Beholding God's Glory

How can we make the eye of our souls fit to behold the glory of God? We must fix the eye of the soul; fix our meditation upon the glory of God and the excellency of Christ. A moving, roving eye sees nothing. We must set some time apart to fix our meditations upon the excellent things in the gospel.
We must also labour to have both inward and outward hindrances removed. We must labour that the soul be cleansed from all carnal passions and desires. Only a spiritual soul can ever behold spiritual things. The physical eye cannot apprehend or behold spiritual things. There must be a spiritual eye, and there must be some relation between the soul and spiritual things before the soul can behold them. As the soul must be fixed upon these meditations, so the Spirit of God must sanctify and purge the soul. Sight is also hindered from without by dust in the eyes, cloudiness, and such things. Satan uses the dust of the world to hinder the sight of the soul from beholding the glory of God in the gospel. The apostle says that the god of this world blinds the eyes of men (2 Cor. 4:3, 4). We will not see Christ, and God in Christ, by fixing the soul upon base things below.
We should preserve this sight of faith by hearing. Hearing begets seeing in religion. Death came in by the ear at the beginning, when Adam listened to the serpent who he should not have listened to. Life, too, comes in by the ear. We hear, and then we see; 'As we have heard, so have we seen' (Psa. 48:8). It is also true in religion; most of our sight comes by hearing, which is the sense of learning. God has made it so. We should therefore behold the glory of the Lord all we can in the glass of the word; and to that end hear much. The best picture to see Christ in is the word and the ordinances. And the best eye to see him with is the eye of faith.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 92-94 [101-02]
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