And seeing God we shall be satisfied. With all lesser joys the eye is
not satisfied with seeing, but to look on Him will be enough. Enough for
mind and heart, wearied and perplexed with partial knowledge and
imperfect love; enough for eager desires, which thirst, after all
draughts from other streams; enough for will, chafing against lower
lords and yet longing for authoritative control; enough for all my
being--to see God. Here we can rest after all wanderings, and say, 'I
travel no further; here will I dwell for ever--_I shall be satisfied_.'

And may these dim hopes not suggest to us too some presentiment of the
full Christian truth of assimilation dependent on vision, and of vision
reciprocally dependent on likeness? 'We shall be like Him, for we shall
see Him as He is,'--words which reach a height that David but partially
discerned through the mist. This much he knew, that he should in some
transcendent sense behold the manifested God; and this much more, that
it must be 'in righteousness' that he should gaze upon that face. The
condition of beholding the Holy One was holiness. We know that the
condition of holiness is trust in Christ. And as we reckon up the rich
treasure of our immortal hopes, our faith grows bold, and pauses not
even at the lofty certainty of God without us, known directly and
adequately, but climbs to the higher assurance of God within us,
flooding our darkness with His great light, and changing us into the
perfect copies of His express Image, His only-begotten Son. 'I shall be
satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness,' cries the prophet Psalmist.
'It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master,' responds the
Christian hope.

Brethren! take heed that the process of dissipating the vain shows of
earth be begun betimes in your souls. It must either be done by Faith,