for my part, do not believe that any conceivable extension of creatural
faculties, or any conceivable hallowing of creatural natures, can make
the creature able to gaze upon God. I know that it is often said that
the joy of the future life for men is what the theologians call 'the
beatific vision,' in which there shall be direct sight of God, using
that word in its highest sense, as applied to the perceptions of the
spirit, and not of the sense. But I do not think the Bible teaches us
that. It does teach us 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is.' But who is the 'Him'? Jesus Christ. And, in my belief, Jesus Christ
will, to all eternity, be the medium of manifesting God, and there will
remain, to all eternity, the incapacity which clogs creatures in time--'
No man hath seen God at any time, nor _can_ see Him.'

But my text, whilst it thus suggests solemn thoughts of a Light that
cannot be looked at with undazzled eyes, does also suggest to us by
contrast the possibility of far feebler-sighted and more sinful
creatures than these symbolical seraphs coming into a Presence in which
God shall be manifest to them; and they will need no veil drawn by
themselves across their eyes. God has veiled Himself, that 'we, with
unveiled faces, beholding His glory, may be changed into the same
image.' So the seraph, with his white wings folded before his eyes, may
at once stand to us as a parallel and a contrast to what the Christian
may expect. We, _we_ can see Jesus, with no incapacity except such as
may be swept away by His grace and our will. And direct vision of the
whole Christ is the heaven of heaven, even as the partial vision of the
partially perceived Christ is the sweetest sweetness of a life on earth.

There is no need for us to draw any screen between our happy eyes and
the Face in which we 'behold the glory as of the only Begotten of the
Father.' All the tempering that the divine lustre needed has been done