Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

The office of a prophet was not an easy one. The man had to hazard or sacrifice most of those things that men count dear—property, popularity, home. Every day he had to take his life in his hand, as he risked the rage of a royal tyrant, or faced the fury of insensate mobs. Still harder was it to stand alone in his faith and opinion, rejected by the multitude, by the wealth, by the wisdom of his day, mocked or pitied as a madman; hardest of all to see his efforts foiled, his country humiliated, his people depraved, to feel his heart sink within him, to struggle with dark misgivings, to doubt the reality of the Divine prompting, and despairingly to ask whether this world were indeed governed by a righteous Will, or were not rather the sport of blind caprice or the slave of iron fate! Ah! it was not easy to be a prophet. Before a man could become a prophet he needed to possess a knowledge of God of such absolute certainty as nothing could shake. Once at least in his life he must have come into actual contact with God.

The experience that made Isaiah a prophet took the form of a vision. It happened in a period of distressing perplexity and gloom. Wrestling passionately with the darkness, craving wistfully for light, the yearning to see God in the man's soul became so intense and sensitive that the great Heart in heaven answered the longing of the heart on earth, and aspiration leapt into realisation, and faith flashed into vision. On a throne, high and lifted up, crowning and dominating all things, fixed on immovable foundations, untouched by the changes of time, unshaken by the shocks of history, Isaiah beheld, seated in sovereign supremacy, a Form of ineffable splendour, the power and presence of the Eternal in awful actuality, beyond all doubt or question the Lord of the universe and the Arbiter of destiny. Henceforth he could never doubt the being and the might of God. That is a great experience, but it leaves the heart unsatisfied. We want to know the nature, the character of this God, who holds our fortunes in His awful hands. Is He good, and just, and gentle, or hard, and cold, and cruel? The answer came to Isaiah in the seraphs' song of adoration, with its ascription of perfect triune holiness. It told him that in God is light, and no darkness at all. Through and through, utterly and absolutely, in every chord and fibre of His being, there is no baseness, no harshness, no injustice; there is nothing but stainless purity and splendour, nothing but radiant justice, goodness, and truth. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." Still, one wistful doubt, one anxious question, lingers in the human heart. For what were our poor world the better of this holy God if He be content to sit aloof in the light and glory of heaven, leaving the web of human story to be woven by the blundering fingers of sinning, erring men on earth? That fear, too, was laid for ever in Isaiah's soul by the comforting response of the seraphs' chorus. God does not sit apart in frigid isolation, but with His own hands He guides and controls our lost world's course. Into its strange, sad, perplexing progress He is pouring the goodness, truth, and love of His holy heart; and so when the record is finished and fulfilled, every page and syllable shall shine with that hidden holiness come to manifested light and splendour. "The fulness of the whole earth is His glory!" That sight of God—the living, holy, loving God—made Isaiah a prophet. Preachers and teachers of to-day, if we are to be prophets, we need just such a sight of God.

The vision of God made Isaiah a prophet; but the immediate effect was something very different. The first effect of contact with God was to produce in his soul an intolerable sense of sin. "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Was, then, Isaiah an exceptionally wicked man? Hardly, when God chose him as His ambassador. But if not, is, then, the proper effect on a good man of an access of nearness to God an overwhelming consciousness of personal defilement? What else should it be? Had Isaiah been a Pharisee, he would have seized the opportunity of his sudden vicinity to the Almighty to direct the Divine attention to his virtues, and excellence, and superiority over other men. Had he been one of those philosophers in whom the heart has been overlaid by the intellect, he would have calmly proceeded to make observations on the Divine for a new theory of the Absolute and Unconditioned, in sublime insensibility to the deepest problem of existence, the awful antithesis of human sin and of Divine holiness. Because Isaiah was a good man, his new proximity to God woke within him a crushing horror of defilement and undoneness. And it was so precisely because he had never been so near to God before, and had never felt himself of so much importance. Away down here, sinning among his fellow-men, the blots and blemishes of his soul seemed of little moment. But up there, in the stainless light of heaven, with God's holy eyes resting on him, every spot of sin within him grew hot and horrible, every defiling stain an insult and a suffering inflicted on the sensitive holiness of God. What he does has an effect on God; what he is, is of consequence to God. Never had Isaiah felt himself so near to God; never had he felt himself of such importance to his Maker; and therefore never had he felt his sin so black and so unpardonable. Believe me, these two things are linked together, and no man can divorce them—the dignity of humanity and the damnableness of sin. You cannot tamper with the one without touching the other. Men may, of laxity or of pitifulness, seek to extenuate the guilt of sin and its infinite possibilities of woes; but be sure of this, they will be compelled ere long to attenuate the moral grandeur of our human nature, and to surrender its majestic birthright of immortality. Two things go hand in hand through the Bible, from the first chapter to the last, and mark it out from all other books: the one is its unique and awful sense of the guiltiness of sin; the other is the quite unapproachable splendour of its conception of the dignity of man, made in the image of God, and destined for His service here, and the fellowship of His love for evermore.

The ethical process by which, in the imagery of the vision, Isaiah's sense of sinfulness came home to him, is finely natural and simple. It was at his lips that the consciousness of his impurity caught him. "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." That, judged by our formulas and standards, might seem a somewhat superficial conviction of sin. We should have expected him to speak of his unclean heart, or the total corruption of his whole nature. But conviction of sin, actual conviction of sin, is very regardless of our theories, and is as diverse in its manifestations as are the characters and records of men. Sin finds out one man in one place, and another in a quite different spot, and perhaps the experience is most real when it is least theological. Isaiah felt his defilement in his lips, for suddenly he found himself at heaven's gate, gazing on the glory of God, and listening to the seraphs' ceaseless song of adoring praise. Isaiah loved God, and instinctively he prepared to join his voice to the seraphs' chant, but ere the harmony could pass his lips he caught his breath and was dumb. A horrible sense of uncleanness had seized him. His breath was tainted by his sin. He dared not mingle his polluted praise with the worship of that pure, sinless host of heaven. Oh, the shame and agony of that disability! for it meant that he has no part or place in that fair scene. He is an alien and an intruder. Its beauty and its sweetness are not for him. He belongs to a very different scene and a very different company. He is no inhabitant of heaven, no servant of God; but a denizen of earth, and a companion of sinners. Down there, amid its squalor, and shame, and uncleanness, is his dwelling-place, remote from heaven, and holiness, and God. "Woe is me! because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." With that, the horror of his situation reached its climax. He stands there, on the threshold of heaven in full sight of God and of His holiness, dumb and praiseless, while all heaven rings and reverberates with the worship of its adoring hosts. The awful tremor of that celestial praise passed into Isaiah's frame, and it seemed like the pangs of instant dissolution. He, a creature of God's, stands there in his Maker's presence, alone mute, alone refusing to chant his Creator's glory, a blot and blank in the holy harmony of heaven, a horrible and foul blemish amid the unsullied purity of that celestial scene. It seemed to Isaiah as if all the light, and glory, and holiness of heaven were gathering itself into one fierce lightning fire of vengeance, to overwhelm and crush him out of existence. "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."

Isaiah in the presence of God felt within him the pang of that death which must be the end of unpardoned sin in contact with the Divine holiness. He felt himself already as good as dead, yet never in all his life had he so longed to live as now, in sight of God, and heaven, and holiness. He did not ask to escape. He was too overwhelmed to pray or hope. But to God's heart that cry of despair was an infinitely persuasive prayer for mercy. Ah! Heaven needs no lengthy explanation, nor requires the recital of prescribed forms or theories. The moment a sinful soul turns loathingly from sin, and longingly to God and goodness, that instant the Heart above responds, and meets it with pity, pardon, hope. Ere the piteous echo of Isaiah's cry had died away, one of the seraphs flew with a burning ember from the incense altar, and laid it on Isaiah's mouth, and said, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." The action is of course symbolic, but the thing symbolised is a great spiritual fact. In it we have mirrored the very heart of the process of redemption. The cleansing efficacy of the burning ember resided not in the ember, but in the Divine fire contained in it. In the imagery of sacrifice the fire is always conceived as God's method of accepting and taking to Himself the offering. The sacred flame that comes down from God, licks up the sacrifice, and in vapour carries it up to heaven; a sweet-smelling savour represents, therefore, the pitying holiness of God, that stoops forgivingly to sinful men, and graciously accepts and sanctifies them and their sacrifices. Contact with that has sin-cleansing power, and nothing has besides. Pagan sages and Christian saints alike unite in proclaiming the overmastering strength of sin. Mightier than nature's most potent forces, stronger than all influences of persuasion, not to be reversed or uprooted by any resources of earthly origin, is the grasp of inveterate sin within the sinner's soul. Is there, then, no possibility of recovery, no way of cleansing, no ray of hope? One there is, and one alone. If Divine Purity would but stoop in pity to the sinful one, would but enter, in claiming love, into his polluted soul, would but come into actual contact and conflict with the sin and uncleanness in a decisive struggle of triumph or defeat, then which must prove the stronger, which must conquer—human sinfulness or Divine holiness? Ay, if only God so loves our sin-stained race as that His stainless purity enters really into our humanity, and wrestles with our impurity in a contact that must be suffering to the Divine holiness, and is sin-cleansing to us, that were salvation surely, that were redemption. But is it a reality? Brethren, Jesus Christ has lived, and died, and lives again, and we know that His Holy Spirit dwells in us and in our world. That, and that alone, is salvation—not any theories, nor any rites, but God's Holy Spirit given unto us.

It was at Isaiah's lips that the sense of sin had stung him, and it was there that he received the cleansing. The seraph laid the hot ember on his lips, and it left about his mouth the fragrance of the celestial incense. He felt that he breathed the atmosphere and purity of heaven. He too might now join in heaven's praise and service; no more an alien, but a member of the celestial choir and a servant of the King. That act of Divine mercy had transformed him. He was a new creature, and instantly the change appeared. The voice of God sounds through the temple, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And the first of all heaven's hosts to offer is Isaiah. A moment before he had shrunk back, crushed and despairing, from God's presence, feeling as if the Divine gaze were death to him. Now he springs forward, invokes God's attention on himself, and before all heaven's tried and trusty messengers proposes himself as God's ambassador. Was it presumption? was it self-assertion? I think if ever Isaiah was not thinking of himself at all, if ever he had utterly forgotten self, and pride, and all things, and was conscious only of God, and goodness, and gratitude, it was then, when his heart was running over with wonder, love, and praise for God's unspeakable mercy to him. It was not presumption; it was a true and beautiful instinct, that made him yearn with resistless longing to do something for that God who had shown such grace to him. Oh, the tender love and irrepressible devotion of a forgiven heart! Nothing can restrain it, nothing hold it back. Salvation, real salvation, springs resistlessly onward into service.

[2] Preached at Nottingham, before the Congregational Union of England and Wales, on Monday evening, October 8th, 1888.

XII.
FOR AND AGAINST CHRIST.

"He that is not with Me is against Me: and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth."—Luke xi. 23.