What we all want is direct teaching the teaching of Almighty God. God has many lesson-books out of which He teaches. But the Teacher Himself is always apart from and above the lesson-book. The power is all in His secret agency. That instructs; that elevates. It is a real, personal God, using all, pervading all, impressing all, a spirit working with the spirit of a man.
I. There are two classes of subjects about which we need God's teaching. (1) The one is what we know is to be known, but as yet we do not know it. (2) The other is that about which we have not a conception; we do not know that it exists or can exist. Both equally lie in the words, "What I see not."
II. As you attain to the knowledge of the one, the other will open to you first of things dimly guessed; then of facts actually realised. So it will be for ever, indistinct knowledge growing distinct, and the distinct knowledge making up the idea of things indistinct, and then those indistinctnesses becoming again in their turn distinct. Then shadow out further hazes, which in their turn grow into substances, and so on in a never-ending series. And still the craving must be, "What I see not, teach Thou me."
III. There is only one way to secure God's own teaching. You must go into that school with clean hands and a pure heart. Over the portal of the palace of truth is the inscription as strict in its stipulation as it is large in its undertaking "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,9th series, p. 21.
References: Job 34:33. A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 195; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs,p. 136; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,pp. 132, 287; H. F. Burder, Sermons,p. 299. Job 34 S. Cox, Expositor,1st series, vol. x., p. 341; Ibid., Commentary on Job,p. 437. Job 35:10. H. Melvill, Four Sermons in Cambridge,No. 2; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 295.Job 35:10; Job 35:11. Ibid., Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1511.Job 35 S. Cox, Expositor,1st series, vol. xi., p 33; Ibid., Commentary on Job,p. 455.