located as seen in the Temple, there is not a single reference (except
that passing allusion to the altar) to the ritual of the Temple, but the
cleansing comes in another fashion altogether.

But far more important than that thought is the human condition that is
required ere this cleansing can be realised. 'I am a man of unclean
lips.' 'I am undone!' It was because that conviction and confession
sprang in the prophet's consciousness that the seraph winged his way
with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just
this: faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what
we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the
recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the resolve
to turn my back on my own past self. Now, it seems to me that a great
deal of what is called, and in a sense is, Evangelical teaching, fails
to represent the full counsel of God, in the matter of man's redemption,
because it puts a one-sided emphasis on faith, and slurs over the
accompanying idea of repentance. And I am here to say that a trust in
Jesus Christ, which is unaccompanied by a profound penitent
consciousness and abhorrence of one's own sins, and a resolve to turn
away from them for the time to come, is not a faith which will bring
either pardon or cleansing. We do not need to have less said about
trust; we need to have a great deal more said about repentance. You have
to learn what it is to say, 'I abhor myself'; you have to learn what it
is to say, 'I will turn right round, and leave all that past behind me;
and go in the opposite direction'; or the faith which you say you are
exercising will neither save nor cleanse your souls nor your lives.

Again, note that we have here set forth most strikingly the other great
truth that, side by side, and as closely synchronous as the flash and
the peal, as soon as the consciousness of sin and the aversion from it