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If you are outside a beautiful church building, with its fine stained glass windows, the figures on the windows look dim, dull, and obscure, mere blotches of vague colors. You cannot see the artistic designs, the noble representations, the delicate shading. But if you go inside the building, the windows reveal themselves to you in all their exquisite loveliness. There is no more haziness about them. The figures appear in clear outline, in all their artistic beauty. The scenes, for example, in our Lord’s life, are pictured so distinctly that they seem almost life like. From without all is vague and dim and shadowy; from within all is clear, plain, shining in rich beauty.
This illustrates the story of many people’s experience of Christian truth. When they think of it from without, having yet no experience of it, it seems misty and vague. They cannot understand it. They cannot see any beauty in it. Then they pass within the sacred temple. They become followers of Christ, children of God. They yield their hearts to the Holy Spirit and begin to do the will of their Father. Then all the vagueness passes away from the teachings. They have willed to do the will the God, and they know of the doctrine.