but to exalt our Lord Jesus in the hearts of men. L.—What Paul taught was not simply “God, man, nature, law, Supreme will, benevolent purpose, all right, right for everybody.” Nor was it a sentimental Theism: “God, man, nature; love, beauty, trust, song; all safe, or very few having anything to fear.” Nor was it a pure, simple, Christian Theism: “God, man, law, sin; a great prophet; a loving message; a verbal assurance; something said, taught; uttered in words, confirmed and ratified by miracle and martyrdom; a declaration and promise; repentance on one side, securing of itself forgiveness on the other.” It was not these, or anything like these things. It might include something belonging to them all, but in itself it was something more. It was the assertion of a Divine act, not merely the assurance of the Divine disposition; a work done, not a thing said; something transacted, not uttered; something embodied in a person and a fact, not merely breathed forth and clothed in speech. It was a supernatural something, something done by God in raising up and sending forth a Christ; something done by the Christ as the sent of God. It was the manifested might of a Messiah, not merely the word or wisdom of a prophet, however inspired, and whatever he might reveal! T. B.

6. A more powerful figure of illustration could not be employed. The mind goes back to the sublime days of creation; to periods when no sun, moon, or stars beamed upon our chaotic globe, and then to the moment when light was born out of dread obscurity. Such was the utter darkness of the unrenewed soul; such is the work of grace. J. W. A.—The Gospel did not make God our Father; it revealed what He had ever been, is, and ever shall be; it disclosed him as a Father; and in the life of Christ the love of God has become intelligible to us. The Gospel threw light on God: light unknown before, even to the holiest hearts among the Jews. “Clouds and darkness are the habitation of his seat,” spoke the Old Testament; “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” declared the New. For out of Christ our God is only a dark, dim, and dreadful mystery. There is only an awful silence, which is never broken by an articulate voice. But all is brightness in the Redeemer’s life and death. The Gospel threw light, too, upon man’s own nature. Man—a dark enigma, a contradiction to himself, with Godlike aspirations and animal cravings—asks his own heart in terror, “Am I a god or beast?” And the Gospel answers: “You are a glorious temple in ruins, to be rebuilt into a habitation of God and the Spirit, your soul to be the home of the High and Holy One, your body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.” It threw light upon the grave; for “life and immortality” were “brought to light through the gospel.” The darkness of the tomb was irradiated, and the things of that undiscovered land shone clear and tranquil then to the eye of faith; but not until then, for immortality before was but a mournful perhaps. F. W. R.

Shined in our hearts. The first touch is that of God. While he does no violence to freedom; while he conducts his greatest marvel in new creation according to the laws he has impressed on the human mind; while he draws by the bands of a man; while he allows the soul to move agreeably to vision of truth—it is God who begins. It is the same God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness that hath shined in our hearts. In the first motion our hearts have no activity. The irradiation is of God. The glory of God. A phrase which in Hebrew idiom brings along with it ideas of surpassing light, such as transfigured the high priest within the veil when it radiated from the cherubic propitiatory throne. Such splendor demands a curtain or a mirror to dim and modify the blaze of godhead, and this has been afforded in the humanity of the Son of God. From amidst the central and consuming disk of insufferable deity there smiles and weeps on us a brother’s countenance. It is “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Our eye confronts, not the absolute godhead, but the mirrored and subdued glory of incarnation. Let that face, in that glory, by that light, be once beheld, and sight melts into believing, faith expands into salvation. J. W. A.—If Christ and heaven do not fill the heart, the world and self will; no man can get self out but by letting Christ in; you can not possibly remove the darkness but by letting in the light; and where this heavenly light is not admitted to reign spiritual depravity and darkness will reign. G. B. C.

7. The great Head of the Church has ordained three grand repositories of his truth. In the Scriptures he has preserved it by his providence against all hostile attacks. In the hearts of Christians he has maintained it by the almighty energy of his Spirit, even under every outward token of general apostasy. And in the Christian ministry has he deposited “the treasure in earthen vessels” for the edification and enriching of the Church in successive ages. Bridges.—Christ’s ministers are no more than earthen vessels, which derive their whole importance from the preciousness of the treasure which they contain; and this treasure has been put in such frail receivers for the very purpose of making it thereby the more manifest that the whole excellency of the power felt in preaching the gospel is of God and not of us. J. S. S.

8-10. On the one side we see feebleness, trembling, ignorance, perplexity, a dying body, earthen vessels; on the other side, strength, courage, the demonstration of the Spirit, the excellency of the power, the immortal life of Christ. In that contrast, made a personal experience in our Christian discipline, lie the trial of character, the ministry of temptation, the shame and splendor of the cross, and the victory of faith which overcometh the world. Something like this we are continually seeing, as the common working of God’s Spirit, in the characters of men. Not one in fifty of those who have their hearts made alive and earnest for Christian service are led that way by increased prosperity, by high health, by having their own way, by any personal advantages whatever. How many there are who first take firmly hold of the everlasting Hand, when they have felt all around them in the dark and could find no other hand! F. D. H.

10. It is in vain for us to say that we are relying on Christ, unless Christ be in us, slaying the old man and quickening the new. The one test of true faith is the inward possession of the Lord’s Spirit; and between the sacrifice on the cross and me the sinful man there is no real union effected, nor any imputation and transference of merits, unless with it, proof of it, and consequence of it—and proof of it because consequence of it—there be likewise the flowing over from the cross to me of the life that was in him and of the death that he died. A. M.

11. Paul could bear to look on his own decay; it was but the passing of the human; and, meantime, there was ever going on within him the strengthening of the Divine. Thus his own contracted, isolated existence was gone; it had been absorbed into communion with a higher life; it had been dignified by its union with the life of lives. Pain was sacred, since Christ had also suffered. Life became grand when viewed as a repetition of the life of Christ. The apostle lived, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in” his “mortal flesh.” F. W. R.

13. Spirituality is always fresh, always vital, always real. No soul that has been touched with the simple majesty of the Sermon on the Mount, that has sat at the feet of the truthful Jesus, that takes its spiritual draughts from that fountain of which if a man drink he shall never thirst again, can consent to affront the eternal veracity by offering as a plea for piety, or a prayer to the Father, a hollow phrase, a sanctimonious manner, a technical expostulation, a language caught from the ancient lips of faith, but emptied of all its living significance and dwindled now into the drivel of make-believe. Paul’s justification of his apostleship, “I believed,

Strong belief makes strong characters. We see this in common life. The man who clings to some great conviction, even though it be of error, becomes a man of energy. He has a hidden fire perpetually urging him to act. His motive power is sometimes wonderful to all beholders. Genuine belief propels its subject to a degree far beyond all that can be imitated by simulation and hypocrisy. The fixed idea is always driving on the wheels of fervid action. Men are strong and influential just so far as they have some immovable conviction, some urgent belief. And their strength lies in the precise direction of this their inward judgment. It ought to encourage every believer who has a strong conviction. Let the truth which lies within his breast be raised to a red heat, and its influence becomes decisive. Where the truths which animate him are grand truths—where he holds them with a grasp that nothing can disengage or relax—where his soul is steeped in them day and night—where he delights in them—communication follows spontaneously. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, the manner speaketh, the behavior speaketh, the very visage speaketh. A man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost sends forth influence at every pore. His whole body is full of light, which he radiates on every side. J. W. A.

15. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 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. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

BEFORE every man, on his right hand and on his left, thronging, clamorous, and importunate, are the things “seen and temporal”; those single facts, those special occasions which urge themselves upon his regard, but always with a false argument, because it is a partial argument. But there are also within the knowledge of every man more or less distinctly the things “unseen and eternal,” or those universal and unalterable truths which must in the end rule his destiny for the better or the worse. To follow and to comply with the solicitations of the things “seen and temporal” is, in all cases, and with an infallible certainty, to go on toward damage, overthrow, misery. Nothing can avert the ruin, nothing dissolve the connection between the course and its issue, if that course be persisted in. But, on the contrary, to draw our motives from those principles that are universal, “unseen and eternal” is to follow a road which, by a like infallible necessity, leads to perfection and felicity. The line of truth and virtue is always (find it where we may) a line drawn from the circumference to the center; and to no other center than that of the divine purity and blessedness. Scriptures, by a multitude of intelligible decisions, adapted to all occasions, distinguish between the things seen and temporal and those that are unseen and eternal; and to take them always as our directory is to walk upon a path which, whether rugged or smooth, overshadowed or illuminated, shall bring us at length to immortality and joy. I. T.

15. The teaching of Christ contemplated the coming of a day for his disciples in which many things should be said to them which they could not bear them. In the later teaching that day is come. At first they are taught as those who are with Jesus, afterward as those who are in Christ. They know now that he is in the Father, and they in him, and he in them. When that consciousness is given, a standing-point is reached from which new worlds of thought may be surveyed. They are surveyed in the Epistles, and there the chosen teachers spread before us the unsearchable riches of Christ. They say to us, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”; and they show us what that state implies, of capacities, possessions, responsibilities, duties, and destinies; of relations to God and man, of connection with things in earth and things in heaven. They show that to produce and to perfect this state are the ends of the preaching of the word, of the institution of the sacraments, of the ordinance of the ministry, of the life and order of the Church; yea, of the divine government of the world, and of all that bears on human history: “All things are for your sakes.” T. D. B.

16. By “the outward man” is meant the body—the body with its physical, organic, natural life. “The inward man” is not the soul merely—the spiritual part of our constitution as distinct from the material—it is that, as animated by that new and divine life which belongs to the regenerate. “The inward man is renewed day by day.” This language not only implies that daily or regular renewal is needed, but that it can be had, and that it is the will of Christ that it should be had. There is a daily waste of spiritual energy which makes necessary to us a daily renewal. The Christian is not only called to duty and service which may in one sense invigorate while in another they exhaust; he is exposed to temptations which may suddenly take him at an advantage, to perils and dangers which he may not always pass through unhurt. All this occasions a sense of exhaustion, which needs to be met by a fresh supply of Divine strength. Every new day brings with it its demand for service, and its exposures to peril. The grace of yesterday will not do for to-day; the strength of yesterday was needed for itself, and was expended, we may hope, in doing whatever the day required. It will not be possible to meet the demands of a new morning in the wasted condition in which the man may have been left on the preceding night. Hence the force of the apostle’s expression, and its beauty also, in presenting us with the idea of the renewal of the inward man day by day. T. B.

As a man does not make himself spiritually alive, so neither can he keep himself so. He can feed on spiritual food, and so preserve his spiritual strength; he can walk in the commandments of the Lord, and so enjoy rest and peace; but still the inner life is dependent upon the Spirit as much for its after existence as for its first begetting. C. H. S.—That divine fire kindled within them is daily refining and sublimating them. Life from their Lord is still flowing and causing them grow, abating the power of sin, strengthening a fainting faith, quickening a languishing love, teaching the soul the ways of wounding strong corruptions and fortifying its weak graces; yea, in wonderful ways, raising them by their falls, and strengthening them by their very troubles; working them up to humility and vigilance, and sending them to Christ for strength by the experience of their weaknesses and failings. L.—This remains the law of life: daily renewal. Where no renewal of the Holy Ghost takes place, there the hand of faith is a withered hand, which can neither hold the old grace nor grasp the new; there tears of repentance are at best but tears of duty, or of a self-righteous deception of the soul. Ye who go about with the withered hand of faith and the dying fire of love, ye have neglected the law of life—daily renewal. A. C.

17. Paul recounts his manifold trials as things that had done him good, wherein he only gloried. In the full strength and at the lofty height of his joyous Christian life he speaks of these tribulations as working out present Christian graces and future Christian glories—as if from the very gate of heaven, casting a brief glance downward upon all that troublous sea of conflict and agony, “These light afflictions which are but for a moment!” and then lifting his eyes upward, crying, “That far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” C. W.—These sufferings are but temporary, nay, but momentary, this glory eternal. What heart is big enough to comprehend the full sense of these words? How might I dwell upon every syllable, light affliction, weighty glory, exceeding weight; affliction for a moment, eternal weight of glory! Howe.—The glory above is true real glory, and bears weight, and so bears aright the name of glory, which in the Hebrew signifies weight; and the apostle’s expression seems to allude to that sense. Speaking of this same glory to come, he calls it a far more excellent weight of glory. It weighs down all labor and sufferings in the way, so far that they are not worth the speaking of in respect of it. Other glory is over-spoke, but this glory, over-glorious to be duly spoke, it exceeds and rises above all that can be spoke of it. L.

Afflictions speak convincingly. Many a poor Christian is sometimes bending his thoughts to wealth, or flesh-pleasing, or applause, and so loses his relish of Christ and the joy above, till God break in upon his riches, or children, or conscience, or health, and break down his mountain which he thought so strong. And then, when he lieth in Manasseh’s fetters, or is fastened to his bed with pining sickness, the world is nothing, and heaven is something. If our dear Lord did not put these thorns under our head, we should sleep out our lives, and lose our glory. Bax.—Our afflictions work out blessing for us, not only because there is laid up a reward for the afflicted according to the measure of affliction, but because afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so more able to hold and contain more. Bun.

18. Not at the things seen.** The apostle looks not on the things that are temporal, even while admiring the display in them of God’s invisible and eternal realities. He looks on them only as seeing through; uses them only as a medium of training, exercise, access unto God. Their value to him is not in what they are but in what they signify. Thus it is a true use 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. H. B.—At the things not seen. The man like Paul that admits and believes in a world of truth and duty and spiritual reality, who converses daily with the invisible and the eternal; a man to whom all the material universe is but a glass through which the soul reads lessons of hope and faith and love; one whose eye ranges beyond the horizon of time and sense, and takes in an infinite prospect; one who sinks the body into subservience to the spirit, and who makes all the experience of life, its pains and pleasures, toil and rest, trials and triumphs, help to the development of a holy life and preparation for final blessedness: such a one is carrying out God’s plan in his education. He looks to things that are unseen. E. H. G.

Things not seen are eternal. If there be anything in the world eternal, then that which is perishable, even though it may last for many years or many ages, must become infinitely insignificant in comparison. Conceive of things eternal, and we are at once in the presence of God. There is a love and there is a work which shall not pass away—a love which may be felt daily; a work which may be done daily. Surely we do not live without loving some one; but all our love, pure as it is, will certainly pass away if we do not love God. Certainly there will be a time when those who do not love God will love no one at all, nor be loved by any one. Nor do we live without doing something; nor yet, even the happiest of us, without having something to bear. A work of infinite vanity, a suffering of endless increase, unless we work in Christ, and bear with Christ and for Christ and through Christ; but a work never to perish, a suffering yielding a multiplied harvest of blessing, if we work and suffer as the heirs of life eternal; if we firmly believe that there are things which shall not pass away. T. A.

1. “House of this tabernacle” should be “tabernacle wherein we dwell.” The introduction of the word “house” here sadly mars the imagery. The apostle was a tent-maker; and the tents were made of the Cilician haircloth, which was also used for clothing. Hence the mingling of the images of dwelling and clothing, which in our version is unintelligible, because we do not wear the materials of which houses are built. “Of God” should be “from God.” And after “eternal” a comma should be placed. A.

1-4. Is it not as easy to raise the dead as to make heaven, and earth, and all—of nothing? Look not on the dead bones, and dust, and difficulty, but at the promise. Let us lie down in peace and take our rest; it will not be an everlasting night nor endless sleep. If unclothing be the thing thou fearest, it is that thou mayest have better clothing. If to be turned out of doors be the thing thou fearest, remember that when the earthly house is dissolved thou hast a building of God, eternal in the heavens. Bax.—If these things were apprehended and laid hold on, Christ made ours, and the first resurrection manifest in us, were we quickened by his Spirit to newness of life, certainly there would not be a more welcome and refreshing thought, nor a sweeter discourse to us, than that of death; and no matter for the kind of it. Welcome shall that day be, that day of deliverance! To be out of this woful prison, I regard not at what door I go out, being at once freed from so many deaths, and let in to enjoy Him who is my life. L.—Let dissolution come when it will, it can do the Christian no harm; for it will be but only a passage out of a prison into a palace; out of trouble into rest; to an innumerable company of true, loving, and faithful friends; into exceeding great and eternal glory. Bun.

If the grave is becoming populous, so is the region of life and light beyond its confines. That better land in one sense is becoming less and less unknown. The distance diminishes as the avenues are multiplying, along which throng holy desires, earnest sympathies, longing aspirations. That is not the world of doubts and phantoms. It is by eminence the land of life and of conscious existence. Its happy shores are even now thronged by earthly natures, perfected in love, happy in final exemption from sin; who still, from the very necessity of the sympathizing remembrances with which their bosoms overflow, cast down looks of loving solicitude to their old friends and companions, and would, if it were possible, break the mysterious silence, and utter audible voices of encouragement, and reach forth signals of welcome. These, in the view of faith, are undoubted realities, facts which have a stable foundation, truths most comprehensive and fruitful. The contemplation of these realities serves to give new vigor to faith, a fresh reality to that communion of which Christ is the source and the center; to enable one to feel that, however weak and unworthy he may be, he is still a citizen of a mighty commonwealth, an inmate of an imperial household, connected by bonds over which chance and time and death have no power, with those who are now pillars in the temple of God. B. B. E.

6. Absent from the Lord.** If you have indeed laid Christ, God-man, for your foundation, then you do lay the hope of your felicity and joy on this, that the Son of Mary is now absent from his children in his person and humanity, making intercession for them and for thee in the presence of his Father. And the reason that thou canst rejoice hereat is, because thou hast not only heard of it with thine ear, but dost enjoy the sweet hope and faith of it in thy heart; which hope and faith are begotten by the Spirit of Christ. Bun.

7. We all of us either live by faith or by sight; either upon things heavenly or things earthly. If upon the former, let us go forward; on the word of a God, everlasting glory is before us. But if upon the latter, alas, our store will be soon exhausted! A. Fuller.—Not by sight. Not yet, not yet can we behold face to face! Few eyes have seen deeper into God’s majestic disclosures than those piercing ones that looked out from under the dark Hebrew brow of the Christian historian, Neander. But this was the motto that he kept inscribed on his study wall, making his library to open upward into heaven: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.” F. D. H.—After all, faith is life. Sight is royalty; but in order to reign, and before reigning, it is necessary to live; and sight is glory and felicity only to him to whom long before seeing it has been given to believe. A. V.—We read that death shall be swallowed up in victory, but never that faith shall be swallowed up in sight. So far is this from being the case, that in reality the sight which the soul shall enjoy in heaven will only prepare it for the exercise of still greater faith, and faith must continue to be the life of the soul for ever. Faith will indeed cease in regard to certain things, of which there will be experience. But that absolute knowledge, for which the soul is prepared by a life of faith here, is to be the ground, in connection with this precious discipline, of still higher faith hereafter. G. B. C.

8. We are confident.** There is such a thing as Christian assurance. We may not feel it; but we must not lower the standard of Christian attainment ment to suit our narrow lives. To Paul, ever on the brink of that world to come, his own immortality of blessedness was no peradventure. It was not a matter of doubt with him whether he was Christ’s or not. F. W. R.—Surely the walk through the earthly life is very calm and peaceful when one has nothing to fear, but everything to hope; when by faith the sting is taken from death, by the fear of which countless men are slaves for their whole life; when the natural dread of this great, wondrous event is swallowed up in the joyful courage of Christian hope, which sees in death only a birth into a more perfect life. Those who long for home know that to them beyond death life is made sure, in communion with Him who says to his disciples: “Because I live, ye shall live also.” Yes, “we are always confident,” whether in life or in death. With calm longing, our glance rests upon the blessed home which lies before us, and life appears to us peaceful, and death sweet. The thorns of our pilgrim-path no longer wound us, and the entrance to the Father’s house is no more narrow and fearful. The waste blooms into a garden of the Lord, and the dark valley becomes a light, lovely path. With refreshing peace within, praising God with heart and mouth, we joyfully walk toward the beloved home. Muller.

9. Wherefore we labor.** Men intensely conscious of their own heavenly immortality, and profoundly in love with it, will act with an inextinguishable earnestness in behalf of fellow-men destined also to live for ever; in behalf of fellow-men under an eternal government; invested with eternal duties; constructed for eternal purity; susceptible of eternal happiness; exposed to eternal woes. What ardor of zeal and action, what pressure of responsibility attends the man who knows he is doing now, and is constantly to do hereafter, eternal deeds in behalf of eternal spirits. He is in fact, and he feels himself to be, an associate worker with the Deity, in a sphere crowded with objects immeasurable and interests unending and infinite. His whole great soul is given to the Lord’s service. White.

10. We must all appear.** The words should be rendered, “we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ”—a far more searching thought. If we were to employ a homely expression and say, “turned inside out,” it would exactly express the intention of Paul: all that is inward now, and thus hidden, becoming outward then; all secret things searched out; every mask stripped off; every disguise torn away; whatever any man’s work has been, that day declaring it; for it shall be eminently a day of unveiling, or drawing back the veil which now covers and conceals so much. It shall be a day of revelation, in respect of the hidden things of glory and of shame. T.