Chapter XXXVIII: Part 38

Equally unwise is the disposition to specify with a minute particularity the events which are to usher in the great day of the Lord, or the convulsions of nature which shall herald and proclaim it, or the astonishing circumstances with which it shall be arrayed. God has chosen to involve them in a mysterious and solemn indistinctness. In bold and sublime figures the inspired writers have delineated a scene which must stand singular and by itself, without any precedent or parallel, and which, therefore, neither human language can directly express nor human understanding adequately comprehend. Instead of endeavouring to explain the images and symbols employed, prudence will lead us to confine ourselves to the very words of Scripture, such as Dan. xii. 2; Joel iii. 11-15; 2 Cor. v. 10; Matt. xxv. 31, 32; Rev. xx. 11-13; 1 Cor. xv. 51-53.[2] On these declarations we should meditate with serious and chastened minds, for if Scripture be true these words cannot be without a real and solemn meaning, and that meaning can only be that there shall be a day in which the world shall be judged by God in Christ, and that from before the Divine tribunal the good and the evil, separated from each other, shall depart to destinies final and irreversible (P. D. 2109).

II. _In that day the Lord alone shall be exalted._

1. How is this possible? Is not God always exalted far above all blessing and praise? He will then be exalted in the sense in which He is now said to be glorified. He will be exalted in the visible homage and submission of an assembled universe. He will be exalted by the full manifestation of His attributes, in their unclouded and effulgent lustre, but the exhibition, before men and angels, of His omnipotence and justice, His wisdom and truth, His love and mercy, of the holiness of His law, the equity of His administration, the abundance of His grace, so that all hearts shall be bowed down at His footstool, and every mouth shall be stopped.

2. In that day God shall be exalted _alone._

(1) The text may lead our minds to other deities as opposed to Jehovah. They shall indeed be gone; in that day they shall be seen to be less than the least of all their worshippers.

(2) It will be the great day of the disclosure of all things; and all creatures shall see the Lord as He is, and themselves also as they are. Therefore shall all the highest orders of celestial intelligences, the cherubim and seraphim, and all the ranks of existence which may occupy the interval between man and His Maker, veil their faces before His throne; they shall be as nothing in _His_ sight. Then shall all creatureship fall low before the one Creator; all derived, dependent being shall shrink into its true dimensions before the Absolute, the Eternal, the I AM.

(3) Even Christ Himself, His office as the Messiah having been accomplished, and His administration of the Church, in His human character, being brought to a close, shall resign His mediatorial sway (1 Cor. xv. 24-28; H. E. I. 985).

(4) But our chief concern, as we are men, is with humanity: "The lofty looks of _man_ shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of _man_ shall be bowed down; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."

That day shall indeed declare the impotence of human power, the emptiness of human ambition, the nothingness of human renown.[3] The very circumstances on account of which men have most lifted themselves up in their lifetime will be the occasions of their profoundest humiliation then.

In that day our sinfulness shall sink us into the dust, and cover us with shame and confusion even more than our vanities. Shall any one of us hope then to be exalted, when the memories of us all shall retrace so many sterile and unproductive intensions, so many good impressions never fostered and ripened into fruits of righteousness, so many talents misused by our iniquity, or buried by our idleness? Then there shall be no more concealments, no more deceits, no more false excuses, no more of those pretences, equivocations, subterfuges, and sophisms which our reason is now so fatally ingenious in playing off upon itself (P. D. 661, 2106). Oh, think of these things, and let not your sins be dearer to you than your salvation. Think of them ere the night cometh, and the sun of your probation has quite gone down.

"The Lord _alone_ shall be exalted in that day." Will He then confound the righteous with the wicked? As compared with God there shall be no distinctions between men. All men on that great day at the bar of the Omniscient and the All Holy shall have upon them a universal sense of imperfection, unworthiness, insufficiency, nothingness. But as compared with each other there will be immense differences between them. It is one purpose of the great day to make manifest to all orders of being the infinite value and superiority of moral goodness, the infinite preciousness of a holy obedience above and beyond all else; then God, who sees it in secret, will reward it openly. When the wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the people that forget God, the righteous shall shine forth as the stars of heaven. Therefore estimate all things _now_ as you will estimate them then. Lean less upon earth and man and the things present, set your affections more upon the things to come, upon heaven, and upon the Ruler of heaven. Cultivate diligently those dispositions which are pleasing in His sight. For then, when all social forms shall have vanished away, when all material substances shall have been obliterated, as the shapes in a cloud, and dissipated as the morning dew, your moral temper will abide with you, and your spiritual state, as discerned by the unerring Judge, will decide, and will attend, your immortal destiny (H. E. I. 720).--_James Shergold Boone, M.A.: Sermons,_ pp. 359-399.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] During the fifth century Chrysostom expressed himself in
language which sounds almost like an anticipation of much
that we hear at the present day. "No long time now remains
until the consummation; but the world is hastening to its
end. This the wars declare, this the afflictions, this the
love which hath waxed cold. For as the body, when in its
last gasp and near to death, draws to itself ten thousand
sufferings; and as when a house is about to fall, many
portions are wont to fall beforehand from the roofs and
walls; so is the end of the world nigh and at the very
doors, and, therefore, ten thousand woes are everywhere
scattered abroad" (_Homily_ xxxiv.) Towards the close of
the tenth century, Bernhard, a hermit of Thuringia, and
other persons, spread or encouraged the belief, that after
the end of the thousandth year, the fetters of Satan were
to be broken; and that, after the reign of Antichrist
should be terminated, the world would be consumed by sudden
conflagration. This wild and extraordinary delusion
pervaded and possessed every rank of society. It seized on
nobles, princes, and even bishops, as well as on the common
people. Many renounced their pursuits and professions;
abandoned their friends and families; gave themselves up to
superstitious prayer and terrifying expectations, and made
over all their substance to some adjacent church or
monastery. Almost all the donations which were made to the
Church in this century proceeded from this avowed motive,
that the end of the world was drawing near. The form ran,
_"Appropinquante jam mundi termino,"_ &c. Others permitted
their lands to lie waste, and their homes to decay; or
betook themselves in hasty flight to the shelter of rocks
and caverns, as if the temples of nature were destined to
preservation amidst the wreck of man and his
works.--_Boone._

[2] I forbear to expatiate on the phenomena or the tokens which
shall be the premonitory of the Millennium or of the day of
judgment. God has not seen fit, even in Scripture, to
withdraw the curtain of obscurity from between us and that
supreme future. We may well be content that our
apprehensions should be vague, when the language of the
Bible is not definite, and when we find rather the sublime
and half-luminous gloom with which poetry or painting can
invest its delineations, than the sharp and precise outline
which the chisel can carve.--_Boone._

[3] What shall they all be, the strong rivalries and
contentions, which shall have been hushed in the grave; the
towering structures of vanity and earthly hope, which shall
have been crushed before the moth; the schemes and
plottings, the contrivances and expectations, the struggles
and triumphs, which shall have been dropped into the
burial-place where the worm is feeding on them! Oh, the
thrones and dominions of mortality, the crowns and
sceptres, the regal splendours and the imperial sway, how
shall they then be reduced to their real and intrinsic
insignificance! The victories of the warrior who conquered
in a hundred fights, and the projects of the politician,
whose statesmanship could grasp the globe; the famous men
and heroes of the earth, with the poets who celebrated
them, and the historians who recounted their exploits, what
shall they be before the word of Omnipotence! The learning
and science of the philosophers who framed their system of
the universe for the admiration of posterity, what shall
they be, before the blaze of illumination which shall be
poured upon us in another world! The pageantries of courts
and palaces; the banquets and the wine-cups, the spectacles
and the entertainments, the mirrors and the lamps, the
golden furniture of pomp, and the flowing robe of luxury;
the great and the affluent, whose patronage was requested
for busy undertakings, who were besieged with flattery and
obsequiousness from morning to night; the noble and the
beautiful, who gathered homage as they moved; the writers
and the orators, whose popularity was unbounded, and who
lived amidst the incense of human applause; they, and all
that appertained to them, where and what shall they be, as
we stand poor, and naked, and miserable before Him with
whom we have to do! They, the heedless and the selfish,
swimming in pleasure, who thought that the whole voyage of
life was to be like Cleopatra's passage along the Cydnus,
one scene of mirth and gorgeousness; of prodigal
dissipation and fatal revelry, with soft music and delicate
odours floating in the air; what shall become of _them_!
How black and cold shall be the cinders of their joy!

All human dynasties will then have crumbled to pieces, and
all the gradations in the scale of human rank will then
have been blotted out; for all must be dwarfed and
prostrated before the ineffable majesty of the Most High
God. All other differences must fade when the Divine
summits are placed in contrast with them; as from the top
of an exceeding high mountain the whole ground beneath is
as a level plain, because from that vast altitude all
smaller elevations are lost, all minuter inequalities of
surface vanish. Human celebrity will then be as a sound,
the very echoes of which will have departed. The pompous
titles with which the vanity of man was pampered; the
distinctions which kings could confer, or heraldry
emblazon; privileges of caste, nobility of blood, the pride
of ancestry, the blaze of reputation, the splendour of
talents, shall then be confounded, one and all, as
frivolous toys and trifling baubles. The mighty ones of the
earth shall be no more than they who were of the poorest
condition; the great shall stand abashed with the mean, the
learned with the ignorant, monarchs with their subjects,
senators and princes, commanders of fleets and armies, the
loftiest and most renowned by the side of the husbandman
and the labourer; for what shall they all be in contrast
with Him, the Universal Creator, whose dwelling-place is
eternity, and to whom belong, throughout all ages, all
glory and dominion, sovereignty and praise!--_Boone._

THE INEXCUSABILITY AND HOPELESSNESS OF UNBELIEF.

v. 4. _What could have been done more to my vineyard that I
have not done in it?_

In a subsequent verse God condescends to explain what is here meant by His "vineyard," so that there might be no doubt as to the scope and import of the passage (ver. 7). God has done everything which could be done for the spiritual culture of His ancient Church (vers. 3, 4). This assertion that "as much had been done as could be done" is very affecting and startling. And if this could be said of the Jewish vineyard, what shall be said of the Christian?

There is a peculiar argument thus suggested, which, wrought out, will show that men are inexcusable in persisting in their unbelief, since nothing more could have been done to win them to the side of righteousness and to turn them to God. Notice carefully _the variety of the arguments addressed in Scripture to the thoughtless and obdurate._ At one time they are attacked with terrors, the picture being set before them of Divine wrath; at another they are acted on by the loving-kindness of God, and allured by the free mercies of the Gospel. In the text it is not precisely either the one or the other of these methods. There is nothing alleged but the greatness of what has been done for us--a greatness such that nothing more can be done, consistently, at least, with that moral accountableness which must regulate the amount of influence which God brings to bear on men. If this be so, if we are not convinced and renewed under the existing instrumentality, there is nothing that can avert from us utter destruction.

But is this so? Review the means provided and proffered for our rescue, and let us see whether any of us can be other than silent. If we were arguing with a man who disbelieved the existence of God, we should probably reason up from the creation to the Creator. Our adversary might challenge us to prove that nothing short of Infinite Power could have built and furnished the planet. It may be allowed that certain results lie beyond human agency, and yet disputed whether they need such an agency as we strictly call Divine. We do not, therefore, maintain that the evidences in creation are the strongest which can be conceived. Hence we should not perhaps feel warranted in saying to the atheist, "What more could have been done to produce belief in you if you resist all these tokens of God in Nature?" But if we cannot say to the atheist, when pointing to the surrounding creation, "What more could have been done that has not been done for your conviction?" we can ply the worldly-minded with this question when pointing to the scheme of salvation through Christ. We deny that the worldly-minded can appeal from what God has done on their behalf to a yet mightier interference which imagination can picture. It is the property of redemption, if not of creation, that it leaves no room for imagination. Those who turn with indifference from the proffers of the Gospel are just in the position of the atheist who should remain such after God had set before him the highest possible demonstration of Himself. It is not, we think, too bold a thing to say that, in redeeming us, God exhausted Himself--_He gave Himself._ And we may not argue that, resisting what has been granted, you demonstrate that you cannot be overcome, and thus your condemnation is sealed by the incontrovertible truth involved in the question of the text?

Looked at more in detail, the argument is--+I. As much has been done as could have been done, because of the Agency through which man's redemption was effected.+ In looking at the cross, considering our sins as laid on the Being who hangs there in weakness and ignominy, the overcoming thought is, that this Being is none other than the Everlasting God, and that however He seem mastered by the powers of wickedness, He could by a single word, uttered from the altar on which He immolates Himself, scatter the universe into nothing, and call up an assemblage of new worlds and new creatures.--_What a condemning force this throws into the question of the text!_ If it give an unmeasured stupendousness to the work of our redemption, that He who undertook, carried on, and completed that work was "the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person," then surely what has been done for the "vineyard" proclaims us ruined if we bring not forth such fruits as God requires at our hands.--_If the extent of what has been done may be given in evidence that if it prove ineffectual there remains nothing more to be tried, what say you to the justice of the question? what to the condemnation under which it leaves the worldly-minded and rebellious?_

+II. As much has been done as could have been done, regard being had to the completeness and fulness of the work, as well as to the greatness of its Author.+ We might have been sure beforehand that what the Divine Agent undertook would be thoroughly effected. The sins of the whole race were laid on Christ. There is consequently nothing in our own guiltiness to make us hesitate as to the possibility of _forgiveness._ The penalties of a violated law have been actually discharged.

The scheme of redemption provides also for our _acceptance,_ so that happiness may be obtained. If it met our necessities only in part, there might be excuse for refusing it our attention. When you add to the unsearchable riches of grace in Christ _the continued and earnest agency of the Holy Spirit,_ have you a word to plead against the remonstrance of God in the text?

+III. We are bound to regard the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the grand revelation of future punishment and reward.+ Until the Redeemer appeared and brought more direct tidings from the invisible world, the sanctions of eternity were scarcely, if at all, brought to bear on the occupations of time. So imperfect had been the foregoing knowledge regarding the immortality of the soul that Paul declared of Christ that He "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel." Much of what has been done for the "vineyard" consists in the greatness of the reward which the Gospel promises to righteousness, and the greatness of the punishment which it denounces on impenitence.

It was not redemption from mere temporary evil that Christ effected. Redemption does not make men immortal, but, finding them so, it sheds its influence throughout their unlimited existence, wringing the curse from its every instant, and leaving a blessing in its stead. The Gospel sets before us an array of motives, concerning which it is no boldness to say, that, if ineffectual, it is because we are immovable; if heaven fails to attract, hell to alarm--the heaven and the hell opened to us by the revelation of Scripture--it can only be because of a set determination to continue in sin. _What more could have been done for the vineyard?_ If you are waiting to be forced, you are waiting to be ruined. "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near."--_Henry Melvill, B.D.: Golden Lectures,_ pp. 485-492.

MORAL PERVERSITY.

v. 20. _Woe unto them that call evil good, &c._

If the judgments of men are habitually influenced by their affections, it is not surprising that their speech should bear the impress of the same controlling power. What we hear men say in the way of passing judgment upon things and persons, unless said deliberately for the purpose of description, will afford us, for the most part, a correct idea of their dispositions and prevailing inclinations. There is, indeed, a customary mode of talking in which familiar formulas of praise and censure as to moral objects are employed as if by rote; but this dialect, however near it may approach to that of evangelical morality, is still distinguished from it by indubitable marks. One who thus indulges in the use of such expressions as imply a recognition of the principles of Biblical morality, but whose conduct repudiates them, in expressing his opinions on moral subjects avoids, as if instinctively, the terms of censure and of approbation which belong to Scripture. He will speak of an act or a course of acts as wrong, perhaps as vicious,--it may even be as wicked, but not as _sinful._ There are crimes and vices, but no sins in his vocabulary. Vice and sin are referable, it would seem, to an abstract and perhaps variable standard, while sin brings into view the legislative and judicial character of God. Two men shall converse together upon truth and falsehood, employing the _same_ words and phrases; and yet when you come to ascertain the sense in which they severally use the same language, you shall find that while the one adopts the rigorous and simple rule of truth and falsehood laid down in the Bible and by common sense, the other holds it with so many qualifications and exceptions as almost to render it a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. But who does not know that men are often worse in the bent of their affections than in the general drift of their discourse? If we err, therefore, in the application of the test proposed, we are far more apt to err in favour of the subject than against him. He who is invariably prompted, when there is no counteracting influence, to call evil good and good evil, is one who, like the fallen angel, says in his heart, "Evil, be thou my good!" and is, therefore, a just subject of the woe denounced by the prophet in the text.

+I. The expression is descriptive of those who hate good and love evil--not of those who err as to what is good and what is evil.+ A rational nature is incapable of loving evil, simply viewed as evil, or of hating good when simply viewed as good. Whatever thing you love, you thereby recognise as good; and what you hate or abhor, you thereby recognise as evil. No man can dislike a taste, or smell, or sound which at the same time he regards as pleasant, nor can he like one which he thinks unpleasant. But change the standard of comparison, and what appeared impossible is realised. The music which is sweetest to your ear may be offensive when it breaks the slumber of your sleeping friend; the harshest voice may charm you when it announces that your friend still lives. The darling sin is hated by the sinner as the means of his damnation, though he loves it as the source of present pleasure. When, therefore, men profess to look upon that as excellent which in their hearts and lives they treat as hateful, and to regard as evil and abominable that which they are seeking after and which they delight in, they are not expressing their own feelings, but assenting to the judgment of others. And if they are really so far enlightened as to think sincerely that the objects of their passionate attachment are evil, this is only admitting that their own affections are disordered and at variance with reason. It is as if a man's sense of taste should be so vitiated through disease, that what is sweet to others is to him a pungent bitter. So the sinner may believe, on God's authority or man's, that sin is evil and holiness is good, but his diseased eye will still confound light with darkness, and his lips, whenever they express the feelings of his heart, will continue to call good evil and evil good.

The three forms of expression in the text appear to be significant of one and the same thing. The thought is clothed first in literal and then in metaphorical expressions. The character thus drawn is generally applicable to ungodly men. If the verse be taken merely in this general sense, the woe which it pronounces is a general woe, or declaration of Divine displeasure and denunciation of impending wrath against the wicked generally, simply equivalent to that in chap. iii. 11.

Such a declaration, awful as it is, would furnish no specific test of character, because it would still leave the question undecided who it is that chooses evil and rejects good. But the prophet is very far from meaning merely to assert the general liability of sinners to the wrath of God. In view of the context, then, consider--

+II. An enumeration of particular offences then especially prevailing.+ The text is the fourth in a series of six woes denounced upon as many outward manifestations of corrupt affection then especially prevalent, but by no means limited to that age or country; and these are set forth, not as the product of so many evil principles, but as the varied exhibition of that universal and profound corruption which he had just asserted to exist in general terms. 1. _The avaricious and ambitious grasping after great possessions, not merely as a means of luxurious indulgence, but as a distinction and a gratification of pride_ (ver. 8). To such the prophet threatened woe (ver. 9), and to such the Apostle James also (James v. 4). 2. _Drunkenness_ (ver. 11). Here also the description of the vice is followed by its punishment, including not only personal but national calamities, as war, desolation, and captivity. 3. _Presumption and blasphemy_ (vers. 18, 19). 4. _Moral perversity,_ as set forth in the text. 5. _Overweening confidence in human reason as opposed to God's unerring revelation_ (ver. 21). 6. _Drunkenness, considered,_ not as in the former case, as a personal excess, producing inconsideration and neglect of God, but _as a vice of magistrates and rulers, and as leading to oppression and all practical injustice_ (vers. 22, 23).

This view of the context is given for two reasons--1. To show that in this whole passage the prophet refers to species of iniquity familiar to our own time and country; and 2. Chiefly to show that we have in the text the description of a certain outward form in which the prevailing wickedness betrayed itself. An outward mark of those who hate God and whom He designs to punish is their confounding moral distinctions in their conversation. Consider, then--

+III. How moral distinctions are confounded.+ When one admits in words the great first principles in morals, yet takes away so much as to obliterate the practical distinction between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, religion and irreligion, he does virtually, actually, call evil good and good evil. When one admits generally the turpitude of fraud, impurity, intemperance, malignity, &c., and yet in insulated cases treats these as peccadilloes, inadvertences, &c., he cannot be protected by the mere assertion of a few general principles from the fatal charge of calling evil good. And as a counterpart of this, he who praises and admires all goodness in the abstract, but detests it when realised in concrete excellence, really and practically calls good evil. And he who, in relation to the self-same acts performed by different men, has a judgment suited to the case of each, all compassion to the wilful transgressions of the wicked, and all inexorable sternness to the infirmities of godly men, to all intents and purposes incurs the woe pronounced on those who call evil good and good evil. These distinctions may at present appear arbitrary, frivolous, or false, and, as a necessary consequence, the guilt of confounding them may almost fade to nothing,--to a stain so faint upon the conscience as to need no blood of expiation to remove it. But the day is coming when the eye of reason shall no longer find it possible to look at light and darkness as the same, and the woe already heard shall then be seen and felt. From the darkness and bitterness of that damnation may we all find deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord!--_J. Addison Alexander, D.D.: The Gospel of Jesus Christ,_ pp. 568-578.

THE SERVICE OF THE SERAPHIM.

vi. 1, 2, 5-7. _I saw also the Lord, &c._

In that perfect prayer which our Lord bequeathed to His disciples we are taught to ask that God's will may be done in earth as it is done in heaven. Thus angelic service is set before us as a model and pattern. Not that the services we are called upon to render are the same with those assigned to angels. Their sphere is heaven, ours for the present is the earth; and each of these spheres has its distinct and peculiar duties, appropriate to the nature and faculties of its occupants. But the spirit in which the employment of angels and men should be prosecuted is the same. One common sentiment--the sentiment of adoration and devotedness--should animate and govern them all. Hence the passage before us, although containing a record of the transactions of another sphere, contains a lesson, if not respecting the nature of our duties, yet respecting the method in which we should seek to fulfil them.

+I. The twofold life of a servant of God, whether human or angelic, is here very beautifully exhibited to us.+ The seraphim are represented as veiling their faces and feet with their wings while they stand in adoration before the throne of God. But although engaged in ceaselessly adoring the Divine perfections, they do not lead a life of barren contemplation. The words, "with twain he did fly," intimate to us that they are also engaged in the active execution of those errands with which God has charged them. The Christian's life, like that of the seraphim, branches out into the two great divisions of contemplative devotion and active exertion. It is the life of Mary _combined_ with that of Martha (P. D. 2417).

1. _The devotional branch of the Christian's life._ In the exercises of the closet and of the sanctuary are to be found the springs of the Christian's exertions in his Master's cause. These exercises are not originating sources of grace, but they are channels and vehicles through which God's Spirit conveys Himself to the soul--pitchers in which may be drawn up the waters of the River of Life to refresh and recruit the energies of him whom a painful resistance to evil within and without has rendered weary and faint in his mind (H. E. I. 3426, 4107, 4108, and 3438-3448). If devotion be essential to the perfection of a seraph's service, how much more essential must it be to ours, our necessities being so immensely greater than those of the bright inhabitants of heaven! The exigencies of our time make devotion especially needful now. The present is emphatically a period of the world's history in which "many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased." Moreover, there is a revival of outward energy and activity in the cause of religion. This is a blessing. But remember, days of excitement are not days of deep devotion. There may be much of rapid movement abroad in the world without a corresponding adoration of God in the secret chamber of the heart--much of flying without veiling of the face.[1]

2. _The outward manifestation of the Christian life_ discernible by the world. Care must be taken not only that the lamp shall be filled with oil, but that there shall be a light shining before men (Matt. v. 16; H. E. I. 1042, 1044, 3906). The seraphim are not so wrapt up in adoration of God that they are forgetful of active service. "With twain they did fly" for the execution of the errands on which they were commissioned.

Here is a reproof of the monastic principle, that seclusion from the society of our fellow-men and from the active duties of life is necessary in order to secure an uninterrupted period of leisure for solitary spiritual exercises. Undue predominance is thus given to one branch of God's service, to the prejudice and neglect of the other and no less important branch. Exercise as well as nourishment and repose is essential to the health of the body, and so toil in the vineyard--earnest endeavour to advance the kingdom of God in our own hearts and the hearts of others--is no less essential to the health of the soul. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;" but for what purpose? That they may walk in good works, and run with patience the race that is set before them (chap. xl. 31; H. E. I. 1736-1742).

+II. Some practical lessons concerning the maintenance and manifestation of the twofold Christian life.+

1. _A lesson as to the spirit which should pervade all devotion._ These bright and glorious beings are without sin. Still, such is their sense of the infinite distance between themselves and their Creator, that they veil their faces and their feet before His throne in token of adoring reverence. The first and most essential element of devotion is a feeling of deep awe flowing from a sense of God's transcendent excellences and leading to profound self-abasement (H. E. I. 3798, 3799, 5074). If reverence was befitting in the seraphim, how much more is it necessary in sinful men! (Luke xviii. 13; Ezra ix. 6).

The vision of God wrought in Isaiah a feeling almost akin to despair. It seemed to him as if the perfect holiness of God was engaged to banish for ever every creature possessing the slightest taint of moral evil (ver. 5). In vers. 6, 7 we have the glorious remedy. What is the significance of the symbols? By the work of the Son of God a mighty Altar of Propitiation has been reared up, and thence there comes to the penitent sinner cleansing as well as pardon. The "live coal" is an emblem of that love and zeal in God's service with which the Holy Spirit imbues the souls of these who flee to the Altar of Atonement as their only refuge from the wrath to come. A participation in that Spirit's influence is absolutely essential to our true participation in the chorus of the angelic host (H. E. I. 2887).

2. _A few words on that active service which is the outward manifestation of the principles nourished by devotion._ (1.) We must prepare for it by the care and culture of our own heart.[2] (2.) There is also an outward work which God has made binding on all of us. He has assigned to each of us a certain position in life. Every such position involves its peculiar responsibilities, snares, and occupations. The responsibilities must be cheerfully and manfully met, the occupations diligently fulfilled, as a piece of task-work allotted to us by the Lord of the vineyard (Eph. vi. 7). Besides, God has intrusted to us, in various measures, substance, time, abilities influence, and these we are diligently to use for the promotion of the cause of God in the world. In our busy path through life, which brings us in contact with so many individuals, opportunities are ever and anon presented to us of being useful to our fellow-men; and to watch for, seize, and improve such opportunities is not the least important of these branches of active service (P. D. 40, 3567, 3569).

CONCLUSION.--1. It is not the intrinsic dignity of our duties, nor the large result of our fulfilment of them, which renders the diligent performance of them an acceptable work in God's eyes. The great design of our being places in this world is not that we may do some signal service, or large amount of service, to our Creator, but rather that we may execute the service (be it great or small) allotted to us in a spirit of fidelity, zeal, and love. The spirit which is thrown into and pervades the work is everything--the work itself (comparatively) nothing. Be the sphere what it may which Divine Providence has assigned to us, let the duties of it be executed in a seraphic spirit (P. D. 1484). 2. We have overwhelming motives, if we did but rightly appreciate them, to devotedness of our every faculty to the services of our God. The redeemed sinner owes to God far more of allegiance than the angel who has retained his integrity. Angels no such Fall have known, "angels no such Love have known," as we.--_E. M. Goulburn, D.C.L.: Sermons,_ pp. 77-99.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] If this be the case with any of us, if, with the busy
occupation of the hands in the furtherance of religious
objects, we have glimpsed the inward life of communion with
God to decline, how painfully do we resemble those virgins
who took no heed to provide for their dying lamps a
continual supply of oil! The profession which we have made
before men, however bright its blaze, will one day be shown
to have been delusive--to have been destitute of those
animating principles of faith and love from which alone can
flow an acceptable service.--_Goulburn._

[2] God requires us to set a strict watch over its outgoings--a
watch such as sentinels keep over the persons and goods
which pass out of a city whose allegiance to the sovereign
is suspected--to curb and quell at the earliest outbreak
every rising of vanity, temper, bitterness, passion, and
lust--to drag forth from its dark recesses and to stay
every cherished iniquity which has found there a harbour
and a hiding-place. Our own heart is a vineyard over which
God hath set every one of us to dress it and to keep it. We
are to extirpate the soil's poisonous produce, and to
implore upon the soil of this vineyard the precious dews of
the Divine Spirit, which may remedy its native barrenness
and turn it from a desert into the garden of the
Lord.--_Goulburn._ See also H. E. I. 1841, 1842, 2695-2708.

THE MORAL HISTORY OF A RISING SOUL.

vi. 5-8. _Then said I, Woe is me, &c._

Whilst holiness is the normal, depravity is the actual state of man. A restoration to that spiritual condition is his profoundest necessity, his want of wants. The recovery of holiness involves the recovery of all other good. There seem to be, in the nature of the case, _five states through which the soul must pass in this all-important and glorious transit._

I. A VISION OF THE GREAT RULER AS THE HOLIEST OF BEINGS. Isaiah had this: "Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Three facts will show that a spiritual vision of God is the first step of the soul towards holiness. 1. _There can be no excitement of the moral sensibilities and powers without a vision of God._ Show me a soul that has never had an inner vision of God, and you show me a soul whose conscience, whose moral powers, are entirely dormant. The passions, the intellect, the imagination may move, but the conscience, the heart, the moral essence, the _self_ of the man, moves not--is dead. 2. _The means which God has ever employed to restore men are visions of Himself._ What is the Bible but a record of Divine visions and manifestations to man? What is the Gospel--"God's power unto salvation"--but the manifestation of the Eternal in Christ? Here He appears to man in the "face of Jesus Christ." 3. _The history of all restored souls shows that the improvement commences at this stage._ The explanation which Paul gives of the first upward movement would generally be true of all: "When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me," &c. What the sun is to the plant, God is to the soul.

II. A PROFOUND CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE. "Then, said I, Woe is me," &c. His consciousness included four things--1. _A deep sense of his personality._ "_I_ am undone." He feels himself singled out from the millions. When conscience is touched, she breaks the bond, individualises the man, and makes him feel as if he stood alone before the Eternal Judge. 2. _A sense of personal ruin._ "Woe is me, for I am undone." My prospects are blighted, my hopes are gone. 3. _A sense of personal ruin arising from a sense of personal sin._ "I am a man of unclean lips;" I am a sinner, and therefore "undone." 4. _A sense of personal sin, heightened by the remembrance of his neighbour's sins._ "I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." So long as conscience is torpid, men often make the sinful conduct of others an apology for their own; but when conscience awakes, such sophistries depart.

III. A REMOVAL OF THE CRUSHING SENSE OF GUILT. "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand," &c. Three thoughts are suggested by this--1. _There are Divine means for the removal of sin._ This "live coal," this altar, and seraphim in the vision, symbolise this truth. 2. _The means are something in connection with sacrifice._ Fire is a purifying element, and is regarded as the emblem of purity. This "live coal" was taken from the altar of burnt-offering. The fire of that altar as at first kindled by the Lord, and ever afterward kept burning. What is the power that takes away sin? The Divine Word in connection with Christ's sacrifice--the doctrine of the Cross. This, like "fire," has a purifying power. 3. _The means are employed by a Divinely-appointed ministry._ Let that seraph stand as the emblem of a true minister, and we see that his work is to take the purifying elements from the altar and apply them to men.

IV. AN EVER-OPEN AND SENSITIVE EAR TO THE VOICE OF GOD. "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying," &c. Three thoughts will develop the general and practical meaning of these words--1. _God has deep thoughts about our race._ The Bible reveals some of these thoughts, and so does Nature. 2. _Just as the soul is cleared of sin does it become conscious of these thoughts._ Let the conscience be thoroughly cleared of sin, and it will hear the voice of God in every sound and see His glory in every form. The universe to a holy being is the tongue of God (P. D. 2545, 2552, 2560, 2563, 2564). 3. _This consciousness of the Divine thoughts about our race is a necessary stage in the moral progress of the soul._ It is only thus we walk with God, as Enoch did of old.

V. A HEARTY READINESS TO DO WHAT THE SUPREME WILL COMMANDS. "Here am I; send me." I am ready to do whatever Thou commandest. Send me anywhere, at any time, to do any work; I am ready to catch the slightest whisper of duty; my soul stands with plumed pinions.--_David Thomas, D.D.: The Homilist,_ vol. v. pp. 411-418.

SANCTUARY IN GOD.

viii. 14. _And He shall be for a sanctuary._

Not a few mourn, in the midst of a busy, bustling age, the loss of sacredness in life. Not the false "sacred"--that which is merely ascetic separation from life and duty; nor that which is merely solemn "sacred"--the dull heavy monotony of gloominess.

We naturally say that if this is God's world, if civil and civic duties, social responsibilities, are God-ordained, it is likely, at least, that _here_ we may be able to secure a heavenly citizenship amid earthly cares and customs. This is exactly what God reveals in the text. Sanctuary, He says, is _not_ in mere place; _not_ in separation from manly duty; I open up my very _nature_ to you. How often this idea recurs in the Scriptures! God is our refuge and rest, our hiding-place, our dwelling-place.

I. THE SACREDNESS THAT A REVERENT HEART DESIRES. Something within us asserts its dignity when society is frivolous and gay, and when the routine of life brings us into association with lives where the light even of conscience burns low, when the reverent _wonder_ that filled even pagan hearts has given place to scientific explanations of every spiritual function. When we are brought into contact with all this, then it is that we find how the high tides of the world cover the little green knolls of devotion, and sweep away alike the altar of prayer and the harp of praise. In all earnest natures there comes, at times, resentment at all this. We believe the Divinity within us. We believe the high call of seer and prophet to nobler ends; we believe, above all, that Lord of life and light who tells us that the life is more than meat, and who fed His own life by the mountain prayer and the garden solitude. We should seek to secure the sacredness we feel we need, not in morbid methods, but in ways that are human, and ways that are Divine because they are human. Christ lived and worked amongst men. We, too, may secure sacredness for our lives; we may carry in our mien and breathe in our converse the springs of hope and faith and love which flow still from Zion's sacred hill.

II. THE SACREDNESS THAT MAKES SANCTUARY IN GOD HIMSELF. "_He_ shall be for a sanctuary." He whom wicked men dread and flee from; for, as of old, darkness cannot dwell with light, nor irreverence with reverence, nor mammon-worship with devotion to God. We may carry very bad hearts into very beautiful places. Place is easily made unsacred, but into fellowship with God there can enter nothing that is false, or worldly, or vile. "Sanctuary in a person?" Yes; for even here, in this dim sphere of earthly friendship, our best sanctuaries, apart from Christ, have been men and women,--those who bear His likeness, and who do His will. "Sanctuaries?" Yes; for with them we are ashamed of unworthy motive, of impure thought, of unsacred aim. Take Christ with you, and every place is sacred. This is our living sanctuary; we abide in Him who says, "I am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore." And if by His own Divine nature He is a sanctuary, He is also by _experience_ too. How much the human sanctuary of friendship is beautified when there is _oneness of feeling_ about the battle and burden of life! It is nothing, then, that when we speak of sanctuary in Christ we should mean "sympathy," all that belongs to a brother born for adversity--to Him who, as a "Man of Sorrows," was "acquainted with grief" (liii. 9)? We know indeed but little of the realities of religion unless we have found such a living sanctuary in Christ Jesus the Lord (H. E. I. 968-975).

III. THE SACREDNESS OF ALL THE FUTURE DAYS. "He shall be." Names vary in interpreting what God is to suit need and experience. We translate the want, and then God's name is translated to meet it. I am hungry--He is Bread; thirsty--He is Water, &c. The word "sanctuary" meets special wants. Life is not always a seeking for a refuge, but it is so especially at certain times and in strange and desolate experiences. We are alone in a strange city. The child must leave home to teach, to toil, to live; the weakness will come which presaged decline and death; the soul does feel that some lights are lost to faith and that others are going dim. He _shall_ be for a sanctuary. Let the hours come; He will come too. Who can make retreat into his own heart and find perfect sanctuary there? Christ alone could do _that._ We cannot. Nature cannot afford us the sanctuary we need; she has healthy anodynes of atmosphere that afford us deep and quiet retreats, but sanctuary, in the highest sense, she has not. Christ, and He alone, will be now and for ever a sanctuary (H. E. I. 2378-2387).

IV. THE SACREDNESS OF PERSONAL LIFE IN GOD. We can have no safety or rest in Churches as such. They are helpful; they are houses of fellowship and centres of usefulness. But we cannot say, as Mediævalism said, "Enter the Church and be saved." The soul's relation to God is personal and individual. Whether this relation of faith is real, vital, each soul can attest for itself; and that living relationship is all that can ever make life sacred to any man. When the life is hid with Christ in God, all is well, for all is sacred; and nothing that He has created us to do or to enjoy is common or unclean. So may God help us to keep a sacred life which finds sanctuary in the Saviour, until we find it where there is no temple, but where there is sanctuary in God (Rev. xxi. 22, 23).--_W. M. Statham: Christian World Pulpit,_ vol. xvii. pp. 131-133.

WISE LESSONS FROM WICKED LIPS.

ix. 10. _The bricks are fallen down, &c._

Jesus said, "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light," meaning that they excel them in shrewdness and tact. Men of the world do not readily submit to defeat and failure, but strive to convert defeat into victory, and failure into success. In this respect, therefore, the children of this world are worthy of imitation. Within the spiritual, Christian sphere we might well emulate them in the determined, hopeful, persevering, progressive, patient spirit with which they prosecute their affairs. Of this the text affords illustration. The children of this world, of whom it speaks to us, are worthy of our imitation in the following respects:--

+I. They proceed with a defined purpose.+ The bricks mentioned as having fallen down were not a heap of burned clay, which somehow had got piled up, no one could tell how. They had been built by human hands, and the builders had heads as well as hands. But now that the bricks had fallen, in making up their minds as to what should be done, they proceed with a defined purpose. The architect precedes the builder; the head leads the hand. They build not at random. They first say what they will build, and how. They also resolve once more to beautify their surroundings with trees, and they make their choice. This time they will not have sycamores, but cedars.

The same principle should underlie the building up of all Christian character and work. Knowledge and zeal should ever be in partnership. The hand should be under control of the head. Everything should be done well, because done wisely. One purpose should run through and be supreme in each life. Striving, and toiling, and fighting, we should have it first settled what we are to strive, and toil, and fight for. And as to this we are left in no difficulty. A plan is made for us, and our wisdom is to work it out. A number of young men were one day practising archery, when the arrows of one invariably stuck in the ground. Seeing this, one of his companions cried out, "Do aim higher." That is what we have to do. We substitute our own low, faltering purposes for the high, glorious purpose of God (Rom. viii. 29; 1 Pet. ii. 21). So, also, in connection with our work, a high purpose should be our aim. We should not make up our minds to do as little as possible, neither should our only object be to do as much as possible. Our question should be, What is my Master's will? Obedience is better than sacrifice. They who would work for their Lord with acceptance must wait on Him, and He will give "to each man his work." Further, with our plan fixed, we must set our whole heart upon the working of it out. Here Israel teaches us. When her first effort failed, she tried again. The spirit of enthusiasm must inspire us. This is what makes labour rest, and turns the yoke into a crown.

+II. They were inspired with hopefulness.+ Their bricks fell down, but their spirits fell not into the pit of despair. Their sycamores were cut down, but their ambition was not. They viewed the desolation not without sadness, but in the midst of it all _"Nil Desperandum"_ was the song which they sang. And that is the spirit of the world to-day. So the Christian ought to be hopeful. You have fallen! Say, "I will rise again." Your schemes have failed! Say, "I will try again." You are afraid you have laboured in vain! Say, "In labours I will be more abundant." You went into what you thought the paradise of God, but lo! it turned out to be a dreary wilderness. What then? Still hope in God. Seek on, O seeker, and thou shalt find. Knock on, louder and louder; the door will be opened.

Night must give way to day. Mystery after mystery will unfold itself. Light will appear to every man having eyes and using them. The children of this world hope; greater reason have they to hope who are children of God.