Thus piercing the future, and seeing that these simple, child -- like men, who had nothing but what was given them, were to be organs of the power of God to renovate humanity, that by their preaching men, were to learn what human wisdom could never have discovered, he poured forth the holy joy of his heart before God in fervent thankfulness: |I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father; and no man knoweth who the Son is (the true nature of the Son) but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.|
After he had thus poured out his soul before God, he turned to his disciples, and pronounced them blessed, because their eyes had beheld that which the prophets and the pious had waited and longed for.
The |seeing| and |hearing| are not to be taken, as Hugo à St. Victor long ago remarked, in an outward sense, but spiritually, with reference to the truth revealed to them, which had been veiled and, to some extent, hidden from those who occupied even the highest place in the Old Dispensation. A conscious or unconscious longing for the future revelation was their highest attainment.