There came on the prophet, as in a flash, the two convictions, one
which he learned from the song of the seraphs, ringing in music through
the Temple, and one which rose up, like an answering note from the
voice of conscience within. They sang 'Holy! holy! holy! Lord God
Almighty.' And what was the response to that, in the prophet's
heart?--'I am unclean.' Each major note has a corresponding minor, and
the triumphant doxology of the seraph wakes in the hearer's conscience
the lowly confession of personal unlikeness to the holiness of God. It
was not joy that sprang in Isaiah's heart when he saw the throned King,
and heard the proclamation of His name. It was not reverence merely
that bowed his head in the dust, but it was the awakened consciousness,
'Thou art holy; and now that I understand, in some measure, what Thy
holiness means, I look on myself and I say, "unclean! unclean!"'
The prophet's confession assumes a form which may strike us as somewhat
singular. Why is it that he speaks of 'unclean lips,' rather than of an
unclean heart? I suppose partly because, in a very deep sense, a man's
words are more accurately a cast, as it were, from a man's character
than even his actions, and partly because the immediate occasion of his
confession was the words of the seraphim, and he could not but contrast
what came burning from their pure lips with what had trickled from, and
soiled, his own.
But, however expressed, the consciousness of personal unlikeness to the
holiness of God is the first result, and the instantaneous result, of
any real apprehension of that holiness, and of any true vision of Him.
Like some search-light flung from a ship over the darkling waters,
revealing the dark doings of the enemy away out yonder in the night,
the thought of God and His holiness streaming in upon a man's soul, if
it does so in any adequate measure, is sure to disclose the heaving
waters and the skulking foes that are busy in the dark.
But it was not only the consciousness of sinfulness and antagonism that
woke up instantaneously in response to that vision of the holy God. It
was likewise a shrinking apprehension of personal evil from contact of
God's light with Isaiah's darkness. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of
the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' What is to
become, then, of the man that has neither the one nor the other? The
experience of all the world witnesses that whenever there comes, in
reality, or in a man's conceptions or fancy, the contact of the
supernatural, as it is called, with the natural, there is a shrinking,
a sense of eerieness, an apprehension of vague possibilities of evil.
The sleeping snake that is coiled in every soul stirs and begins to
heave in its bulk, and wake, when the thought of a holy God comes into
the heart. Now, I do not suppose that consciousness of sin is the whole
explanation of that universal human feeling, but I am very sure it is
an element in it, and I suspect that if there were no sin, there would
be no shrinking.
At all events, be that as it may, these are the two thoughts that,
involuntarily and spontaneously and immediately, sprang in this man's
heart when his purged eyes saw the King on His throne. He did not leap
up with gladness at the vision. Its consolatory and its strengthening
aspects were not the first that impinged upon his eye, or upon his
consciousness, but the first thing was an instinctive recoil, 'Woe is
me; I am undone.' Now, brethren, I venture to think that one main
difference between shallow religion and real is to be found here, that
the dim, far-off vision, if we may venture to call it so, which serves
the most of us for a sight of God, leaves us quite complacent, and with
very slight and superficial conceptions of our own evil, and that if
once we saw, in so far as it is possible for humanity to-day to see,
God as He is, and heard in the depths of our hearts that 'Holy! holy!
holy!' from the burning seraphim, the easy-going, self-satisfied
judgment of ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly
impossible; and would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of
God. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,' said Job, 'but
now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust
and ashes.' A hearsay God and a self-complacent beholder--a God really
seen, and a man down in the dust before Him! Has that vision ever
blazed in on you? And if it has, has not the light shown you the
seaminess of much in which a dimmer light detects no flaws or stains?
Thank God if, having seen Him, you see yourselves. If you have not
felt, 'I am unclean and undone,' depend upon it, your knowledge of God
is faint and dim, and He is rather One heard of from the lips of others
than realised in your own experience.
II. Again, note the second stage here, in the education of a soul for
service--the sin, recognised and repented, is burned away.
'Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it
upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips; and thine
iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.'
Now, I would notice as to this stage of the process, first, that Isaiah
singularly passes beyond all the old ritual in which he had been
brought up, and recognises another kind of cleansing than that which it
embodied. He had got beyond the ritual to what the ritual meant. We
have passed beyond the ritual, too, by another process; and, though I
would by no means read full, plain, articulate Christian thought into
the vision of Isaiah--which would be an anachronism, and unfaithful to
the gradual historical development of the idea and means of
redemption--yet I cannot help pointing to the fact that, even although
this vision is located as seen in the Temple, there is not a single
reference (except that passing allusion to the altar) to the ritual of
the Temple, but the cleansing comes in another fashion altogether.
But far more important than that thought is the human condition that is
required ere this cleansing can be realised. 'I am a man of unclean
lips.' 'I am undone!' It was because that conviction and confession
sprang in the prophet's consciousness that the seraph winged his way
with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just
this: faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what
we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the
recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the
resolve to turn my back on my own past self. Now, it seems to me that a
great deal of what is called, and in a sense is, Evangelical teaching,
fails to represent the full counsel of God, in the matter of man's
redemption, because it puts a one-sided emphasis on faith, and slurs
over the accompanying idea of repentance. And I am here to say that a
trust in Jesus Christ, which is unaccompanied by a profound penitent
consciousness and abhorrence of one's own sins, and a resolve to turn
away from them for the time to come, is not a faith which will bring
either pardon or cleansing. We do not need to have less said about
trust; we need to have a great deal more said about repentance. You
have to learn what it is to say, 'I abhor myself'; you have to learn
what it is to say, 'I will turn right round, and leave all that past
behind me; and go in the opposite direction'; or the faith which you
say you are exercising will neither save nor cleanse your souls nor
your lives.
Again, note that we have here set forth most strikingly the other great
truth that, side by side, and as closely synchronous as the flash and
the peal, as soon as the consciousness of sin and the aversion from it
spring in a man's heart, the seraph's wings are set in motion. Remember
that beautiful old story in the historical books, of how the erring
king, brought to sanity and repentance by Nathan's apologue, put all
his acknowledgments in these words, 'I have sinned against the Lord';
and how the confession was not out of his lips, nor had died in its
vibration in the atmosphere, before the prophet, with divine authority,
replied with equal brevity and completeness, and as if the two sayings
were parts of one sentence, '_And_ the Lord hath made to pass the
iniquity of thy sin.' That is all. Simultaneous are the two things. To
confess is to be forgiven, and the moment that the consciousness of sin
rises in the heart, that moment does the heavenly messenger come to
still and soothe.
Still further, notice how the cleansing comes as a divine gift. It is
purifying, much more than pardon, that is set forth in the symbolical
incident before us. The seraph is the divine messenger, and he brings a
coal from the altar, and lays that upon the prophet's lips, which is
but the symbolical way of saying that the man who is conscious of his
own evil will find in himself a blessed despair of being his own
healer, and that he has to turn to the divine source, the vision of
which has kindled the consciousness, to find there that which will take
away the evil. The Lord is 'He that healeth us.'
But, further, the cleansing is by fire. By which, as I suppose, in the
present context, and at Isaiah's stage of religious knowledge and
experience, we are to understand that great thought that God burns away
our sins, as you put a piece of foul clay into the fire, and the stain
melts from the surface like a dissipating cloud as the heat finds its
way into the substance. 'He will baptize with the Holy Ghost and with
fire'--a fire that quickens. A new impulse will be granted, which will
become the life of the sinful man's life, and will emancipate him from
the power of his own darkness and evil.
Now, let us remember that _we_ have the fulness of all that was
shadowed to the prophet in this vision, and that the reality of every
one of these emblems is gathered together--if I may so say--not with
confusion, but with abundance and opulence in Jesus Christ Himself. Is
He not the seraph? Is He not Himself the burning coal? Is He not the
altar from which it is taken? All that is needed to make the foulest
clean is given in Christ's great work. Brethren, we shall never
understand the deepest secret of Christ and of Christianity until we
learn and hold fast by the conviction that the central work of Jesus is
to deal with man's sin; and that whatever else Christianity is, it is
first and foremost God's way of redeeming the world, and making it
possible for the unholy to dwell with His holy self.
III. Lastly, and only a word, the third stage here is--the purged
spirit is ready for service.
God did not bid the prophet go on His mission till the prophet had
voluntarily accepted the mission. He said, 'Who will go for us?' He
wants no pressed men in His army. He does not work with reluctant
servants. There is, first, the yielding of the will, and then there is
the enduement with the privilege of service. The prophet, having passed
through the preceding experiences, had thereby received a quick ear to
hear God's calling for volunteers. And we shall not hear Him asking
'Who will go?' unless we have, in our measure, passed through similar
experiences. It will be a test of having done so, of our having been
purged from our evil, if, when other people think that it is only Eli
speaking, we know that it is the Lord that has called us, and say,
'Here am I.'
For such experiences as I have been describing do influence the will,
and mould the heart, and make it a delight to do God's commandments,
and to execute His purpose, and to be the ministers of His great Word.
Some of us are willing to say that we have learned God's holiness; that
we have seen and confessed our sins; that we have received pardon and
cleansing. Have these experiences made you ready for any service? Have
they made your will flexible--made you dethrone yourself, and enthrone
the King whom the prophet saw? If they have, they are genuine; if they
have not, they are not. Submission of will; glorying in being the
instrument of the divine purpose; ears sharpened to catch His lowest
whisper; eyes that, like those of a dog fixed on his master, watch for
the faintest indication from his guiding eye--these are the infallible
tests and signs of having had lips and heart touched with the live coal
that burns away our uncleanness.
So, friends, would that I could flash upon every conscience that
vision! But you can do so for yourselves. Let me beseech you to bring
yourselves honestly into that solemn light of the character of God, and
to ask yourselves, 'How can two walk together except they be agreed?'
Do not put away such thoughts with any shallow, easy-going talk about
how God is good and will not be hard upon a poor fellow that has tried
to do his best. God is good; God is love. But divine goodness and love
cannot find a way by which the unclean shall dwell with the clean. What
then? This then--Jesus Christ has come. We may be made clean if we
trust in Him, and forsake our sins. He will touch the heart and lips
with the fire of His own Spirit, and then it will be possible to dwell
with the everlasting burnings of that flaming fire which is a holy God.
Blessed are they that have seen the vision; blessed they that have felt
it disclosing their own sins; blessed they whose hearts have been
purged. Blessed most of all they who, educated and trained through
these experiences, have taken this as the motto of their lives, 'Here
am I; send me.'