V. The Seraphim.
" Above him stood the seraphim."
1. The seraphim are not mentioned elsewhere, and the origin and meaning of the name can only be supplied by conjecture. It must suffice to say that they appear here as the most exalted ministers of the Divine Being, in immediate proximity to Himself, and give expression to the adoration and reverence unceasingly due from the highest of created intelli- gences to the Creator. Possessed apparently of human form, and in an erect posture, they form a circle — or perhaps rather a double choir, about the throne, each with two of his wings seeming to support himself upon the air, with two covering his face, in reverence, that he might not gaze directly upon the Divine glory, and with two his own person, in humility, not deigning to meet directly the Divine glance. Can the scene be more aptly or more worthily reproduced than in our own poet's noble lines ? —
Fountain of light, thyself invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st, Throned inaccessible, but when thou shadest The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
^ p. T. Forsyth, Missions in State and Cliurcli, p. 224. 2 Early Church History to A.D. 313, ii. p. 127.
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Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.*
2. The seraphim, says Kautzsch {Dictionary of the Bible, V. 643), belong undoubtedly to the realm of angels. Although mentioned only in the vision of Isaiah (vi. 2), they appear there as well-known beings, so that the belief in them may certainly be assumed for the pre-Prophetic period. Furnished with six wings, they offer around God's throne antiphonal praise in the Trisagion ; one of them purges the lips of the prophet, and announces to him the forgiveness of his sins. They are thus, in fact, intelligent beings, angels. Of the numerous explanations of the name, the only one that can be taken in earnest is that which traces it back to the singular sdrdph. This word means properly "serpent" (Num. xxi. 8, Deut. viii. 15), and the seraphim must accordingly have been originally serpent-formed creatures — embodiments, indeed, of the serpent-like lightning flashes that play around Jehovah. But, in the case of the seraphim of Isaiah, the six wings may be regarded as all that has survived of this somewhat mythological form. Moreover (probably long before the time of Isaiah), they have assumed human form, as is evident not only from the song of praise (vi. 3), which would be inconceivable in a serpent's mouth, but from the hand (vi. 6) and the speech of the sdrdph (vi. 7).
3. The first thing that strikes us about the seraphim is their redundance of wings. They had each six, only two of which were used for flying ; the others, with which they shrouded their faces and their feet, were, apparently, quite superfluous. Why should they have had them when there was no fit employment for them ? Was it not sheer waste to be possessing wings that were merely employed as covering, and never spread for flight ? And yet, perhaps, without this shrouding of their faces and feet — an office which, at least, the wings performed — they might not have answered so well high heaven's purposes, might not have swept abroad with such undivided intentness and such entire abandonment on their Divine errands. Perhaps their upper and
^ Paradise Lost, iii. 375,
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lower parts needed to be swathed thus to make them the singly bent, the wholly absorbed ministers that they were. With unveiled faces and naked feet they might have been less prompt and alert, less concentrated and surrendered for the Lord.
If We meet sometimes with these seemingly wasted wings in men, in the form of powers or capabilities, knowledges or skills, for the exercise of which there is no scope or opportunity in their lot, which they are not called on or able to apply. There they lie, unutilised ; nothing is done with them, no demand for them exists. To what end, we ask, have they been acquired ? or what a pity, we say, that the men could not be placed in circumstances in which a field would be offered them, in which they would be wanted and drawn out! And yet, a knowledge or skill gained, may not be really wasted, though it be left without due scope and opportunity. The best, the finest use of it does not lie always in what it accomplishes, in the open product of its activity, but often in what has been secretly added to us or wrought into us, through gaining it, in the contribution which the gaining of it has been to our character or moral growth, in some nobler shaping of ourselves by means of it.^
(1) "With twain he covered his face." The first pair of wings suggest the need of the lowliest reverence in the worship of God. What does that lofty chorus of " Holy ! holy ! holy ! " that burst from those immortal lips mean but the declaration that God is high above, and separate from, all limitations and imperfections of creatures ? And we Christians, who hear it re-echoed in the very last Book of Scripture by the four and twenty elders who represent redeemed humanity, have need to take heed that we do not lose our reverence in our confidence, and that we do not part with godly fear in our filial love.