of the reward ... `he endured, As Seeing Him Who is Invisible' (Heb. 11:23 -

27) .  Not only is this quality of faith seen in full exercise in the

spiritual realm; such is the blinding nature of sin that we discover it ought

to have been within the range of unassisted reason, to have discerned from

the very works of nature the existence of the invisible God.  This, as is

well known, is the charge laid against the heathen world by Paul in his

epistle to the Romans, where he proves beyond the possibility of doubt that

all mankind, whether the Gentile with the book of nature or the Jew with the

book of the law, were inexcusable:

`For whatever is to be known of God is plain to them; God Himself has

made it plain -- for ever since the world was created, His Invisible

nature, His everlasting power and divine Being, have been quite

perceptible in what He has made.  So they have no excuse' (Rom.

1:19,20, Moffatt).

We must not from all this assume that, because we have believed on the

name of the Son of God, we shall receive visions and revelations.  Many times

we who have this faith that sees the invisible may have to walk by faith and

not by sight; we may at times be driven to read again the words of the

Saviour to Thomas who said `Except I see'.

`Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are

they that have not seen, and yet have believed' (John 20:25 -29).

Or we may be comforted by the words of Peter:

`Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet

believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory' (1 Pet.

It will also be remembered, and should ever be in mind, that the

apostle indicated to the Ephesians that they could only proceed to the fuller

knowledge of the character of their calling and the nature of its hope by

realizing that

the eyes of their understanding (or heart) had been enlightened.

There are a number of passages where the exhortation to `look' and the

blessed consequence of this looking by faith is brought before us.  This

however is well worth separate attention, and so to this we now turn.

We propose gathering together the many references that are made in the

Word to `looking' either in faith, expectancy or in other ways, to round off

the lesson already learned concerning the possession and value of spiritual

vision.  First and foremost must be placed the call:

`Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am

God, and there is none else' (Isa. 45:22).

The word translated `look' here is not derived from the Hebrew word

either for the `eye' or for `seeing', but means `to turn the face'.  It does

not matter whether the person who thus `looks' has keenness of vision or

defective eye -sight, `to turn the face' is sufficient.  The same Hebrew word

is used in Isaiah 53:6 in the well known passage `We have Turned every one to