Article May 29, 1902 Issue

Things not Seen

We republish from The Constitution of Atlanta, Ga., the following extract from a sermon recently preached by Rev. Dr. W. W. Landrum at the First Baptist Church in that city. The text was 2 Corinthians, 4:18: "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." He said in part:—

"Men of spiritual vision are not visionary men. Spirituality is practicality. When 'we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen,' we are philosophical as well as religious. Our senses are deceptive. The eye especially makes great mistakes. Things are not what they seem; nature is not what it seems; men are not what they seem. You no longer believe the testimony of your eye when it tells you that the heavenly bodies are but lamps of various sizes hung up in the heavens, or that the earth is flat and stationary and the center of our solar system. In all this the eye deceives; in a thousand minor matters it is busy with its delusions. The mind's eye is reason. Reason is better than sight; it collects evidence and corrects the mistakes of sight. Reason is spiritual sight; reason builds evidences on which faith, which is simply confidence in God, or right reason leaning on God, can rest satisfied and secure.

"As in nature, so in human nature, wise man look at 'the things which are not seen.' We are not materialists; we believe in a region of invisible and eternal principles; we stand squarely against those who live a material life; we oppose, as contrary to common sense, all those whose ideas of wealth, beauty, grandeur, dignity, pleasure, are material and 'of the earth, earthy.'

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

President Roosevelt on the Bible