his wife, "because we have seen God!" "Thou canst not see my face," said the Lord Himself even to Moses, "for there shall no man see me and live'!" And therefore the prophet is struck with terror at the sight which he beholds. "Woe is me! I am undone!" I perish! I must be cut off, "for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"

And truly there were reason for that terror, if he had been confronted with God in all the untempered severity of His awful justice. No man could look upon the lightning flash of that scorching attribute and live! I warn you, if you have to do with the naked justice of the Almighty there is no hope for you. If you will present yourselves, either through presumption, or through negligence, at the bar of judgment unshielded and unsheltered, in your natural deformity, your guilt, your leprous loathsomeness, you will have to cry through all eternity, and the throng of the unclean, among whom you must dwell, will echo and intensify that cry on every side, "Woe is me! for I am undone.”

But, then, the revelation to Isaiah was not the revelation of God in His untempered justice. It was the revelation of Him, remember, as the King of Israel; as having, therefore, condescended to the lost condition of mankind; as having looked down with compassion on His creatures, yea, even His sinful ones; as having raised them from the dust and called them out of the house of bondage, and said to them, "I will be your God, and ye shall be my people!" In a word, it was the revelation of God as He is manifested, and has from the beginning been manifested, in His only begotten Son-the self-communi6 Judg. xiii. 22.

? Exod. xxxiii. 20.

cating God; the God linking Himself to man; descending to his infirmities; providing for his restoration; taking his hand; guiding his steps; drawing him to Himself; establishing with him His covenant of peace! What says the Scripture on this point? "These things said Isaiah" (writes St. John, xii. 41, when quoting from the very passage before us,) "when he saw His glory (the glory of the Christ, the King) and spake of Him." It was the WORD of the Lord; the Angel of His presence; He in whom God had put His name (i. e. to whom He had committed His authority). It was He who had led forth Israel by the hand of Moses like a flock of sheep; consecrated them for His people; set Himself over them as their King; manifested Himself to them in the temple that was His palace; enthroned Himself between the Cherubim, commissioned forth the Prophets, and sustained the Law.

And through Him alone then can we see God and live. Without Him we are undone. But with Him, in dependence on the grace of which He is the manifestor; laying hold of the link which He has knit between the Great Supreme and His fallen creatures; pleading the reconciliation He has effected between the Holy One and the defiled; and partaking of the Spirit of access to the Father which He communicates with Him you may enter into the very holiest, and may there behold the glory of the Lord, with reverence indeed, and self-abasement, but not with terror and dismay.

us.

See how all this is intimated in the passage before

See how the momentary terror of the prophet is allayed; the true conception of the Lord whom he beholds made clear to him. "Then flew one of the

seraphims, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged." Mark, a live coal from the altar; where the daily sacrifice had been offered, whence the flame of the substituted victim was ascending up before the holy of holies; this took away his iniquity; this purged his sin. He was no longer terrified. A new spirit came upon him. He could respond to the Divine voice when it asked, "Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?" And in all the humble confidence of a purified, and because purified, devoted heart, he cried immediately, "Here am I, send me!" He, who before dreaded to look on God, now offers himself to be the ambassador of God! He, who felt that he deserved immediate death, can talk with God and receive from Him the words of life!

Where, brethren, is the altar for us? It was raised on Calvary! What is the live coal that must touch our lips? It is the warm breath of the Spirit of adoption, sent forth to us by the risen Saviour, yea, glowing from His ever-burning sacrifice! What, again, is the thought, which by His inspiration must pervade our souls, and make us feel that we may look unscathed upon the Holy One? That our iniquity is cleansed, our sin is purged! And what is the feeling thence awakened, to thrust us forth to every beautiful and noble deed? Just, "Here am I, send me!"

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, LONDON.

ESAU'S BITTER CRY.

GENESIS XXVii. 34.

"And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a and said unto his father, Bless me,

great and exceeding bitter cry,

even me also, O my father."

(From the First Morning Lesson for the Second Sunday in Lent.)

Also, HEBREWS xii. 17.

“He found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

NEW TESTAMENT comments on the Old Testament Scriptures have a special value about them. It is a great advantage, if we really wish to know the mind of the Spirit, to hear holy men, who wrote under His teaching, interpreting what other holy men had written, under the same dictation, centuries before. Here, for instance, we have St. Paul giving judgment on the scene which has been brought before us this morning, the painful, humbling scene in the house of Isaac, which can never be recalled without shame and sorrow. The words of our text, you remember, are spoken concerning Esau, and the Apostle tells us two things in relation to him—first, that being a "profane" person, a careless, earthly-minded man, who had no regard to the Covenant of Promise, nor to the blessing contained in it, he sold his birthright, when pressed with hunger, just that he might get a meal [No. 20.]

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somewhat sooner,-and, secondly, that, when he wished to have back what he had thus rashly parted with, he was kept to his bargain, and could not be reinstated in his forfeited place of honour. He "found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

It is very important to connect these two statements together, and to remember the particular thing of which the Apostle is speaking; or else we shall put a thoroughly false .construction on words which, properly understood, have no difficulty about them whatever. Some persons do pervert the passage by wresting it from its connexion, and making it speak a language utterly unlike what we find written in a hundred other passages about the mercies of God being free to all comers. They will argue against themselves, and try to make out their case as hopeless, because Esau, they say, was "rejected" when he saw his folly, and would have repaired his fault. "He found no place of repentance," they argue; (that is, as they interpret the words, he could not repent to any purpose ;) "he was a castaway in spite of all his earnestness of feeling, manifested even by tears of sorrow; and why should we fare any better? Who shall say, if God's favour once lost, could not be recovered in his case, that we shall be accepted, though we should turn to God with weeping and with mourning?"

Of course, we understand that there is no real contradiction between this passage and a hundred others, which tell us that the man who sorrows for his sins, how many soever they be, "after a godly