I have been just asking myself, how far I really see “form and comeliness” in the rejected and despised Jesus; and I am assured that while the soul is under the power of things seen, this cannot be; because the marred visage, the thorny crown, the carpenter’s son, the penniless, homeless stranger, the One spit upon, the patient sufferer of wrongs and reproaches daily heaped upon Him, is no object of “form or comeliness” before the eye of mere man. If the soul, therefore, be under the power or presence of things seen, what is Jesus to it? It is faith alone that can admire Him. It is the eye trained and practiced by the Holy Ghost that alone can see the beauty of the smitten form of the low-estated Galilean.
This tells loudly against the constant currents of our hearts. May we be more and more lifted above the admiration of, or delight in, the things seen, the fair shows of the flesh. Such glances of our hearts, of which they are so guilty, weaken our power to perceive this only real “form and comeliness.”
So, where there is the ear for the Shepherd’s voice? Surely only in that which the Spirit has, in like manner, opened. And if the flesh and the world be practicing it with its music and soft words, its readiness and skill to catch that unearthly voice will, in like manner, decline and be impaired.