Ezekiel 43:13 And these are the measures of the altar after the cubits: The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a cubit… God is a great measurer. God has a reed, a line, a pole. God makes His cities four-square, and He will not see the law of the square violated. It is His method! God is a great geometer. All your little Euclids are cut out of the Deity! It is said that He stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and that He spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. It is reported of Him that He meteth out the heavens with a span. He weighs the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. And no man can steal one atom of dust, and no little pebble can flee away! It is all measured! The bounds of our habitation are fixed! There are bounds that cannot be measured. What is your house? Tell me about it; I like to hear about houses. Well? "It is large." How large? "Three rooms on the ground floor." There may be certain minds who have no peace with less than four rooms on the ground floor. One is enough for me — but I am not everybody. Well, then, upstairs? "Rooms so many." Lofty? "Very." What are your proportions? "Thirty feet by twenty-five feet." And the garden? "Two hundred feet by one hundred and thirty-two feet." Is that all? I do not want to hear these things! I do not want an auctioneer to speak to me in my higher moods! He has his place, but there are levels to which I go where he in his professional capacity is nobody, and where he cannot speak in my native language. You can lay a line upon the house. Now lay me a line upon the home! No man can do that! But is not the house the same as the home? Ah, there you ask a question which is infinitely ridiculous, so destitute of sentiment, of poetry, of high spiritual sensitiveness and ideality! The house is one thing. The home is another! You may have a house and not a home! You may be in the Church, but not in the Sanctuary! You may have a book, and not a revelation! Why do we not distinguish between things that differ, and get the right values and proportions of them? Coleridge says: "I for one am not content to call the soil under my feet my country." Certainly not! The country is not an affair of soil. He says: "The religion, the language, the home life, these constitute all that is best in your country." That is what I am labouring to say. We want soil — something to stand upon; but it is nothing until we have crowned it with those happy associations to watch I have just referred. The life that has no home in it, no interior sanctuary, no altar, no cross, no hope — we cannot call it life. Call it the second death! What I want to show you, therefore, needs a little repetition in order to deepen and settle the best impressions. You see there is a measurable quantity, and you see there is an immeasurable quantity; and the measurable is of no use to me except it signify and indicate the immeasurable. The measurable is only a kind of ladder by which I climb to see the immeasurable. This is the spirit in which we have to do our work. This is the spirit, the influence, the spiritual immeasurable inwardness of what we are doing! A certain kind of man — I wonder who made him? — once wrote in the newspapers something about our missionaries, and he thought he had made them quite ridiculous. Many men have thought that; but "The horse and his rider wilt the Lord throw into the sea." He said the income of the Society — perhaps it was. your Society or the London Missionary Society — I do not know which — the income of the Society was so many thousands; the number of conversions reported, so many hundreds; dividing the thousands by the hundreds we find that each conversion cost the Society, say, a thousand pounds. What a man that would have been for measuring altars! How very ingenious this application of a foot rule! He thought he made us all look ridiculous because he showed us, by arithmetic and statistical processes, that each conversion cost an almost fabulous amount. That is the measure of the altar by cubits! Now, the measure of the soul! the measure of the character! the measure of the influence! There is a foot rule. Lay it on light, on gravitation. on the fragrance, on the influence, on the effluence! The poor man has come to the end of his tether. If one conversion cost the total income of your Society, it was worth it! That is the right way of looking at it! "Knowest thou the importance of a soul immortal, Behold the midnight glory, world on world, Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze. Ten thousand add and twice ten thousand more. One soul outweighs them all, and calls The astonishing magnificence of unintelligent creation poor!"Unless we work in that spirit we shall give up all our efforts and confuse all our enterprises. I have given up seeking after the results of my ministry. I have asked God in many a high hour of converse to enable me to do my work as lovingly, earnestly, and capably as I can, and I have asked Him to look after the results, and He promised me He would do so. (J. Parker, D. D.). Parallel Verses KJV: And these are the measures of the altar after the cubits: The cubit is a cubit and an hand breadth; even the bottom shall be a cubit, and the breadth a cubit, and the border thereof by the edge thereof round about shall be a span: and this shall be the higher place of the altar. |
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