'With twain he covered his feet.' The less comely and inferior parts of
that fiery corporeity were veiled lest they should be seen by the Eyes
that see all things. The wings made no screen that hid the seraph's feet
from the eye of God, but it was the instinctive lowly sense of
unworthiness that folded them across the feet, even though they, too,
burned as a furnace. The nearer we get to God, the more we shall be
aware of our limitations and unworthiness, and it is because that vision
of the Lord sitting on 'His throne, high and lifted up,' with the
thrilling sense of His glory filling the holy temple of the universe,
does not burn before us that we can conceit ourselves to have anything
worth pluming ourselves upon. Once lift the curtain, once let my eye be
flooded with the sight of God, and away goes all my self-conceit, and
all my fancied superiority above others. One little molehill is pretty
nearly the same height as another, if you measure them both against the
top of the Himalayas, that lie in the background, with their glittering
peaks of snow. 'Star differeth from star in glory' in a winter's night,
but when the great sun swims into the sky, they all vanish together. If
you and I saw God burning before us, as Isaiah saw Him, we should veil
ourselves, and lose all that which so often veils Him from us--the fancy
that we are anything when we are nothing. And the nearer we get to God,
and the purer we are, the more shall we be keenly conscious of our
imperfections and our sins. 'If I say I am perfect,' said Job in his
wise way, 'this also should prove me perverse.' Consciousness of sin is
the continual accompaniment of growth in holiness. 'The heavens are not
pure in His sight, and He chargeth His angels with folly.' Everything
looks black beside that sovereign whiteness. Get God into your lives,
and you will see that the feet need to be washed, and you will cry,
'Lord! not my feet only, but my hands and my head!'