The Veil
[Heb.6:19]---' Within the veil.' There is a veil over the spiritual world.---By the spiritual world is meant all the unseen realities which surround us now. And it is not necessary to say much to prove that that world is veiled because it is difficult to maintain a Christian life, faithful unto death. From that spiritual region the Christian draws inspiration, and from it proceed the laws of his life. To him the unseen kingdom of the present God and the living Christ---the kingdom of eternal truth and love, of saints and angels---is a reality, compared with which the material world is unreal, shadowy, and transient. The Divine life commences with the opening of the spirit's eye on the invisible. The awakening soul discerns a ladder between heaven and earth on which the angels come and go. Or, to use the profound language of the Apostle Paul, he is ' in Christ a new creature '; therefore, ' old things, have passed away, and all things have become new. ' The test by which we can estimate a man's progress in spiritual life is the extent to which he measures the visible by the laws of the unseen. He who is in the highest sense spiritual, feels the world to be a Divine temple, because he realizes God in it---His infinite presence shining from the deep sky above, and His love revealed in every flower. To him Christ is everywhere, hallowing, as of old, the relationships of life, and coloring by His sympathy its struggles and its sorrows. He can reverence men, not because they are rich or successful or powerful, but because they are living and immortal spirits; and His standard of life is not the expedient or the pleasurable or the popular : it is righteousness and truth and the love of the eternal world. Still, that world is veiled : only the eye of a strong faith can see its beauty. We are so encircled and enchained by the fleshy and material that we can clearly realize the eternal only in moments of meditation and prayer ; while the transient presses incessantly upon us, and passion, with its colored light, blinds the vision of the soul. Is it not evident, then, that to be faithful to the end demands a hope that enters within the folded veil which hides us from the spiritual world? It is easy to feel God ever so near, to live as in the presence of Christ, to realize in our daily contact with men the dignity of the immortal nature for which Christ died, to measure present temptations and allurements by the laws of everlasting right? Are there no moments when ' the eye of faith is dim.' What can hold us fast then, but the hope that we shall one day pass from this region of delusions, and no longer looking through the darkened windows of sense, behold the unclouded beauty of eternal realities, and ' know even as we are known '? ' Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.' There is a veil over the discipline of life.---Indeed, the meaning of human life generally is profoundly veiled. Look at the myriads of our sinning, suffering, toiling brethren, oppressed, as thousands of them are, by the selfishness of their fellows, bearing the burden of sins they have not wrought or sorrows they have not created, and sinking by multitudes into the night of moral corruption, without one ray of God's gospel to lighten the gloom! Ask what all that means. And if we had no ' hope entering within the veil,' on the strength of which we could trust in the Fatherhood of God, and believe that in His good time we shall understand the mystery, and be able to trace the eternal rectitude amid the conflict of appearances. But here comes in the hope which ' entereth within the veil.' Just as in the natural world the inscrutable activities which darken the seed-time, and create the fear of the seed's failure, do yet mature its fruitage; so in spiritual life, the Divine law of growth is at work, though it may be hidden from us. Our life here must be imperfect, because we live for eternity, and God is causing our life and work to move on an eternal scale. We, in this ' time world,' see but the minute commencement of that which reaches on into the everlasting. Every true effort must have its completion. Do you think that the spiritual purposes and aspirations die because they are not fulfilled here? No! God knows our life with all its efforts and failures. He will one day unfold the secret records of the soul, and its purposes shall be carried out in grander tasks and with nobler fulfillment amid ' the song of Moses and the Lamb.' Pray for the brethren, timothy. maranatha
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