was in the temple. Ewald and other able commentators interpret this to
mean the heavenly temple, and suppose that the future prophet was
transported to some imaginary place which he called by this name. But
this is quite a gratuitous suggestion, and it very much weakens the
impressiveness of the whole scene, the very point of which lies in the
fact that it took place on familiar ground. Isaiah was a Jerusalemite,
and the temple was the most familiar of all haunts to him. He had
witnessed there a thousand times the external ritual of religion--the
worshipping multitudes, the priests, and the paraphernalia of
sacrifice. But now, on the same spot, he was to see a sight in whose
glory all these things would disappear. This is what the critical
moments of religious experience are always meant to do: they
obliterate the familiar externals of religion and reveal the reality
which is hidden behind them; they convert common spots of every-day
experience into the house of God and the gate of heaven.
* * * * *
Such were the circumstances of time and place in which the crisis of
Isaiah's history occurred. One day, in the year that King Uzziah died,
he wended his way, as he had done hundreds of times before, to the
temple; and there that took place which altered the whole course of
his life. Whether in the body or out of the body, we cannot tell, he
saw three successive visions, or rather a threefold vision--a vision
of God, a vision of sin, and a vision of grace.
1. It began with a Vision of God. The chapter opens with these sublime
words, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord." It is an
astounding statement to come from a prophet of that religion whose
fundamental principle was the spirituality of God, "No man hath seen
God at any time"; and, indeed, there is an old rabbinical tradition,
that King Manasseh, who is said to have caused Isaiah to be sawn
asunder, made the alleged impiety of these words the excuse for his
cruelty. But it was a mere excuse; for the difficulty only serves to
prove the transcendent spiritual tact and literary skill of the
prophet, who manages the scene in such a way as to preserve quite
intact the principle of the Divine spirituality. Though he says that
he saw God, he gives no description of Him; only the sights and sounds
round about Him are so described as in the most vivid way to suggest
the Presence which remains unseen. It is as if a historical scene of
ruin and conflagration were represented on canvas, without showing the
burning materials, by painting the glare of light and the emotions of
terror and dismay on the faces of the spectators.
First, the throne on which God sits is described: it is erected in the
temple, and it is high and lifted up, for He is a great King. But no
description is given of the figure seated on it; only His train--the
billowing folds of His robes--filled the temple. Above the throne, or
rather round it, like the courtiers surrounding the throne of an
Eastern monarch, stand the seraphim. These beings are mentioned only
here in Holy Writ. Their name signifies the shining or fiery ones.
They are attendants of the Divine King, bright and swift as fire in
their intelligence and activity. Each has six wings: with twain he
covers his face, and with twain he covers his feet, evidently to
protect his eyes and person from the consuming glory of the Divine
presence, which is thus indicated again without being described; and
with the remaining two he flies, or rather poises himself in his place
ready for flight at the Divine signal.
Then, amidst these sublime sights break in sounds equally sublime. By
our translation the impression is produced that they come from the
seraphim. But the original is more vague, and the meaning probably is,
that the responsive voices which are heard come from unseen choirs in
opposite quarters of the temple. Unceasingly the strain rises from one
side, unceasingly the answer comes from the other; in the centre the
voices meet and mingle in loud harmony.
Their burden is, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole
earth is full of His glory." That is, they are celebrating the two
attributes of the Divine character which always most impressed a
Jewish mind--His holiness and His omnipotence. The one is God as He is
in Himself, turned inwards, so to speak. He is absolutely holy,
unapproachable, a consuming fire scorching away impurity, falsehood,
and sin of every kind. The other is God as He is in the world, turned
outwards, so to speak; the world's fulness--suns and systems,
mountains and oceans, earthquake and storm, summer's abundance and
winter's terror--all this is His glory, the garment by which He makes
Himself visible.[9]
The voices swell till the temple rocks, or seems to rock to the
reeling senses of the prophet, and the house is filled with smoke, or
seems to be so, as a mist envelops the swooning spirit of the
spectator. But still, through the mist, there peal, falling like the
strokes of a hammer on the listening heart, the notes of the dread
song, "Holy, holy, holy."
2. Next ensued a Vision of Sin. The vision of God could not but unseal
a rushing stream of feeling of some kind in Isaiah. But of what kind
would it be? Surely of joyful adoration: the soul, inspired with the
sublimity of these sights and thrilled with these sounds, will rise to
the majesty of the occasion, and the human voice will strike in with
all its force among the angelic voices, crying, "Holy, holy, holy."
So one might have expected. But the human mind is a strange thing; and
it is difficult to know where and how to touch its delicate and
complex mechanism so as to produce any desired effect. You wish to
produce a flow of tender feeling, and you tell a pathetic tale, which
ought, you think, to move the heart. But at every sentence the
features of the listeners harden into more and more rigidity, or even
relax into mocking laughter; whereas the suggestion of a noble
thought, which seems to have nothing to do with pathos, may
instantaneously melt the soul and unseal the fountain of tears. Or is
it the conscience which is to be affected? The clumsy operator begins
to assail it straight with denunciations of sin, but, instead of
producing penitence, he only rouses the whole man into proud and angry
self-defence; whereas a single touch, no heavier than an infant's
finger, applied away up somewhere, remote from conscience, in the
region of the imagination, may send an electric shock down through the
whole being and shake the conscience from centre to circumference.
Isaiah's mind was one of the most sensitive and complicated ever
bestowed on a human being; but it was now in the hands of its Maker,
who knew how to touch it to fine issues. The Maker's design on this
occasion was to produce in it an overpowering sense of sin; and what
He did was to confront it with infinite holiness and majesty. These
were brought so near that there was no escape. The poor, finite,
sinful man was held at arm's length, so to speak, in the grasp of the
Infinite and Most Holy; and the result was a total collapse of the
human spirit. Isaiah's eye turned away from the sight of God's glory
back upon himself, and back on his past life; and, in this light, all
appeared foul and hideous. There was sin everywhere--sin in himself
and sin in his environment. He was utterly confounded and swallowed up
of shame and terror. "Woe is me," he groaned, "for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips."
Why he felt the taint specially on his lips it might not be easy to
tell. Perhaps it was because the angelic song was a challenge to join
in the praise of God, but he felt that the lips of one like him were
not worthy to join in their song. Perhaps--who can tell?--the
besetting sin of his previous life may have been profanity of speech,
as it was evidently a crying sin of his time. This suggestion gives a
shock to the ideas which we associate with Isaiah, and it is hard to
think that the lips which afterwards spoke like angels can ever have
defiled themselves with such a sin. But this is the most natural
meaning of the words, and it is not against the analogy of other
lives. Great saints, and even great preachers, are made out of great
sinners; and the memory of an odious and conspicuous sin like this may
sometimes lend a passionate force to subsequent devotion and keep
alive for a lifetime the sense of personal unworthiness.
3. The last scene in the evolution of this vision, which was surely
more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery
attendants, who hovered on quivering wing ready to execute the orders
of the Divine King, receiving a command by some unexplained mode of
communication, flew to the altar, and, taking up the tongs, seized
with them a stone from the altar fire. It was neither a coal, as our
rendering gives it, nor a brand, but a heated stone, such as was used,
and is used at the present day, in the East, for conveying heat to a
distance for any purpose for which it might be required. It came from
the altar: it contained God's fire, and God sent it.
The purpose for which it was required on this occasion was cleansing.
Of cleansing there are in Scripture three symbols. The simplest is
water; and water can purify many things; but there are some things
which water cannot cleanse. A stronger agent is required, and this is
found in fire. You must fling the ore, for example, into the fire, if
you wish to extract from it the pure gold. There is a third symbol,
which appears in the New Testament as well as the Old, and it is the
most sacred of all. It is blood. Water, fire, blood--these three mean
the same in Scripture. In this case it was fire.
The seraph flew with the hot stone and laid it on the lips of the
future prophet. Why did he lay it there? Because it was there that
Isaiah felt his sin to be lying. He had said, "I am a man of unclean
lips." The fire burned the sin away. So the seraph said, speaking in
God's name, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is
taken away and thy sin purged." It was the assurance of the Divine
forgiveness, which had come swift as a seraph's flight in answer to
Isaiah's confession.[10]
Isaiah's preparation was completed in these three successive phases of
experience; and now the purpose was disclosed for which he had been
prepared. From aloft--from the throne high and lifted up--came the
question, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" The King needed
a messenger to bear a message and represent Himself. He had chosen
Isaiah to bear it; yet He did not thrust the commission on him.[11] He
did not need to do so; for Isaiah had passed through a preparation
which made him not only thoroughly able, but thoroughly willing. He
had been lifted out of time into eternity; and in this one hour of
concentrated experience he had both died and been born again. His life
had been undone and forfeited; but God had given it back to him, and
he felt that now it was not his own. He was thrilling with the power
of forgiveness, and the impulses towards God--to be near Him, to
serve Him, to do anything for Him--were now far stronger than his
shrinking from Him had been a little before. Therefore of his own free
will and choice he answered the Divine question with, "Here am I, send
me."
* * * * *
Gentlemen, I have gone minutely into the details of this scene in the
life of a representative preacher of the Old Testament, because every
line of it speaks to the deep and subtle movements of our own
experience. What is the inference to be drawn from it? Is it that at
the commencement of a preacher's career there must be a call to the
ministry distinct from the experience of personal salvation? This
inference has often been drawn; but I prefer, in the meantime at
least, to draw a wider but, I believe, a sounder and more useful
inference. It is this: that the outer must be preceded by the inner;
public life for God must be preceded by private life with God; unless
God has first spoken to a man, it is vain for a man to attempt to
speak for God.
This principle has an extensive and varied application.
It applies to the beginnings of the religious life. I should like to
be allowed to say to you, gentlemen, with all the earnestness of which
I am capable, that the prime qualification of a minister is that he be
himself a religious man--that, before he begins to make God known, he
should first himself know God. How this comes to pass, this is not the
place to explain. Only let me say, that it is more than the play upon
us of religious influences from the outside. There must be a reaction
on our own part--an opening of our nature to take in and assimilate
what is brought to bear on us by others. There must be an uprising of
our own will and a deliberate choice of God. Of course in the history
of many there are, at this stage, experiences almost as dramatic and
memorable as this scene in the life of Isaiah; and they may be
composed of nearly identical elements. In some haunt of ordinary
life--perhaps in the church of one's childhood or in the room
consecrated by the prayers of early years--there comes a sudden
revelation of God, which transfigures everything. In this great light
the man feels himself to be like an unclean thing, ready to be
condemned and annihilated by the presence of the Thrice Holy. But then
ensues the wonderful revelation of grace, when God takes up the soul
in despair and draws it to His heart, penetrating it with the sense of
forgiveness and the confidence of childhood. It is not surprising that
this new-born life should feel itself at once dedicated to the service
of God. I heard one of our most rising ministers say a short time ago,
that he knew he was to be a minister on the very day of his
conversion, though at the time he was engaged in a totally different
pursuit.
But this may come later; and it may be the burden of another great
moment of revelation. For, as I have hinted already in this lecture,
the true Christian life is not all a silent, unmarked growth; it has
its crises also, when it rises at a bound to new levels, where new
prospects unfold themselves before it and alter everything. There are
moments in life more precious than days, and there are days which we
would not exchange for years. Swept along with other materials into
the common receptacle of memory, they shine like gold, silver,
precious stones among the wood, hay, stubble of ordinary experience.
It is impossible to say how much one such experience may do to direct
and to inspire a life. I believe that many a humble minister has such
an experience hidden in his memory, which he may never have disclosed
to anyone, but which is invested for himself with unfading splendor
and authority, and binds him to the service of God till his dying
day.[12]
But this principle, which we have drawn for our own use from Isaiah's
call, applies not only to the initial act, but to every subsequent
detail of our life. It is true of every appearance which a minister
makes before a congregation. Unless he has spent the week with God and
received Divine communications, it would be better not to enter the
pulpit or open his mouth on Sunday at all. There ought to be on the
spirit, and even on the face of a minister, as he comes forth before
men, a ray of the glory which was seen on the face of Moses when he
came down among the people with God's message from the mount.
It applies, too, on a larger scale, to the ministerial life as a
whole. Valuable as an initial call may be, it will not do to trade too
long on such a memory. A ministry of growing power must be one of
growing experience. The soul must be in touch with God and enjoy
golden hours of fresh revelation. The truth must come to the minister
as the satisfaction of his own needs and the answer to his
perplexities; and he must be able to use the language of religion, not
as the nearest equivalent he can find for that which he believes
others to be passing through, but as the exact equivalent of that
which he has passed through himself. There are many rules for praying
in public, and a competent minister will not neglect them; but there
is one rule worth all the rest put together, and it is this: Be a man
of prayer yourself; and then the congregation will feel, as you open
your lips to lead their devotions, that you are entering an accustomed
presence and speaking to a well-known Friend. There are arts of study
by which the contents of the Bible can be made available for the
edification of others; but this is the best rule: Study God's Word
diligently for your own edification; and then, when it has become
more to you than your necessary food and sweeter than honey or the
honey-comb, it will be impossible for you to speak of it to others
without a glow passing into your words which will betray the delight
with which it has inspired yourself.[13]
Perhaps of all causes of ministerial failure the commonest lies here;
and of all ministerial qualifications, this, although the simplest, is
the most trying. Either we have never had a spiritual experience deep
and thorough enough to lay bare to us the mysteries of the soul; or
our experience is too old, and we have repeated it so often that it
has become stale to ourselves; or we have made reading a substitute
for thinking; or we have allowed the number and the pressure of the
duties of our office to curtail our prayers and shut us out of our
studies; or we have learned the professional tone in which things
ought to be said, and we can fall into it without present feeling.
Power for work like ours is only to be acquired in secret; it is only
the man who has a large, varied and original life with God who can go
on speaking about the things of God with fresh interest; but a
thousand things happen to interfere with such a prayerful and
meditative life. It is not because our arguments for religion are not
strong enough that we fail to convince, but because the argument is
wanting which never fails to tell; and this is religion itself. People
everywhere can appreciate this, and nothing can supply the lack of it.
The hearers may not know why their minister, with all his gifts, does
not make a religious impression on them; but it is because he is not
himself a spiritual power.[14]
There comes to my mind a reminiscence from college days, which grows
more significant to me the longer I live. One Saturday morning at our
Missionary Society there came, at our invitation, to talk to us about
our future life, the professor who was the idol of the students and
reputed the most severely scientific of the whole staff. We used to
think him keen, too, and cynical; and what we expected was perhaps a
scathing exposure of the weaknesses of ministers or a severe
exhortation to study. It turned out, on the contrary, to be a strange
piece, steeped in emotion and full of almost lyrical tenderness; and I
can still remember the kind of awe which fell on us, as, from this
reserved nature, we heard a conception of the ministry which had
scarcely occurred to any of us before; for he said, that the great
purpose for which a minister is settled in a parish is not to
cultivate scholarship, or to visit the people during the week, or even
to preach to them on Sunday, but it is to live among them as a good
man, whose mere presence is a demonstration which cannot be gainsaid
that there is a life possible on earth which is fed from no earthly
source, and that the things spoken of in church on Sabbath are
realities.
Side by side with this reminiscence there lives in my memory another,
which also grows more beautiful the more I learn of life. It was my
happiness, when I was ordained, to be settled next neighbour to an
aged and saintly minister. He was a man of competent scholarship, and
had the reputation of having been in early life a powerful and popular
preacher. But it was not to these gifts that he owned his unique
influence. He moved through the town, with his white hair and somewhat
staid and dignified demeanour, as a hallowing presence. His very
passing in the street was a kind of benediction, and the people, as
they looked after him, spoke of him to each other with affectionate
veneration. Children were proud when he laid his hand on their heads,
and they treasured the kindly words which he spoke to them. At
funerals and other seasons of domestic solemnity his presence was
sought by people of all denominations. We who laboured along with him
in the ministry felt that his mere existence in the community was an
irresistible demonstration of Christianity and a tower of strength to
every good cause. Yet he had not gained this position of influence by
brilliant talents or great achievements or the pushing of ambition;
for he was singularly modest, and would have been the last to credit
himself with half the good he did. The whole mystery lay in this, that
he had lived in the town for forty years a blameless life, and was
known by everybody to be a godly and prayerful man. He was good enough
to honour me with his friendship; and his example wrote deeply upon
my mind these two convictions--that it may sometimes be of immense
advantage to spend a whole lifetime in a single pastorate, and that
the prime qualification for the ministry is goodness.[15]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] "One great part of the history of the Bible is the history of
Calls."--DEAN CHURCH.
[8] I am sorry to observe that even Mr. G.A. Smith, whose Commentary on
Isaiah is distinguished not only by thorough scholarship but by what is
far rarer in works of the kind--a profusion of just and inspiring
ideas--at this point, following bad examples, says that there are ideas
imported into the account of Isaiah's call which belonged to a later
period of his life. Not only is this wrong psychologically, because it
minimises the divinatory power of the human spirit in the great moments
of experience; but surely it is utterly wrong artistically, because, if
the ideas are historically out of place, Isaiah himself ought to have
felt that, by placing them there, he was breaking the spell of
verisimilitude, on which the effect of such a picture depends.
[9] This is the literal translation, "The fulness of the whole world is
His glory."
[10] The lips of Jeremiah were also touched in his call by the hand of
God. But the meaning appears to have been different. He had complained
that he could not speak--that he was tongue-tied. The touch of the
Divine hand may have meant that the restraining cord was loosed, and a
free passage made for the utterance of what he had to say. The words
which accompanied the touch suggest, however, a slightly different
idea--"Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth." The difficulty of
Jeremiah was not exactly that of Moses, who, when he complained that he
could not speak, meant that, never having acquired the art of expressing
himself, he could not utter what he had to say, even though he was full
of matter. This was the natural difficulty of an elderly man; for the
art of expression has to be acquired in youth. But the difficulty of a
young man like Jeremiah is not so much to express what he has to say as
to get something worth saying. This was what Jeremiah complained of; and
the touching of his lips meant that God was putting His own words into
his mouth. It was a promise that the well of ideas in his mind should
not run dry, but that God would give him such a revelation of His mind
and will as would supply him with an ample message to his age. All three
cases are full of instruction and encouragement.