may add, 'with two he stood ready for service, by flight whithersoever
the King would send.' Such awe-stricken reverence, such humble hiding of
self, such alacrity for swift obedience, such flaming ardours of love
and devotion, should be ours. Their song celebrated the holiness and the
glory of Jehovah of hosts. We must ever remember that the root-meaning
of 'holiness' is separation, and that the popular meaning of moral
purity is secondary and derivative. What is rapturously sung in the
threefold invocation of the seraphs is the infinite exaltation of
Jehovah above all creatural conditions, limitations, and, we may add,
conceptions. That separation, of course, includes purity, as may be seen
from the immediate effect of the vision on the prophet, but the
conception is much wider than that. Very beautifully does the second
line of the song re-knit the connection between Jehovah and this world,
so far beneath Him, which the burst of praise of His holiness seems to
sever. The high heaven is a bending arch; its inaccessible heights ray
down sunshine and drop down rain, and, as in the physical world, every
plant grows by Heaven's gift, so in the world of humanity all wisdom,
goodness, and joy are from the Father of lights. God's 'glory' is the
flashing lustre of His manifested holiness, which fills the earth as the
train of the robe filled the temple. The vibrations of that mighty hymn
shook the 'foundations of the threshold' (Rev. Ver.) with its thunderous
harmonies. 'The house was filled with smoke' which, since it was an
effect of the seraph's praise, is best explained as referring to the
fragrant smoke of incense which, as we know, symbolised 'the prayers of
saints.'

II. The effect of the vision on the prophet.--The vision kindled as with
a flash Isaiah's consciousness of sin. He expressed it in regard to his
words rather than his works, partly because in one aspect speech is even
more accurately than act a cast, as it were, of character, and partly