The vision of God.
"I saw … the Lord," writes the prophet. These simple, strong words suggest to us—
I. THE VISION WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE. "NO man hath seen God at any time," our Lord declares; and his declaration is sustained by the philosophic truth that he who is a Divine Spirit must be invisible to mortal eye. So far as our apprehension by sense is concerned, God must remain, to every human being, "the King eternal, immortal, invisible." Himself, in his own essential nature, we cannot look upon.
II. THE VISION WHICH IS EXTRAORDINARY. God has, on some few occasions, granted special and particular manifestations of himself—such that those to whom they were vouchsafed might say, without impropriety, that they had "seen the Lord." Of this kind were the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-22.), the vision granted to Moses on the mount (Exodus 34:5, Exodus 34:6), that of Micaiah (1 Kings 22:19), this one narrated in the text, those of the Apocalypse. In these cases there was a manifestation of Deity in Some form, temporarily assumed, cognizable by the senses, and bringing the soul into close communion with the Eternal One himself.
III. THE VISION WHICH IS CONSTANT. It is something more than poetry to think and speak of God as being in the various objects and operations in nature. It is something deeper than fanciful sentiment, and truer than Pantheistic thought, to say that "nature is the robe of God." For his power is immanent in all living things. The forces of nature, which are working everywhere and in all things, are, in truth, the out-workings of his own Divine hand, in constant and regular, and therefore in measurable and reliable activity. When we watch them, we do well to feel that we are near to him; they are directly suggestive of him, and we ought not to be able to regard them with interest without reaching and resting in him of whose presence and skill and love they continually speak to us.
IV. THE VISION WHICH IS HISTORICAL. There are two manifestations of Deity which stand by themselves, the latter being transcendently the greater and more gracious of the two.
1. One was in the visible Shechinah: which remained the constant symbol of the presence of Jehovah for many generations; there in the midst of the camp, visible to any eye that looked within the veil, but only to be seen by one man on one great day in the sacred calendar.
2. The other was found in him who was able to say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." They who looked on him in the days of his flesh, and who heard his voice, might say with peculiar meaning, "I have seen the Lord." And we, before whose eyes a once-crucified Savior has been conspicuously upheld (see Galatians 3:1), and who, in him, have presented to our spiritual vision the holy and loving One, infinitely' worthy of our reverent affection, may also say, with profound truthfulness, that we too "have seen the Lord."
V. THE VISION WHICH IS OCCASIONAL. There are certain exceptional experiences which God grants to us now, when he comes very near to us and reveals himself to our souls. It may be on the occasion of some outward incident, the apparent nearness of death and the future world, or the passing of some intimate friend or relation into the unseen realm, or the powerful presentation of the truth by some faithful minister of Christ, or it may be the sudden illumination of the Spirit of God apart from all special circumstances whatsoever; but there are times in individual history when God comes to us, when he makes his person, his claims upon us, his grace to us in his Son, and with these, our highest, eternal interests, to assume to our souls their true, their grand proportions. Then is it well, indeed, for us so to act that we can thereafter say," I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."—C.