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of this spirit may be seen in the motor-car and the aeroplane as they are often used. These indeed need not be ministers of paganism. The glory of swift motion and the mounting up on wings as eagles reach very near to the spiritual, if not indeed across its borderland, as exhilarating and splendid stimuli to the human spirit. But, on the other hand, they may be merely instruments for gratifying that insane human restlessness which is but the craving for new sensations. Along the whole line of our commercial and industrial prosperity there runs one great division. There are some who, in the midst of all change, have preserved their old spiritual loyalties, and there are others who have substituted novelty for loyalty. These are the idealists and the pagans of the twentieth century.1
(5) Such was the state of the whole world when Christ came down to save it. The whole world was lying dead in trespasses and sins ; and nothing was to be seen in the whole race of man but the wreck of shattered souls. If we look into the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Eomans, we are there carried in spirit to a far more appalling and loathsome vision than that which met the eyes of the prophet Ezekiel — to a place filled, not with dry bones, but with unrighteousness, with fornication, with covetousness, with envy, with murder, with strife, with deceit, with malignity, with backbiting, with hatred of God, with despitefulness, with pride, with boasting, with undutifulness, with implacableness, with unmercifulness, with all things that die, and with all things that kill. When our eyes wander over these carcasses of souls, mouldering and rotting on every side, we can hardly so much as take heart to ask, Can these bones live?
But some members of the Church make a greater problem than men of the world. They make us ask, in more despair than the world itself stirs, Can these bones live? These people go to church, uphold their Church, and would fight for their Church ; they would make civil war for its privilege. They have more fight than faith in them. Their souls are exceedingly filled with contempt. And they have a name of lusty life. But they are spiritually dead and they care for their Church but as partisans, or because it is a centre of social rank, or of juvenile amusements. What preacher but is cast into occasional despair by that question
1 J. Kelman, Among Famous Books, 243. JER.-MAL. — 1 6
242 LIFE FROM THE DEAD
as he looks upon many spiritual skeletons around him? What preacher has not many a time to answer with Ezekiel that these can live only by some miracle of God ?
Tf The members of Mr. Murker's little congregation, disturbed and shaken with the dissension that had arisen [over the question of electing a woman as treasurer of the church], " were cast down but not destroyed," " perplexed but not in despair." A tenacious affection and unfaltering loyalty for the "cause" kept most of them together. They did not value their " principles " less because they had betrayed human infirmities in working them out. They were simple people, but they were not so illogical as to suppose that the trying vicissitudes which their church shared in common with all earthly institutions proved their particular policy to be unsound. Order is good, but life, they held, came before order. One of their members from Macduff met a member of the Established Church there who twitted him upon a want of harmony in the Congregational Chapel. " Why," he said, " do you dissenters have so many differences. Look at the folk in the Kirk, how quiet they are!" "Oh, yes," was the smart but provoked rejoinder, " the folk in the Kirk are quiet, very quiet ; so are the folk in the yaird behin' the Kirk ! " l
2. What we have here, then, is an allegory of resurrection. But it is the resurrection, not of the body, nor primarily of the soul as individual, but of the nation. The resurrection of the individual dead was no part as yet of the Hebrew faith. This is shown here by the prophet's answer to the question, " Can these bones live ? " "0 Lord God, thou knowest," he said. If the resurrection of the dead had been a current belief, or the prophet's belief, he would have said, "Yea, Lord." But he took the unlikeliest, most incredible thing they knew to illustrate the grandeur of what God would do. The people were as hopeless of the future as they were of the dead rising. The point of the vision is lost if we suppose a current belief in the resurrection of the dead, or any intention of the prophet to teach it. " God will do a thing as incredible in its way as you and I know the raising of the dead to be." It is originally, then, an allegory of spiritual resurrection; but of spiritual resurrection in national or public form.
1 J. Stark, John Murker of Banff, 42.
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II.
A Living Prophet.
Ezekiel was himself to be the instrument of the regeneration. Christ can do no mighty works through unbelief ; unbelief ever breeds spiritual paralysis ; it sinks into a slough of despond, and there wallows in its helplessness. Ezekiel was the one man who had the faith and courage to lift his eyes above the phenomena to the great Eeality that is behind all phenomena, the one man who refused to fix his gaze on the dry bones as if that were the whole truth. If he saw the dead bones, he saw also the living God, and set no limits to His power. The man of faith comes to his generation with a message : he is a seer of the mountain tops, who sees the heavens open and the Son of Man, standing at the right hand of power. The prophet is a man with a mission and a message, who sees deep into the heart of things because God has anointed his eyes with eye-salve; and so he becomes an inter- preter of truth to his generation. " Again he said unto me, Prophesy over these bones, and say unto them, 0 ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." It was the thing they needed most. They had listened to the word of Nebuchadnezzar till their hearts welled within them; they marked the horses and chariots of Babylon, and cried, Woe unto us, for we are undone. But, here is a man who heard the word of the Lord, who saw the horses of fire and chariots of fire round about them, and therefore bears himself with strength and assurance. So he prophesied as he was commanded ; he brought to the people a message of hope ; he came to tell them the Lord was among them.