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94 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
prophets saw vindicated in their deliverance from tyranny or oppression : " The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations " ; or, " And the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall show myself holy in you before their eyes." And so it is to God's holiness that the Psalmist, persecuted but conscious of innocence, who has cried day and night without respite, appeals : " And thou art holy, who inhabitest the praises of Israel." The seraphs celebrate God not as the All-righteous, not as the All-powerful, or the All-wise ; they celebrate Him under a title which expresses His essence more profoundly than any of these, and which marks more significantly the gulf which severs Him from all finite beings : they celebrate Him as the All-holy.i
1[ The Hebrew word for hohness springs from a root which means to set apart, make distinct, put at a distance from. When God is described in the Old Testament as the Holy One of Israel 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 " (xl. 25). He is the Unapproachable : " Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God ? " (1 Sam. vi. 20). He is the Utter Contrast of man : " I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee " (Hos. xi. 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 " (Ivii. 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 attri- bute 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.
" Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts " (Isa. vi. 5). " The Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth " (Jer. i. 9). " I saw . . . the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord . . . and I went in bitterness . . . but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me" (Ezek. i. 27, 28; iii. 14). These three utterances spoken severally by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, show a remarkable agreement in one respect between
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the three prophets who were otherwise most unlike. They all record how a vision of God was the essence of their call. Because they had seen God, and had heard His voice, they could, and therefore must, speak to their fellow-men. So far there is a close similarity between them. But their circumstances were different, their gifts were different, their works were different; and so God also was pleased to make Himself known to them in different forms. In each case the vision which was granted to the prophet corresponded with his message. What the prophet had seen was the seal of that which he had to say. (1) In a season of outward prosperity Isaiah saw the Lord seated upon a throne, high and lifted up, in all His glorious majesty ; and he was filled with the sense of holiness. (2) In the prospect of inevitable overthrow Jeremiah received the direct assurance of the Lord's sovereign Providence ; and he was filled with a sense of trust. (3) In the desolateness of a strange land, a captive among captives, Ezekiel looked upon the emblems of God's all- quickening presence ; and he was filled with the sense of stern courage.
The great missionary motive of the Church is the enthusiasm for holiness. The prophet received his mission in an atmosphere charged with unutterable holiness. It was not the poetic splendour of the vision which awed and stirred him. It was not the imaginative glory of the scene. That might have made him an artist, an orator, but not a prophet, not a missionary. What at once crushed and moved him, abased him and lifted him out of himself, was the glory of holiness. Every splendour seems to carry with it some trace of earth but this. It is the most unworldly of all unearthly things. It takes a man out of himself, shames him out of himself, gives him to his highest self and truest destiny. It puts the new song into his trembling lips. It endows the stammering man with mighty speech, and sends him forth from his abasement with all the power of the Spirit of God. It cleanses the very lips that it moves to confess themselves unclean, unclean. It emboldens the very conscience that it had just made to quail. It inspires with a grand fear which forgets fear. It gives a message to the man who feels in its presence that he is nothing and has nothing. When the enthusiasm of humanity comes it turns the spirit of adventure