The Gospel in Ezekiel

Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man — EZEKIEL xxxvi. 16, 17.

TTAVING scattered over an open field the bones of the human body, bring an anatomist to the scene. Conduct him to the valley where Ezekiel stood with his eye on the skulls and dismembered skeletons of an unburied host. Observe the man of science how he fits bone to bone and part to part, till from those scattered members he constructs a framework, which, apart from our horror at the eyeless sockets and fleshless form, appears perfectly, divinely beautiful. In hands which have the patience to collect, and the skill to arrange these materials, how perfectly they fit! bone to bone, and joint to joint, till the whole figure rises to the polished dome, and the dumb skeleton seems to say, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Now as with these parts of the human frame, so is it with the doctrines of the Gospel, in so far as they are

B intelligible to our limited understandings. From the pages of Scripture over which they are scattered let these doctrines be collected; arrange them in systematic order; how beautifully they fit! doctrine to doctrine, duty to duty; till — connected with each other, all “members one of another” — they rise into a form of perfect symmetry, presenting that very system which, with minor differences but substantial unity, is embodied in the confessions, creeds, and catechisms of Evangelical Christendom. I have said so far as they are intelligible to us; for it is ever to be borne in mind, that while the Gospel has shallows through which a child may wade to heaven, it has also deep, dark, unfathomed pools, which no eye can penetrate, and where the first step takes a giant beyond his depth.

There is a difference, which even childhood may discern, between the manner in which the doctrines and duties of the Gospel are set forth in the Word of God, and their more formal arrangement in our catechisms and confessions. They are scattered here and there over the face of Scripture, much as the plants of nature are distributed upon the surface of our globe. There, for example, we meet with nothing that corresponds to the formal order, systematic classification, and rectangular beds of a botanical garden; on the contrary, the creations of the vegetable kingdom lie mingled in what, although beautiful, appears to be wild confusion. On the same moor, on the surface of the same meadow, the naturalist collects grasses of many forms — he finds both enamelled with flowers of every hue; and in those primeval forests which have been planted by the hand of God, and beneath whose silent and solemn shades man still walks in savage freedom, trees of every form and foliage stand side by side like brothers. With the Sabbath hills around us, far from the dust and din, the splendour and squalor of the city, we have sat on a rocky bank, to wonder at the varied and rich profusion with which God had clothed the scene. Nature, like Joseph, was dressed in a coat of many colours — lichens, grey, black, and yellow, clad the rock; the glossy ivy, like a child of ambition, had planted its foot on the crag, and, hanging on by a hundred arms, had climbed to its stormy summit; mosses, of hues surpassing all the colours of the loom, spread an elastic carpet around the gushing fountain; the wild thyme lent a bed to the weary, and its perfume to the air; heaths opened their blushing bosoms to the bee; the primrose, like modesty, looked out from its leafy shade; at the foot of the weathered stone the fern raised its plumes, and on its summit the fox glove rang his beautiful bells; while the birch bent to kiss the stream, as it ran away laughing to hide itself in the lake below, or stretched out her arms to embrace the mountain ash and evergreen pine. By a slight exercise of fancy, in such a scene one could see Nature engaged in her. adorations — we could hear her singing, “The earth is full of the glory of God.” “How manifold are thy works, Lord God Almighty! in wisdom thou hast made them all.”

Now, although over the whole surface of our globe — as in that spot — plants of every form and family seem confusedly scattered, amid this apparent disorder the eye of science discovers a perfect system in the floral kingdom; and just as — although God has certainly scattered these forms over the face of nature without apparent arrangement — there is a botanical system, so there is as certainly a theological system, although its doctrines and duties are not classified in the Bible according to dogmatic rules. Does not this circum stance teach us that God intended his Word to be a subject of careful study as well as devout faith, and that man should find in its saving pages a field for the exercise of his highest faculties? We are commanded to compare “spiritual things with spiritual;” we are to “search the Scriptures,” to dig for their treasures, and dive for the pearls. Hence the prayer of David, “Give me understanding, that I may learn thy com mandments.”

While the trees and flowers that clothe the fields of nature are scattered without apparent order over the wide surface of the earth, there are mountain regions lying within the tropics, where, in the course of a single day, the traveller finds every vegetable form peculiar to every line of latitude between the equator and the poles, and all these laid out in regular arrangement. Leaving the palms which cover the mountain’s feet, he ascends into the regions of the olive; from these he rises to a more temperate climate, where the vine festoons the trees, or trails its limbs along the naked rock; still •’• ascending, he next reaches a belt of oaks and chestnuts; from that he passes to heights shaggy with the hardy

pine; by and by, tie enters a region where trees are dwarfed into bushes; rising above that, his foot presses a carpet of lowly mosses; till, climbing the rocks where only the lichen lives, he leaves all life beneath him; and now, shivering in the cold, panting in the thin air for breath, he stands on those dreary elevations, where eternal winter sits on a throne of snow, and, waving her icy sceptre, says to vegetation, “Hither shalt thou come and no further.” Like some such lofty mountain of the tropics, there are portions of the Divine Word, where, in a space also of limited extent — within the short compass of a chapter, or even part of it — the more prominent doctrines of salvation are brought into juxtaposition, and arranged side by side, almost in systematic order.

This chapter offers to our attention one of the most remarkable of these; and in illustration of that remark I observe; —

I. That this portion of Scripture, extending onwards from the 16th verse, presents an epitome or outline of the Gospel.

Its details, with their minute and varied beauties, are here, so to speak, in shade; but the grand truths of redemption stand boldly up, much as we have seen from sea the summits of a mountain range, or the lofty headlands of a dim and distant coast. We are aware that the Mosaic economy, and many of God’s dealings with his ancient people, were but the shadows of good things to come; and that, when the things are come — as come they certainly are — you may meet us on the very threshold with this question, Why look at the shadow when you possess the substance? However valued in his absence the portrait of a son may be, what mother, when her boy is folded in her arms, and she has the living face to gaze on, turns to the cold picture? What artist studies a landscape in sombre twilight, when he may see it in the blaze of day? True — true at least in general. Yet such study has its advantages. It not seldom happens that a portrait brings to view some shade of expression which we had not previously observed in the face of the veritable man; and when some magnificent form of architecture, or the serried ridges and rocky peaks of a mountain, have stood up between us and the lingering lights of day, we have found, that although the minor beauties of fluted columns or frowning crags were lost in the shades of evening, yet, drawn in sharp and clear outline against an evening sky, the ejfect of the whole was even more impressive than when eyed in the glare of day.

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