have not first heard His, Draw not nigh. The
sense of sin, of unfitness for God's presence, is the groundwork of true
knowledge or worship of Him as the Holy One. 'Put off thy shoes from off
thy feet.' The shoes are the means of intercourse with the world, the
aids through which the flesh or nature does its will, moves about and
does its work. In standing upon holy ground, all this must be put away.
It is with naked feet, naked and stript of every covering, that man must
bow before a holy God. Our utter unfitness to draw nigh or have any
dealings with the Holy One, is the very first lesson we have to learn,
if ever we are to participate in His Holiness. That _Put off!_ must
exercise its condemning power through our whole being, until we come to
realize the full extent of its meaning in the great, '_Put off_ the old
man; put on the Lord Jesus,' and what 'the _putting off_ of the body of
the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ,' is. Yes, all that is of
nature and the flesh, all that is of our own doing or willing or
working--our very life, must be put off and given unto the death, if
God, as the Holy One, is to make Himself known to us.

We have seen before that Holiness is more than goodness or freedom from
sin: even unfallen nature is not holy. Holiness is that awful glory by
which Divinity is separated from all that is created. Therefore even the
seraphs veil their faces with their wings when they sing the Thrice
Holy. But oh! when the distance and the difference is not that of the
creature only, but of the sinner, who can express, who can realize, the
humiliation, the fear, the shame with which we ought to bow before the
voice of the Holy One? Alas! this is one of the most terrible effects of
sin, that it blinds us. We know not how unholy, how abominable, sin and
the sinful nature are in God's sight. We have lost the power of
recognising the Holiness of God: heathen philosophy had not even the
idea of using the word as expressive of the moral character of its gods.
In losing the light of the glory of God, we have lost the power of
knowing what sin is. And now God's first work in drawing nigh to us is
to make us feel that we may not draw nigh as we are; that there will
have to be a very real and a very solemn putting off, and even giving up
to the death, of all that appears most lawful and most needful. Not only
our shoes are soiled with contact with this unholy earth; even our face
must be covered and our eyes closed,