Isaiah 6:1-4 - Homiletics

The vision of God.

Sight is a thing of degrees. The healthy eye sees with infinite shades of distinctness and indistinctness, according to the amount of light which is vouchsafed it. The diseased eye has an equal variety of gradation in its powers of seeing, owing to the variations in its own condition. And it is with our spiritual as with our natural sight. The vision which men have of God varies infinitely with varying circumstances—from extreme dimness up to perfect distinctness. Amid this infinitude of gradation, depending mainly on the internal condition of the visual power, three main varieties, depending on the circumstances under which the spiritual sight exerts itself, may be distinguished.

I. THE NATURAL VISION OF GOD IN THIS LIFE . This is, even in the best men, dim and unsatisfying. "Now we see through a glass darkly" ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 ). We have to look within us and without us; and, among the confused shadows of things, as sight and memory and imagination present them to us, we have to piece together a conception of that mysterious and inscrutable Power which alone exists of itself and has brought all that is beside itself into existence. How should not the vision be unsatisfactory? Agnosticism denies that any conception which we can form can possibly bear any resemblance at all to the reality, if there be a reality. Agnosticism, to be consistent , ought not to go so far, but should content itself with saying that we cannot tell whether there be a resemblance or no. Some conception, however, of God all men form who reflect at all; and there is so much likeness among the conceptions of men of all times and countries as to point to some basis of truth underlying them all as the only conceivable ground of the similarity. The conceptions differ less in their essential character than in their vividness and their continuousness. Most men " see God" dimly and rarely—by snatches, and as through a cloud or mist. A small number have a somewhat clearer and more frequent vision. To a few only is it given to "set God always before their face," and to see him with something approaching to distinctness.

II. THE ECSTATIC VISION OF GOD IN THIS LIFE . It has been the privilege of some great saints to be lifted up from earth into that condition which is called ecstasy, and while in that state to have a vision of God. In ecstasy Moses saw "the glory of God" from the "cleft in the rock" on his second ascent of Sinai ( Exodus 33:18-23 ; Exodus 34:6-8 ). In ecstasy Isaiah now saw him. In ecstasy Ezekiel saw him "by the river of Chebar" ( Ezekiel 1:26-28 ). So St. John the divine beheld him in the island of Patmos ( Revelation 4:2-11 ). The exact nature of such visions we do not know; but it is only reasonable to suppose that they were, to those favored with them, revelations of God more distinct, more vivid, more satisfying, than any which belong to the ordinary course of nature, even to those which are vouchsafed to the "pure in heart" ( Matthew 5:8 ). They fall short in respect of duration; they are transient—some of them, perhaps, momentary. But their vividness seems to have so impressed them on the beholders as to have given them a quasi-permanency in the recollection, which made them possessions for life, and gave them an undying influence on the character.

III. THE BEATIFIC VISION OF GOD IN ANOTHER LIFE . What this is no tongue of man can tell. "Eye hath not seen," etc. We know only what the Word of God declares. "Then shall we see him face to face ; then shall we know even as we are known ," ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 ). That this vision transcends even the ecstatic one is reasonably concluded, from its being the final reward of God's saints—the beatitude beyond which there is none other ( Revelation 22:4 ). But it is scarcely reverent to speculate on a theme so far above human imagining. Even Bishop Butler seems to overstep the just limit, when he supposes the beatific vision to include the contemplation of the scheme of the universe in the mind of him who contrived it. We shall not know what the beatific vision is until we are admitted to it. Perhaps it will not be the same to all. Probably, as on earth "the eye sees that which it brings with it the power of seeing," so, in the world beyond the grave, the vision of God will stand in a certain correlation with the seeing faculty of the beholders. All will "see his face," but all will not be capable of receiving from the sight that which it will convey to some. There are degrees of happiness in the next world no less than in the present. If we would derive from that blessed sight all that God intended man to derive from it, we must in this life cultivate the power of "seeing God" and delighting in the contemplation of him.