2 Corinthians 4:18

18. Look The expressive Greek word signifies to look at a mark, to fix our gaze upon a definite object or prospect. Seen, by the bodily eye, the eye of the outward, (2 Corinthians 4:16,) and which can see only the outward.

Not seen We must see the unseen if we would see the true and the real. Our eyes are material, and can see only material things.

Seen Are visible.

Temporal An expressive Greek word again, for a season, season-lasting. The visibles are temporaries: the invisibles the great unseen, the stupendous frame-works, beheld only by the eye of the inward, (2 Corinthians 4:16,) are eternal, aeonic, belonging to the aeons, cycles, ages, time-worlds, of the invisible. As opposed to the temporal, which is limited, they are unlimited. Revelation contemplates the settlements of the judgment day as finalities; and if the rolling aeons make any change, revelation knows, certainly says, nothing about them. See on Matthew 25:46.

It is deeply true that our eyes can see nothing but the changing. And science states this fact more intensely than popular observation. Astronomy beholds the visible universe as ever moving with amazing rapidity. The laws by which these changes work are, indeed, held by science to be immutable; but no eye, no telescope, can see these laws; they are inward, and beheld only by the eye of the inward. And by the eye of the inward it is seen that the universal outward is completely ruled by the inward. But as laws are nothing in themselves, except by the force that moves things in accordance with laws, so the inward eye perceives that FORCE, in order to act harmoniously in accordance with rational law, must spring from an infinitely rational Source, which, as the primal spring of all force, must be Almighty. Thus most truly does our philosopher-apostle declare that it is the seen which is transient, and the not seen which is permanent nay, eternal.

Blessed are they whose spiritual inward can see that the world unvailed by revelation is included in the real and the eternal; and that the blessed eternal is theirs. So far as the spirit of faith animates them, they realize that our bodily frames may safely and cheerfully be allowed to dissolve in earnest duty under the eye of the Master. Whether our outward shall disappear by decay or death, a serene hope unfolds an unfading future before the eye of the soul. That future, from the standpoint of a frail present, the apostle is now about to contemplate in the next chapter.