No man has ever seen God in any outward, visible, close-fitting form of his own: he is revealed in no shape save that of his son. But multitudes of men have with their mind's, or rather their heart's eye, seen more or less of God; and perhaps every man might have and ought to have seen something of him. We cannot follow God into his infinitesimal intensities of spiritual operation, any more than into the atomic life-potencies that lie deep beyond the eye of the microscope: God may be working in the heart of a savage, in a way that no wisdom of his wisest, humblest child can see, or imagine that it sees. Many who have never beheld the face of God, may yet have caught a glimpse of the hem of his garment; many who have never seen his shape, may yet have seen the vastness of his shadow; thousands who have never felt the warmth of its folds, have yet been startled by No face: only the sight Of a sweepy garment vast and white. Some have dreamed his hand laid upon them, who never knew themselves gathered to his bosom. The reproach in the words of the Lord is the reproach of men who ought to have had an experience they had not had. Let us look a little nearer at his words. 'Ye have not heard his voice at any time,' might mean, '_Ye have never listened to his voice_,' or '_Ye have never obeyed his voice_' but the following phrase, 'nor seen his shape,' keeps us rather to the primary sense of the word _hear: 'The sound of his voice is unknown to you;' 'You have never heard his voice so as to know it for his_.' 'You have not seen his shape;'--'_You do not know what he is like_.' Plainly he implies, '_You ought to know his voice; you ought to know what he is like_.' 'You have not his word abiding in you;'--'_The word that is in you from the beginning, the word of God in your conscience, you have not kept with you, it is not dwelling in you; by yourselves accepted as the witness of Moses, the scripture in which you think you have eternal life does not abide with you, is not at home in you. It comes to you and goes from you. You hear, heed not, and forget. You do not dwell with it, and brood upon it, and obey it. It finds no acquaintance in you. You are not of its kind. You are not of those to whom the word of God comes. Their ears are ready to hear; they hunger after the word of the Father_.' On what does the Lord found this his accusation of them? What is the sign in them of their ignorance of God?--For whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.' 'How so?' the Jews might answer. 'Have we not asked from thee a sign from heaven, and hast thou not pointblank refused it?'