But the original is more vague, and the meaning probably is,
that the responsive voices which are heard come from unseen choirs in
opposite quarters of the temple. Unceasingly the strain rises from one
side, unceasingly the answer comes from the other; in the centre the
voices meet and mingle in loud harmony.

Their burden is, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole
earth is full of His glory." That is, they are celebrating the two
attributes of the Divine character which always most impressed a
Jewish mind--His holiness and His omnipotence. The one is God as He is
in Himself, turned inwards, so to speak. He is absolutely holy,
unapproachable, a consuming fire scorching away impurity, falsehood,
and sin of every kind. The other is God as He is in the world, turned
outwards, so to speak; the world's fulness--suns and systems,
mountains and oceans, earthquake and storm, summer's abundance and
winter's terror--all this is His glory, the garment by which He makes
Himself visible.[9]

The voices swell till the temple rocks, or seems to rock to the
reeling senses of the prophet, and the house is filled with smoke, or
seems to be so, as a mist envelops the swooning spirit of the
spectator. But still, through the mist, there peal, falling like the
strokes of a hammer on the listening heart, the notes of the dread
song, "Holy, holy, holy."

2. Next ensued a Vision of Sin. The vision of God could not but unseal
a rushing stream of feeling of some kind in Isaiah. But of what kind
would it be? Surely of joyful adoration: the soul, inspired with the
sublimity of these sights and thrilled with these sounds, will rise to
the majesty of the occasion, and the human voice will strike in with
all its force among the angelic voices, crying, "Holy, holy, holy."

So one might have expected. But the human mind is a strange thing; and
it is difficult to know where and how to touch its delicate and
complex mechanism so as to produce any desired effect. You wish to
produce a flow of tender feeling, and you tell a pathetic tale, which
ought, you think, to move the heart. But at every sentence the
features of the listeners harden into more and more rigidity, or even
relax into mocking laughter; whereas the suggestion of a noble
thought, which seems to have nothing to do with pathos, may
instantaneously melt the soul and unseal the fountain of tears. Or is
it the conscience which is to be affected? The clumsy operator begins
to assai