One knows not whether it is harder for faith to look beyond the visible
helpers or delights to the Unseen Real One, or to look through tears,
when these are gone, and to see Him clearly filling an otherwise empty
field of vision. When we have a palpable prop to lean on, it is
difficult to be clearly aware that, unless the palpable support were
held up by the Unseen, it could not be a prop, and to lean on it would
be like resting one's weight on a staff stuck in yielding mud. But it
is no less difficult to tell our hearts that we have all that we ever
had, when what we had leaned on for many happy days and found to hold
us up is stricken from beneath us. Present, the seen lawgiver, judge,
or king stays the eyes that should travel past him to God Himself;
removed, his absence makes a great emptiness, in whose vacuity it is
difficult for faith to discern the real presence of Him who is all that
the departed seemed to be. The painted glass stays the eye; shattered,
it lets in only the sight of a void and far-off sky.
Israel could not breathe freely in the rarefied air on the heights of a
theocracy, and demanded a visible king. It had its desire, and as a
consequence, 'leanness in its soul.' Christendom has found it as
difficult to do without visible embodiments of authority, law, defence,
and hence many evils and corruptions in the institutions and practices
of organised Christianity.