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Every breath of the autumnal wind brings down hundreds of faded leaves: they lie thick under the fast baring trees in thousands. Perfect in form, wonderful in construction, beautiful in hue, they are crushed down in myriads under every passing foot of man or beast. And what is the fall of one leaf among so many? Yet we are told by those who have studied the vast distances and proportions of this marvellous universe, — the fall of our world from the sphere of creation would be but as the fall of a leaf in the midst of a great forest. And our text does not even concern itself with the earth in its entirety, but speaks only of the members of the race that inhabits it, creatures of a moment, dying fast as the leaves of the autumn wood, and swept like them to decay.

1. "The Lord God." This holy name meant much to the devout Israelite in Ezekiel's time. The Jew had been taught to ascribe all around him — from the tiny herb on the wall to the cedars of Lebanon, from the raindrop against his easement to the blue waters of the Mediterranean that washed the shores of his beloved land, from the minute insect on the leaf to the lion roaring for his prey, from the lowest among the people to the majestic figure of a Moses or an Elijah — to the power and will of the Lord God. "For Thy pleasure they are and were created" was a fundamental article of his faith. And he associated with the holy name the conception of the Lawgiver. Yet what was his knowledge of the power and majesty of the Lord God compared with that we now possess? The power, the wisdom, and the greatness of the Lord God as creator have been magnified a thousandfold by the scientific research of later days. And certainly the discoveries of science have tended to magnify the idea of Law. We meet it everywhere, inflexible, unbending, supreme. If, then, it is dominant in the physical universe, and certain to justify itself upon the disobedient, must not we, who acknowledge the God of the Israelites, feel what an argument we thus have for the fact that the moral law is equally stern and unyielding in its demands on our obedience? Thus are we prepared to understand our need of the Gospel, and to comprehend in some degree the absolute necessity, of the perfect obedience and of the great Atonement which is set forth in the life and death of Jesus Christ. The first duty required of man — the initial duty, if he is to receive blessing and acceptance, is that he should bow down in humility and adoration before the Lord his God.

2. He, then, the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity, is the speaker. And looking down upon this little globe, a mere speck in His vast universe, He says of its inhabitants, "Ye My flock, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your God." And what has science to tell us of man? It has been busy with his origin, with his capabilities and his destiny, and every step in its progress has tended to do away with any special dignity as connected with our humanity. We are asked to believe that by a gradual process man has been developed from the lowest scale of organism to his present state of physical and intellectual power; we are told that all the researches of science go to prove that the difference between his mental capabilities and those of the higher animals is one of degree, not of kind; we are confidently assured that as they die so he dies. Science can find no trace of the spirit of man that goeth upward, and it can only pronounce upon what it sees, and the lofty conceptions of man's immortality it dismisses to the region of dreams.

3. And has our experience a more flattering tale to tell of human capabilities and destinies? A few years of bright hope and vigour, a narrow span of time which is utterly insufficient to fulfil one half of man's aspirations and purposes, a training which is suddenly arrested, an education broken short, a sharp discipline of sorrow and pain — and then the darkness and decay of death. Man's very work outlives him. The labours of his brain and hands have a vitality beyond his own. If we look at man morally, have we greater reason for speaking of his dignity? There is much that we may call noble, but how much that is unutterably mean and degrading! There is a gradual advance in civilisation and outward refinement, but the thin veneered surface covers a depth of moral defilement and evil.

4. Yet it is of man, of whom science and experience have but a mournful tale to tell, that the Lord God says, "Ye, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your God." And this is surely the point to which we are brought. Talk as we may of the dignity and destiny of humanity, we search in vain for any real proof of it till we come to the Revelation of God's Word. The Bible, which throws the clearest light on man's weakness and sin, exalts him to a height above all we could hope or desire. It marks out man from the rest of creation by the fact that he is capable by grace of hearing God's voice, of following after and of loving Him. The Lord takes one of the tenderest relations of pastoral life when He says, "Ye are My flock"; and in the fulness of time we have the clear explanation of these words in those of Christ Jesus our Lord, "I am the Good Shepherd: My sheep hear My voice and follow Me." He who believes that this world has been trodden by the human steps of the Son of God, that His prayers have ascended from it, that He shed His blood to redeem it, that He shared our humanity even unto death, and lives again at God's right hand, can receive with joy unspeakable the marvellous promises of the destiny of those who are Christ's. The love of God becomes a reality, life earnest, restoration to holiness possible.

(D. Reith, M. A.)

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KJV: And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord GOD.

WEB: You my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, says the Lord Yahweh.