'With twain he covered his feet.' The less comely and inferior parts of
that fiery corporeity were veiled lest they should be seen by the Eyes
that see all things. The wings made no screen that hid the seraph's
feet from the eye of God, but it was the instinctive lowly sense of
unworthiness that folded them across the feet, even though they, too,
burned as a furnace. The nearer we get to God, the more we shall be
aware of our limitations and unworthiness, and it is because that
vision of the Lord sitting on 'His throne, high and lifted up,' with
the thrilling sense of His glory filling the holy temple of the
universe, does not burn before us that we can conceit ourselves to have
anything worth pluming ourselves upon. Once lift the curtain, once let
my eye be flooded with the sight of God, and away goes all my
self-conceit, and all my fancied superiority above others. One little
molehill is pretty nearly the same height as another, if you measure
them both against the top of the Himalayas, that lie in the background,
with their glittering peaks of snow. 'Star differeth from star in
glory' in a winter's night, but when the great sun swims into the sky,
they all vanish together. If you and I saw God burning before us, as
Isaiah saw Him, we should veil ourselves, and lose all that which so
often veils Him from us--the fancy that we are anything when we are
nothing. And the nearer we get to God, and the purer we are, the more
shall we be keenly conscious of our imperfections and our sins. 'If I
say I am perfect,' said Job in his wise way, 'this also should prove me
perverse.' Consciousness of sin is the continual accompaniment of
growth in holiness. 'The heavens are not pure in His sight, and He
chargeth His angels with folly.' Everything looks black beside that
sovereign whiteness. Get God into your lives, and you will see that the
feet need to be washed, and you will cry, 'Lord! not my feet only, but
my hands and my head!'