Spiritual veils.
Anything interposed between the eye and the object of vision may be called a veil; designed for the purpose of convenience or of modesty, the veil has often been the cause of unsightliness and inconvenience—it has been abused almost as much as it has been used. In Scripture the word has a moral significance, indicating something which intercepts the truth, and blinds the soul to the will of God and to its own duty and interest.
I. THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRITUAL VEILS. They are those of:
1. Credulity. Often the mind freely accepts all kinds of irrational, superstitious errors, which coat and cover the truth of God, rendering it invisible beneath a mass of error.
2. Prejudice. Men who act as did the Jews in our Lord's time, determining beforehand and judging irrespective of the evidence before their eyes, making up their minds in advance of any facts or reasons which have to be alleged, are sure to miss their way. They cannot see through the veil of prejudice.
3. Intellectual pride: unwillingness to believe anything which our finite faculties cannot comprehend; practical forgetfulness that the heavenly Father must have many more truths that we can only very dimly discern to reveal to his children, than earthly fathers have to make intelligible to their sons.
4. Worldliness: allowing the interests, occupations, gratifications, of this world to assume a magnitude and importance to which they have no claim; and allowing the conventional maxims of society to pass current as heavenly truth, when they are only too often misleading and even deadly errors.
5. Passion. The false glare of passion hides from many souls the truth which otherwise they would see and by which they' would live.
II. THEIR REMOVAL God "will destroy … the veil that is spread over all the nations."
1. It is a blessed fact, in the far future, which God will establish. By means he is now employing, and perhaps by ways and methods of which we may have no conception now, he will bring it to pass; the day will come when the nations shall walk in the light of the Lord; both Jew (2 Corinthians 3:16) and Gentile (Isaiah 60:3).
2. We may contribute our share toward this happy issue: there are mental errors and spiritual delusions which we can help to expose, both by enlightening words and convincing action.
3. We are bound to make every effort to put away whatever veil may be over our own eyes. Unconscious spiritual blindness is sin (see John 9:41). It may be in part a man's misfortune, but it is partly his fault. There may be that which palliates it, but nothing will excuse it. We must betake ourselves to God (Psalms 139:23, Psalms 139:24).—C.
The evening of expectation.
Of this passage we may look at—
I. ITS PRIMARY HISTORICAL APPLICATION. (See Exposition.)
II. ITS APPLICATION TO THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. The Church of Christ is "the Israel of God," and we may expect much of the language first used in reference to the Jewish nation to be appropriate to it and even intended for its service. Like ancient Israel, the Church has found itself in great humiliation and distress, and has been in sore need of Divine comfort in its dark days. At many stages in its history the Church has felt itself oppressed with heavy burdens, beset with serious difficulties, threatened with great calamities; and then the blessed promise of deliverance has dawned, and its heart has been elated, and such words of joyful praise as these in the text have been upon its lips. Even when there are no signs of the coming of Christ in delivering and reviving power, the Church may "take heart of grace" if it be
This holy and rightful attitude will turn the night of sorrow into the evening of expectation; and in due time will come the morning of deliverance; this will include
III. ITS APPLICATION TO INDIVIDUAL SOULS. Our Christian life presents various aspects according to the path by which our Lord leads us home. The life of some may be characterized as that of abounding privilege, of others as that of multiplied mercies, of others as that of honorable and useful activity; in these cases the heavenly kingdom may appear to be a continued though an exalted experience in another sphere. But in other instances human life is one of unflagging toil, or of unceasing struggle, or of oppressive care, or of crushing sorrow: the night for which weeping endures (Psalms 30:5) is all but lifelong. It is in such cases as these that we are "saved by hope." Hope is the morning star which is a blessed promise of an eternal day. It turns the night of weary trouble into the evening of holy expectation; it puts a song of joy even into the lips of suffering; it calmly but eagerly "prevents" the approaching morning; it anticipates the hour when the tears of sorrow will be wiped away from eyes that will weep no more forever, when every burden will fall from every heavy-laden shoulder, when the heart will be "exceeding glad" in the joy of God's great salvation. Let the children of affliction comfort themselves with these words of the prophet; but let them