3. But in facing the facts Ezekiel did not acquiesce in them. The temptation of religious people everywhere is to recognize the wide extent of insensibility and to acquiesce in it. They mark where their neighbours are and, having given to each his badge, they let them be ; he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is worldly let him be worldly still, for characters are formed, and there is little use in fighting against facts. There are whole communities which have sunk to that, which are perfectly respectable, but with no faintest impulse of aggression,
' William Law, An Appeal to all that Doubt (ed. 1768), 18.
246 LIFE FROM THE DEAD
and where the great powers which transfigure character are unknown.
T| Much of what in Scotland was called Moderatism began by being something else. A minister, with evangelical sympathies, found himself in a parish where swearing and hard drinking abounded ; at first he talked in his own dialect, but, in a while, as no one understood, he changed his tone, and through the rest of life he was content to discharge a purely mechanical office, taking men as they were, and not expecting them ever to be different. But alongside of that we have another record, of brave men coming into very ungodly regions, and by sheer courage and directness penetrating the hard crust of habit, and awakening in the unlikeliest people interest, and tenderness, and the deep fountain of tears.1
T| Tolstoy describes the effect in a frightful lodging-house in Moscow of something which he had said without knowing that he was overheard. Over the top of a partition in the room, one woman's head and then another appeared, looking at him with strained attention. "I had not expected that a casual word would produce such an impression. It was like the field of battle seen by Ezekiel on which the bones began to move. I had uttered a chance word of love and pity, and it produced upon these women such an effect that it seemed as if they had been waiting for it, to cease to be corpses and to become alive again." Nothing is gained by underestimating the difficulty ; and yet I think that every one who has had experience in working for others must have seen effects in individuals like that which Tolstoy describes, when they found themselves in some way accepted by the good, and spoken to as if, after all their waste of life, they still might make some- thing of it. They may be far from what they ought to be, but it is an unforgettable lesson to see such movements in what seemed a hopeless life.2
4. Then, to our surprise, instead of Jehovah Himself address- ing the bones and rousing them to unity and life by His word of thunder, He turns to the prophet, and bids him pronounce the magic word. " Prophesy thou over the bones." The Divine and resuscitating word is to be spoken by God's human servant. " Dry Bones " — they are thus addressed as if that were their name — " listen " — among these dead ones there are still, it would seem, slumbering possibilities — "listen to the word of Jehovah," the word, that is, that falls from the lips of His prophet. What
1 W. M. Macgregor, Some of God's Ministries, 208. 9 Ibid.
EZEKIEL xxxvii. 3 247
qualifications had Ezekiel for this task ? Every worker in the valley of bones needs three qualifications. He must be a man of God, a man of the Bible, and a man of prayer. He must keep right with God and the word of God, while he trusts the Spirit of God. No valley of bones can resist a man of this kind.
(1) Ezekiel was a man of God in that he was right with God and completely under God's control. It is well to be a man of learning, a man of position, a man of means, a man of eloquence, but it is a thousand times better to be a man of God.
(2) But, further, the man of God must speak the word of God. The prophet spoke to the bones exactly what God told him. In 2 Timothy iii. 16, 17, we have the purpose of the Scriptures : " All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." The man of God has the whole Bible from which to draw equipment for every good work.
Tj This is the glory of the Bible. It is at once the book of truth, the book of law, and the book of influence. Think of it as the book of truth, and you remember immediately the great historical pictures of the Old Testament, and the great appeals to reason in the Epistles of the New. Think of it as the book of law, and you hear the thunder of the Ten Commandments, and the vehement admonitions of the Hebrew prophets. Think of it as the book of influence, and you feel the pathetic power of tke Psalms of David and the Gospel of St. John. Try to conceive its full might as a combination of the three, and there stands out before you the personality of Him of whom the whole Bible is but the picture and expression — that Christ who is at once the teacher of man's ignorance, the ruler of man's waywardness, and the inspirer of man's spiritual vitality ; at once the Truth and the Way and the Life. It is in its combination and mastery of all three of these great fundamental powers that the Bible is the universal and eternal book, the Word of God to man.1