In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord. Isaiah 6 The story of the prophet's call -- why inserted here Prof . S. R. Driver, D. D. Why the narrative of the prophet's call was not, as in the cases of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, allowed to occupy the first place in the book, is a question which cannot be certainly answered. One conjecture is that chaps. 1-5 were placed first for the purpose of preparing the reader of the book for the severity of tone which marks the end of chap. 6, and of acquainting him with the condition of things in Judah which led to such a tone being adopted. Or, again, it is possible that chap. 6 may have been placed so as to follow chaps. 1-5, because, though describing what occurred earlier, it may not have been actually committed to writing till afterwards — perhaps as an introduction to Isaiah 7:1-9:7 . ( Prof . S. R. Driver, D. D. ) Why did Isaiah publish this account of his call P. Thomson, M. A. ? — Why was it needful to publish a private transaction between God and Isaiah? The only reason we can conceive of is that the prophet needed to give a justification of his public assumption of prophetic work. And that implies in the community a suspicion of prophetic men, and in the young prophet's mind struggles and hesitation such as we can easily conceive. This picture of his call he holds up half before himself, as the answer to all the timid fears of his own heart, and half before his countrymen, as his reply to all the objections they might raise against his prophetic commission. This is strongly confirmed when we proceed to look at the message which the prophet is sent to deliver (vers. 9, 10). ( P. Thomson, M. A. ) The circumstances of the vision W. Hay Aitken, M. A. Let us try, if we can, and present to our imaginations some idea of this extraordinary scene. The shades of evening are closing in, and all is still within the sacred precincts of the temple. The daily ritual has been duly observed, and priests and worshippers have withdrawn from the hallowed fane. The noise and stir of the great city, hard by is subsiding; a solemn hush and stillness pervades the place. One solitary worshipper still lingers within the sacred courts absorbed a reverie of prayer. He is a religions and devout man; probably a member of the school of the prophets, well instructed in the faith of his fathers, and familiar with the sacred ritual of the temple, and the lessons that it inculcated. There he is, looking forward possibly to a prophet's career, yet feeling keenly the responsibilities which it will involve, and perhaps pleading earnestly to be fitted for his mission. He cannot be blind to the unsatisfactory condition of his people. Amidst much outward profession of religiousness and readiness to comply with the ceremonial demands of the faith, he cannot but discern the presence of barren formalism and hypocrisy, and of a latent superstition that might at any moment, were the restraints of authority removed, blossom out into open idolatry. And who shall say what heart searchings may have occupied his own mind as he knelt there in the temple all alone with God. Was he more spiritual than those around him? Was he sufficiently pure and devout to stand up in protest against a nation's sins? One moment all is silence and stillness as he kneels in prayer; the next, and lo! a blaze of glory and a burst of song! Startled and awe-stricken, the lonely worshipper raises his head to find himself confronted with a sublime and dazzling spectacle. His bewildered vision travels up through ranks of light till it finds itself resting for a moment, but only for a moment, on an Object "too august for human gaze." I saw also, the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Around that dread Presence the forms of vast and wondrous intelligences of glory, the attendant ministers of the Majesty Divine, seem bending in adoration, and the voice of their worship falls like the roll of thunder on his ear, shaking the very pillars of the temple porch with its awe-inspiring resonance, as they echo and re-echo with answering acclamations the antiphon of heaven — "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory." ( W. Hay Aitken, M. A. ) The vision Sir E. Strachey, Bart. Isaiah might probably have said, as St. Paul did on a like occasion, "Whether I was in the body or out of the body I cannot tell," but he would undoubtedly have confirmed the plain meaning of his words that the vision was a reality and a fact. ( Sir E. Strachey, Bart. ) The Symbolism of Isaiah's vision J. Matthews. There is a variety of opinion among the commentators as to the basis of the symbolism of this vision. Some assert that the imagery by which the prophet sets forth the wealth and splendour of the heavenly kingdom is taken entirely from the scenery and ritual of the temple; that when the worshippers had left, and the sacrifices had been offered, and only a few of the most devout remained for prayer and vigil, Isaiah, lingering with the few, unsatisfied and perplexed, beheld this vision, and consecrated himself to his prophetic activity: In this view the picture presented of the celestial world is the inner features and ritual of the temple idealised and expanded. Dr. Cheyne casts doubt upon this interpretation, and leans to the opinion that not the temple but the palace is the point from which the prophet's inspired imagination takes its departure. The figures, the messengers, and the throne are from the court, not from the temple. It is impossible wholly to accept either of these views. There is no reason why we should not blend both in our exposition of Isaiah's vision. There are certainly some references to the temple in the altar, the purging away of sin, and the smoke-filled house. In the throne and the train filling the temple there are suggestions of the court. As Isaiah was an attendant on both, it is probable that the ideas under which he sets forth the kingship of Christ, as priestly and yet regal, were drawn from his own observation of the centres of government and worship in his own country. Ideas of righteousness, and sympathy, and sacrifice unite in his conception of the invisible kingdom. ( J. Matthews. ) Isaiah's vision of God F. D. Maurice, M. A. Some of you may have been watching a near and beautiful landscape in the land of mountains and eternal snows, till you have been exhausted by its very richness, and till the distant hills which bounded it have seemed, you knew not why, to limit and contract the view; and then a veil has been withdrawn, and new hills, not looking as if they belonged to this earth, yet giving another character to all that does belong to it, have unfolded them. selves before you. This is a very imperfect likeness of that revelation which must have been made to the inner eye of the prophet, when he saw another throne than the throne of the house of David, another King than Uzziah or Jotham, another train than that of priests or minstrels in the temple, other winged forms than those golden ones which overshadowed the mercy seat. ( F. D. Maurice, M. A. ) The inaugural vision of Isaiah A. B. Davidson, D. D. contains in brief an outline of his prophetic teaching. The passage besides this has a singular psychological and religious interest of a kind personal to the prophet. It consists of a series of steps, each one of which naturally follows upon the other. I. There is first A VISION OF THE LORD, THE KING, surprising and majestic, with a singular world of beings and activities around Him (cars. 1-4). II. THIS VISION OF JEHOVAH REACTS UPON THE MIND OF THE PROPHET and makes him think of himself in relation to this great King, the Holy One, whom he had seen; and one thought succeeds another, so that in a moment he lives a history (vats. 5-7). III. Having passed through this history, the beginning of which was terror, but the end peace, AN ALTOGETHER NEW SENSATION FILLED HIS MIND, as if the world, which was all disorder and confusion before, and filled with a conflict of tendencies and possibilities, had suddenly, in the light felling on it from the great King whom he had seen, become clear and the meaning of it plain, and also what was his own place in it; and this was accompanied with an irresistible impulse to take his place. This is expressed by saying that he heard the voice of the great Sovereign who had been revealed to him proclaiming that He had need of one to send, to which he replied that he would go. IV. Finally, there comes THE SERVICE WHICH HE HAS TO PERFORM, which is no other than just to take his place in the midst of that world, the meaning of which his vision of the Sovereign Lord had made clear to him, and state this meaning to men, to hold the mirror up to his time and declare to it its condition sad its tendencies, and what in the hand of the great King, God over all, its issue and the issue of all must be (vers. 8-13). ( A. B. Davidson, D. D. ) Isaiah's vision T. Allen, D. D. I. We have to contemplate A REMARKABLE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. II. WHAT WAS ITS EFFECT ON THE PROPHET? III. THE MEANS BY WHICH THE PENITENT PROPHET WAS PURIFIED. IV. THE CALL OF THE PROPHET. V. HIS COMMISSION. ( T. Allen, D. D. ) Realising God T. Allen, D. D. A man's realisation of the character of God does not depend altogether on his religious experience; it depends also on original capacity, temperament, and on suitable physiological conditions both of body and of mind. ( T. Allen, D. D. ) An anticipation of the Incarnation T. Allen, D. D. This vision was an anticipation of the Incarnation of our Lord. St. John tells us distinctly that the glory which the prophet saw was the glory of the Redeemer. "No man hath seen God at any time." God is a spiritual being, and therefore He does not appeal to sense. He reveals Himself to faith, to conscience, and to love. But sense is an avenue through which the soul is reached and influenced, and Almighty God, in revealing Himself to man, has not overlooked this constitutional fact. The Incarnation was a tribute of respect paid to our senses. What the prophet saw only in symbol we realise in the form of a glorious historic Presence. ( T. Allen, D. D. ) Vision and service J. Matthews. I. THE PROCESSION OF THE DEAD FROM EARTH BRINGS US FACE TO FACE WITH THE ETERNAL KINGDOM. We cannot look upon any visible forms, and note their changefulness and yet the permanence of the ideas they illustrate, and not infer the existence of the world of thought, and law, and reality from which they proceed. But while all life is based on the unseen, and witnesses to its presence ever, the procession of the generations of men on the earth more powerfully still reveals the higher kingdom. Think of the populations that have lived in this planet, and received their first schooling and drill here. After a brief preparation and teaching in the knowledge of the laws and facts of existence, they depart. The procession into the pale kingdoms is endless and crowded. The majority the other side becomes greater each day. It is impossible to think of that succession and deny the celestial world. The law of continuity suggests a life beyond. The principle which secures the completion of all great work rightly begun, speaks of it. Our sense of the justice at the heart of things assures us of a realm of compensation for unrequited labour and unexplained sorrow. The union with God that begins here must be consummated elsewhere. Such facts as these would be forced upon the thought of Isaiah as all Israel mourned the death of their leader and king. II. THE SUPREME FACT OF THE CELESTIAL KINGDOM IS THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST. After John's statement ( John 12:41 ) that Isaiah saw His glory, and spake Of Him, there can be no question with any Christian mind as to the Messianic reference of the manifestation. Isaiah may not have known of the sacrifice and resurrection by which that throne was gained, but the general outlines of the mediatorial kingdom are fully recognised here. "I saw the Lord, high and lifted up." All else in heaven was subordinated to that central fact. 1. The supremacy of our Lord's rule over heaven and earth, over angels, monarchs, events, the great and the little, the present and the future. 2. The absorbing attraction of that rule. For as prophet, and angels, and men, discern the glory of His love, and mercy, and power, they are constrained to praise. 3. The perfect serenity and sufficiency of His rule are indicated here. Beneath is storm and tumult. He sits above the flood. 4. The universality of His rule is clear. His train fills the temple. Those who went before, and those who came after, cried Hosanna! 5. The design of Christ's rule on earth is to bestow pardon and purity. 6. The King who confers cleansing and peace demands service. 7. He does not hesitate to discipline His unfaithful servants until their loyalty is assured. III. THE EFFECT OF THE VISION OF CHRIST'S LORDSHIP ON THE BEHOLDER. 1. A deep sense of personal sinfulness. 2. A deep sense of insufficiency for the work of God. 3. The vision that humbles, clothes with power, fills with certitude, directs our steps, inspires with invincible heroism, and makes us partakers of its glory and its resources. ( J. Matthews. ) The vision of God W. Clarkson B. A. No truth is more familiar than that God cannot be seen by mortal eye. But God has so manifested Himself that we may say, without impropriety or mistake, that we have seen Him. He did so — I. OCCASIONALLY, BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA. We have illustrations of this in the case of the burning bush ( Exodus 3 ), of Moses on the mount of God ( Exodus 34 ), of Micaiah, the Hebrew prophet ( 1 Kings 22 ), and in that before us in the text. In such experiences, each one of which may have been unlike the others, a very special privilege was granted to these men; so special and peculiar that they felt, and had a right to feel, that they stood in the very near presence of the High and Holy One Himself. II. PERMANENTLY, IN THE TEMPLE. The religion of the people of Israel differed from that of the surrounding nations in that there was not to be found in their sacred places any image or statue or visible representation of God. If any such were found it was a marked violation of law, a distinct apostasy. Only one visible indication of the Divine presence was permitted, and that was as immaterial as it could be, and was only beheld by one man once in the year — the Shechinah in the Holy of holies. Once a year the high priest might use the words of our text; for when he entered within the veil, on the great day of atonement, he stood in the presence of manifested Deity. III. ONCE FOR ALL IN THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. All previous historical manifestations were lost in the presence of the Son of God. He manifested the Divine so that those who saw Him did in truth see God. They saw nothing less than — 1. Divine power, including control over the body and the spirit of man, over the elements of nature, over disease and death. 2. Divine wisdom, reaching to all those truths that concern the nature and will of God, and also the character, life, and destiny of man. 3. Divine purity, shown in an absolutely blameless life. 4. Divine love, shining forth in tender, practical sympathy with men in all their sufferings and sorrows; showing itself in compassion for men in their spiritual destitution ( Mark 6:34 ); culminating in the agony of the garden and the death of the Cross. Well might the Master say that His disciples were privileged beyond kings and prophets, for as they walked with Him they "saw the Lord." Conclusion — We can see God in nature, in history, in the outworkings of His providence, in the human conscience and human spirit. But the way in which to seek His face is by acquainting ourselves with, and uniting ourselves to, Jesus Christ, His Son. ( W. Clarkson B. A. ) The empty throne filled A. Maclaren, D. D. I. THE VISION ITSELF. The centre truth is that the Lord of hosts is the King — the King of Israel II. THE MINISTRATION OF LOSS AND SORROW IN PREPARING THE VISION. If the throne of Israel had not been empty, the prophet would not have seen the throned God in the heavens. And so it "is with all our losses, with all our sorrows, with all our disappointments, with all our pains; they have a mission to reveal to us the throned God. III. THE TEXT SUGGESTS THE COMPENSATION THAT IS GIVEN FOR ALL LOSSES. The one God will become everything and anything that every man, and each man, requires. He shapes Himself according to our need. The water of life does not disdain to take the form imposed upon it by the vessel into which it is poured. The Jews used to say that the manna in the wilderness tasted to each man as each man desired, of dainties or of sorrows. And the God who comes to us all, comes to us each in the shape that we need; just as He came to Isaiah in the manifestation of His kingly power, because the throne of Judah was vacated. So when our hearts are sore with loss the New Testament manifestation of the King, even Jesus Christ, comes to us and says, "the same is my mother and sister and brother," and his sweet love compensates for the love that can die, and that lass died. When losses come to us He draws near, as durable riches and righteousness. In all our pains He is our anodyne, and in an our griefs He brings the comfort; He is all in all, and each withdrawn gift is compensated, or will be compensated, to each in Him. So let us learn God's purpose in emptying heart and chairs and homes. He empties that He may fill them with Himself. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) The rectal and mediatorial dominion of God W. M. Bunting. I. PECULIARITIES OF THIS DOMINION. 1. The law of belief, or what we may otherwise phrase, the law of intellectual humility. Revelation was never intended to be a revelation to our comprehension or to our reason. The revelation of the Bible is made to faith. 2. The law of evangelical faith. 3. The law of holiness. You will find a great difference between the nature of the obedience which God in the Gospel requires and that which earthly governments require.(1) Earthly governments take cognizance of the outward act, but none at all of the motives, the affections, or the tempers: but God in the Gospel government controls these.(2) Earthly governments are usually backward in interfering with the private arrangements of commercial and domestic life, and with the personal property of their subjects. But Christianity puts everything under law. Its sway is universal, all-pervading, absolute.(3) Earthly governments, earthly systems of ethics, either fail to inculcate, or are at positive variance with, much of the more elevated and spiritual morality of the Bible. The great peculiarity of the government of Jehovah the Saviour in this respect is, that He requires men to be holy and not merely to be moral. 4. The law of disciplinary suffering. II. EXCELLENCIES OF THIS DOMINION. 1. It is a spiritual government. 2. It us a mediatorial government — a government, therefore, of mercy. 3. The supremacy of this dominion might be adverted to. It is a "throne high and lifted up" above all the thrones and dynasties of the earth. Let this comfort the people of God. 4. It is eternal. ( W. M. Bunting. ) The dead king; the living God Israel's king dies, but Israel's God still lives. From the mortality of great and good men we should take occasion, with the eye of faith, to look up to "the King eternal, immortal, invisible." ( M. Henry . ) Government human and Divine R. Winter, D. D. I. THE CHANGE IN CIVIL SOCIETY TAKE PLACE UNDER THE DIRECTION AND GOVERNMENT OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. II. THE PERMANENCY OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT AFFORDS A STRIKING CONTRAST TO THE FADING CHARACTER OF EARTHLY GOVERNMENTS. III. THE SPIRITUAL KINGDOM IN THE HANDS OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST PROCEEDS WITH MAJESTIC PROGRESS NOTWITHSTANDING, AND EVEN BY MEANS OF, THESE VARIOUS CHANGES. ( R. Winter, D. D. ) Seeing God Amory H. Bradford, D. D. Isaiah saw God: do men see Him today? Was He any nearer to Jerusalem than He is to London and New York? Did that old Hebrew possess faculties different from ours? 1. God can be seen and known. He has been seen and known. Moses, Isaiah, Elijah, Paul, John — all saw Him. He has been seen and known in all lands and among all religions. 2. What do we mean by seeing and knowing God? A spirit cannot be seen with physical eyes. We mean that we are so convinced of the nearness and reality of God that our thinking and living are all determined by that conviction — so sure of Him that we live as if we saw Him by physical sight. 3. But have not men seen their own imaginings, and thought that those were God! Is not a perfect God the noblest work of man! It has not been proved that any have actually known God. It would, in the nature of things, be impossible to demonstrate that to anyone who did not himself possess the same knowledge; but it has been proved that these whom the world always heeds when they speak concerning other things have believed that they had this knowledge; and that faith has been the inspiration of dauntless heroism, most patient endurance, and most sacrificing service. 4. How is God known! Many answers are given. Probably all are partially correct. As each individual sees natural objects from his own standpoint, so must he approach the highest knowledge. We are not asking whether men have known about God, but whether they have known Him. We know about Caesar, but we do not know him; we about the Mikado of Japan, but we do not know him. Many know about God who show no signs of knowing Him. I think that no one has been able to tell how this knowledge is attained: Some say, "We are conscious of Him"; others, "We see Him with the inner eye"; others, "Reason leads to Him"; and others still, "He is seen and known in the things which are made." But after all, the most that any can say is, "I know Him." Isaiah said, "I saw the Lord," but all is hazy and indistinct when he comes to detail 5. All who have learned to love man in the spirit of Christ never can fail of coming to the knowledge of God, "for whosoever loveth is born of God and knoweth God." Love is the new life; and love secures knowledge. 6. When we want to know about God we stand before the majesty of an ocean in a storm, before the terrible splendour of Alpine crests and glaciers, beneath the host of the heavens that in solemn silence thread the mazes of the sky, and say: "Behold the greatness of God!" We study the movement of history, and see how the dispersion of the Jews sent true spiritual ideas into all lands; how the triumphs of Alexander gave a common language to the world; how the supremacy of Rome made nations one; how the carnival of blood called the "French Revolution" overthrew more abuses than it worked; how the American Civil War ended in the proclamation of freedom, and we say, God is revealing Himself in history. We read the story of the life and death of Jesus, and say, if that is a revelation of God, then He is the One for whom our souls long. But all these revelations may be accepted without personal knowledge. The Father, who is a Spirit, comes to us in spirit; speaks in a still voice in the chambers of memory, conscience, aspiration; and we know Him and yet may not be able to explain "that knowledge to those who do not have it. I know my Father; He knows His child." That is the highest human experience. That is eternal life. 7. If eternal life is not a question of dates, of the succession of months and years, but knowing God, then no question is more imperative than, "Is it possible for me to know Him?" It is a great thing to claim that knowledge. It should never be done irreverently or lightly, but always humbly and with great joy. The mission of the pulpit and the Church is primarily to help men to know God. How, then, may we know Him? However many answers are possible, only one need be given. All who follow Jesus Christ are sure, sooner or later, to realise that, like Him, they, too, are sons of God. ( Amory H. Bradford, D. D. ) Removing the veil J. H. Jowett, M. A. 1. A king must die! There almost seems to be something incongruous in the very phrase. The very word "king" means power. The king is the man who can — the man who is possessed of ability, dominions, sovereignty; and the shock is almost violent when we are told that the range of kingship is shaped and determined by death. How the one word suffices for all sorts and conditions of men! The registrar deals with us very summarily! We look through his books. His vocabulary is very limited. He has two words, "born" and "died," and between the two he Can fit in all mankind; there is no exception to disturb his little printed form; we all take our place in it, prince and peasant, emperor and slave. And all this irrespective of character. 2. As kings went in those days, Uzziah had proved himself an admirable king, a wise ruler, a good man. He was distinctly a progressive man, a man of action and enterprise. His energies were not absorbed in merely foreign affairs, nor shaped by the lust of mere dominion. He proceeded upon the principle that a successful foreign policy must be based upon a wise domestic policy; that an efficient and stable rulership must begin at home. I like the way in which the chronicler sums up the king's motives and gives us the very spirit of his home policy, "he loved husbandry?" "He loved husbandry," and therefore you find him hedging his people about with security as they go about their daily life. He "digged many wells," he attended to the requirements of irrigation, he laid the hand of protection and favour upon husbandmen and vine dressers, and in every way he showed that he regarded agriculture as the fundamental and primary pursuit of national life. Upon that home policy he built his foreign policy. If you have peace, security, and contentment at the centre it is easier to extend and widen the bounds of your circumference; and with order and prosperity at home, Uzziah was able to enlarge the borders of his empire. He could raise from his devoted people an army of mighty power. The limits of his kingdom were being continually expanded. "His name spread far abroad. He was marvellously helped, till he was strong." Such was the nation's king; loved by all his people, feared by all his foes. Is it, then, any wonder that King Uzziah — skilled organiser in home affairs, subtle strategist in foreign affairs — became the pillar of the nation's hopes, the repository of her trust, the ultimate security of her prosperity and permanence? 3. Now, there is a strange tendency in human nature to deify any person who gives evidence of possessing any kind of extraordinary power. We place them on the heart's throne — the throne on which are centred the soul's hopes and which carries with it the ultimate sovereignty and apportionment of life. Extraordinary power of any kind appeals to the godlike within us, and upon the object evincing the extraordinary power we too often fix our trust. Watch the principle in the narrative before us. Here is Isaiah. Before his call and consecration he had lived on the political plane of life. His thought was ever moving among the forces of diplomacy and statecraft. How intensely absorbed he was in the game of national politics! The national problem was to Isaiah a political problem. The ultimate foundation of national prosperity was stable government. The wise handling of political forces was the one essential for the continuity and grandeur of the nation's life. That was the plane of thought and life on which Isaiah moved, and on that plane he must find his heroes. He found the hero in Uzziah. What then? He had won Isaiah's admiration. Next, he won his confidence, next his love, next his devotion; then Uzziah became Isaiah's god! Uzziah filled the whole of Isaiah's vision. How now did Isaiah's reasoning run? Thus — "What will become of the world when Uzziah dies? When the master of statecraft is gone, in whose hands will the rulership rest? When the political nave is removed, will not all the spokes of the national wheel be thrown into the direst confusion?" That was Isaiah's fear, begotten by his hero worship. Well, Uzziah died. What then! Says Isaiah, "In the year that King Uzziah died" — what? — "All my worst fears were abundantly realised"? No, no! "In the year that King Uzziah died I had my eyes opened; I saw there was a greater, kingdom with a greater King — I saw the Lord." The hero died to reveal the hero's God. What, then, did the revelation do for Isaiah? It gave him an enlarged conception of all things. It gave him a new centre for his thoughts and life. It taught him this, that the ultimate security for all national greatness is not kings and crowns but God. It taught him this, that big armies, and walled cities, and quiet husbandry, and subtle diplomacy, and complex civilisations am not the fundamental forces on which mankind rests. The eternal centre of all true life, the centre which time cannot weaken and which death cannot corrupt, is not diplomacy, but holiness — not Uzziah, but the Lord. The earthly king had come between Isaiah and his God, and it was only when the earthly king was taken away that Isaiah saw the King of kings. "I saw the Lord high and lifted up" — a limited interest replaced by a larger one, a low standard supplanted by a loftier one, a loom monarch stepping aside to reveal the universal King. 4. This teaching has a most pertinent application to the life of today. Which is the most prominent in English national life today — King Uzziah or King Jesus, the representative of diplomacy or the representative of holiness? Which are we most concerned about — the science of politics or the science of holy living? What are the forces on which we are chiefly depending for the continuity of our national supremacy? The eternal forces are not material, but spiritual, proceeding not from the earth, but coming down from heaven. Material forces must be kept secondary, because they are transient; spiritual forces must be primary, because they are eternal. What is the conclusion of the whole matter? Don't let us lay the stress and emphasis of life upon secondary things — not upon Uzziah, but upon the Lord. ( J. H. Jowett, M. A. ) The "Uzziahs" of history and the Lord J. H. Jowett, M. A. History tells us the stories of nations who have looked no further than King Uzziah, and who have been accustomed to use the temporal and earthly forces which Uzziah represents. And how has it fared with them? Ancient Phoenicia looked no further than King Uzziah. She built her national temple upon the foundation of commerce, and the only binding force among her people was the relationships of trade. Ancient Greece looked no further than King Uzziah. She raised a palatial national structure upon the foundation of literature and art, and the structure was exceeding beautiful, the wonder and admiration of all time. Ancient Rome looked no further than King Uzziah. She raised an apparently solid masonry, compact and massive, upon a political foundation, and all the stones in the building were clamped together by a tie of patriotism, such as the world has elsewhere never known. Now what has become of them — Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome! How has it fared with the nations so constituted, the houses so built? This is the record. They stood for a time, proud, august, radiant with imperial splendour, fair with the smile of fortune, and reflecting the sunny light of the prosperous day. But "the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon" those nations, and they fell, and great was the fall of them! Surely that is a lesson for today, that national foundations must not be laid by Uzziah but by the Lord. ( J. H. Jowett, M. A. ) The material fleeting: the spiritual enduring J. H. Jowett, M. A. I spent a little time in the old castle at Stifling, and in one of the rooms of the tower were two curiosities which riveted my attention. In one corner of the room was an old time worn pulpit. It was John Knox's pulpit, the pulpit from which he used to proclaim so faithfully the message of the King: In the opposite corner were a few long spears, much corrupted by rust, found on the field of Banncokburn, which lies just beyond the castle walls. John Knox's pulpit on the one hand, the spears of Bannockburn on the other! One the type of material forces, forces of earth and time; the other the type of spiritual forces, forces of eternity and heaven. The spears, representative of King Uzziah; the pulpit, representative of the Lord. Which symbolises the eternal? The force and influence which radiate

Benson Commentary Isaiah 6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1 . In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord — “As this vision,” says Bishop Lowth, “seems to contain a solemn designation of Isaiah to the prophetical office, it is by most interpreters thought to be the first in order of his prophecies. But this perhaps may not be so: for Isaiah is said, in the general title of his prophecies, to have prophesied in the time of Uzziah, whose acts, first and last, he wrote, ( 2 Chronicles 26:22 ,) and the phrase, in the year when Uzziah died, probably means, after the death of Uzziah; as the same phrase, ( Isaiah 14:28 ,) means, after the death of Ahaz. Not that Isaiah’s prophecies are placed in exact order of time: chapters 2., 3., 4., 5. seem, by internal marks, to be antecedent to chapter 1.; they suit the time of Uzziah, or the former part of Jotham’s reign: whereas, chapter 1. can hardly be earlier than the last years of Jotham: see note on Isaiah 1:1 ; Isaiah 1:7 ; Isaiah 2:1 . This might be a new designation of the whole course of God’s dispensations in regard to his people, and the fates of the nation; which are even now still depending, and will not be fully accomplished till the final restoration of Israel.” I saw the Lord — In a vision or ecstasy. The place of this vision is supposed to be the temple, from which the particular scenery of it is taken. The Divine Majesty is represented as seated upon a throne, high and lifted up — Probably above the ark in the most holy place, where the glory appeared above the cherubim, surrounded by his attendant ministers. “The veil, separating the most holy place from the holy, or the outermost part of the temple, is supposed to be taken away, for the prophet, to whom the whole is exhibited, is manifestly placed by the altar of burnt-offering, at the entrance of the temple, (compare Ezekiel 43:5-6 ,) which was filled with the train of the robe, the spreading and overflowing of the divine glory. The Lord upon the throne, according to St. John, ( John 12:41 ,) was Christ, and the vision related to his future kingdom; when the veil of separation was to be removed, and the whole earth was to be filled with the glory of God, revealed to all mankind. It respects, indeed, primarily the prophet’s own time, and the obduration of the Jews of that age, and their punishment by the Babylonish captivity; but extends, in its full latitude, to the age of the Messiah, and the blindness of the Jews to the gospel; the desolation of their country by the Romans, and their being rejected by God; that, nevertheless, a holy seed, a remnant, should be preserved, and that the nation should sprout out and flourish again from the old stock. — Bishop Lowth. Isaiah 6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. Isaiah 6:2 . Above it — Or, rather, above him, as ???? ?? might be better rendered; stood the seraphim — As ministers attending upon their Lord, and waiting to receive and execute his commands. The word seraphim, which, like cherubim, is plural, signifies burning, or flaming ones, from the verb ??? Š, seraph, to burn or flame. The expression here means spiritual beings, qui a claritate et aspectus splendore, quasi flammantes et ignei visi sunt, “who, from their brightness, and the splendour of their aspect, appeared as if they were fiery and flaming.” It is probable that both their name and their fiery, burning appearance were intended to signify, 1st, Their nature, which is bright and glorious, subtle and pure; and, 2d, Those qualities of fervent love to God, and zeal for his glory and service, which they possess. Each one had six wings — For the purpose immediately mentioned. With twain he covered his face — Out of profound reverence, as being sensible of the infinite distance between God and him, so that he durst not presume to look directly upon him, and judged himself neither able nor worthy to behold the brightness of his glory. And with twain he covered his feet — To signify the sense he had of his own natural, though not moral, infirmity; and his desire that God would not too severely examine all his ways and actions, commonly signified by the feet; because, though they did not swerve from God’s commands, yet they were not worthy of the acceptance, nor suitable to the dignity of so glorious a majesty. And with twain he did fly — Which implies his great readiness and alacrity, his activity and celerity in executing God’s commands. We may infer from this description of the seraphim, that they appeared in a human form: but whether that is the form they always bear, or whether it was only assumed on this occasion, cannot be determined. Isaiah 6:3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. Isaiah 6:3 . And one cried unto another — Divided into two choirs, they sung responsively one to the other; and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts — “God’s holiness,” says Lowth, “or the superlative purity of his nature, implies in it all the rest of his attributes, especially his justice and mercy, which are dispensed by the most exact rules of rectitude. The Christian Church has always thought the doctrine of the Trinity to be implied in this threefold repetition of holy: as it is also intimated in several other passages of the Old Testament, particularly in that form commanded to be used in blessing the people, Numbers 6:24-26 ; and Isaiah 48:16 , of this book;” where see the notes. Thus Jerome observes the design of their hymn was “to show that there is a Trinity in the one Godhead; and to testify, that, not the Jewish temple, as formerly, (for that was to be forsaken of God,) but the whole earth was full of his glory:” namely, of the effects and demonstrations of his glorious holiness, as well as of his power, wisdom, and goodness. Isaiah 6:4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Isaiah 6:4 . And the posts of the door moved — Together with the door itself. Such violent motions were commonly tokens of God’s anger. And here, it seems, this concussion of the temple was intended to signify God’s displeasure against his people for their sins, and to be a token of its destruction, by the Babylonians first, and afterward by the Romans; and the house was filled with smoke — Which elsewhere is a token of God’s presence and acceptance, but here, of his anger; and may be considered likewise as an emblem of the darkness and blindness of that generation of Jews, accustomed to worship in that temple, as also of that future generation of the same people, who should worship there in the days of the Messiah, before its second destruction by the Romans. Isaiah 6:5 Then said I, 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 6:5 . Then said I, &c. — The second part of this vision begins here, containing the sanctification of the prophet, in order to his undertaking of a great prophetical office, and showing, 1st, his state of mind upon the sight of the preceding illustrious vision: his consternation under a sense of his great unworthiness; and, 2d, describing the singular mode of his sanctification — Wo is me, for I am undone, &c. — That is, if God deal with me in strict justice. For I have made myself obnoxious to his displeasure; because I am a man of unclean lips — I am a great sinner, having offended him, as in many other ways, so particularly by my lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips — I am an unclean branch of an unclean tree; besides my own uncleanness, I have, both by want of zeal and of diligence, and faithfulness in the discharge of my duty, involved myself in the guilt of their sins, and therefore may justly fear to partake with them in their plagues. Add to this, his consternation probably also arose, in part, from a sense of his want of due qualifications for the important office in which he was to be employed, and of his unworthiness to be God’s messenger to his people, or even to join with the seraphim in praising him. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts — The sight of this glorious and holy God gives me cause to fear that he is come to enter into judgment with me. Observe, reader, while sinners are presumptuous and secure, even in the acts of their worship, though merely formal and hypocritical, holy persons have always been filled with reverence and humiliation before God: and the more extraordinary the manifestations of God’s presence have been to them, the more have they reverenced and stood in awe of him, and the more have they abhorred themselves. Thus Job 42:5-6 , Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes! And thus may not only every penitent sinner, but every justified believer, say, My humbled soul, when thou art near, In dust and ashes lies; How shall a sinful worm appear, Or meet thy purer eyes! Isaiah 6:6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: Isaiah 6:6-7 . Then flew one of the seraphim unto me — By God’s command; having a live coal in his hand — Both a token and an instrument of purification, as the next verse explains it; which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar — Of burnt-offering, which stood in the court of the priests, where the prophet appeared to himself to be during the vision. The seraph took it from the altar, to show that men are to expect the expiation of sin, and purification from it, only by such means as God hath appointed, and particularly by the mediation of Christ, whom that altar manifestly represented, and by that purifying and refining grace of the Holy Spirit, which was signified by this live coal, and is conferred on none except through the merit of Christ’s sacrifice; see Hebrews 9:14 ; Hebrews 13:10 . And he laid it upon my mouth — So as only to touch my lips, and not to burn them. This was done to signify, not only that all the gifts and graces that purify the mind, and fit us for the discharge of any particular duty or function, come from God; but that there must be a real application and communication of them to our souls. It is not sufficient that we hear, think, and speak of them; or even that we desire them, and believe them to be attainable; but we must really receive and possess them. Observe this, reader. It is of infinite consequence to thy salvation. Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquity is taken away — This is a sign that the guilt of thy sin is removed by pardoning mercy, and thy corrupt disposition and inclination to sin, by renewing grace; and, therefore, nothing can hinder thee from being accepted of God, as a worshipper, in concert with the holy angels; or from being employed for God, as a messenger to the children of men. Those only, who are thus purged from an evil conscience, are prepared to serve the living God, Hebrews 9:14 . The taking away of sin is necessary, in order to our speaking with confidence and comfort, either to God in prayer, or from God in preaching. Nor are any so fit to display to others the riches and power of gospel grace, as those who have themselves tasted the sweetness, and felt the influence of that grace. Isaiah 6:7 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. Isaiah 6:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. Isaiah 6:8 . Also I heard the voice of the Lord — We have here the third part of this vision, comprehending, 1st, A trial of the disposition of the prophet, now sanctified, with his reply to the Lord, in this verse; 2d, The command delivered to him concerning the execution of the divine judgment upon the Jews, of blindness, &c., Isaiah 6:9-10 ; Isaiah 3 d, A more full and explicit declaration of a most grievous temporal judgment, which should be joined with the spiritual one, Isaiah 6:11-13 . — Vitringa. Whom shall I send? — God asks this question, not as if he were unresolved whom to send, but that Isaiah might have an opportunity of voluntarily offering his service. And who will go for us? — To deliver the following message. The change of the number, I and us, is very remarkable; and both being meant of one and the same Lord, do sufficiently intimate a plurality of persons in the Godhead. Then said I, Here am I, &c. — God’s last and great favour to him both encouraged and obliged him to be thus forward in his service. Isaiah 6:9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Isaiah 6:9-10 . And he said, Go, and tell this people — Not my people, for I disown them as they have rejected me. Hear ye indeed, but understand not, &c. — The Hebrew words are imperative; yet they are not to be taken as a command, enjoining what the people ought to do, but only as a prediction foretelling what they would do. The sense is, Because you have so long heard my words, and seen my works, to no purpose, and have hardened your hearts, and will not learn nor reform, I will punish you in your own way; your sin shall be your punishment. I will still continue my word and works to you, but will withdraw my Spirit, so that you shall be as unable, as now you are unwilling, to understand. Make the heart of this people fat — Stupid and senseless. This making of their hearts fat, is here ascribed to the prophet, as it is ascribed to God in the repetition of this prophecy, ( John 12:40 ,) because God inflicted this judgment upon them by the ministry of the prophet, partly by way of prediction, foretelling that this would be the effect of his preaching, and partly by withdrawing the light and help of his Spirit. Make their ears heavy — Make them dull of hearing. Lest they see with their eyes — That they may not be able, as before they were not willing to see. And convert — Turn from their sinful practices unto God; and be healed — Of sin, (which is the disease of the soul,) by remission and sanctification, and of all the deadly effects of sin. This prophecy might relate, in some measure, to the state of the Jews before the Babylonish captivity, but certainly it did not receive its full accomplishment till the days of our Lord; and in this sense it is understood and applied by the writers of the New Testament, and by Christ himself. Isaiah 6:10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Isaiah 6:11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, Isaiah 6:11-12 . Then said I, Lord, how long? — An abrupt speech, arising from the prophet’s great passion and astonishment: how long shall this dreadful judgment last? Until the cities be wasted, &c. — Until this land be totally destroyed, first by the Babylonians, and afterward by the Romans. And the Lord have removed men far away — Hath caused this people to be carried away captive into far countries. And there be a great forsaking — Till houses and lands be generally forsaken of their owners. The reader wilt observe, “There is a remarkable gradation in denouncing these judgments; not only Jerusalem and the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, but even the single houses should be without man; and not only the houses of the cities, but even the country should be utterly desolate; and not only the people should be removed out of the land, but the Lord should remove them far away; and they should not be removed for a short period, but there should be a great, or rather, a long forsaking in the midst of the land. And hath not the world seen all these particulars exactly fulfilled? Have not the Jews laboured under a spiritual blindness and infatuation, in hearing, but not understanding, in seeing, but not perceiving the Messiah, after the accomplishment of so many prophecies, after the performance of so many miracles? And, in consequence of their refusal to convert and be healed, have not their cities been wasted without inhabitants, and their houses without man? Have they not been removed far away into the most distant parts of the earth? and hath not their removal, or banishment, been now of above 1700 years duration? And do they not still continue deaf and blind, obstinate and unbelieving? The Jews, at the time of the delivery of this prophecy, gloried in being the peculiar church and people of God; and would any Jew, of himself, have thought or have said, that his nation would, in process of time, become an infidel and reprobate nation; infidel and reprobate for many ages, oppressed by man, and forsaken of God? It was above 750 years before Christ that Isaiah predicted these things; and how could he have predicted them, unless he had been illuminated by the divine vision; or could they have succeeded accordingly, unless the Spirit of prophecy had been the Spirit of God?” See Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, vol. 1. p. 233. Isaiah 6:12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. Isaiah 6:13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof. Isaiah 6:13 . But yet in it shall be a tenth — A small remnant reserved, that number being put indefinitely. And it shall return — Out of the Babylonish captivity, into their own land. And shall be eaten — Or, shall be for a prey, as Dr. Waterland translates it: that is, that remnant shall be devoured a second time by the kings of Syria, and afterward by the Romans. Yet as a teil-tree, and as an oak, &c. — Yet there shall be another remnant, not such a one as that which came out of Babylon, but a holy seed, who shall afterward look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn over him. Whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, &c. — Who, when their leaves are cast in winter, have a substance within themselves, a vital principle, which preserves life in the root of the tree, and in due time sends it forth into all the branches. So the holy seed shall be the substance, or, rather, the support thereof — Of the people, who, were it not for the sake of these, should be finally rooted out and destroyed. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. CHAPTER IV ISAIAH’S CALL AND CONSECRATION 740 B.C. written 735? or 727? Isaiah 6:1-13 IT has been already remarked that in chapter 6 we should find no other truths than those which have been unfolded in chapters 2-5: the Lord exalted in righteousness, the coming of a terrible judgment from Him upon Judah and the survival of a bare remnant of the people. But chapter 6 treats the same subjects with a difference. In chapters 2-4 they gradually appear and grow to clearness in connection with the circumstances of Judah’s history; in chapter 5 they are formally and rhetorically vindicated; in chapter 6 we are led back to the secret and solemn moments of their first inspiration in the prophet’s own soul. It may be asked why chapter 6 comes last and not first in this series, and why in an exposition attempting to deal, as far as possible, chronologically with Isaiah’s prophecies, his call should not form the subject of the first chapter. The answer is simple, and throws a flood of light upon the chapter. In all probability chapter 6 was written after its predecessors, and what Isaiah has put into it is not only what happened in the earliest moments of his prophetic life, but that spelt out and emphasised by his experience since. The ideal character of the narrative, and its date some years after the events which it relates, are now generally admitted. Of course the narrative is all fact. No one will believe that he, whose glance penetrated with such keenness the character of men and movements, looked with dimmer eye into his own heart. It is the spiritual process which the prophet actually passed through before the opening of his ministry. But it is that, developed by subsequent experience, and presented to us in the language of outward vision. Isaiah had been some years a prophet, long enough to make clear that prophecy was not to be for him what it had been for his predecessors in Israel, a series of detached inspirations and occasional missions, with short responsibilities, but a work for life, a profession and a career, with all that this means of postponement, failure, and fluctuation of popular feeling. Success had not come so rapidly as the prophet in his original enthusiasm had looked for, and his preaching had effected little upon the people. Therefore he would go back to the beginning, remind himself of that to which God had really called him, and vindicate the results of his ministry, at which people scoffed and his own heart grew sometimes sick. In chapter 6 Isaiah acts as his own remembrancer. If we keep in mind that this chapter, describing Isaiah’s call and consecration to the prophetic office, was written by a man who felt that office to be the burden of a lifetime, and who had to explain its nature and vindicate its results to his own soul-grown somewhat uncertain, it may be, of her original inspiration-we shall find light upon features of the chapter that are otherwise most obscure. I. THE VISION ( Isaiah 6:1-4 ) Several years, then, Isaiah looks back and says, "In the year King Uzziah died." There is more than a date given here; there is a great contrast suggested. Prophecy does not chronicle by time, but by experiences, and we have here, as it seems, the cardinal experience of a prophet’s life. All men knew of that glorious reign with the ghastly end-fifty years of royalty, and then a lazar-house. There had been no king like this one since Solomon; never, since the son of David brought the Queen of Sheba to his feet, had the national pride stood so high or the nation’s dream of sovereignty touched such remote borders. The people’s admiration invested Uzziah with all the graces of the ideal monarch. The chronicler of Judah tells us "that God helped him and made him to prosper, and his name spread far abroad, and he was marvellously helped till he was strong"; he with the double name-Azariah, Jehovah-his-Helper; Uzziah, Jehovah-his-Strength. How this glory fell upon the fancy of the future prophet, and dyed it deep, we may imagine from those marvellous colours, with which in later years he painted the king in his beauty. Think of the boy, the boy that was to be an Isaiah, the boy with the germs of this great prophecy in his heart-think of him and such a hero as this to shine upon him, and we may conceive how his whole nature opened out beneath that sun of royalty and absorbed its light. Suddenly the glory was eclipsed, and Jerusalem learned that she had seen her king for the last time: "The Lord smote the king so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house, and he was cut off from the house of the Lord." Uzziah had gone into the temple, and attempted with his own hands to burn incense. Under a later dispensation of liberty he would have been applauded as a brave Protestant, vindicating the right of every worshipper of God to approach Him without the intervention of a special priesthood. Under the earlier dispensation of law his act could be regarded only as one of presumption, the expression of a worldly and irreverent temper, which ignored the infinite distance between God and man. It was followed, as sins of wilfulness in religion were always followed under the old covenant, by swift disaster. Uzziah suffered as Saul, Uzzah, Nadab, and Abihu did. The wrath, with which he burst out on the opposing priests brought on, or made evident as it is believed to have done in other cases, an attack of leprosy. The white spot stood out unmistakably from the flushed forehead, and he was thrust from the temple-"yea, himself also hasted to go out." We can imagine how such a judgment, the moral of which must have been plain to all, affected the most sensitive heart in Jerusalem. Isaiah’s imagination was darkened, but he tells us that the crisis was the enfranchisement of his faith. "In the year King Uzziah died"-it is as if a veil had dropped, and the prophet saw beyond what it had hidden, "the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up." That it is no mere date Isaiah means, but a spiritual contrast which he is anxious to impress upon us, is made clear by his emphasis of the rank and not the name of God. It is "the Lord sitting upon a throne-the Lord" absolutely, set over against the human prince. The simple antithesis seems to speak of the passing away of the young man’s hero-worship and the dawn of his faith; and so interpreted, this first verse of chapter 6 is only a concise summary of that development of religious experience which we have traced through chapters 2-4. Had Isaiah ever been subject to the religious temper of his time, the careless optimism of a prosperous and proud people, who entered upon their religious services without awe, "trampling the courts of the Lord," and used them like Uzziah, for their own honour, who felt religion to be an easy thing, and dismissed from it all thoughts of judgment and feelings of penitence-if ever Isaiah had been subject to that temper, then once for all he was redeemed by this stroke upon Uzziah. And, as we have seen, there is every reason to believe that Isaiah did at first share the too easy public religion of his youth. That early vision of his, { Isaiah 2:2-5 } the establishment of Israel at the head of the nations, to be immediately attained at his own word { Isaiah 5:5 } and without preliminary purification, was it not simply a less gross form of the king’s own religious presumption? Uzziah’s fatal act was the expression of the besetting sin of his people, and in that sin Isaiah himself had been a partaker. "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." In the person of their monarch the temper of the whole Jewish nation had come to judgment. Seeking the ends of religion by his own way, and ignoring the way God had appointed, Uzziah at the very moment of his insistence was hurled back and stamped unclean. The prophet’s eyes were opened. The king sank into a leper’s grave, but before Isaiah’s vision the Divine majesty arose in all its loftiness. "I saw the Lord high and lifted up." We already know what Isaiah means by these terms. He has used them of God’s supremacy in righteousness above the low moral standards of men, of God’s occupation of a far higher throne than that of the national deity of Judah, of God’s infinite superiority to Israel’s vulgar identification of His purposes with her material prosperity or His honour with the compromises of her politics, and especially of God’s seat as their Judge over a people, who sought in their religion only satisfaction for their pride and love of ease. From this contrast the whole vision expands as follows. Under the mistaken idea that what Isaiah describes is the temple in Jerusalem, it has been remarked that the place of his vision is wonderful in the case of one who set so little store by ceremonial worship. This, however, to which our prophet looks is no house built with hands, but Jehovah’s own heavenly palace ( Isaiah 6:1 -not temple); only Isaiah describes it in terms of the Jerusalem temple which was its symbol. It was natural that the temple should furnish Isaiah not only with the framework of his vision, but also with the platform from which he saw it. For it was in the temple that Uzziah’s sin was sinned and God’s holiness vindicated upon him. It was in the temple that, when Isaiah beheld the scrupulous religiousness of the people, the contrast of that with their evil lives struck him, and he summed it up in the epigram "wickedness and worship." { Isaiah 1:13 } It was in the temple, in short, that the prophet’s conscience had been most roused, and just where the conscience is most roused there is the vision of God to be expected. Very probably it was while brooding over Uzziah’s judgment on the scene of its occurrence that Isaiah beheld his vision. Yet for all the vision contained the temple itself was too narrow. The truth which was to be revealed to Isaiah, the holiness of God, demanded a wider stage and the breaking down of those partitions, which, while they had been designed to impress God’s presence on the worshipper, had only succeeded in veiling Him. So while the seer keeps his station on the threshold of the earthly building, soon to feel it rock beneath his feet, as heaven’s praise bursts like thunder on the earth, and while his immediate neighbourhood remains the same familiar house, all beyond is glorified. The veil of the temple falls away, and everything behind it. No ark nor mercy-seat is visible, but a throne and a court-the palace of God in heaven, as we have it also pictured in the eleventh and twenty-ninth Psalms. The Royal presence is everywhere. Isaiah describes no face, only a Presence and a Session: "the Lord sitting on a throne, and His skirts filled the palace." "No face; only the sight Of a sweepy garment vast and white With a hem that I could recognise." Around (not above, as in the English version) were ranged the hovering courtiers, of what shape and appearance we know not, except that they veiled their faces and their feet before the awful Holiness, -all wings and voice, perfect readinesses of praise and service. The prophet heard them chant in antiphon, like the temple choirs of priests. And the one choir cried out, "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts"; and the other responded, "The whole earth is full of His glory." It is by the familiar name Jehovah of hosts-the proper name of Israel’s national God-that the prophet hears the choirs of heaven address the Divine Presence. But what they ascribe to the Deity is exactly what Israel will not ascribe, and the revelation they make of His nature is the contradiction of Israel’s thoughts concerning Him. What, in the first place, is holiness? We attach this term to a definite standard of morality or an unusually impressive fulness of character. To our minds it is associated with very positive forces, as of comfort and conviction-perhaps because we take our ideas of it from the active operations of the Holy Ghost. The original force of the term holiness, however, was not positive, but negative, and throughout the Old Testament, whatever modifications its meaning undergoes, it retains a negative flavour. The Hebrew word for holiness springs from a root which means to set apart, make distinct, put at a distance from. When God is described as the Holy One in the Old Testament it is generally with the purpose of withdrawing Him from some presumption of men upon His majesty or of negativing their unworthy thoughts of Him. The Holy One is the Incomparable: "To whom, then, will ye liken Me, that I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One." { Isaiah 40:25 } He is the Unapproachable: "Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God?". { 1 Samuel 6:20 } He is the Utter Contrast of man: "I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee". { Hosea 11:9 } He is the Exalted and Sublime: "Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place". { Isaiah 57:15 } Generally speaking, then, holiness is equivalent to separateness, sublimity-in fact, just to that loftiness or exaltation which Isaiah has already so often reiterated as the principal attribute of God. In their thrice-repeated Holy the seraphs are only telling more emphatically to the prophet’s ears what his eyes have already seen, "the Lord high and lifted up." Better expression could not be found for the full idea of Godhead. This little word Holy radiates heaven’s own breadth of meaning. Within its fundamental idea-distance or difference from man-what spaces are there not for every attribute of Godhead to flash? If the Holy One be originally He who is distinct from man and man’s thoughts, and who impresses man from the beginning with the awful sublimity of the contrast in which He stands to him, how naturally may holiness come to cover not only that moral purity and intolerance of sin to which we now more strictly apply the term, but those metaphysical conceptions as well, which we gather up under the name "supernatural," and so finally, by lifting the Divine nature away from the change and vanity of this world, and emphasising God’s independence of all beside Himself, become the fittest expression we have for Him as the Infinite and Self-existent. Thus the word holy appeals in turn to each of the three great faculties of man’s nature, by which he can be religiously exercised-his conscience, his affections, his reason; it covers the impressions which God makes on man as a sinner, on man as a worshipper, on man as a thinker. The Holy One is not only the Sinless and Sin-abhorring, but the Sublime and the Absolute too. But while we recognise the exhaustiveness of the series of ideas about the Divine Nature, which develop from the root meaning of holiness, and to express which the word holy is variously used throughout the Scriptures, we must not, if we are to appreciate the use of the word on this occasion, miss the motive of recoil which starts them all. If we would hear what Isaiah heard in the seraphs’ song, we must distinguish in the three-fold ascription of holiness the intensity of recoil from the confused religious views and low moral temper of the prophet’s generation. It is no scholastic definition of Deity which the seraphim are giving. Not for a moment is it to be supposed, that to that age, whose representative is listening to them, they are attempting to convey an idea of the Trinity. Their thrice-uttered Holy is not theological accuracy, but religious emphasis. This angelic revelation of the holiness of God was intended for a generation some of whom were idol-worshippers, confounding the Godhead with the work of their own hands or with natural objects, and none of whom were free from a confusion in principle of the Divine with the human and worldly, for which now sheer mental slovenliness, now a dull moral sense, and now positive pride was to blame. To worshippers who trampled the courts of the Lord with the careless feet and looked up the temple with the unabashed faces, of routine, the cry of the seraphs, as they veiled their faces and their feet, travailed to restore that shuddering sense of the sublimity of the Divine Presence, which in the impressible youth of the race first impelled man, bowing low beneath the awful heavens, to name God by the name of the Holy. To men, again, careful of the legal-forms of worship, but lawless and careless in their lives, the song of the seraphs revealed not the hard truth, against which they had already rubbed conscience trite, that God’s law was inexorable, but the fiery fact that His whole nature burned with wrath towards sin. To men, once more, proud of their prestige and material prosperity, and presuming in their pride to take their own way with God, and to employ like Uzziah the exercises of religion for their own honour, this vision presented the real sovereignty of God: the Lord Himself seated on a throne there- just where they felt only a theatre for the display of their pride, or machinery for the attainment of their private ends. Thus did the three-fold cry of the angels meet the threefold sinfulness of that generation of men. But the first line of the seraph’s song serves more than a temporary end. The Trisagion rings, and has need to ring, forever down the Church. Everywhere and at all times these are the three besetting sins of religious people-callousness in worship, carelessness in life, and the temper which employs the forms of religion simply for self-indulgence or self-aggrandisement. These sins are induced by the same habit of contentment with mere form; they can be corrected only by the vision of the Personal Presence who is behind all form. Our organisation, ritual, law, and sacrament-we must be able to see them fall away, as Isaiah saw the sanctuary itself disappear, before God Himself, if we are to remain heartily moral and fervently religious. The Church of God has to learn that no mere multiplication of forms, nor a more aesthetic arrangement of them, will redeem her worshippers from callousness. Callousness is but the shell which the feelings develop in self-defence when left by the sluggish and impenetrative soul to beat upon the hard outsides of form.. And nothing will fuse this shell of callousness but that ardent flame, which is kindled at touching of the Divine and human spirits, when forms have fallen away and the soul beholds with open face the Eternal Himself. As with worship, so with morality. Holiness is secured not by ceremonial, but by a reverence for a holy Being. We shall rub our consciences trite against moral maxims or religious rites. It is the effluence of a Presence, which alone can create in us, and keep in us, a clean heart. And if any object that we thus make light of ritual and religious law, of Church and sacrament, the reply is obvious. Ritual and sacrament are to the living God but as the wick of a candle to the light thereof. They are given to reveal Him, and the process is not perfect unless they themselves perish from the thoughts to which they convey Him. If God is not felt to be present, as Isaiah felt Him to be, to the exclusion of all forms, then these will be certain to be employed, as Uzziah employed them, for the sake of the only other spiritual being of whom the worshipper is conscious-himself. Unless we are able to forget our ritual in spiritual communion with the very God, and to become unconscious of our organisation in devout consciousness of our personal relation to Him, then ritual will be only a means of sensuous indulgence, organisation only a machinery for selfish or sectarian ends. The vision of God-this is the one thing needful for worship and for conduct. But while the one verse of the antiphon reiterates what Jehovah of hosts is in Himself, the other describes what He is in revelation. "The whole earth is full of His glory." Glory is the correlative of holiness. Glory is that in which holiness comes to expression. Glory is the expression of holiness, as beauty is the expression of health. If holiness be as deep as we have seen, so varied then will glory be. There is nothing in the earth but it is the glory of God. "The fulness of the whole earth is His glory," is the proper grammatical rendering of the song. For Jehovah of hosts is not the God only of Israel, but the Maker of heaven and earth, and not the victory of Israel alone, but the wealth and the beauty of all the world is His glory. So universal an ascription of glory is the proper parallel to that of absolute Godhead, which is implied in holiness. II. THE CALL ( Isaiah 6:4-8 ) Thus, then, Isaiah, standing on earth, on the place of a great sin, with the conscience of his people’s evil in his heart, and himself not without the feeling of guilt, looked into heaven, and beholding the glory of God, heard also with what pure praise and readiness of service the heavenly hosts surrounded His throne. No wonder the prophet felt the polluted threshold rock beneath him, or that as where fire and water mingle there should be the rising of a great smoke. For the smoke described is not, as some have imagined, that of acceptable incense, thick billows swelling through the temple to express the completion and satisfaction of the seraphs’ worship; but it is the mist which ever arises where holiness and sin touch each other. It has been described both as the obscurity that envelops a weak mind in presence of a truth too great for it, and the darkness that falls upon a diseased eye when exposed to the mid-day sun. These are only analogies, and may mislead us. What Isaiah actually felt was the dim-eyed shame, the distraction, the embarrassment, the blinding shock of a personal encounter with One whom he was utterly unfit to meet. For this was a personal encounter. We have spelt out the revelation sentence by sentence in gradual argument; but Isaiah did not reach it through argument or brooding. It was not to the prophet what it is to his expositors, a pregnant thought, that his intellect might gradually unfold, but a Personal Presence, which apprehended and overwhelmed him. God and he were there face to face. "Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because a man unclean of lips am I, and in the midst of a people unclean of lips do I dwell; for the King, Jehovah of hosts, mine eyes have beheld." The form of the prophet’s confession, "uncleanness of lips," will not surprise us as far as he makes it for himself. As with the disease of the body, so with the sin of the soul; each often gathers to one point of pain. Every man, though wholly sinful by nature, has his own particular consciousness of guilt. Isaiah being a prophet felt his mortal weakness most upon his lips. The inclusion of the people, however, along with himself under this form of guilt, suggests a wider interpretation of it. The lips are, as it were, the blossom of a man. "Grace is poured upon thy lips, therefore God hath blessed thee forever. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also." It is in the blossom of a plant that the plant’s defects become conspicuous; it is-when all a man’s faculties combine for the complex and delicate office of expression that any fault which is in him will come to the surface. Isaiah had been listening to the perfect praise of sinless beings, and it brought into startling relief the defects of his own people’s worship. Unclean of lips these were indeed when brought against that heavenly choir. Their social and political sin-sin of heart and home and market-came to a head in their worship, and what should have been the blossom of their life fell to the ground like a rotten leaf beneath the stainless beauty of the seraphs’ praise. While the prophet thus passionately gathered his guilt upon his lips, a sacrament was preparing on which God concentrated His mercies to meet it. Sacrament and lips, applied mercy and presented sin, now come together. "Then flew unto me one of the seraphim, and in his hand a glowing stone-with tongs had he taken it off the altar-and he touched my mouth and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and so thy iniquity passeth away and thy sin is atoned for." The idea. of this function is very evident, and a scholar who has said that it "would perhaps be quite intelligible to the contemporaries of the prophet, but is undoubtedly obscure to us," appears to have said just the reverse of what is right; for so simple a process of atonement leaves out the most characteristic details of the Jewish ritual of sacrifice, while it anticipates in an unmistakable manner the essence of the Christian sacrament. In a scene of expiation laid under the old covenant, we are struck by the absence of oblation or sacrificial act on the part of the sinner himself. There is here no victim slain, no blood sprinkled; an altar is only parenthetically suggested, and even then in its simplest form, of a hearth on which the Divine fire is continually burning. The "glowing stone," not "live coal" as in the English version, was no part of the temple furniture, but the ordinary means of conveying heat or applying fire in the various purposes of household life. There was, it is true, a carrying of fire in some of the temple services, as, for example, on the great Day of Atonement, but then it was effected by a small grate filled with living embers. In the household, on the other hand, when cakes had to be baked, or milk boiled, or water warmed, or in fifty similar applications of fire, a glowing stone taken from off the hearth was the invariable instrument. It is this swift and simple domestic process which Isaiah now sees substituted for the slow and intricate ceremonial of the temple-a seraph with a glowing stone in his hand, "with tongs had he taken it off the altar." And yet the prophet feels this only as a more direct expression of the very same idea with which the elaborate ritual was inspired-for which the victim was slain, and the flesh consumed in fire, and the blood sprinkled. Isaiah desires nothing else, and receives no more, than the ceremonial law was intended to assure to the sinner-pardon of his sin and reconciliation to God. But our prophet will have conviction of these immediately, and with a force which the ordinary ritual is incapable of expressing. The feelings of this Jew are too intense and spiritual to be satisfied with the slow pageant of the earthly temple, whose performances to a man in his horror could only have appeared so indifferent and far away from himself as not to be really his own nor to effect what he passionately desired. Instead, therefore, of laying his guilt in the shape of some victim on the altar, Isaiah, with a keener sense of its inseparableness from himself, presents it to God upon his own lips. Instead of being satisfied with beholding the fire of God consume it on another body than his own, at a distance from himself, he feels that fire visit the very threshold of his nature, where he has gathered the guilt, and consume it there. The whole secret of this startling nonconformity to the law, on the very floor of the temple, is that for a man who has penetrated to the presence of God the legal forms are left far behind, and he stands face to face with the truth by which they are inspired. In that Divine Presence Isaiah is his own altar; he acts his guilt in his own person, and so he feels the expiatory fire come to his very self directly from the heavenly hearth. It is a replica of the fifty-first Psalm: "For Thou delightest not in sacrifice, else would I give it; Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." This is my sacrifice, my sense of guilt gathered here upon my lips: my "broken and contrite heart," who feel myself undone before Thee, "Lord, Thou wilt not despise." It has always been remarked as one of the most powerful proofs of the originality and Divine force of Christianity, that from man’s worship of God, and especially from those parts in which the forgiveness of sin is sought and assured, it did away with the necessity of a physical rite of sacrifice; that it broke the universal and immemorial habit by which man presented to God a material offering for the guilt of his soul. By remembering this fact we may measure the religious significance of the scene we now contemplate. Nearly eight centuries before there was accomplished upon Calvary that Divine Sacrifice for sin, which abrogated a rite of expiation, hitherto universally adopted by the conscience of humanity, we find a Jew, in the dispensation where such a rite was most religiously enforced, trembling under the conviction of sin, and upon a floor crowded with suggestions of physical sacrifice; yet the only sacrifice he offers is the purely spiritual one of confession. It is most notable. Look at it from a human point of view, and we can estimate Isaiah’s immense spiritual originality; look at it from a Divine and we cannot help perceiving a distinct foreshadow of what was to take place by the blood of Jesus under the new covenant. To this man, as to some others of his dispensation, whose experience our Christian sympathy recognises so readily in the Psalms, there was granted afore-time boldness to enter into the holiest. For this is the explanation of Isaiah’s marvellous disregard of the temple ritual. It is all behind him. This man has passed within the veil. Forms are all behind him, and he is face to face with God. But between two beings in that position, intercourse by the far off and uncertain signals of sacrifice is inconceivable. It can only take place by the simple unfolding of the heart. It must be rational, intelligent, and by speech. When man is at such close quarters with God what sacrifice is possible but the sacrifice of the lips? Form for the Divine reply there must be some, for even Christianity has its sacraments, but like them this sacrament is of the very simplest form, and like them it is accompanied by the explanatory word. As Christ under the new covenant took bread and wine, and made the homely action of feeding upon them the sign and seal to His disciples of the forgiveness of their sins, so His angel under the old and sterner covenant took the more severe, but as simple and domestic form of fire to express the same to His prophet. And we do well to emphasise that the experimental value of this sacrament of fire is bestowed by the word attached to it. It is not a dumb sacrament, with a magical efficacy. But the prophet’s mind is persuaded and his conscience set at peace by the intelligible words of the minister of the sacrament. Isaiah’s sin being taken away, he is able to discern the voice of God Himself. It is in the most beautiful accordance with what has already happened that he hears this not as command, but request, and answers not of compulsion, but of freedom. "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? and who will go for us? And I said, Here am I; send me." What spiritual understanding alike of the will of God and the responsibility of man, what evangelical liberty and boldness, are here! Here we touch the spring of that high flight Isaiah takes both in prophecy and in active service for the State. Here we have the secret of the filial freedom, the life-long sense of responsibility, the regal power of initiative, the sustained and unfaltering career, which distinguish Isaiah among the ministers of the old covenant, and stamp him prophet by the heart and for the life, as many of them are only by the office and for the occasion. Other prophets are the servants of the God of heaven; Isaiah stands next the Son Himself. On others the hand of the Lord is laid in irresistible compulsion; the greatest of them are often ignorant, by turns headstrong and craven, deserving correction, and generally in need of supplementary calls and inspirations. But of such scourges and such doles Isaiah’s royal career is absolutely without a trace. His course, begun in freedom, is pursued without hesitation or anxiety; begun in utter self-sacrifice, it knows henceforth no moment of grudging or disobedience. "Esaias is very bold," because he is so free and so fully devoted. In the presence of mind with which he meets each sudden change of politics during that bewildering half-century of Judah’s history, we seem to hear his calm voice repeating its first, "Here am I." Presence of mind he always had. The kaleidoscope shifts: it is now Egyptian intrigue, now Assyrian force; now a false king requiring threat of displacement by God’s own