What a craving there oftentimes is in the heart of a child of God, to behold the Being whom he has worshipped so long, but whom he has never seen. It is true that he enjoys many aids to his faith and worship. The history of all these Divine manifestations to the patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, is before him, and he reads it often and again. Still more, the story of the incarnation, and of the residence of God the Son here upon earth, he peruses over and over. These place the object of worship very plainly before him, in comparison with the dimness of natural religion, and the darkness of idolatry. Nevertheless, he desires a fuller manifestation than this, and looks forward to one in the future. He sees through a glass darkly, though living under the light of revelation; and says with David, “I shall be satisfied [only] when I awake in Thy likeness.”

“If,” says Richard Baxter, “an angel from heaven should come down on earth to tell us all of God that we would know, and might lawfully desire and ask him, who would not turn his back upon libraries, and universities, and learned men, to go and discourse with such a messenger? What travel should I think too far, what cost too great, for one hour’s talk with such a messenger?” This is the utterance of that holy man when he was standing upon the borders of eternity, and was about to go over into the “everlasting rest” whose felicity he has described so well. This is one of his “Dying Thoughts,” and from it we see how ardently he desired to behold God, the great Object of worship, face to face. He had worshipped him long, and he had loved him long. He had enjoyed a clearer mental vision, probably, than is granted to most believers. And yet he is not satisfied. With the Psalmist he cries out: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

William G. T. Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), 74–75.