Sight often crusts over spiritual things, or builds a wall, or draws a
sprung out of what is seen by their own eye. This makes it also far more unwavering and unchanging than if it rested on sight; for sight may change; to-day bright, to-morrow dim; but God's testimony changes not. Not sense, nor feeling, nor touch, nor taste, nor vision, but the naked word of Him that cannot lie;—this is the true foundation of a sinner's faith. That is the surest and truest faith, that thus comes into contact with, and rests directly on, the bare rock, with nothing between. Nothing can shake faith, in such a case, but that which shakes the evidence of God's own being and faithfulness. Changes and uncertainties, in themselves or in man, cannot shake them, so long as they know that with God there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
2. They come directly into contact with God himself.—No cloud, no distance, no medium of any kind, comes between them and God. They deal directly with God; the soul touches him who is a Spirit, needing no interpreter nor introducer. We speak to God, and he speaks to us, as he did to Moses, face to face. We are of necessity cast upon God himself, God alone; and this is blessedness. Joseph no longer speaks to his brethren through an interpreter, but draws near and speaks in their own tongue, nay, falls on Benjamin's neck, and kisses him.
3. They get more into the heart and reality of the things of God.— Sight often crusts over spiritual things, or builds a wall, or draws a veil around them. Simple faith goes in at once to the heart and core of things; it goes beyond what is outer, and takes up its dwelling in the region of the invisible and divine. Instead of cruising along the rocky sea-board, it strikes inland, and pitches its tent amid the gardens and by the streams of a richer and more glorious country; it leaves things seen and temporal behind, and holds direct intercourse with things unseen and eternal. It is in itself simpler, purer, and more direct; less drossy and earthly; less mixed or alloyed with elements of frailty, or self, or the flesh; and hence it finds its way into regions into which faith of a grosser kind could never penetrate: it rises up, with a buoyancy all its own, into a higher atmosphere,