The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 1 — Section 135

care for loss or gain, glad if only they escaped with their lives, The best things cannot be bought with money; but, happily, they can be had "without money and without price." 2. Wnen national calamity comes, commerce fails. The commercial barometer is a most sensitive test of approaching political storms. Wickedness in busiuess is deservedly punished in the general calamity of a nation by the collapse of trade that; is certain to be one of the first results of the adversity. 3. Commercial sin will be jwtly punished with commercial ruin. 'l'his does not necessarily happen to the indi- vidual trader who may die rich with ill-gotten gains; but history proves it to be true in the long run with nations. Ver. 16.-Mourning as doves. The fugitives from Jerusalem flee to the mountains and hide themselves there, like the doves in the valleys below, whose melancholy notes seem to be a suit.able echo to their own sad feelings. I. NATURE IKTERPRETS MAN TO HIMSELF. There is an interpretation of nature by ma.n; there is also an interpretation of man by nature. The glad sights and sounds of spring are commentaries on the fresh joyousness of youth. We should not know the hope and beauty of life so well if May never came. So, also, storm, night, winter, desert, mountain, and raging torrent open the heart of man's grief and despair, and reveal its desolation. The key to human passion is there. Wordsworth, the prophet of nature, who saw deepest into her secret, discerned among the woods and hills "the Btill, sad masic of humanity." II. SoRilOW IS RELIEVED BY CONGENIAL SCENES OF NATURE. The mourning exiles will note the melancholy tones of the doves of the valley. To the happy these sounds come as a touching variation from the generally pleasing aspect of nature; but to the sorrowful fugitives among the mountains they express the sympathy of nature. It is well to cultivate this sympathy, which is not all imaginative; "for there is a spirit in the woods," and hills aud valleys are filled with a Divine presence. JIL lN THE SECLUSION OF NATURE THE DEEPER FEELINGS OF THE SOUL FIND VENT,! While among the mountains the e:x:iles utter their lamentations. In the city, scenes' c,f warfare, bloodshed, fury, and terror absorb all attention. These are the immediate and the coarser experiences in a season of great calamity. For the time they destroy the power of reflection. But in solitude and silence men have leisure to think, Then the sadness of the soul wakes up, and takes the place of the agitation and distress of external circumstances. IV. THE SOilBOW OF MAN IS DEEPER THAN THE MELANCHOLY OF NATURE. While the doves coo in plaintive notes that suggest to the hearer a feeling of grief, though they are not really mourning, the exiles from Jerusalem respond to the natural notes of the doves with utterances of true sorrow. Man is greater than nature. He has self-con- sciousness and conscience. He knows his trouble and he knows his sin. He pays the penalty of his higher endowments in the greater depth of his fall and shame and sorrow. The whole range of nature's experiences is slight by the side of the lofty aspirations and profound griefs of man. Going from the one to the other is like lee.ving the soft, undulating landscape of England for the cliffs and chasms e.nd dark valleys and the awful mountain-peaks of Switzerland. The chief difference is moral. Man alone has conscience; he only can mourn for sin. This grief/or sin-and not merely grief on account of its penalties-is one of the deepest experiences of the human heart, It pnts leagues of space between the men who mourn like doves, and the innocent, simple birds whose notes suggest a grief they can never feel. But in this deeper grief is man's hope. Mourning for sin is a part of repentance, and it points to the day of better things, when God ~s forgiven his guilty children, and when the mourning doves will be forgotten, and the singing of the lark at heaven's gate will be the key to a new experience of heavenly gladness. Ver. 19.-Gold and silver. Gold and silver are here referred to as precious things that have become worthless in the confusion consequent on the sack of Jerusalem. Inasmuch as they are usually regarded as of great value and guarded with especie.l care, kept in purses and safe places, to throw them in the streets is to reverse the normal treat11,e11t of them, I. 'l'IIE VALUE OF GOLD AND SILVEB IS NOT STABLE, Financially, this fact is en. vn. 1-27.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. 125