Ezekiel 37:9 Then said he to me, Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus said the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds… All else was done. Three things are prominent — the multitude, the dryness, and the isolation. We shall not stay to draw out the figure in detail in its national application. But who does not do it for himself when once the thought is suggested? What are the despairing things in the problem this day presented to the statesman, to the philanthropist, to the Christian, as any one of the three gives his mind to the study of his dear, his suffering, his unmanageable people? Is net indeed multitude the first of them? The population has outgrown its spot of earth; has outgrown its home supplies and resources; has outgrown its civilising influences; has outgrown its means of grace. But if multitude is one despairing thought, another is dryness. What is sometimes called "the milk of human kindness" — that indescribable something which ought to be capable of being appealed to as sure to respond, that appreciation of kindness in the motive, in the intention, in the effort to serve, that meeting half-way the fellow feeling of love — all this seems to have been (as the vision would say) dried up and dried out of the human being which meets us in the streets and lanes, the high roads and hedges, into which the messenger of an unselfish compassion tries to make his way: the bones are very many — that is not the worst of it — they are also by long habit, of neglect on the one side, of suspicion on the other, so utterly dry. There is yet a third despairing thing — it is the isolation. Each bone, of the once one compact frame, lies apart and separate. The parable is too easily read. The corporate life, as we speak, is extinct in vast masses of our people. Patriotism, loyalty, public spirit, are not ideas, not names, only, they are jests and gibes. "Every man for himself" is the hateful maxim — hateful enough if it were all, but there is a companion maxim — "and every man's hand against his brother!" We turn for a moment from the social to the religious aspect. Multitude — dryness — isolation — yes, they are all here. It is not only the difficulty (though that is enormous) of providing for what we call the spiritual destitution of the masses — masses springing up suddenly in valley and mountain, in harbour and hamlet, in town and country. We would look more broadly at the religion of our times. Certainly it has multitude. Legion is its superscription. This of itself is perplexing: perplexing any way: deeply depressing to the lover of order, to the educated churchman who must have the exact thing or nothing. It is idle to sit wishing for what men call union — generally meaning by it uniformity; generally meaning by it a uniformity to be brought about by the unconditional surrender of all but one form to the one. It is too late — or too soon — for this. The one hope now for religion is the practical confederation (without much talking about it, without programme or treaty of peace) of all schools and all parties, of all sects and all churches against what ought to be the common foe of all — ignorance and profaneness and infidelity and sin. And, in order to this, a spiritual unity — the holding of a unity of spirit in the bond of peace. "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live" — live each first, live then all. We hasten to our last use of the text, which is the individual. Is it fanciful to see a valley full of dry bones within the continent of the one being? Multitude — dryness — isolation — have those words, those despairing things we have called them, no meaning for the man? Has the scattering of Babel, the very confusion of tongues, no parable for the individual? Oh, how many provinces, how many islands and continents are there in one life, in one bosom! The disunion which works all around works first within. Oh, if there were peace within, how many discords would be precluded or healed around. Uncertain tempers, inordinate affections, unruly passions, hurtful lusts — desire of things forbidden, indisposition to things commanded — doubts about revealed truth, alienation from God in His beauty and His holiness — questionings what to think of Christ — suspenses about things vital to faith, vital to hope, vital to charity — these are the things spoken of when we make the vision personal. There is no need to traverse this part of the ground: we all plead guilty to the charge of selfishness. Rather let us listen to what the vision tells of as the steps of the revival. We can trace them more clearly in the individual case than in the collective. There is, first, what a prophet calls a "noise" — the margin of the revised version calls it a "thundering": a "shaking" — the revised version calls it an "earthquake." What is it in the man? It is something, it is anything, which interrupts the course of the everyday life. It may be a loss — it may be a disappointment — it may be a sickness — it may be a death. The immediate result of this shaking, where it has its proper work, will be the earnest effort to amend the life. God, whose hand is in all, yet expects this of the man. If he wishes to be saved, he must help the work by a reformation of the life. He must give up, in resolution and honest effort, his known sins. He must exert himself, in resolution and honest effort, to do his known duties. And then, sooner or later, not all at once but little by little, that prophecy to the wind, the breath, the spirit, shall make itself audible within, and God Himself shall "breathe upon the slain," so that the dead carcase shall become a living man, and the gathering of the bones and the reconstruction of the frame shall have its perfect work in the reanimation of the whole by the entrance of the life-giving Spirit. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. |
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