June 5

Whom, having not seen, ye love. 1 Peter 1:8.

THERE have been seasons when Christians have been tempted to envy those who lived when our Saviour was upon earth, and who had the privilege of knowing Christ after the flesh.” Ah! ye highly-favoured ones, we have been ready to exclaim, you could hear the voice of him who spake “as never man spake;” you could gaze on the visage of him who was “fairer than the children of men;” you could bring your troubles and lay them down at the feet of him who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Here are, however, two or three things which should tend to reduce this envious feeling. First, We should remember that many of those who saw him derived no benefit from the sight. “Ye have seen me,” says he, “and believed not;” “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.”

Secondly, We should remember, if we are Christians, that we shall see him ourselves soon,-see him really, see him personally, see the very One who loved us and “gave himself for us;” “see him as he is,” and “be forever with the Lord.” Thirdly, We should observe, that, though he is no longer now visible, he is accessible, and we can have intercourse with him, and much freer and easier and speedier intercourse than they. They often had to repair to a great distance in approaching him, and much time was consumed in the application: when Martha and Mary called in one of the ploughmen to send to our Saviour this message,- “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick!”-he was fifty miles off, in Galilee.

“But we have no such lengths to go.”

We have no such waitings to endure. Does our burdened heart urge us to exclaim, “Lord! lam oppressed; undertake for me”? The groan, the sigh, can reach him “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” and ere we call upon him he will answer, and while we speak he will hear. Yes; though he be “passed into the heavens,” we can hold communion with him; though he be unseen, we can love him, we can enjoy him. And hence the language of the apostle:-“Whom having not seen ye love, in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”