The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 2 — Section 196

is entitled to their respect, while to his solemn monition a serious regard is due. 2. To ad immediately on conviction; to place a distinct distance between themselves and the threatened evil; to keep the insidious theory, the subtle falsehood, the dangerous half- truth well out of their miud; to refuse any entrance to the perilous habit or the tainted practice; or, on the other hand, to welcome the old truth in its new form render the old service in the new method, as the more suitable and the more excellent way. III. THE LARGE ELEMENT OF MINISTERIAL REBPONSIDILITY. The watchman whC) sleeps at his post or who fails to arouse his fellow-citizens when the enemy is in sight. is severely condemned (see vers. 6, 8). 'l'be spokesman for God who does not "watch for souls as one that must give account," who has no deep feeling of the seriousness or bis position, and no abiding sense of the urgency and imperativeness of his duty, is gravely at fault; so also is that watchman (minister) who perceives but who does not speak, or who does not speak quickly, plainly, forcibly in the ears of the people,-he will have an account to give, and a judgment to bear, from which he may well shrink. But there is also- IV. A LARGE REMAINDER OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSillILITY. "Every man must bear his own burden" here. No man can devolve it upon his religious teacher. Be is only responsible for speaking the truth faithfully; that done, his soul is delivered (see vers. 6, 9). Whether we, as individual men and women, are assimilating Divine truth or are appropriating deadly error; whether we are forming healthy and life-preserving habits, or poisonous and pernicious ones; whether we are moving up the incline of heavenly wisdom and Christian purity, or descending the decline of folly and of wrong; whether we are exerting an elevating and redeeming influence, or a depressing and degrading one, upon our contemporaries and upon those who will succeed us-this must depend very largely indeed on whom we hear, and how we hear. Therefore let the Master say to u~, "Take heed how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whoso- ever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have [tbinketh that he bath]" (Luke viii. 18).-C. Vers. 10, 11.-171,e hope and the way of life. Taking these words apart from their immediate application, as we may do without departing from their spirit and inner meaning, we are invited to think of- L HUMAN HOPELESSNESS. "Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them." The men into whose lips these words are put are very far from being the only ones to whom they apply. All men everywhere may say the same-all who live on in conscious departure from the will of God. 1. Sin bears its penalty with it; it enfeebles the body, it injures the mind, it lowers the life, it degrades the s0ul,-it robs of Divine favour, of spiritual worth, of abiding peace, 2. It may become an increasing burden. It may indeed lead down to a most dangerous and deplorable insensibility, so that the sinful man no more k~ows bow serious and fatal is his condi- tion than does the man who lies down to sleep m the snow, or he who tallls freely a1.d happily in a delirium ; but often the conscious burden of sin rests with a heavy and growing weight upon the soul, and despondency leads down to despair. 3. It ends iu hopelessness; the man feels that he is "pi □ ing away," that there is nothing for him in the future, his heritage is forfeited; there is nothing b<'yond but the gates of death. But he has not taken into his account-- II. THE DIVINE D.IBl'l'~J'l'ION. "As I live, ... I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked," etc. There is much in this statement: 1. Regarded in its negative aspect. "God has no pleasure," etc. That may not seem much to us who have become habituated to think of him as a Divine Father; but it was very much indeed to those who bad not thus learnt of Chiist, very much indeed to those who lived in an age when the Divine powers were supposed to find a terrible satisfaction in the miseries they i11flicted on their enemies. '!'hen the cruelty of man was transferred, in thought, to the bei □ gs who were worshipped, and they were believed quite capable of taking pleasure in the sorrows and in the death of their devotees. But God tells ue here that that is -rwt his disposition. The reaping by guilty men of the full consequences of their sin a:.:aiust himself would give him no pleasure at all; it would not be to satisfy him that tlicir course would go downward until it ended in death. 2. Regarded in its positiv• cB. xx.x.m. 1-33.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. 203,