his earnest desire for some token that at last it was permitted him to enter on the actual functions of the prophetic office for which he had been so long preparing; and that this vision was the answer to such beautiful prayerful desire--itself an inspiration from on high--we may well believe.--_Strachey._ Some of you may have been watching a near and beautiful landscape in the land of mountains and eternal snows, till you have been exhausted by its very richness, and till the distant hills which bounded it have seemed, you knew not why, to limit and contract the view,--and then a veil has been withdrawn, and new hills not looking as if they belonged to this earth, yet given another character to all that does belong to it, have unfolded themselves before you. This is an imperfect, very imperfect, likeness (yet it is one), of that revelation which must have been made to the inner eye of the prophet when he saw another throne than the throne of the house of David, another king than Uzziah or Jotham, another train than that of priests or minstrels in the Temple, other winged forms than those golden ones which overshadowed the mercy-seat. Each object was the counterpart of one that was then or had been at some time before his bodily eyes. . . . The symbols and service of the Temple were not, as priests and people often thought, an earthly machinery for scaling a distant heaven; they were witnesses of a Heaven nigh at hand, of a God dwelling in the midst of His people, of His being surrounded by spirits which do His pleasure, hearkening to the voice of His words.--_F. D. Maurice._ [2] See my _Dictionary of Poetical Illustrations,_ No. 1501; and my _Homiletic Encyclopædia of Illustrations,_ Nos. 2229-2240. [3] P. D., 1489, 1493, 1496, 1502, 1504-1506, 1508, 1509, 1511, 1514, 1519, 1526, 2545, 2552, 2563; H. E. I., 2242. [4] H. E. I., 854-857, 2241, 2243. ISAIAH'S VISION. vi. 1-7. _In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord, &c._[1] Behold, in these temple scenes, both what the Lord your God is, and what He requires from you.