(Ezekiel"s languRge is necessarily that of e. Ver. 25.-Are not my we.ys equal t The hold anthropopathy), and his transgressions primary meaniug of the Hebrew ndjoctive shell not be mentioned unto him (comp. oh. is that of something ordered, symmetrically xxxiii. 16; Isa. xliii. 25; !xiv. 9; Jer. xxxi. arranged. Men would find in the ways of 34). Assuming the later date of Isa.. xl.- God precisely that in which their own ways lxvi., the last three utterances have the in- were wanting, and which they denied to terest of being those of nearly contemporary him-the workings of a considerate equity prophets to whom the same truth had been adjusting all things acoording to their tru~ revealed. weight aud measure. Ver. 23.-Have I any pleasure, etc.? Eze- Vere. 26-29.-The equity of the Divine kiel's anticipations of the gospel of Christ judgments is asserted, as before, by fresh take a yet wider range, and we come at last iteration rather than by new arguments. In to what had been throughout the suppressed a discourse delivered, as this probably was, premise of the argument. To him, as after- orally, it wa.q necessary, so to spenk, to wards to St. Paul (I Tim. ii. 4) and St. Peter hammer in the truth upon men's minds (2 Pet. iii. 9), the mind of God was pre- so that it might be driven home and do its sented as being at once absolutely righteous work. and absolutely loving. The death of the Vere. 30, 31.-That work was to produoe wicked, the loss, i.e., of true life, for a time, repentance, hope, and fear. The goodness nr ernn for ever, might be the necessary and severity of God alike led up to that. consequence of laws that were righteous in For a man to remain in his sin will be fatal, thernsel ves, and were working out the well- bnt it is not the will of God that he should being of the nniverse; but that death was so remain. Wliat he needs is the new heart not to be thou~ht of as the result of a Dinne and the new spirit, which are primarily, as decree, or contemplated by the Divine mind in eh. xi. 19, God's gift to men, but which with any satisfaction. If it were not given men must make their own by seeking and to Ezekiel to see, as clearly as Isaiah seems receiving them. So iniquity shall not be your to have seen it, how the Divine philanthropy ruin; better, with the margin of the Revised was to manifest itself. he at least gauged that Version, so shall they not be a stumbling- philanthropy itself, and fonnd it fathomless. block (same word as in eh. iii. 20; vii. 19; Ver. 24.-ln the previous argument (ver. xiv. 3) of iniquity unto you. Repented sins 21) the truth that the individual character shall be no more an occasion of offence. Men may change had been stated as a ground of may rise on them to "higher tliings," as on hope. Here it appears as a ground for fear "stepping-stones of their dead selves." and watcLfalness. The •• grey-he.ired saint Ver. 32.-Turn yourselves, etc. As in may fail at last," the apostle may become a eh. xiv. 6, but there is no ground for the castaway (1 Cor. ix. 27), and the righteous- rendering of "turn others," suggested in ness of a life may be cancelled by the sins the margin of the Authorized Version. of a year or of a day. Whether there was an opening for repentance, even after that fe.11, So we close what we may rightly speak of the prophet does not say, but the law that a as among the noblest of Ezekiel's utterances, man is in spiritual life or death according that which makes him take his plaoe side to what he is at any given moment of his by side with the greatest of the prophets as course, seems to require the extension of the a preacher of repentance and forgiveness. hope, unless we assume that the nature of the fall in the caet> supposed fetters the In the next chapter he returns to his para- freedom of the will, and makes repentance bles of history after the fashion of those of (rnpussible (Heb. vi 4-7; 2 Pet. ii. 20). oh. xvii.
HOMILETICS. Ycrs. 2, 3.-.An old proverb disr,arded. The proverb of the sour grapes was but an expression of a prevalent belief of the Jews, viz. that guilt is hereditary. • Whatevor element of truth there may have been in this proverb was overlaid and lost in a monstrous notion, which destroyed. both the sense of personal responsibility and the conception of Divine justice, substituting doctrines of unavoidable fate and unrea~onable vengeance on the innocent. L THE TRUTHS BEHIND THE PROVERB. This saying and the doctrine which it embodied were based upon dark, mysterious, but still true, facts of experience. 1. Children share in the sufferings produced by the sinij of their parents. Sins of the fathers are visited on the children. Thi.~ dread fact was recognized in the ten commandments (Exod. :u. 5). We see it confirmed by our daily observation of th@ (Ill, xvm. 1-32.] 'l'HE BOOK OF 'l'HE PROPHET EZEKIEL, 325