faith sees, as it were, everything with God's eyes, and hears
disentangled and disengaged from the things of earth. Like a being without a body to clog it, it moves more at will, and rejoices in a liberty to which faith of a more material kind is a stranger.
4. They take fewer false steps, and make fewer mistakes.—Simple faith sees, as it were, everything with God's eyes, and hears everything with God's ears; it sees nothing with man's eyes, and hears nothing with man's ears; and thus comes to no false conclusions, and is kept from the continual mistakes into which sense is falling. It sees through the screen, or veil, of the visible into the invisible; it makes the distant seem as the near, and the future as the present. It not only sets the right estimate on the evidence of sense and feeling, but it puts the true interpretation upon all the facts and phenomena coming under the eye or sense. It disputes the point with sense and feeling, with the eye and ear, with consciousness and reason, and triumphs over all. Exercising simple faith on the bare word of him who has given me the sure record respecting his crucified, dead, buried, risen Son, I see myself crucified, dead, buried, risen with him. Though seeing in myself the chief of sinners, I know and believe that there is no condemnation for me. Conscious of foolishness and ignorance, I know and believe that I am wise in Christ. Sensible of hourly defilement all over, I am persuaded that there is no spot in me. I see sin covering the earth, and Satan exercising dominion, but yet I do not believe in the supremacy of sin, and I know that Jehovah reigns. I see no visible Christ, no cross, no throne, no Holy Spirit, anywhere; and yet I believe in a Christ, a cross, a throne, a Holy Spirit, and that these are the most real of all real things. I see the sickness, the death-bed, the coffin, the grave of the saint; and yet I believe not in his sickness, but in his health; not in his death, but in his life; not in corruption, but in incorruption; not in mortality, but in immortality; not in the grave, but in the resurrection. Thus what I see I do not believe; nay, I believe in the contrary of what I see. I believe not only without, but against seeing; and thus I put the right construction upon things seen and temporal, looking at everything with the eyes of God, and tasting the blessedness of anticipating the time when that which is perfect is