The Hallowing of the Outer Courts

“His train filled the temple.” — Is. vi. 1.

The prophet had lost a hero and found his Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.’ He had anticipated that when the good King Uzziah died the linch-pin would be removed and the car of the nation’s life would topple over into confusion and disaster. All Isaiah’s hopes were centred in this radical and aggressively righteous monarch, and he feared for the state when its sovereign should be taken. He anticipated chaos, and in place of chaos there emerged the Lord of Order! He found that in the days of his hero-worship he had been living in comparative twilight, the real Luminary had been partially obscured, there had been an eclipse of the Sun; and now, with the passing of Uzziah the eclipse had ended, and the Presence of the Lord blazed out in unexpected glory! “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” It had seemed to the foreboding fears of the depressed youth as though the very existence of the kingdom was involved in the continued reign of the king. If he goes — what then? A crisis was assured! And yet in place of the crisis came God, and the effulgent glory was bewildering. Succeeding generations of men have shared these pessimistic fears. We have riveted our gaze upon the incidental until the incidental has become the essential, and we have feared the withering blast of death. “What will Israel do when Uzziah is taken?” “What will Methodism do when John Wesley is removed? ‘’ ‘’ What will the Salvation Army do when anything happens to its General?” ‘’ What will this or that church do when bereft of its minister? ‘’ And the long-feared crisis has come, but instead of being left to the hopeless, clammy darkness of the grave, we have gazed upon the dazzling glories of a forgotten heaven! The transient pomp and splendour died, and their passing removed the veil from the face of the Eternal, and we saw the Lord. “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” He anticipated an end, he found a new beginning.

But it was not only that Isaiah had an unexpected vision of God, it was the unique character of the vision which impressed and empowered him. Where does the wonder of the prophet culminate? “‘I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne! “That was not the unfamiliar sight, and not there did the prophet’s wonder gather. ‘’ High and lifted up!” A terrible sublimity, like some towering and awe-inspiring Alpine height! Yet not there was concentrated the supreme surprise. “And his train filled the ternpie! ‘’ That was the marvel which made the prophet’s heart stand still. He was not a stranger to the conception of the throne, or of the lonely and snow-white exaltation, but this vision of the train that” filled the temple was altogether foreign to his thought. We must remember that in all these temple arrangements of the olden days there were different grades and varying degrees of sanctity. Even in the time of our Lord there were divisions, separating the holy and the profane, beginning at the outer courts, where the foot of the Gentile might tread, but beyond which he was not permitted to pass, on penalty of death, on to the veiled and silent chamber where the awful Presence dwelt between the cherubim. And there was the same gradient in the thought of the young Isaiah, There were divisions in his temple, separating the different degrees of sanctity, ranging from the much-diluted holiness of the remote circumference to the clean and quenchless flame of the sacred Presence. And now comes this strange and all-convulsing vision: ‘’ His train filled the temple,’’ filled it, every section of it, every corner of it, to the furthest and outermost wall. The posts of the thresholds,” not merely the curtains of the inner shrine, “the posts of the thresholds moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.’’ That is the word which expresses the supreme wonder of this great inaugural vision. “His train filled the temple!” “The house was filled with smoke.” The garments of the Almighty swept an unsuspected area. His robe impartially carpeted the entire pile, there was not a single inch that was exempt from the touch of His enveloping Presence.” His train filled the temple.’ What, then, had the crisis brought to this young heroworshipper who had been so fearful of the passing of his noble king? It had brought to him a larger conception of God, a filling-out conception of God, a full-tide conception, filling every nook and creek and bay in the manifold and far-stretching shore of human life.

Now, the most important crises in a man’s life are related to the growth or impoverishment of his conception of God. It is momentous when some area in the wide circle of his life is unexpectedly discovered to be the dwelling-place of God. Robinson Crusoe begins to track his desolate and presumably uninhabited island, and one day, on the sandy shore, he comes upon the print of a human foot. That footprint revolutionises his entire conception of the island, and all his plans and expedients are transfigured. And so the soul, moving over some area of its activities which has never been related to God, and over which God has never been assumed to exercise a living and immediate authority, one day unexpectedly discovers His footprints upon this particular tract of the sands of time, and the whole of the spiritual outlook is transformed. ‘’ Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.’’ ‘^ This, too, is none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.” I say it is a momentous crisis in the history of the soul when its conception of the

Lord’s Presence and authority covers unfamiliar and unsuspected fields. It is a high birthday for the soul when the soul discovers that the Lord is on the other side of the barrier and that His train fills the temple.

Now, some of the great soul-crises can be more particularly defined. There are certain familiar experiences, enlarging and enriching, which mark the pilgrimage of every man’s thought as he moves forward in the life divine. They have this common characteristic, that each is concerned with the reclamation of some province which has hitherto been regarded as altogether unhallowed or only partially sanctified. Let me give two or three modern examples. Here is a temple, with a dividing barrier, separating the pile into two sections, one of which is described as sacred and the other as secular or profane. That is a division which is made, not merely by the thoughtless and flippant, but even by many grave and serious minds. On one side the barrier they move softly and reverently, as though feeling the very breathings of the Almighty Presence; on the other side they step loudly and thoughtlessly, as though the Almighty were absent. And then one day there comes one of the great crises I have named, and on the secular side of the barrier they see the trailing garments of the Lord, and they are filled with a surprise which ends in resurrection. For it is a birthday for the soul when we discover that the Lord occupies the whole of this divided house, and that His train fills the temple. You know how we divide this temple into the secular and sacred. We began with personages, and we said that all who stand on one side of the line shall be regarded as holy, and shall receive singular ordination and anointing. And then we passed from the personages to their work, and we decided that the work of the anointed should be esteemed as holy, and that his calling should be regarded with reverent awe. And so the ministry was supposed to live on one side the barrier, engaged in its holy calling, while quite a lower significance was attached to the work that is effected on the other side. I have frequently heard reference to my own vocation as a ‘’ sacred calling,” but I have rarely, if ever, heard the same sober phrase applied to the work of the baker or tent-maker, or even to the work of the City Councillor or the members of the House of Commons. But the seamless robe of the Lord is on both sides the artificial barrier, and all things on either side can be equally sacred and sanctified. Our Anglican brethren consecrate their graveyard, and they consecrate the bells that peal in their towers and spires; I do not disagree with it: it is a most impressive ministry; I only say, go on with the consecration service until ^’ the very bells upon the horses are holiness unto the Lord.” I have seen the trailing garment of the Lord in the chancel, at the altar, among the multitude in the nave, among the little group of lonely mourners as they stand at the new-made tomb, but I have also seen it in the open streets, among the common ways of men, at the mart, in the forge, at the common meal as well as at the sacramental feast. The sweeping garment is on the other side of the barrier, and the train fills the temple. It is a great day for a man when first he sees the train of the Almighty wrapping itself about his common work! “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain!’^ This is our sacred place! “Ye say that at Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship,” but that is our secular place! And then the Lord opens the woman’s eyes to the wonderful vision which makes Gerizim and Jerusalem one! “Neither in this mountain ‘’ in particular, ‘’ nor at Jerusalem ‘’ in particular, but anywhere,” in spirit and in truth! ‘’ And so the barrier is crossed, the sacred and the secular become one, the sweet incense rises in the outer courts, and the strain of the singing seraphim revives even those who stand at the threshold. We can go to our work as we go to our worship, we can go to the polling-booth as we go to church, for “the Lord is high and lifted up, and His train fills the temple.”

Let me now mention another temple which our modern thought so frequently divides into sections of different degrees of sanctity, as the temple was divided in the days of old. It is the temple of the entirely personality, and one side of the barrier is called body, and the other is called spirit, and I cannot think they are commonly looked upon with the same venerable and awe-inspiring regard. It is great day for a man when the wonderful revelation breaks upon his eyes, that these two entities possess a common sanctity, that our division is unwise and impoverishing, and that His train fills the whole temple. In the olden days there was a school of thinkers who regarded matter as essentially evil, the very sphere and dwelling-place of evil, and therefore the body itself was esteemed as the very province of the devil. It was therefore further reasoned that to despise the body was to heap shame and contumely upon the devil, and that one of the holiest exercises was thus to treat the flesh with disdain and contempt. The body was a thing of the gutter, gutterborn, and destined to a gutter-death! Therefore they neglected it, they bruised it, they refused to cleanse it, and they utterly deprived it of any attention and adornment. So far as the body-part of the temple was concerned, the Lord was not in it! Js’ow we can see the force and relevancy of the Apostle’s firm and vigorous teaching: ‘’^ Know ye not that your hody is the temple of the Holy Ghost? ‘^ That word would come as a bewildering surprise! The Lord’s temple does not end where the spirit ends; it includes the bodv too: and His train fills the temple! “I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” That veil in the temple has been rent in twain!

There is still yet another temple which we divide into discriminating sections much as the temple of old was divided. One side of the barrier is described as home, the other side as foreign, the one side as Jew, the other side as Gentile. And so the temple itself, rather than the partitioning veil, is too frequently rent in twain. It is a season of wonderful regeneration when first the train of the Almighty is seen to fill the entire temple, and the whole of the unworthily divided area is seen to be the familiar walking-ground of the Eternal God. To go out, I say, into the section regarded as foreign, and to behold the footprints of the Lord, to see that, even where home ends, the trailing garment of the Lord sweeps on, is a great birthday for the soul, a day of fertilising knowledge and of energising grace! To gaze upon other sects, foreign to our own, and to see common footprints in the varying roads; to gaze upon other nations, foreign to our own, and to see the mystic garment in their unfamiliar ways, to discover that the train fills the entire temple, is to enter an experience only less momentous than our conversion, for it is a second conversion into the larger thought and love of God. “In Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither bond nor free.”” His train filled the temple.’^

And as it is with all these unlawful distinctions, distinctions so frequently aggravated into antagonisms, so it is with the alienated ministries of science and religion. They have been too commonly r( garded as though separated by an impassable barrier, on only one side of which there flamed the presence of the Lord. We have regarded the revelations of science as though they were the decrees of an alien power, and we have listened suspiciously to the story of the planet as though it were antagonistic to the story of grace. But now we are reaching a wiser synthesis. More and more clearly are we recognising that the Lord’s train fills the entire temple, and that on both sides the artificial barrier we have the revelation of the same mind. And so now we are watching science as she deciphers the rocks, and ransacks the treasures of the air, and unravels the history of planets, in the same reverent spirit in which we watch the learned saint disentangle the truth from the ancient word. His train fills the temple! One decree runs through the whole universe, and the ultimate secret of Calvary will not be found in final conflict with the liberated secrets of the stars.