458 THE BROKEN LIMBS. [Serm. was it only the desolation of Israel. He who was called 'Son of Man,' was not likely to speak less of Egypt and Tyrus and the land in which he was himself dwelling, than those older prophets who had so many more reasons for regarding Judæa as the one garden of the Lord. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar had been turning the earth upside down and making it waste. Every thing must have seemed to him disjointed, incoherent, withered. Could it ever be renovated? Was it possible even for that country which God had blessed above all others and man had cursed above all others, to breathe and live again? This was the question which was proposed to the prophet on that day when the hand of the Lord was upon him and he was carried into the valley which was full of bones. The vision, clear as it is in itself, must not be read apart from the context of the prophecy. You should remember where Ezekiel was dwelling; by what kind of people he was surrounded; what was the condition of his own land; what had come and was coming upon all lands; or you will not understand the picture which now rose up before him. You should think too of the man himself, of the heat of his spirit, of the words which he had uttered in vain, of the acts which had only made the captives stare vacantly, of the desolation of his house and his heart. You should think of those other visions he had of the ascending scale of creatures, of the mysterious order of the universe, of the glory of God, before you place yourself beside him in the valley, and walk with him round about it, and look at the different bones, and see how each separately, how altogether, they expound to him the condition of the house of Israel. It was dead-that body from which he had believed that life was to go forth to quicken the universe. It had none of XXVI.] THE MOVEMENT OF THE BONES. 459 the beauty of a corpse in which there is still form, on which the spirit has left its impression. There had been a time of gradual decay, a time when the pulses of the nation beat feebly and faintly, but when they might still be felt; a time after that when you knew it had ceased to breathe, but when you could still speak of it as entire. But another stage had come, the stage of utter dissolution, when each limb looked as if it had nothing to do with any other, when you could scarcely force yourself to believe that they had ever been joined together. Can these bones live? what a thought to come into the mind of any man gazing on such a scene! It could not have come from himself certainly, nor from any of these relics. God must have sent it to him; He must have led him to dream that such a resurrection was possible. And now the process of it is also revealed to him. The prophet is commanded to speak. His speech seems a mere sound in the air. But there is a noise and a shaking; then a frightful movement of the bones towards each other, each claiming its fellow to which it had once belonged. This strange effort at a union of dead things betokens a power that has not yet declared itself. And soon the sinews and the flesh came up upon them. They have acquired a form, though they have no life. “Then said He unto me, 'Prophesy unto the wind; Thus saith the Lord God: come from the four winds, Oh breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' So I prophesied as He commanded. And the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." "Doth he not speak parables," was the phrase by which the Jews of the captivity expressed their dislike and contempt for the troublesome and mystical prophet who was 460 THE VISION IN OUR DAY. [Serm. among them. "Doth he not speak parables," is a question which men looking round with weary hearts upon the condition of Christ's Church in various periods of its existence, have asked themselves, with a very different intention and spirit, when they have read this vision of the valley of dry bones. "Is not this written," they have said, “for the ages to come? Is not this one of the parables concerning the kingdom of God?" Yes, brethren, if we will first read it fairly and honestly, as describing what Ezekiel says it described to him-if we will not search for a distant application till we have acknowledged the immediate onewe shall find that here, as every where, Ezekiel is exhibiting facts which belong to other times as well as his own, and laws and a method of divine government which belong to all times as well as his own. And that I may not waste your time in enumerating different crises of history in which the facts may be discerned and by which the law and the method may be tested, I say at once, they are all for us; the vision and the interpretation are of this day. Do you not hear men on all sides of you crying, "The Church which we read of in books exists only in them. Christendom consists of Romanists, Greeks, Protestants, divided from each other, disputing about questions to which nineteen twentieths of those who belong to their communions are indifferent. And meantime what is becoming of the countries in which these different confessions are established? What populations are growing up in them? Does the present generation believe that which its fathers believed? Will the next generation believe any thing?" Brethren, you hear such words as these spoken. I do not mean to enquire how much there. is of truth in them, how much of exaggeration, what evi XXVI.] HOW DARK IT IS. 461 dences there are on the other side which have been overlooked, what signs of life there are anywhere in the midst of apparent death. But this I must say; Christians in general are far too eager to urge special exceptions when they hear these charges preferred; far too ready to make out a case for themselves while they admit their application to others; far too ready to think that the cause of God is interested in the suppression of facts. The prophets should have taught us a different lesson. They should have led us to feel that it was a solemn duty, not to conceal, but to bring forward all the evidence which proves, not that one country is better than another, or one portion of the church better than another, but that there is a principle of decay, a tendency to apostasy in all, and that no comfort can come from merely balancing symptoms of good here against symptoms of evil there, no comfort from considering whether we are a little less contentious, a little less idolatrous than our neighbours. Alas, for this church or for any church, if its existence now, if its prospects for the future, are to be determined by such calculations as these! No, brethren, our hope has a deeper foundation. It is this; that when the bones have become most dry, when they are lying most scattered and separate from each other, there is still a word going forth, if not through the lips of any prophet on this earth, then through the lips of those who have left it—yet not proceeding from them, but from Him who liveth for ever and ever-the voice which says, "These bones shall rise." It is this; that every shaking among the bones, every thing which seems at first a sign of terror,-men leaving the churches in which they have been born, forsaking all the affections and sympathies and traditions of their childhood, infidel questionings, doubts whether the world is left to itself or whether it is 462 THE BONES MAY BECOME MORE DRY. [Serm governed by an evil spirit,—are themselves not indeed signs of life, but at least movements in the midst of death which are better than the silence of the charnel-house, which foretell the approach of that which they cannot produce. It is this; that all struggles after union, though they may be of the most abortive kind, though they may produce fresh sects and fresh divisions, though they must do so as long as they rest on the notion that unity is something visible and material, yet indicate a deep and divine necessity which men could not be conscious of in their dreams if they were not beginning to awake. It is this; that there are other visions true for us, as they were for Ezekiel, besides the vision of dry bones. The name of a Father has not ceased to be a true name because baptized men do not own themselves as His children. The name of the Son has not ceased to be a true name because men are setting up some earthly ruler in place of Him, or are thinking that they can realise a human fellowship without confessing a Man on the throne above the firmament. The name of the Spirit has not ceased to be a true name because we are thinking that we can form combinations and sects and churches without His quickening presence, because we deny that He is really in the midst of us. It is this; that when all earthly priests have been banished or have lost their faith, though there should be none to mourn over the ruins of Jerusalem, or to feel its sins as his own, yet that there is a High Priest, the great Sin-Bearer, ever presenting His perfect and accepted sacrifice within the veil, a High Priest not of a nation, but of humanity. It is this; that though all earthly temples, in which God has been pleased to dwell, should become desecrated and abominable, though all foul worship should go on in the midst of them, and though what is pourtrayed on |