Temple, and one which rose up, like an answering note from the voice of
conscience within. They sang 'Holy! holy! holy! Lord God Almighty.' And
what was the response to that, in the prophet's heart?--'I am unclean.'
Each major note has a corresponding minor, and the triumphant doxology
of the seraph wakes in the hearer's conscience the lowly confession of
personal unlikeness to the holiness of God. It was not joy that sprang
in Isaiah's heart when he saw the throned King, and heard the
proclamation of His name. It was not reverence merely that bowed his
head in the dust, but it was the awakened consciousness, 'Thou art holy;
and now that I understand, in some measure, what Thy holiness means, I
look on myself and I say, "unclean! unclean!"'

The prophet's confession assumes a form which may strike us as somewhat
singular. Why is it that he speaks of 'unclean lips,' rather than of an
unclean heart? I suppose partly because, in a very deep sense, a man's
words are more accurately a cast, as it were, from a man's character
than even his actions, and partly because the immediate occasion of his
confession was the words of the seraphim, and he could not but contrast
what came burning from their pure lips with what had trickled from, and
soiled, his own.

But, however expressed, the consciousness of personal unlikeness to the
holiness of God is the first result, and the instantaneous result, of
any real apprehension of that holiness, and of any true vision of Him.
Like some search-light flung from a ship over the darkling waters,
revealing the dark doings of the enemy away out yonder in the night, the
thought of God and His holiness streaming in upon a man's soul, if it
does so in any adequate measure, is sure to disclose the heaving waters
and the skulking foes that are busy in the dark.