merely shrewd politicians have looked and listened and put all
their visible forces into their own measures and methods. The
^ H. C. O. Lanchester, in Hastings' Single- Volume Dictionary of the Bible, p. 55U.
ISAIAH III
statesmen have looked and listened also, but with the unseen power of truth and right and God ; they have counted on the hosts of the Lord. They have known that ideas and principles are God's messengers to command men and lead them ; they have believed that progress is made by the rule of the powers above man's vision, rather than that of those below it ; and not politicians, but statesmen have ruled the world. So all reform depends on a Lord of hosts.
IT The Greeks, looking at the heavens above them and at the earth around them, beholding everywhere order, called what they saw cosmos — beauty of harmony. The Eomans, discovering the same harmonious relations and movements, named the entirety of creation a universe — combined as one. To the poetic imagination of the Hebrews, with their knowledge of the omnipotent, reigning God, the regularity and order everywhere apparent suggested an army in vast, numerous, and varied divisions acting under the command of one will, and that will Jehovah's. The Lord of hosts, He is the King, the King who sitteth upon the throne of the universe.'
V.
" Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar."
1. "I am a man of unclean lips." "lam undone!" It was because that conviction and confession sprang in the prophet's consciousness that the seraph winged his way with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just this : faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the resolve to turn my back on my own past self. Now, it seems to me ^ that a great deal of what is called, and in a sense is, evangelical teaching, fails to represent the full counsel of God in the matter of man's redemption, because it puts a one-sided emphasis on faith, and slurs over the accompanying idea of repentance. And I am here to say that a trust in Jesus Christ, which is unaccompanied by a profound penitent con-
1 J. D. Davis. a A. Maclareh.
112 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
sciousness a ad abhorrence of one's sins, and a resolve to turn away from them for the time to come, is not a faith which will bring either pardon or cleansing. We do not need to have less said about trust ; we need to have a great deal more said about repentance.
But the seraph did not come in his own personality alone ; he did not say, I can remove all the impurity of which thou dost complain ; it lies within my power to make thee a good man. No such speech did he make. It is not in mortal to purify mortality. This help that we need is supernatural aid. Even a seraph cannot redeem, purify, or forgive.
H Now, mark this : the angel was not told to go, but he knew just what to do. The fact is, the angels have gone so often for the live coal, that whenever they hear a sinner crying that he is undone, they go for it ; they do not need to be told. It is as if a druggist's boy were so in the habit of getting the same medicine for the same symptoms, that when the patient comes to the door he knows just what medicine to seek, without going to the doctor to get advice.^
2. As soon as the consciousness of sin and the aversion from it spring in a man's heart, the seraph's wings are set in motion. The two are as closely synchronous as the flash and the peal. Remember that beautiful old story in the historical books, of how the erring king, brought to sanity and repentance by Nathan's apologue, put all his acknowledgments in these words, " I have sinned against the Lord "; and how the confes- sion was not out of his lips, nor had died in its vibration in the atmosphere, before the prophet, with Divine authority, replied with equal brevity and completeness, and as if the two sayings were parts of one sentence, " And the Lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin." That is all. Simultaneous are the two things. To confess is to be forgiven, and the moment that the consciousness of sin rises in the heart, that moment does the heavenly messenger come to still and soothe.
3. " A live coal." The thing called in the A.V. a " live coal," and in the R.V. margin a " hot stone," is peculiarly Oriental, belonging to a state of society that has now passed away in the West ; and hence we have in English no word that
> F. B. Meyer.
ISAIAH 113
properly translates it. The rendering " a live coal," i.e. a burning log (for of course in those days the fuel was wood), is totally wrong, and, indeed, the conception is too grotesque to be for a moment entertained. The rizpah is a stone kept in all ancient Oriental households as a means of applying heat to household purposes. In order to bake cakes (cf. 1 Kings xix. 6, " a cake baked on the hot stones "), or to roast flesh, the stone was first heated in the fire, and the wet dough or the flesh spread out upon it, the stones as they grew cold being exchanged for hot ones fresh from the fire. To boil milk, the hot stone was plunged into it when contained in the leathern skin that served alike as cauldron and as pitcher. The prophet, carrying the similitude of an earthly household into the heavenly palace, assumes the presence of such an utensil on the hearth, which here, of course, must be conceived as an altar, on the model of God's earthly dwelling-place. A seraph takes the hot stone from the altar and lays it on the prophet's lips, which he had himself mentioned as the special seat of sin, and announces to him also in words the forgiveness of his guilt : " Lo, this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."