came in to examine our tickets, and I thought to myself, you will
never be able to see whether they have been punctured aright.
As I watched, curious to notice, he touched a little spring on his
7
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breast, and iu a tiny globe of glass a beautiful glow of electric light shone out. Manifestly the man could see anywhere, because he carried the light with which he saw. So we must understand thal^, when the heart is full of God, you will find God anywhere and everywhere, as the miner carries the candle in his cap through the dark cavity of the earth, and lights his steps.^
1 We are like children in a machine shop, who see this wheel revolving one way, and that wheel revolving another way, this wheel revolving rapidly, and that wheel revolving slowly, and who conclude that therefore there is no plan, no unifying force about it all. Or, to use another figure, we stand by a great loom, and see one side of the fabric, and it seems to be a crazy patch- work of shapes and colours. Isaiah caught a glimpse of the Engineer and saw that He was Master of all the wheels and belts and pulleys. Isaiah caught a glimpse of the Weaver at the loom and saw that the pattern was before Him all the while. So, ever afterward, whoever was on the throne of Judah, whoever ruled Israel, there was one man absolutely calm and contented, knowing that the King of kings was on the Great Throne, and that all earthly monarchs are but His puppets, with paper crowns and sceptres of straw. He was like Eobert Browning's man, who "never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph." " What is your carpenter doing now ? " said a Eoman scoffer to an early Christian. " He is making a coffin for your emperor," was the reply. And He was. Nero is but a noxious memory. We name our Hogs Nero. The Carpenter of Nazareth is on the throne of power, " Ancient of days yet ever new." *
'Tis not the temple's shrine
Which holy makes the place, Where'er God is, is power Divine;
Where'er God helps is grace.
The bush on Horeb's peak,
Burning and unconsumed, The prophet bent to reverence meek,
For God the spot illumed.
The sword at night beheld,
By Jordan's swelling bed. The captain of the host compelled
To own the Lord who led.
» F. B. Meyer. » C. C. Albertson.
ISAIAH 99
Tliink of thy God as near;
And, once His presence found, Be sure, whate'er around appear,
Thou tread'st on holy ground.
Put off, 0 Man, thy shoes.
With which thou earth hast trod; Thee from earth's dust and toil unloose,
And worship pay thy God.
So shalt thou find a light,
To burn and still endure ; A leader of all-conquering might
To make thy Canaan sure.^
vii. The Effect of the Song.
" And the foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke."
1. " The foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him that cried " — and yet his face was covered with his wings. Dim, feeble, mufifled sounds are the most we should have expected to proceed from them. With a covered face we associate the idea of silence. They are not the face-veiled whose voices ring out, whose words go forth abroad to agitate and thrill. Fancy the posts of the Lord's house quivering, and the prophet's heart stirred to its depths, beneath the cries of those whose heads are bowed and hid behind their wings ! Here, however, is an image of much truth. Great, penetrating, inspiring utterances like the utterances of the seraphim of Isaiah's vision — are they not always connected with some deep, still inwardness, with some profound withdrawal and retirement of soul ? Is it not always from such as have held their breath that they come ? from such as have brooded oft in solitude, and sighed, being burdened ? No one speaks with quickening energy, to the melting or rousing of his fellows, who has not dwelt apart, who has not had his moments, his hours, of dumb absorption, with bent brows and folded hands, when thought and feeling have weighed upon him heavily, and held him bound. There is no life, again, of noble activity and influence which does not rest
^ Loi-d Kinloch.
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on, and issue from, some inner, hidden life of careful self- discipline and quiet self-communion, which is not fed and sustained from behind with cherishings of faith and contempla- tion of ideas. " The more I ascend before men," said one, " the more I descend before Thee, 0 God ! " and we may say, also, that to descend before God is to ascend before men.
2. " And the house was filled with smoke." The posts of the door moved at the voice which declared that the Holy One was there. The house was filled with smoke because the fire of His love was kindling the sacrifices. The sights and sounds of Sinai would not have made the Israelites tremble as they did if they had been merely sights and sounds of overwhelming and destructive power ; they spoke first of Truth, of Holiness. And that Truth and Holiness did not dwell aloof and at a distance from the man, as in the burning mountain, but in the very house which every Israelite might claim as his own,