96 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
into the spirit of help ; but the enthusiasm of holiness makes the spirit of help the spirit of redemption. It not only consecrates the old, it creates a new spirit within us.
1[ It has been the song of the Church in hovel and palace, in the leafy groves and in the magnificent cathedral through mighty anthems, oratorios, and masses, and in children's melodies for thousands of years. Our old planet has forgotten it often in politics and in the hollow mockery of reform, but statesmanship and philanthropy, every congeries of powers set to make the world advance, or improve, has had at its core the truth not only that this is God's universe, but that the God of the universe is holy ; and above every lasting triumph have fluttered the banners which bore the words : " Holy, holy, holy. Lord God of Hosts." Every army which has forgotten to count on the fact that the supremacy of this system of things lay in the hands of hohness has failed of permanent triumph. "The power not ourselves that makes for righteousness" — object to the theological way of saying it, and accept this, if you will; but to neglect that factor — "a power making for righteousness" — is to have the universe against you. Your financial authority of the majority, and your dreadful wx populi, are as straw beneath the feet of a dawning righteousness. Build in the night your icy wrong high as heaven, right will be here with sunrise and with a single ray tumble it down.^
2. But not only does the seraphic hymn celebrate the Divine nature in its own transcendent purity and perfection ; it celebrates it as it is manifested in the material world — "The fulness of the whole earth is His glory." By " glory " we mean the outward show or state attendant upon dignity or rank : the glory, then, of which Isaiah speaks, is the outward expression of the Divine nature : pictured as visible splendour it may impress the eye of flesh ; but any other worthy manifestation of the Being of God may be not less truly termed His glory. It is more than the particular attribute of power or wisdom ; it is the entire fulness of the Godhead, visible to the eye of faith, if not to the eye of sense, in the concrete works of nature, arresting the spectator and claiming from him the tribute of praise and homage. It is that which in giant strokes is imprinted upon the mechanism of the heavens, and which, in the bold conception of the poet, " One day telleth another, and one night declareth to another," so far as the empire of heaven extends. It is that
* F. W. Gunsaulus.
' • ISAIAH 97
whicli, as another poet writes, in the thunderstorm, when the clouds seem to part and disclose the dazzling brightness within, wrings from the denizens of God's heavenly palace the cry of adoring wonder. Conceived, again, as an ideal form of splendour, it is set by Isaiah before the Israelites as that which should be the object of their reverence, but which has been too often the object of their shamelessness and scorn : " For their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to defy the eyes of His glory." It is the attribute which is disclosed when those who are the enemies of truth and right are overcome, and the Kingdom of God is extended upon earth. " Be thou exalted, 0 God, above the heavens : be thy glory over all the earth;" prays the Psalmist : let Thy majesty be acknowledged more widely, more worthily, than it now is, amongst the nations of the world. The move- ments of history, in so far as they affect the welfare of Israel and promote God's purposes of salvation, are a progressive revelation of His glory : " Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low," before the nation returning from its exile, " and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
1[ It is said the whole earth is full of God's glory. You and I would be prepared to admit that, where the glory of God shines in the spray above Niagara, or where the morning tint is seen upon the Matterhorn and the evening glow upon the Jungfrau, or where the sun rises and sets upon the broad bosom of the Atlantic, or where the wake of the ships stirs the phosphorescence of the Mediterranean at night. But to be told that the whole earth is full of the glory of God, that startles us.
I know a place in London where a woman in a drunken frenzy put her child upon a hot iron bar ; where a man beat to death his little crippled boy whose agonising cries were heard at night. I should not have thought that the glory of God was there. But the seraphim say the whole earth is full of the glory of God. We are reminded of what Elizabeth Barrett Browning says —
Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he that sees takes off his shoes.
If One day in London I was sitting in a dark omnibus. A man