Therefore we will lay down now our hopes and our fears, our every burden, at the steps of the altar, that, entering disencumbered into the inmost sanctuary, we may fall before the Eternal Presence.
The vision of God is threefold—the vision of Righteousness, the vision of Grace, the vision of Glory.
I. The vision of Righteousness is first in the sequence. Righteousness includes all those attributes which make up the idea of the Supreme Ruler of the universe—perfect justice, perfect truth, perfect purity, perfect moral harmony in all its aspects. Here, then, is the force of Butlers dying words. Ask yourselves, Can it be otherwise than "an awful thing to appear before the Moral Governor of the world"? You have read, perhaps, the written record of some pure and saintly life, and you are overwhelmed with shame as you look inward and contrast your sullied heart and your self-seeking aims with his innocency and cleanness of heart. You are confronted—you, an avowedly religious person—in your business affairs with an upright man of the world; and his straightforward honesty is felt by you as a keen reproach to your disingenuousness and evasion, all the keener because he makes no profession of religion. Yes, you know it; this is the very impress of God's attribute on his soul, though God's name may seldom or never pass his lips. And if these faint rays of the Eternal Light, thus caught and reflected on the blurred mirrors of human hearts and human lives, so sting and pain the organs of your moral vision, what must it not be, then, when you shall stand face to face before the ineffable Righteousness, and see Him in His unclouded glory!
It is a vision indeed of awe, transcending all thought; a vision of awe, but a vision also of purification, of renewal, of energy, of power, of life. Therefore enter into his presence now and cast yourself down before His throne. Therefore dare to ascend into the holy mountain; dare to speak with God amidst the thunders and the lightnings; dare to look upon the face of His righteousness, that, descending from the heights, you, like the lawgiver of old, may carry with you the reflection of His brightness, to illumine and to vivify the common associations and the every-day affairs of life.
Not a few here will doubtless remember how an eloquent living preacher in a striking image employs the distant view of the towers of your own Durham—of my own Durham—seen from the neighbourhood of the busy northern capital only in the clearer atmosphere of Sundays—as an emblem of these glimpses of the Eternal Presence, these intervals of Sabbatical repose and contemplation, when the furnaces and pits cease for the time to pour forth their lurid smoke, and in the unclouded sky the towers of the celestial Zion reveal themselves to the eye of faith. Let this local image give point to our thoughts to-day. "Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold, even as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God."
II. But the vision of Righteousness is succeeded by the vision of Grace. When Butler in his dying moments had expressed his awe at appearing face to face before the Moral Governor of the world, his chaplain, we are told, spoke to him of "the blood which cleanseth from all sin." "Ah, this is comfortable," he replied; and with these words on his lips he gave up his soul to God. The sequence is a necessary sequence. He only has access to the Eternal Love who has stood face to face with the Eternal Righteousness. He only who has learned to feel the awe will be taught to know the grace. The righteous Judge, the Moral Governor of the World, is a loving Father also, is your Father and mine. This is the central lesson of Christianity. Of this He has given us absolute assurance, in the life, the death, the words, and the works of Christ. The incarnation of the Son is the mirror of the Father's love. What witness need we more? Happy he who shall realise this fact in all its significance and fulness. Happy he on whom the light of the glory of the Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, shall shine, he who shall—
"Gaze one moment on the Face Whose beauty Wakes the world's great hymn; Feel it one unutterable moment, Bent in love o'er him; In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels, Distant grow, and dim; In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels, Nearer grow through Him."
Yes, it is so indeed. All our interests in life, the highest and the lowest alike, abandoned, merged, forgotten in God's love, will come back to us with a distinctness, an intensity, a force, unknown and unsuspected before. Each several outline and each particular hue will stand out in the light of His grace. Thus we are bidden to lose our souls only that we may find them again; we are charged to give up houses, and brethren, and sisters, and father, and mother, and wife, and children, and lands—all that is lovely and precious in our eyes—to give up all to God, only that we may receive them back from Him a hundredfold, even now in this present time. Our affections, our friendships, our hopes, our business and our pleasure, our intellectual pursuits and our artistic tastes—all our cherished opportunities and all our fondest aims must be brought into the sanctuary and bathed in the glory of His Presence, that we may take them to us again, baptized and regenerate, purer, higher, more real, more abiding far than before.
III. And thus the vision of love melts into the vision of glory. So we reach the third and final stage in our progress. This is the crowning promise of the Apocalyptic vision, "They shall see His face." The vision is only inchoate now; we catch only glimpses at rare intervals, revealed in the lives of God's saints and heroes, revealed above all in the record of the written Word and in the Incarnation of the Divine Son. But then no veil of the flesh shall dim the vision; no imperfection of the mirror shall blur the image; for we shall see Him face to face—shall see Him as He is—the perfect truth, the perfect righteousness, the perfect purity, the perfect love, the perfect light. And we shall gaze with unblenching eye, and our visage shall be changed. Not now with transient gleams of radiance, as on the lawgiver of old, shall the light be reflected from us; but resting upon us with its own ineffable glory, the awful effluence—
"Shall flood our being round, and take our lives Into itself."