EZEKIEL - CHAPTER
3
Man Sinning
36:18/19
When the house of Israel dwelt in their own
land, they defiled it by their own way, and by their doings. - Ezekiel
36: 17.
I HAVE dreamed a dream, said Joseph, and behold the sun,
moon, and eleven stars made obeisance to me. The earth was once supposed to
occupy a place of no less honour in creation. Turning daily on its axis, and
performing also an annual revolution round the sun, our globe is in incessant
motion; and yet in old times men believed that its state was one of perfect
rest; and that, like the small pivot on which some great wheel revolves, it
formed a centre, around which the whole machinery of heaven went rolling, suns,
and planets, and fiery comets, both the fixed and wandering stars. This dream
of science met a happier fate than Joseph's. Believed in the credulous ages of
the world's childhood, it was obstinately clung to as an article of faith down
to no very distant period. It is not so long ago since the telescope of Galileo
demonstrated that our earth - whatever the Pope might say to the contrary - is
a satellite of the sun, and but one of many orbs that roll around him; and he
but one of many suns, which, requiring millions of years to complete their
circuit, revolve about some greater centre.
At a period preceding the
philosopher's discovery, the throne of Spain was filled by a man who had
acuteness enough to perceive, that if all these vast systems, suns, planets,
and comets, were daily turning round this earth, then, in making the greater
subservient to the less, the Creator of the universe had constructed a clumsy
and very cumbersome piece of mechanism. History has preserved the profane
language of his dissent from the science of that day. It was something to the
effect that if God had consulted him when he made the universe, it would have
been better planned. Far be it from us, under any perplexity felt in
contemplating the mechanism of creation, or the mysteries of providence, to
question the divine wisdom, to cherish a thought so daring, or utter an
expression so profane. In his dealings toward us his way may be in the sea, his
path in the mighty waters, and his footsteps not known; by terrible things in
righteousness, he may answer us; but although he dash the cup of happiness from
our hand, or fill it to the brim with wine of astonishment, we shall never deem
it right to think that God has done wrong. Whatever appearance of error his
works may present, be assured that the defect is not in the object, but in the
spectator; in the eye that sees, not in the thing that is seen; in you, not in
God; not in the plans of infinite wisdom, but in the finite mind, which has the
folly to condemn what it has not the understanding to comprehend. Manifold
are thy works, Lord God Almighty; in wisdom hast thou made them all.
Such is the judgment of the Psalmist. From this verdict no work of God so
strongly tempts us to dissent as do the condition and character of man himself;
and I am ignorant of any way by which so well to meet this temptation as by
receiving into our creed the doctrine of the Fall. If we reject this doctrine,
if we hold with some that the children are not in any sense implicated in their
parents' sin, then, in the providence of God, and in the government of the
world, there appears nothing, I shall not say so deficient in wisdom, but so
obscure, so inscrutable, so painfully and fearfully mysterious, as the position
and character of man. On the supposition that he has never fallen, that the
vessel is as pure and perfect as when it passed from the potter's hand, these
questions are ever rising, and, dismiss them as we may, are ever returning, -
How could a good God make such a wicked creature? How could a kind God make
such an unhappy creature? How could a wise God make such a foolish creature?
How could a holy God make such a sinful creature? If it is impossible for a
pure stream to be born of a polluted fountain, is it not as impossible that a
pure fountain can be the parent of a polluted stream? If a clean thing cannot
come out of an unclean, is not the conclusion as fair, as logical, as
inevitable, that an unclean thing cannot come out of a clean?
Now let us
shut the Bible, excluding every ray of inspired and celestial light. We stand
in darkness; and yet the subject seems to me like the dead substance, the
decaying wood, or the putrid animal matter which grows luminous through decay,
and emits in death a phosphorescent light. By the help of man's very corruption
we have light enough to discover his fallen, dead, degraded state. Indeed, I
would a thousand times sooner believe that man made himself what he is, than
that God made him so; for in the one case I should think ill only of man; in
the other, I am strongly tempted to throw blame on his Maker. Just think, I
pray you, to what conclusion our reason would conduct us in any analogous case.
You see, for example, a beautiful capital still bearing a few of the flowers,
and some vestiges of the foliage which the sculptor's chisel had carved upon
the marble. It lies on the ground, half-buried under rank weeds and nettles;
while beside it the headless shaft of a noble column springs from its pedestal.
Would you not at once conclude that its present position, so base and mean, was
not its original position? You say the lightning-bolt must have struck it down;
or an earthquake had shaken its foundations; or some ignorant barbarian had
climbed the shaft, and with rude hand hurled it to the ground. Well, we look at
man, and arrive at a similar conclusion. There is something, there is much that
is wrong, both in his state and character. His mind is carnal and at enmity
with God; the imaginations of his heart are only evil continually. So says the
Bible. His body is the seat of disease; his eyes are often swimming in tears ;
care, anticipating old age, has ploughed deep furrows on his brow; he possesses
noble faculties, but, like people of high descent who have sunk into the low
estate of slaves or menial servants, they drudge in the service of the meanest
passions. He has an immortal soul, but it is clogged by the infirmities, and
imprisoned within the walls of a "body of death." His life is vanity. He is
ever pursuing happiness, but, like the child who chases the rainbow, or climbs
the hill-top to catch the silvery moon, he is doomed to disappointment; he
never finds the object of his search. In some respects manifestly made for a
sphere higher than he fills, he appears to us like a creature of the air which
a cruel hand has stripped of its silken wings. How painfully he resembles this
hapless object which has just fallen on the pages of a book that we read by the
candle on an autumn evening? It retains the wish, but has lost the power to
fly! Allured by the taper's glare, it has brushed the flame, and, dropping with
a heavy fall, now crawls wingless across the leaf, and seeks the finger of
mercy to end its misery.Compare man with any of the other creatures, and how
directly we come to the conclusion that he is not, nor can be, the same
creature with which God crowned the glorious work of creation!
Who has not
had this truth borne in upon his mind when he wandered forth into the beauteous
realms of nature? I pass out among her sylvan scenes; and here, on the spray of
the tasselled broom, sits a little bird. He sings, filling the glen with
melody. From throat and throbbing breast, hear how he rings out the sweetest
music, as with keen bright eye he now looks up to heaven and next down on the
bush where his mate is seated, with wings spread over their unfeathered
nestlings; with lightsome song he cheers her cares, and now is away on untiring
wing to cater for the mother and her young. Next, I turn my Steps to the open
moor; and so soon as the intruder appears on her lonely domain, the lapwing
comes down upon the wind. Brave and venturesome she sweeps me with her wing,
and shrieking out her distress, wheels round and round my heath Her
homeless brood are cowering on that naked waste; nor does she rest till my foot
is off the ground; and even then, when the coast is clear, I hear her long wild
screams, like the beating of a mother's heart when her child is saved - like
the mournful dash of waves on the shore long after the wind is down.
Next I
climb the mountain, when snow drifts thick from murky heavens, and, emblem of
Satan taking advantage of a believer's trials, the wily fox has left his cairn
and prowls abroad for prey. Every mother of the flock lies there with a tender
lamb behind her; her body screens it from the rudeness of the storm and with
her head to the wind, and expanded nostril, snuffing the distant danger, she
lies ready, so soon as her eye catches the stealthy foe, to start to her feet,
receive him on her horns, and die like a true mother, in her lamb's defence.
Such are God's creatures. And though the shock of the Fall has been felt
throughout all this lower creation, which "groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now," yet the work is to a great extent immarred, and the
workmanship such as it came from the Maker's hand. Away among these old hoar
hills, remote from man, his cities, his sins, his works, his sorrows, we are
out of hearing of the groans of creation. But for the corruption we carry
within us, we might forget the Fall. Stretched on a fragrant bank of thyme,
with the hum of bees, the song of birds, and the chirp of the merry grasshopper
in our ear, a cloudless sky overhead, and beneath us the placid lake, where
each flower and bush and birch-tree of the rock looks down into the mirror of
its own beauty, the murmur of the waterfall sounds to us, like an echo from the
crags of the Creator's voice, All is very good?
But let us retrace our
steps from the bosky glen where the little bird sings, or the moor where the
lap-wing screams out her fears, or the hill where the timid sheep faces the fox
to die for her offspring, or the forest den, where the bear with her cubs
behind her offers her shaggy bosom to the hunter's spear. Enter this town. Look
at that wretched mother, as we saw her when Sabbath bells rang worshippers to
prayer, and God was calling sinners to a throne of mercy. Her back rests
against the church wall; she has sunk down on the cold pavement; her senses are
steeped in drink; and on her lap - pitiful sight! lies an emaciated,
half-naked, dying infant, with the cold rain soaking its scanty rags, and
lashing its pallid face. Is this mother God s handiwork? Is this the clay as it
came from the potter's wheel? Was it in such shape as this that woman came from
her Maker's hand! When Adam awoke, was Eve such as this her daughter? If so,
better he had never awoke; if so, it had been good that the man should be
alone. Reason, to say nothing of religion, revolts from the impious thought.
It is common enough to call such spectacles brutal The language is a libel
on creation, and a blasphemy against the Creator. These scenes are not brutal.
My very argument lies in this, that the inferior animals never present
themselves in such an unnatural and revolting aspect. Under the impulse of
instincts necessary for their well-being, for the due balance of the different
races, and for the general welfare of the world, they may, and indeed must prey
upon each other. They do destroy each other; but were they ever found
committing self-destruction? Range the wide fields of nature, travel from the
equator to the poles, rise from the worm that wriggles out of its hole to the
eagle as she springs from the rock to cleave the clouds, and where shall you
find anything that corresponds either to our scenes of suicidal dissipation, or
the bloodstained fields of war? Suppose that, on his return from Africa, some
Park, or Bruce, or Campbell, were to tell how he had seen the lions of the
desert leave their natural prey, and, meeting face to face in marshalled bands,
amid roars that drowned the thunder, engage in deadly battle. Would he find one
man so credulous as to believe him? The world would laugh that traveller and
his tale to scorn. But should anything so strange and monstrous occur, or,
while the air shook with their bellowings, and the ground trembled beneath
their hoofs, should we see the cattle rush from their distant pastures, to form
two vast, black, solid, opposing columns, and, with heads levelled to the
charge, should these herds dash forward to bury their horns in each other's
bodies, we would proclaim a prodigy, asking what madness had seized creation.
But is not sin the parent of more awful prodigies? Look here, turn to the
bloody horrors of this battlefield. This is no fancy picture, but a fact; a
sad, sickening fact. The trampled ground lies thick with the mangled brave; the
air is rent with the most horrible sounds; every countenance expresses the
passions of a fiend. Fiercer than the cannon's flash, flames of wrath shoot
from brothers eyes. They draw; they brandish their swords, they sheathe them in
each other's bowels; every stroke makes a widow, every ringing volley scatters
a hundred orphans on a homeless world. Covering her eyes, humanity flies
shrieking from the scene, and leaves it to rage, revenge, and agony.
Sooner
would I be an atheist and believe that there was no God at all, than that man
appears in this scene as he came from the hand of a benignant Divinity. Man
must have fallen. Nature, society, the state of the world, are so many echoes
of the voice of Revelation; they proclaim our fall, that the gold has become
dim, that the most fine gold has changed; and, in words to which we again turn
your attention, that we have defiled the land in which we dwell, by our ways
and by our doings. Now, leaving the subject of Original, to speak of Actual
Sin, we remark
I. Apart from derived sinfulness, we have personal
sins to answer for.
Dispose of the doctrine of Original Sin as you
please; suppose that you could disprove it; when that count of the indictment
is cancelled, what advantage have you gained? Enough, more than enough, remains
to convict us of guilt, and to condemn all both within and without these walls.
You may deny original, but can any man in his senses deny actual sin? You may
as well deny your existence. It sticks to you like your shadow. If we should
say that we have no sin, we make God a liar, and the truth is not in us. Let me
address you in the words of God himself, Come, let us reason together.
Do you mean, on the one hand, to affirm, that you have never been guilty of
doing what you should not have done? or, on the other, that you were never
guilty of not doing what you should have done? Lives there a man so happy as to
look back on the past and feel no remorse, or forward to the future, and feel
no fear? What! is there no page of your history that you would obliterate, no
passage that you would erase, no leaf that, with his permission, you would tear
from the book of God's remembrance? Is there neither work, nor word, nor wish
of days gone by, that you would not, if you could, recall? To David's prayer,
"Lord, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions", have you no
solemn and hearty Amen? Could you be carried back to life's starting post,
leant you again an infant against the cradle, stood you again a child at your
mother's knee, sate you again a boy at the old school-desk, with companions
that are now changed, or scattered, or dead and gone, were you again a youth to
begin the battle of life anew, would you run the self-same course; would you
live over the self-same life?
What! is there no speech that you would
unsay? no act that you would undo? no Sabbath that you would spend better? are
there none alive, or mouldering in the grave, none now blest in heaven, or with
the damned in hell, to whom you would bear yourself otherwise than you have
done? Have none gone to their account whose memory stings you, and whose
possible fate, whose everlasting state fills you with the most painful anxiety?
Did you never share in sins that may have proved their ruin, nor fail in
faithfulness that might have saved their souls? Oh! if every thread of life' s
web were yet to weave, what man would make the future a faithful, I will add, a
fearful copy of the past? I will make hold to say no man living would; and that
the Apostle therefore has universal conscience on his side, when he declares,
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. No sin! Our sins are more
in number than the hairs upon our head; nor do I know of language or attitude
so becoming us as those of Ezra, when, rending his mantle, that holy man fell
upon his knees to cry, Oh, my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face
to thee; for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is
gone up into the heavens.
II. The guilt of these actual sins is our
own.
Hast thou eaten of the tree? God puts the question, and man
replies, The woman whom thou gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I
did eat. Adam points an accusing finger at Eve; and turning round to the woman,
God says, What is this that thou hast done? She in her turn lays the blame on
the serpent, saying, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat; and, each
repudiating the guilt, thus and thus they shift the sin. We have " eaten of the
tree;" and, unless it be by faith to roll the guilt on Jesus Christ, we attempt
in vain to fix the blame on others - to fasten the burden on any shoulders but
our own. There are strong pleas which the heathen may advance in extenuation of
their guilt; there are excuses which they, stepping forward with some
confidence to the judgment, may urge upon a just and merciful as well as holy
God. They may say, we knew no better; no man cared for our souls. Great God!
when thy followers landed on our benighted shores, they brought no olive branch
or Bible; they came with fire, and sword, and chains, and slavery. At the door
of those who, bearing thy name, oppressed us, plundered us, enslaved us, and
left us to die ignorant of thy love, we lay our guilt. Let them answer for us.
Place these Christians at thy bar; demand of them, Where is thy brother Abel?
and on their heads, not on ours, let thy dread justice fall.
Again, this
wretched child, the victim of cruel neglect, who has left cold, and hunger, a
bed of straw, or a bare floor to stand at the bar of God, may lift up his
injured head at that august tribunal, and stand on his defence with more
expectation both of justice and of pity than he ever met here below. In
shivering cold and ragged nakedness, in gnawing hunger and parching thirst, in
beggary and heathen ignorance, he was left to wander these streets, nor, among
all the Christians of this city, was there one kind hand to guide his erring
feet to Sabbath church or ragged school. Poor wretch! pity was not for him;
kindness was not for him; the house of God was not for him; but now that he
addresses one who will neither rudely order him away nor refuse to hear him,
child of misfortune! how may he say, Merciful Lord! my mother trained me to
steal, my father taught me to swear. How could I obey a Bible which I never
learned to read? How could I believe in thee, whom no one taught me to know.
How was I to avoid sins against which I was never warned? Saviour of sinners!
condemn me not! No man cared for my soul. I did not know what I did. I throw
myself at thy feet. Seizing thy cross, I claim the benefit of its dying prayer,
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
What value may
be given to these pleas, what weight they may carry at a tribunal where much
shall be exacted of those who have received much, and little asked where little
has been given, it is not for us to say, or even attempt to determine. The
Judge of all the earth will do right. But this we know, that we have no such
excuse to plead, nor any such plea to urge, in extenuation of our offence, of
one of a thousand of our offences. Some, indeed, plead their natural proneness
to sin, excusing themselves on that ground; or on this, that the temptation
before which they fell, struck them with the suddenness and vehemence of a
hurricane. The command, however, to watch and pray leaves you without excuse.
You were fully warned. You should have been on the outlook for the white
squall. The sentinel is righteously shot who is caught asleep upon his post.
Supposing, however, that the plea were accepted, more than enough remains
to condemn us, and leave guilt no refuge out of Christ. We talk of the
strength, or plead the suddenness of temptation; but how often have we sinned
designedly, deliberately, repeatedly? We talk of a natural bias to sin; but who
has not committed sins that he could have avoided; sins which he could have
abstained from, and did abstain from, when it served some present purpose to do
so? This reeling sot and slave of drunkenness keeps sober at a communion
season; and that swearer, who alleges that he cannot refrain from oaths, puts a
bridle on his tongue in the presence of his minister. It is useless for the
sinner to allege that he is swept away by temptation; "he conceiveth
mischief, and he bringeth forth falsehood;" and if swept away, it is as the
suicide, who repairs to the river, stands on its brink, and, leaping in, is
swept off to his watery grave. I know that Satan goes about seeking whom he may
devour, but, while he tempts us, how often have we tempted him? Stealing on
unawares, like a lion crouching to the leap, with sudden and unlooked for
spring he may throw himself upon us; but how often have we cast ourselves in
his way? We have gone down to Delilah; we have stood in the way of
sinners; we have sinned when we knew that we were sinning; we have repaired to
scenes where we knew that we were to sin. In pursuit of its guilty pleasures -
trampling conscience beneath our feet, and more than that, the body and blood
of Jesus Christ - we have done what the heathen never did, what Sodom and
Gomorrah never did, what Tyre and Sidon never did; we have rejected a Saviour,
and insanely refused eternal life. There is hope for us in the blood of his
cross, but none in its prayer. We knew what we did.
Some years ago, on a
great public occasion, a distinguished statesman rose to address his
countrymen, and, in reply to certain calumnious and dishonourable charges, held
up his hands in the vast assembly, exclaiming, These hands are clean. Now, if
you or I or any of our fallen race did entertain a hope that we could act over
this scene before a God in judgment, then I could comprehend the calm, the
unimpassioned indifference with which men sit in church on successive Sabbaths,
idly gazing on the cross of Calvary, and listening with drowsy ears to the
overtures of mercy. But are these, I ask, matters with which you have nothing
to do? If indeed, you have no sins to answer for, if before this world's great
assize you are prepared not only to plead, but to prove your innocence, if
conscience accuses you in nothing, and excuses you in everything, then sleep
on; in God's name sleep on, and take your rest. But when the heavens over men
are clothed in thunders, and hell yawns beneath their feet, and both God's law
and their own consciences condemn them, such indifference is insanity! Beware!
Play with no fire; least of all, with fire unquenchable. Play with no edged
sword; least of all, with that which divine justice sheathed in a Saviour's
bosom. Play by the mouth of no pit; least of all, on the brink of that - the
smoke of whose torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. Think of these things.
What incalculable issues. are at stake? Your everlasting destiny may turn upon
this hour.
Do you feel under condemnation? Are you really anxious to be
saved? Be not turned from such a blessed purpose by the laughter of fools and
the taunts of the ungodly. It is a very common thing with scoffers, and with
those who use their religion as a cloak worn loosely, nor ever drawn closely
round, save, so to speak, in inclement weather, when distress troubles, or
death alarms them, to eye all men of zeal with cold suspicion, and represent
them as either rogues or fools, fanatics or hypocrites. I might answer this
charge. Fools! I could produce an array of brilliant and immortal names, names
of men in whom a child-like piety was associated with the highest intellect,
the loftiest genius, the most profound and statesmanlike sagacity, men beside
whom most of your scoffers, sceptics, and worldlings were as dwarfs in the
company of giants. Folly! If Christians really such are chargeable with any
folly, it is with that of not being zealous enough, of being, not too much, but
too little religious. In the name of common sense and religion also, I ask, is
it possible, if there be a hell, to be too anxious to escape it? If men are
perishing, with children, brothers, sisters, friends, in the burning, can I be
too anxious to save them? The man who leaves his bed at mirk midnight to quench
the flames in a neighbour's house, is no fool! But he who can coolly eat his
meals beside the sea, or go singing about his common avocations on the shore,
when a wreck is in sight, and the roar of the surf and the shrieks of the
drowning are in his ear, is a fool, or something worse.
As to the
insinuation of general hypocrisy, the wretched charge got up against religion,
when some specious professor stands unmasked before the world, how absurd it
is! Is there no sound grain in our barnyards, because there is so much chaff?
Are all patriots - Wallace and the Bruce, Tell, Russel, and Washington -
deceivers and liars, because some men have villainously betrayed their country?
Is there no bright honour in our army, because some soldiers, the sweepings
probably of our city streets, have deserted, left the lines, and gone over to
the enemy? Is there no such virtue as integrity among British merchants,
because now and then we hear of a fraudulent bankruptcy? Because some religious
professors prove hypocrites, is all ardent piety hollow hypocrisy? To reason
so, argues either a disordered intellect, or a very depraved heart. The
conclusion is as contrary to logic as to love. When or where were hypocrites
ever known to suffer for principle? Yet is there a country within the bounds of
Christendom that has not been strewed thick with the ashes and crimsoned with
the blood of martyrs? Have not their heads in ghastly rows stood spiked above
our own city gates? Two hundred gears ago, and the windows of the very houses
that still stand beside this church were crowded with eager faces taking their
last look of men who went with firm step and lofty carriage to the death,
loving Christ more than their lives, and, as one said before they threw him
off, ready, had they as many lives as they had hairs on their head, to lay them
all down for Christ.
Religion has fairly won her honours, and stands before
you an honest thing, and the highest wisdom. Whatever you be, be religious. God
working in you and with you, work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling. The way to the refuge lies open. With the feet of an Azahel haste to
Jesus. Once in him, you can turn on the avenger, saying, Man-slayer, I fear
thee not; here thou comest, but no further; this blood-red line thou canst not
pass, There is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus.
Do you see
sin staining your holiest services, defiling your head, heart, hands, feet -
the whole man? Haste to the fountain where sins are lost, and souls are
cleansed. With its base ingratitude to your heavenly Father, the wounds it has
inflicted on a most loving Saviour, the grief it has caused, and the resistance
it has offered, to a most gentle and Holy Spirit, the deep injuries it has done
your own soul, and souls which, loving, you should have longed, and yearned,
and laboured, and watched, and wept, and prayed to save - Oh, let sin be your
deepest sorrow, your heaviest grief, the spring of many tears, the burden of
many sighs, the occasion of daily visits to the Cross of Calvary.
Weep not for broad lands lost;
Weep not for fair
hopes crossed;
Weep not when limbs wax old;
Weep not when friends grow
cold;
Weep not that death must part
Thine and the best-loved heart:
Yet weep - weep all thou can - .
Weep, weep, because thou art
A sin
defiled man."
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