THE EMPTY THRONE FILLED

'In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a
throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.'--ISAIAH
vi. 1.


Uzziah had reigned for fifty-two years, during the greater part of which
he and his people had been brilliantly prosperous. Victorious in war, he
was also successful in the arts of peaceful industry. The later years of
his life were clouded, but on the whole the reign had been a time of
great well-being. His son and successor was a young man of
five-and-twenty; and when he came to the throne ominous war-clouds were
gathering in the North, and threatening to drift to Judah. No wonder
that the prophet, like other thoughtful patriots, was asking himself
what was to come in these anxious days, when the helm was in new hands,
which, perhaps, were not strong enough to hold it. Like a wise man, he
took his thoughts into the sanctuary; and there he understood. As he
brooded, this great vision was disclosed to his inward eye. 'In the year
that King Uzziah died' is a great deal more than a date for
chronological purposes. It tells us not only the _when_, but the _why_,
of the vision. The earthly king was laid in the grave; but the prophet
saw that the true King of Israel was neither the dead Uzziah nor the
young Jotham, but the Lord of hosts. And, seeing that, fears and
forebodings and anxieties and the sense of loss, all vanished; and new
strength came to Isaiah. He went into the temple laden with anxious
thoughts; he came out of it with a springy step and a lightened heart,
and the resolve 'Here am I; send me.' There are some lessons that seem