To look thus is to see pillars, lintels and cross-beams twist and fall, crumble and fade; but how inexplicable the process seems! Take away the glass, and everything is clear. The fiery element is filling all the interstices, that were blank to us before, and beating upon the solid material. The heat becomes visible, shimmering even where there is no flame. Just so had it been with the sinners in Judah these forty years. Their society and politics, individual fortunes and careers, personal and national habits--the home, the Church, the State--common outlines and shapes of life--were patent to every eye, but no man could explain the constant decay and diminution, because all were looking at life through a glass darkly. Isaiah alone faced life with open vision, which filled up for him the interstices of experience and gave terrible explanation to fate. It was a vision that nearly scorched the eyes out of him. Life as he saw it was steeped in flame--the glowing righteousness of God. Jerusalem was full _of the spirit of justice, the spirit of burning. The light of Israel is for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame._ The Assyrian empire, that vast erection which the strong hands of kings had reared, was simply their pyre, made ready for the burning. _For a Topheth is prepared of old; yea, for the king it is made ready; He hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it._[64] So Isaiah saw life, and flashed it on his countrymen. At last the glass fell from their eyes also, and they cried aloud, _Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?_ Isaiah replied that there is one thing which can survive the universal flame, and that is character: _He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of fraud, that shaketh his hands from the holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from the hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking on evil, he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: his bread shall be given him: his water shall be sure._ [64] Chaps. iv. 4; xxx. 33. * * * * * Isaiah's Vision of Fire suggests two thoughts to us.