Zechariah has a vision of the ideal Messianic times, and, of course, as
must necessarily be the case, his picture is painted with colours laid
upon his palette by his experience, and he depicts that distant future
in the guise suggested to him by what he saw around him. So we have to
disentangle from his words the sentiment which he expresses, and to
recognise the symbolic way in which he puts it. His thought is
this,--the inscription on the high priest's mitre will be written on
the bells which ornament the harness of the horses, which in Israel
were never used as with us, but only either for war or for pomp and
display, and the use of which was always regarded with a certain kind
of doubt and suspicion. Even these shall be consecrated in that far-off
day.
And then he goes on with variations on the same air, 'In that day there
shall be upon the bells of the horses, "Holiness unto the Lord,"' and
adds that 'the pots in the Lord's house'--the humble vessels that were
used for the most ordinary parts of the Temple services--'shall be like
the bowls before the altar,' into which the sacred blood of the
offerings was poured. The most external and secular thing bearing upon
religion shall be as sacred as the sacredest. But that is not all.
'Yea! every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the
Lord of hosts, and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of
them,' and put their offerings therein. That is to say, the coarse
pottery vessels that were in every poverty-stricken house in the city
shall be elevated to the rank of the sacred vessels of the Temple.
Domestic life with all its secularities shall be hallowed. The kitchens
of Jerusalem shall be as truly places of worship as is the inner shrine
of the Most High.
On the whole, the prophet's teaching is that, in the ideal state of man
upon earth, there will be an entire abolition of the distinction
between 'sacred' and 'secular'; a distinction that has wrought infinite
mischief in the world, and in the lives of Christian people.
Let me translate these words of our prophet into English equivalents.
Every cup and tumbler in a poor man's kitchen may be as sacred as the
communion chalice that passes from lip to lip with the 'blood of Jesus
Christ' in it. Every common piece of service that we do, down among the
vulgarities and the secularities and the meannesses of daily life, may
be lifted up to stand upon precisely the same level as the sacredest
office that we undertake. The bells of the horses may jingle to the
same tune as the trumpets of the priests sounded within the shrine, and
on all, great and small, may be written, 'Holiness to the Lord.'
But let us remember that that universally diffused sanctity will need
to have a centre of diffusion, else there will be no diffusion, and
that all life will become sacred when the man that lives it has
'Holiness to the Lord' written on his forehead, and not else. If that
be the inscription on the driver's heart, the horses that he drives
will have it written on their bells, but they will not have it unless
it be. Holy men make all things holy. 'To the pure all things are
pure,' but unto them that are unclean and disobedient there is nothing
pure. Hallow thyself, and all things are clean unto thee.