l it straight with denunciations of sin, but, instead of
producing penitence, he only rouses the whole man into proud and angry
self-defence; whereas a single touch, no heavier than an infant's
finger, applied away up somewhere, remote from conscience, in the
region of the imagination, may send an electric shock down through the
whole being and shake the conscience from centre to circumference.

Isaiah's mind was one of the most sensitive and complicated ever
bestowed on a human being; but it was now in the hands of its Maker,
who knew how to touch it to fine issues. The Maker's design on this
occasion was to produce in it an overpowering sense of sin; and what
He did was to confront it with infinite holiness and majesty. These
were brought so near that there was no escape. The poor, finite,
sinful man was held at arm's length, so to speak, in the grasp of the
Infinite and Most Holy; and the result was a total collapse of the
human spirit. Isaiah's eye turned away from the sight of God's glory
back upon himself, and back on his past life; and, in this light, all
appeared foul and hideous. There was sin everywhere--sin in himself
and sin in his environment. He was utterly confounded and swallowed up
of shame and terror. "Woe is me," he groaned, "for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips."

Why he felt the taint specially on his lips it might not be easy to
tell. Perhaps it was because the angelic song was a challenge to join
in the praise of God, but he felt that the lips of one like him were
not worthy to join in their song. Perhaps--who can tell?--the
besetting sin of his previous life may have been profanity of speech,
as it was evidently a crying sin of his time. This suggestion gives a
shock to the ideas which we associate with Isaiah, and it is hard to
think that the lips which afterwards spoke like angels can ever have
defiled themselves with such a sin. But this is the most natural
meaning of the words, and it is not against the analogy of other
lives. Great saints, and even great preachers, are made out of great
sinners; and the memory of an odious and conspicuous sin like this may
sometimes lend a passionate force to subsequent devotion and keep
alive for a lifetime the sense of personal unworthiness.

3. The last scene in the evolution of this vision, which was surely
more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery
attendants, who