says, he told them, Behold, all souls are Mine ; each is of equal
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and independent value ; as the soul of the father, so is the soul of the son ; the soul that sinneth, it shall die — U, and not another for it ; it alone, and only for its own conscious and inward wrong. Every man is a unit, an integer needing no fraction from the present, or past, or future, to complete his being. His responsi- bility is personal, exclusive, individual, and entire. Each soul of man dwells in the awful solitude of its individual obligation to God. " Teeth set on edge " are not signs of personal sin ; suffering is no proof of personal wrong, and is not " death." It is sin that kills, and sin is and must be of personal will and individual intelligence. No man sins for another ; no man dies for another. God's ways are all equal, and righteousness is the glory of His administration. Heredity is a fact; but it accounts neither for the sum of human suffering nor for the presence of individual sin. The Jews thought that present suffering was to be explained en bloc by past sin. The fact of a man being born blind was to be accounted for by his parents having sinned. The law of heredity was recognized by the prophet as largely explaining the fact of moral degeneration, but he shows that it does not fully explain it. There are limitations to the law of heredity. Each individual soul stands in a direct and personal relationship to God ; each person alone, and from this point of view unaffected by the position of his father, has an individuality — has character, and moral worth. Hence the individual that sins shall die — not for the sin he may have inherited, not because of any relationship to a father, but for the sin he himself has done.
And as sin is individual, so the call to repentance, which is the keynote of the prophet's ministry, is addressed to individual men, and, in order that it may take effect, their minds must be disabused of all fatalistic preconceptions which would induce paralysis of the moral faculties. It was necessary to affirm in all their breadth and fulness the two fundamental truths of personal religion — the absolute righteousness of God's dealings with individual men, and His readiness to welcome and pardon the penitent.
3. So the prophet's teaching is that in human history and human life there is something higher than the law of heredity, as we now call it. There is a spirit, a soul in man, and the Almighty
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has given him understanding. The spirit of man is akin to the Divine Spirit, and in this kinship it has a spring of higher life. It has an impulse of its own, which no circumstances can over- bear, which connects it at once with the consciousness and the power of self action, of doing that which is lawful and right, and so, under whatever disadvantages, of saving the soul alive; or again, of doing that which is evil, and so bringing death to itself. Ezekiel, in the Old Testament, is the great teacher of this deepest of spiritual truths. " Other prophets," it has been said, " have more of poetical beauty, a deeper sense of Divine things, a tenderer feeling of the mercies of God for His people ; none teach so simply — and with a simplicity the more remarkable from the elaborate imagery out of which it emerges — the great lesson that the individual soul is free before God, that it has within it the power of good and evil, and that God will judge it, not for anything done by others, but by its own doings." Every man is responsible for his own life and conduct, and must be held directly accountable to God. Collectivism received its death- blow before such teaching as this, and men were seen to stand or fall according to their lives, which were regarded as the index to the state of the individual heart ; God refused to deal with men solely upon principles of moral heredity.
Tf One day, as Ezekiel strayed by the river-side, he had what he calls a vision — what would now be called a spiritual experience. Doubtless there were men besides Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar that day; but these saw only a sheet of water and heard only a murmuring sound. To Ezekiel the sheet of water was a crystal mirror revealing the Kingdom of God, and the murmuring sound was the voice of the Divine Spirit.
And what did that voice say ? What was the message which greeted him by the river-side? Let me try to paraphrase it. It said : Ezekiel, your people have an exaggerated sense of the power of heredity. They are making the sins of their fathers an excuse for their own. They are claiming their iniquities as an inevitable inheritance ; they are trying to throw their responsi- bility upon the long line of their ancestors. Go and tell them they are mistaken ! Tell them there is a force in this world besides hereditary force — the force of the individual soul ! Tell them there is a power in the personal will which can modify the will of the ages ! Proclaim to each man that he is not bound to yield to the current of the stream ! Bid him remember that he