ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly impossible; and
would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of God. 'I have
heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,' said Job, 'but now mine eye
seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' A
hearsay God and a self-complacent beholder--a God really seen, and a man
down in the dust before Him! Has that vision ever blazed in on you? And
if it has, has not the light shown you the seaminess of much in which a
dimmer light detects no flaws or stains? Thank God if, having seen Him,
you see yourselves. If you have not felt, 'I am unclean and undone,'
depend upon it, your knowledge of God is faint and dim, and He is rather
One heard of from the lips of others than realised in your own
experience.

II. Again, note the second stage here, in the education of a soul for
service--the sin, recognised and repented, is burned away.

'Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it
upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips; and thine
iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.'

Now, I would notice as to this stage of the process, first, that Isaiah
singularly passes beyond all the old ritual in which he had been brought
up, and recognises another kind of cleansing than that which it
embodied. He had got beyond the ritual to what the ritual meant. We have
passed beyond the ritual, too, by another process; and, though I would
by no means read full, plain, articulate Christian thought into the
vision of Isaiah--which would be an anachronism, and unfaithful to the
gradual historical development of the idea and means of redemption--yet
I cannot help pointing to the fact that, even although this vision is