The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 2 — Section 383

II. DEGRADED SERVANTS MAY BE PEBHI'l"l'ED TO DISCHARGE HUMBLER DUTIES, The Levites are not discharged; they are only put to lower offices. God inflicts no heavier penalties than are absolutely necessary, He bears no grudge against any of his servants. If we have failed in a more honourable position, we need not despair; there may be a lowly work which we can still perform. It must have been most painful fur the Levites to be thus forced to take a lower place. Possibly at first they would rather have given up the whole temple service, and have devoted themselves to secular pursuits. It speaks well for them that they silently confessed the justice of what was done, and quietly took the lower place. It is hard, like John the Baptist, to step back and give way for a new man ; hard to say, " He must increase, but I must decrease" (John iii. 30). But he who has the cause of Christ at heart will be willing to do anything for the service of his Master. Many would be willing to take the rank of priests. The test is whether we will obey when we are called to the more humble work of the Levites. III. '!'HE DEGRADATION OF THE UNFAITHFUL IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE EXALTATIO). OF THE FAITHFUL. The loss of the Levites is the gain of the family of Zadok. The talent that is taken from the idle servant is giveo to the servant with ten talents. We may here see a hierarchy in the making. Merit and practical utility lie at the foundation of institutions that have subsequently become more formal. But merit and utility should always govern the appointment to office. There is no higher honour than to have been true in a. time of general unfaithfulness. Ver. 23.-" The differenre between the holy and profane." I. THERE IS A REAL DIFFERENCE. Men have been much concerned with wholly fictitious distinctious, and a most artificial line has been drawn between what has been accounted sacreJ and what has been regarded as profane. But this is only the abuse and the degeneracy of what should be discovered in its high and true condition as a genuine difference. 'l'he formal distinctions of the Jewish Law were all intended to symbolize moral and spiritual differences. Some of them were obviously concerned with matters of common cleanliness and decency; some had a more immediate bearing on sanitary laws; others, perhaps, were too suggestive of Jewish exclusiveness or conventional propriety; but oven these latter regulations could not but impress upon the minds of thoughtful men the separateuess of true holiness. The one real distinction is moral. It is the line of demarcation that separates sin from righteousness. This, and not the supposed distinction between the secular and the sacred, is the real difference between clean llDd unclean. St. Peter was taught to call none of the creatures of God common or unclean (Acts x. 15). It is not they that are so, but the uncleanness is in us, in our use of them. "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled aud unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled" (Titus i. 15). Sirnilnrly, men make an artifichi.l distinction between sacred and' profane history. Coming from the pen of a Josephus, the history of Israel is profane; written by an Arnold, the history of Rome is sacred. He who sees God in history beholds a sacred- ness in it. To him who is worldly and untrue in heart all that he touches is profane. II. Tms DIF~'ERENCE IS TO DE LEARNT BY SPIRITUAL EDUCATION. The priests were to teach the people the difference between the clean and the uncle,,n. No doubt the elaborate external regulations of the Jewish Law required careful study, and men needed to be thoroughly instrueted in regard to them, in order that they might avoid even unconscious offences. This was a necessary adjunct of a ceremonial religion. A religiou of law needed lawyers for its priests. Now that system is wholly swept away. We Jive in the glorious liberty of the sons of God, and there is no ueed for us to be instructed in elaborate rules of ceremonial purification. Still, moral educa- tion is now needed, though in another direction. Conscience must be educated, so thnt it may be sensitive and keen to discern what is right, and separate this from what is evil. '!'his education is not to be a drilling in casuistry, which would be a return to the old bondage of the Law; but it is to be an enlightening in regard to the great principles of Ohristian righteousness, and still more a quickening of the soul to feel the force of those principles, and to apply them without delay to every case as it arises. It is important that the religious teaching of children should be directed more to this end. One great function of the pulpit is to awaken men's sense of the grel\t 898 THE BOOK OF 'l.'m: PROPHET EZEKIEL. [err. XLIV. 1--81.