The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 126

for ue, if we do not ever recollect in our worship that, high as yonrler empyrean above this "dim spot that men call earth," distinct as the clouds in fleeciest white from the stngDBnt and foul spots below, are the tbou!(hts of Jehovah above our thoughts, and his ways above our ways I Shall we think of holiness as separation 1 Woe to us if we know not that purity, which, like the flame, refuses to wed with ought that is alien to itself; which, like the ligM, divides and discriminates the evil from the good wheresoever it comes I 'l'he thrice-holy God is none other than the supremely pure Intelligence, the perfect chastity of Love. Ilut the infinite glory as well as the holiness of Jehovah is celebrated. It is the "fulness of the earth," teeming with life, throbbing with mysterious forces, covered with a rich robe of rare embroidery, holding rich treasures in her keeping; which embodies to our thought the nature of God in its vast extent, just as the pure sky represents the intensity of that nature as a principle of holiness. Silent and inaccessible as sun and stars, he is yet near to us in the throbbing of greai nature's heart-nay, of our own. "Speak to him, then I for he hea.rs, and spirit with spirit may meet; Closer is he tha.n thy breathing, nearer than hands and feet." "God in all "-this was the thought of Paul the apostle, as of Isaiah the prophet. Incarnate in the flower and in the stem, vocal in the "sound of many waters," or in the tinkling of brook or murmur of zephyr; there is nothing in the world in which he is not revealed, "Thou art, 0 God, the Life and Light Of all this wondrous world we see I Its glow by day, its smile by night, Are but reflections caught from thee: Where'er we turn, thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are thine." 4, The voic11 of God. A loud cry is heard even above the hymn of the seraphim, and it causes the thresholds to tremble. The thnnder was among all ancient nations listened to a.s the voice of God. It is the natural expression of supreme and irreEistible power, before which man, in the last height of his own intelligence and power, must bow. Instant.ly the smoke soars from the al tar, and the temple is filled with smoke. Worship is man's answer to God's voice-the answer of his conscience, the answer of his heart. Nor can we truly worship without the sense of being face to face with unuttera.ble mystery. For behind the most glorious visions remaius he "whom no ma.n hath at a.ny time seen, nor can see;" at the heart of the thunder is that Divine emotion which must slay ns were it fully discharged into our souls. The rising smoke may fitly typify that sacred silence, the " offspring of the deeper heart," in which our worship should begin and end. II. 'l'HE PROPHET'S CONSECRATION. 1. The e,(fect of the revelation on his mind. First, there is the sense of utter wealcness. When the true glory of the spiritual world bursts upon us, it seems as if we must die. Every dil11culty conquered brings us a. new sense of strength ; every human being we have fairly faced in the consciousness of our own manhood we may reduce to our own level; for one man is virtually the peer of every other, the world over. Ilut who can look and live in the presence of the white intensti light of the pure and burning Spirit of God? Already, like Abraham (Gen. xvi ii.), the man feels himself as if reduced to " dust and ashes ; " or, like Moses, that he cannot see the Eternal and Jive, but must shelter himself in a cleft of the rock, and hide behind the hand of God (Exod. xxxiii.); or, like Manoah, forebodes a deathful doom as he gazes into the myHtic altar-flame (Judg. :xiii.). In Greek and other Gentile legeais we read of children receiving a nightly birth of fire as the condition of immortality, the mean- ing of which was that none but those destined to divinity could endure the fier; ordeal, Profound enigma of our nature I that we to whom has been imparted t.h., longing for life eternal, the dim consciousness of an undying destiny, should yet know moments when we seem on the verge of "dusty death." But the man whom God ea.lie to be mighty in word and deed must pass through the whole gamut and soale of human emotion, from the lowest mood of self-distrust to that of lo1tiest !)Onfidence in GO<\, No noto mus~ be l11ll uustruck iu QIU" owo heart, if we ar11 tu ~414~ l  lli THE BOOK OF TllE IIROPRET ISAIA.H. [om vu 1-13,