_THE MAKING OF A PROPHET._[2]
"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up, and His train overspreading the temple floor.
Seraphs were poised above, each with six wings, with twain veiling his
face, with twain veiling his feet, and with twain hovering. And those on
one side sang in responsive chorus with those on the other side, saying,
'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.' 'The fulness of the whole earth
is His glory.' And the foundations of the threshold trembled at the
sound of that singing, and the house was filled with incense smoke. Then
cried I, 'Woe is me! for I am a dead man; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.' Then flew one of the
seraphs unto me, having in his hand a burning ember, which with a tongs
he had taken from off the incense altar; and he touched my mouth with
it, and said, 'Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is
taken away, and thy sin purged.' Thereupon I heard the voice of the
Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I cried,
'See me; send me.'"—ISAIAH vi. 1-8 (_annotated_).
Isaiah was a prophet. A prophet, we say, was a man who foretold future
events. It is not an apt description. He did that, and much more
besides. He interpreted past, present, and future alike in the light of
eternal truth. But his supreme concern was with the present, and he
cared for the past and the future only as they threw light on the
problems of instant, pressing duty. The prophet was no dealer in
futurities, no dreamer babbling to an age unborn. He was a potent actor
in history, living and working amid the actual sins, and sorrows, and
struggles of his day and generation.
Read the memoirs of Isaiah, and you will see how intense and intimate
was the part he played in the life and movement of his age. One day you
will find him at the Temple, scathing with scornful reprobation the
hypocrisy and hollowness of the established ritual of religion. Another
time he has taken his stand over against the fashionable promenade of
Jerusalem, and as he watches the passing procession of pomp and
opulence, built up on the misery and degradation of defenceless poverty,
his heart grows hot with honest indignation, and he breaks into
impassioned invective against the stream of selfish luxury, as it rolls
by with a smiling face and a cruel heart. Again, he forces his way into
a meeting of the Privy Council, fearlessly confronts the King and his
advisers, denounces the iniquity of a faithless foreign policy and
sternly demands its abandonment. In every department of national life,
in every section of social and religious existence, his voice was heard
and his personality felt. Yet nobody ever mistook him for a mere
politician, philanthropist, or reformer. He was ever, and was ever felt
to be, a prophet. For he did not speak like other men, he did not act
like other men, he did not reason like other men. He spoke not for
himself, but for God. He claimed for his speech, not the persuasiveness
of human probability, but the imperativeness of Divine certainty. He
relied solely on the coercive power of truth. He did not touch the tools
of political partisanship or scheming statecraft. He cared nothing for
the suggestions of expediency; he defied the most certain conclusions of
earthly wisdom, and followed absolutely the bidding of an unseen
guidance. He was a man taken possession of by an irresistible perception
of the will of God, and an all-absorbing passion to have that will done
on earth. He held in the commonwealth the place that is held by that
inexorable voice which, deaf to all balancings of earthly gain or loss,
unflinchingly proclaims the antithesis of right and wrong, and
imperatively demands that right shall be obeyed. The prophet was the
conscience of the nation. Preachers and teachers of religion, that is
what England asks of us. It is a high calling.
The office of a prophet was not an easy one. The man had to hazard or
sacrifice most of those things that men count dear—property, popularity,
home. Every day he had to take his life in his hand, as he risked the
rage of a royal tyrant, or faced the fury of insensate mobs. Still
harder was it to stand alone in his faith and opinion, rejected by the
multitude, by the wealth, by the wisdom of his day, mocked or pitied as
a madman; hardest of all to see his efforts foiled, his country
humiliated, his people depraved, to feel his heart sink within him, to
struggle with dark misgivings, to doubt the reality of the Divine
prompting, and despairingly to ask whether this world were indeed
governed by a righteous Will, or were not rather the sport of blind
caprice or the slave of iron fate! Ah! it was not easy to be a prophet.
Before a man could become a prophet he needed to possess a knowledge of
God of such absolute certainty as nothing could shake. Once at least in
his life he must have come into actual contact with God.
The experience that made Isaiah a prophet took the form of a vision. It
happened in a period of distressing perplexity and gloom. Wrestling
passionately with the darkness, craving wistfully for light, the
yearning to see God in the man's soul became so intense and sensitive
that the great Heart in heaven answered the longing of the heart on
earth, and aspiration leapt into realisation, and faith flashed into
vision. On a throne, high and lifted up, crowning and dominating all
things, fixed on immovable foundations, untouched by the changes of
time, unshaken by the shocks of history, Isaiah beheld, seated in
sovereign supremacy, a Form of ineffable splendour, the power and
presence of the Eternal in awful actuality, beyond all doubt or question
the Lord of the universe and the Arbiter of destiny. Henceforth he could
never doubt the being and the might of God. That is a great experience,
but it leaves the heart unsatisfied. We want to know the nature, the
character of this God, who holds our fortunes in His awful hands. Is He
good, and just, and gentle, or hard, and cold, and cruel? The answer
came to Isaiah in the seraphs' song of adoration, with its ascription of
perfect triune holiness. It told him that in God is light, and no
darkness at all. Through and through, utterly and absolutely, in every
chord and fibre of His being, there is no baseness, no harshness, no
injustice; there is nothing but stainless purity and splendour, nothing
but radiant justice, goodness, and truth. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts." Still, one wistful doubt, one anxious question, lingers in
the human heart. For what were our poor world the better of this holy
God if He be content to sit aloof in the light and glory of heaven,
leaving the web of human story to be woven by the blundering fingers of
sinning, erring men on earth? That fear, too, was laid for ever in
Isaiah's soul by the comforting response of the seraphs' chorus. God
does not sit apart in frigid isolation, but with His own hands He guides
and controls our lost world's course. Into its strange, sad, perplexing
progress He is pouring the goodness, truth, and love of His holy heart;
and so when the record is finished and fulfilled, every page and
syllable shall shine with that hidden holiness come to manifested light
and splendour. "The fulness of the whole earth is His glory!" That sight
of God—the living, holy, loving God—made Isaiah a prophet. Preachers and
teachers of to-day, if we are to be prophets, we need just such a sight
of God.
The vision of God made Isaiah a prophet; but the immediate effect was
something very different. The first effect of contact with God was to
produce in his soul an intolerable sense of sin. "Woe is me! for I am
undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts." Was, then, Isaiah an exceptionally wicked man? Hardly, when God
chose him as His ambassador. But if not, is, then, the proper effect on
a good man of an access of nearness to God an overwhelming consciousness
of personal defilement? What else should it be? Had Isaiah been a
Pharisee, he would have seized the opportunity of his sudden vicinity to
the Almighty to direct the Divine attention to his virtues, and
excellence, and superiority over other men. Had he been one of those
philosophers in whom the heart has been overlaid by the intellect, he
would have calmly proceeded to make observations on the Divine for a new
theory of the Absolute and Unconditioned, in sublime insensibility to
the deepest problem of existence, the awful antithesis of human sin and
of Divine holiness. Because Isaiah was a good man, his new proximity to
God woke within him a crushing horror of defilement and undoneness. And
it was so precisely because he had never been so near to God before, and
had never felt himself of so much importance. Away down here, sinning
among his fellow-men, the blots and blemishes of his soul seemed of
little moment. But up there, in the stainless light of heaven, with
God's holy eyes resting on him, every spot of sin within him grew hot
and horrible, every defiling stain an insult and a suffering inflicted
on the sensitive holiness of God. What he does has an effect on God;
what he is, is of consequence to God. Never had Isaiah felt himself so
near to God; never had he felt himself of such importance to his Maker;
and therefore never had he felt his sin so black and so unpardonable.
Believe me, these two things are linked together, and no man can divorce
them—the dignity of humanity and the damnableness of sin. You cannot
tamper with the one without touching the other. Men may, of laxity or of
pitifulness, seek to extenuate the guilt of sin and its infinite
possibilities of woes; but be sure of this, they will be compelled ere
long to attenuate the moral grandeur of our human nature, and to
surrender its majestic birthright of immortality. Two things go hand in
hand through the Bible, from the first chapter to the last, and mark it
out from all other books: the one is its unique and awful sense of the
guiltiness of sin; the other is the quite unapproachable splendour of
its conception of the dignity of man, made in the image of God, and
destined for His service here, and the fellowship of His love for
evermore.
The ethical process by which, in the imagery of the vision, Isaiah's
sense of sinfulness came home to him, is finely natural and simple. It
was at his lips that the consciousness of his impurity caught him. "Woe
is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." That,
judged by our formulas and standards, might seem a somewhat superficial
conviction of sin. We should have expected him to speak of his unclean
heart, or the total corruption of his whole nature. But conviction of
sin, actual conviction of sin, is very regardless of our theories, and
is as diverse in its manifestations as are the characters and records of
men. Sin finds out one man in one place, and another in a quite
different spot, and perhaps the experience is most real when it is least
theological. Isaiah felt his defilement in his lips, for suddenly he
found himself at heaven's gate, gazing on the glory of God, and
listening to the seraphs' ceaseless song of adoring praise. Isaiah loved
God, and instinctively he prepared to join his voice to the seraphs'
chant, but ere the harmony could pass his lips he caught his breath and
was dumb. A horrible sense of uncleanness had seized him. His breath was
tainted by his sin. He dared not mingle his polluted praise with the
worship of that pure, sinless host of heaven. Oh, the shame and agony of
that disability! for it meant that he has no part or place in that fair
scene. He is an alien and an intruder. Its beauty and its sweetness are
not for him. He belongs to a very different scene and a very different
company. He is no inhabitant of heaven, no servant of God; but a denizen
of earth, and a companion of sinners. Down there, amid its squalor, and
shame, and uncleanness, is his dwelling-place, remote from heaven, and
holiness, and God. "Woe is me! because I am a man of unclean lips, and I
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." With that, the horror
of his situation reached its climax. He stands there, on the threshold
of heaven in full sight of God and of His holiness, dumb and praiseless,
while all heaven rings and reverberates with the worship of its adoring
hosts. The awful tremor of that celestial praise passed into Isaiah's
frame, and it seemed like the pangs of instant dissolution. He, a
creature of God's, stands there in his Maker's presence, alone mute,
alone refusing to chant his Creator's glory, a blot and blank in the
holy harmony of heaven, a horrible and foul blemish amid the unsullied
purity of that celestial scene. It seemed to Isaiah as if all the light,
and glory, and holiness of heaven were gathering itself into one fierce
lightning fire of vengeance, to overwhelm and crush him out of
existence. "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
Isaiah in the presence of God felt within him the pang of that death
which must be the end of unpardoned sin in contact with the Divine
holiness. He felt himself already as good as dead, yet never in all his
life had he so longed to live as now, in sight of God, and heaven, and
holiness. He did not ask to escape. He was too overwhelmed to pray or
hope. But to God's heart that cry of despair was an infinitely
persuasive prayer for mercy. Ah! Heaven needs no lengthy explanation,
nor requires the recital of prescribed forms or theories. The moment a
sinful soul turns loathingly from sin, and longingly to God and
goodness, that instant the Heart above responds, and meets it with pity,
pardon, hope. Ere the piteous echo of Isaiah's cry had died away, one of
the seraphs flew with a burning ember from the incense altar, and laid
it on Isaiah's mouth, and said, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and
thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." The action is of
course symbolic, but the thing symbolised is a great spiritual fact. In
it we have mirrored the very heart of the process of redemption. The
cleansing efficacy of the burning ember resided not in the ember, but in
the Divine fire contained in it. In the imagery of sacrifice the fire is
always conceived as God's method of accepting and taking to Himself the
offering. The sacred flame that comes down from God, licks up the
sacrifice, and in vapour carries it up to heaven; a sweet-smelling
savour represents, therefore, the pitying holiness of God, that stoops
forgivingly to sinful men, and graciously accepts and sanctifies them
and their sacrifices. Contact with that has sin-cleansing power, and
nothing has besides. Pagan sages and Christian saints alike unite in
proclaiming the overmastering strength of sin. Mightier than nature's
most potent forces, stronger than all influences of persuasion, not to
be reversed or uprooted by any resources of earthly origin, is the grasp
of inveterate sin within the sinner's soul. Is there, then, no
possibility of recovery, no way of cleansing, no ray of hope? One there
is, and one alone. If Divine Purity would but stoop in pity to the
sinful one, would but enter, in claiming love, into his polluted soul,
would but come into actual contact and conflict with the sin and
uncleanness in a decisive struggle of triumph or defeat, then which must
prove the stronger, which must conquer—human sinfulness or Divine
holiness? Ay, if only God so loves our sin-stained race as that His
stainless purity enters really into our humanity, and wrestles with our
impurity in a contact that must be suffering to the Divine holiness, and
is sin-cleansing to us, that were salvation surely, that were
redemption. But is it a reality? Brethren, Jesus Christ has lived, and
died, and lives again, and we know that His Holy Spirit dwells in us and
in our world. That, and that alone, is salvation—not any theories, nor
any rites, but God's Holy Spirit given unto us.
It was at Isaiah's lips that the sense of sin had stung him, and it was
there that he received the cleansing. The seraph laid the hot ember on
his lips, and it left about his mouth the fragrance of the celestial
incense. He felt that he breathed the atmosphere and purity of heaven.
He too might now join in heaven's praise and service; no more an alien,
but a member of the celestial choir and a servant of the King. That act
of Divine mercy had transformed him. He was a new creature, and
instantly the change appeared. The voice of God sounds through the
temple, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And the
first of all heaven's hosts to offer is Isaiah. A moment before he had
shrunk back, crushed and despairing, from God's presence, feeling as if
the Divine gaze were death to him. Now he springs forward, invokes God's
attention on himself, and before all heaven's tried and trusty
messengers proposes himself as God's ambassador. Was it presumption? was
it self-assertion? I think if ever Isaiah was not thinking of himself at
all, if ever he had utterly forgotten self, and pride, and all things,
and was conscious only of God, and goodness, and gratitude, it was then,
when his heart was running over with wonder, love, and praise for God's
unspeakable mercy to him. It was not presumption; it was a true and
beautiful instinct, that made him yearn with resistless longing to do
something for that God who had shown such grace to him. Oh, the tender
love and irrepressible devotion of a forgiven heart! Nothing can
restrain it, nothing hold it back. Salvation, real salvation, springs
resistlessly onward into service.
[Footnote 2: Preached at Nottingham, before the Congregational Union of
England and Wales, on Monday evening, October 8th, 1888.]