Through A Glass Darkly

      We are strangers in the universe of God. Confined to that spot on which we dwell, we are permitted to know nothing of what is transacting in the regions above and around us. By much labor we acquire a superficial acquaintance with a few sensible objects which we find in our present habitation; but we enter and we depart, under a total ignorance of the nature and laws of the spiritual world. One subject in particular, when our thoughts proceed in this train, must often recur upon the mind with peculiar anxiety; that is the immortality of the soul, and the future state of man. Exposed as we are at present to such variety of afflictions, and subjected to so much disappointment in all our pursuits of happiness, why, it may be said, has our gracious Creator denied us the consolation of a full discovery of our future existence, if indeed such an existence be prepared for us? 

      Reason, it is true, suggests many arguments in behalf of immortality; Revelation gives full assurance of it. Yet even that Gospel, which is said to have brought “life and immortality to light,” allows us to see only “through a glass darkly.” “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Our knowledge of a future world is very imperfect; our ideas of it are faint and confused. It is not displayed in such a manner as to make an impression suited to the importance of the object. The faith even of the best men is much inferior, both in clearness and in force, to the evidence of sense; and proves on many occasions insufficient to counterbalance the temptations of the present world. Happy moments indeed there sometimes are in the lives of pious men; when, sequestered from worldly cares, and borne up on the wing of divine contemplation, they rise to a near and transporting view of immortal glory. But such efforts of the mind are rare, and cannot be long supported. When the spirit of meditation subsides, this lively sense of a future state decays; and though the general belief of it remains, yet even good men, when they return to the ordinary business and cares of life, seem to rejoin the multitude, and to resume the same hopes, and fears, and interests, which influence the rest of the world. -by Rev. Hugh Blair, D. D.