ii. The Vision.
" I saw the Lord."
1. The prophet had lost a hero and found his Lord. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord." He had anticipated that when the good King Uzziah died the linch-pin would be removed, and the car of the nation's life would topple over into confusion and disaster. All Isaiah's hopes were centred in this radical and aggressively righteous monarch, and he feared for the State when its monarch should be taken. Ho
T. W. Gunsaulus,
ISAIAH 'j^
anticipated chaos, and lo ! in place of chaos there emerged the Lord of Order ! He found that in the days of his hero-worship he had been living in comparative twilight, the real Luminary had been partially obscured, there had been an eclipse of the Sun : and now, with the passing of Uzziah the eclipse had ended, and the Presence of the Lord blazed out in unexpected glory ! " In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord." It had seemed to the foreboding fears of the depressed youth as though the very existence of the kingdom were involved in the con- tinued reign of the king. If he goes — wh it then ? A crisis was assured ! And yet in place of the crisis oame God, and the effulgent glory was bewildering. Succeeding generations of men have shared these pessimistic fears. We have riveted our gaze upon the incidental until the incidental has become the easontial, and we have feared the withering blast of death. " What will Israel do when Uzziah is taken ? " " What will Methodism do when John Wesley is removed ? " " What will the Salvation Army do when anything happens to its General ? " " What will this or that church do when bereft of its minister ? " And the long-feared crisis has come, but instead of being left to the hope- less, clammy darkness of the grave, we have gazed upon the dazzling glories of a forgotten heaven ! The transient pomp and splendour died, and their passing removed the veil from the face of the eternal, and we saw the Lord. " In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord." He anticipated an end, he found a new beginning.
IT Last autumn I spent a little time in the old castle at Stirling, 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 Bannockburn, 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 radiated from that pulpit will enrich and fashion Scottish character when Bannock- burn has become an uninfluential memory, standing vague and
78 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
indefinite, on the horizon of a far-distant time. When King Uzziah is dead, the Lord will still live, high and lifted up.^
I 2. The great characteristic of Isaiah's age was religious ^v indifference. That which the prophet was enabled to see — that great Divine world within this outer world — was the very thing which the nation could not be made to perceive. Men could not be impressed with the idea of a living God, a Sovereign high and lifted up, ruling over the world and life and men's con- sciences. They were insensible to this, and would have none of it. " The heart of the people was fat, and their ears heavy, and their eyes closed." . They were incapable of being touched witTi the feeling of the reality of God. And this insensibility led to disobedience, to f'">rmalism, to distrust of Jehovah, and to schemes of worldly policy , and, when danger threatened, to the calling in of foreign help : ' they stayed themselves on Egypt, they trusted in Assyria " ; and when these great world-powers once planted their foot on the little country the end of it was not far distant — ^as described in the closing verses of the chapter.
Perhaps the death of Uzziah suggested some of this to the prophet, and made him think of it, and follow it out in his mind to its conclusion. But it was the sight of Jehovah that made him understand it on its deeper side. It was the revelation to him of a great Euler behind all things, and a hidden glory — the real power within all things, — a fire in contact with the sin and impurity of mankind, that must consume them or cleanse it. It was this that made him feel the real meaning of the circum- stances of his time in their relation to this Ruler and made him, when he himself had been brought into right relation to Him, take a stand in regard to the world, and assume his right place in it.