From this contrast the whole vision expands as follows.
Under the mistaken idea that what Isaiah describes is the temple in Jerusalem, it has been remarked, that the place of his vision is wonderful in the case of one who set so little store by ceremonial worship. This, however, to which our prophet looks is no house built with hands, but Jehovah's own heavenly _palace_ (ver. 1--not _temple_); only Isaiah describes it in terms of the Jerusalem temple which was its symbol. It was natural that the temple should furnish Isaiah not only with the framework of his vision, but also with the platform from which he saw it. For it was in the temple that Uzziah's sin was sinned and God's holiness vindicated upon him. It was in the temple that, when Isaiah beheld the scrupulous religiousness of the people, the contrast of that with their evil lives struck him, and he summed it up in the epigram _wickedness and worship_ (i. 13). It was in the temple, in short, that the prophet's conscience had been most roused, and just where the conscience is most roused there is the vision of God to be expected. Very probably it was while brooding over Uzziah's judgement on the scene of its occurrence that Isaiah beheld his vision. Yet for all the vision contained the temple itself was too narrow. The truth which was to be revealed to Isaiah, the holiness of God, demanded a wider stage and the breaking down of those partitions, which, while they had been designed to impress God's presence on the worshipper, had only succeeded in veiling Him. So while the seer keeps his station on the threshold of the earthly building, soon to feel it rock beneath his feet, as heaven's praise bursts like thunder on the earth, and while his immediate neighbourhood remains the same familiar _house_, all beyond is glorified. The veil of the temple falls away, and everything behind it. No ark nor mercy-seat is visible, but a throne and a court--the palace of God in heaven, as we have it also pictured in the eleventh and twenty-ninth Psalms. The Royal Presence is everywhere. Isaiah describes no face, only a Presence and a Session: _the Lord sitting on a throne, and His skirts filled the palace_.
"No face; only the sight Of a sweepy garment vast and white With a hem that I could recognize."[9]
[9] Browning's "Christmas Eve."
_Around_ (not _above_, as in the English version) were ranged the hovering courtiers, of what shape and appearance we know not, except that they veiled their faces and their feet before the awful Holiness,--all wings and voice, perfect readinesses of praise and service. The prophet heard them chant in antiphon, like the temple choirs of priests. And the one choir cried out, _Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts_; and the other responded, _The whole earth is full of His glory_.
It is by the familiar name Jehovah of hosts--the proper name of Israel's national God--that the prophet hears the choirs of heaven address the Divine Presence. But what they ascribe to the Deity is exactly what Israel will not ascribe, and the revelation they make of His nature is the contradiction of Israel's thoughts concerning Him.
What, in the first place, is HOLINESS? We attach this term to a definite standard of morality or an unusually impressive fulness of character. To our minds it is associated with very positive forces, as of comfort and conviction--perhaps because we take our ideas of it from the active operations of the Holy Ghost. The original force of the term _holiness_, however, was not positive but negative, and throughout the Old Testament, whatever modifications its meaning undergoes, it retains a negative flavour. The Hebrew word for holiness springs from a root which means _to set apart, make distinct, put at a distance from_. When God is described as the Holy One in the Old Testament 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_ (Hosea 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_ (lvii. 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 attribute 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_. Better expression could not be found for the full idea of Godhead. This little word _Holy_ radiates heaven's own breadth of meaning. Within its fundamental idea--distance or difference from man--what spaces are there not for every attribute of Godhead to flash? If the Holy One be originally He who is distinct from man and man's thoughts, and who impresses man from the beginning with the awful sublimity of the contrast in which He stands to him, how naturally may holiness come to cover not only that moral purity and intolerance of sin to which we now more strictly apply the term, but those metaphysical conceptions as well, which we gather up under the name "supernatural," and so finally, by lifting the Divine nature away from the change and vanity of this world, and emphasizing God's independence of all beside Himself, become the fittest expression we have for Him as the Infinite and Self-existent. Thus the word _holy_ appeals in turn to each of the three great faculties of man's nature, by which he can be religiously exercised--his conscience, his affections, his reason; it covers the impressions which God makes on man as a sinner, on man as a worshipper, on man as a thinker. The Holy One is not only the Sinless and Sin-abhorring, but the Sublime and the Absolute too.