I. A SPECIOUS PROVERB OF HUMAN WISDOM.

1. Its import. This was twofold - it asserted the postponement indefinitely of righteous judgment, and the failure of authorized prophecy. No doubt retribution was deferred; but this, which was a sign of Divine forbearance, was interpreted as a proof that judgment there was none, on earth or in heaven. No doubt the warnings were uttered long before the calamity overtook the people; and, in consequence, the threatened, the unbelievers, instead of using the opportunity to repent and reform, abused it to their own condemnation.

2. Its plausibility. It is described as a "flattering divination;" for it was intended to fall in with and to encourage the carelessness, the impenitence, and the unspirituality of men.

3. Its illusiveness. The opponents of the inspired prophet had but a "vain vision" to boast of. Time unmasks all false, deceitful appearances; in a short time it was seen that the proverbial wisdom of the impenitent was utterly baseless, was indeed nothing but folly.

II. A VERACIOUS DECLARATION OF DIVINE COUNSELS. I. The proverb dishonouring to God is exposed and refuted. "I will make this proverb to cease." Events should make its currency impossible. There is a destructive power in truth - it shatters illusions to pieces. Great swelling words of vanity collapse when they encounter the simple but authoritative utterances of Divine truth.

2. The truthfulness of the Lord's prophets is established. Every word is fulfilled. Most unlikely events come to pass in accordance with prophetic utterance. God speaks, and the pride of the haughty is humbled, and things that are not vanquish things that are. The faithful admonitions of the Lord's servants are proved to be just and wise.

3. A new proverb is created by the action of Divine providence. "There shall none of my words be deferred any more." The time came, and came speedily, when this could not be questioned. And what happened in the days of Ezekiel has happened wherever God has spoken. For us it is chiefly of practical concern to notice that he who came from God and went to God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, uttered forth the Divine mind and will with a unique completeness; and that though heaven and earth shall pass away, his words shall not pass away. - T.

I. THE PROVERB AND ITS MEANING. The saying may be held to express relief or disappointment. There were doubtless many Israelites who were glad to escape from the consciousness of the ceaseless vigilance of the Keeper of Israel. There are always some minds to whom the thought that "Thou God seest me" is an oppression and a nightmare. Others, however, were bitterly disappointed at what seemed to them the neglect and failure of Jehovah to redeem His promises to His people (Lamentations 3). But our proverb is more probably the outcome of a shallow materialism than of either relief or disappointment. The materialist belongs to all ages and peoples, and is always ready to say that visions have nothing in them. Indeed, there had been, as Ezekiel tells us in ver. 24, "vain visions" and "flattering divinations within the house of Israel." And because the true visions had been contingent, conditional on their effect upon the character of the people, they had very often seemed to fail. The desert can never rejoice and blossom as the rose, except for a people who have learnt the joy of unselfish sacrifice and long adorned themselves with the beauty of holiness. Moreover, many of the truest visions never will and never can be realised in such a world as this, because they have in them an element of idealism. Now, the man who lives in a world governed entirely by material standards of value, cannot stand this kind of thing at all. He calls upon his gods — upon actuality, upon reality and common sense — to deliver him out of it; just as many of the exiled Israelites were, at this very time, thinking of abjuring their nation and religion, and becoming the servants of the gods of Babylon. Babylon, at any rate, was no vision. Babylon commanded the big battalions, the scarlet-coated legions which had never known defeat, the mighty engines of war, the inexhaustible resources of the valley of the Euphrates; she had the mastery of all the rich trade routes between East and West; and possessed, in her own queenly magnificence, her towers, her palaces and temples, her wharves and markets, her civilisation and unrivalled power, the assurances of what seemed eternal prosperity. What folly to set up the visions of prophets over against the great heathen power which dominated the world! It is not wonderful if today also there are those who feel orphaned, desolate, forlorn, as though God had left us. "No voices and no visions now! no direct Divine message! no obvious Divine interposition!" — this is the thought that lies behind very much of our public action and private conduct — this is the thought most to be dreaded; for its influence tends in national politics to a hard, cynical selfishness in place of any lofty enthusiasm for liberty and philanthropy. It is equally fatal in private life; for if God is really silent to us, if He has left us to our own devices, the times are indeed dull and joyless, and there is nothing for it but for each of us to do the best he can for himself, and, according to the wicked old worldly proverb, let the devil take the hindmost.

II. BUT NO! PROPHECY IS A LIVING FORCE. The Babylon of today is materialism — the materialistic view of the world and of life, in the laboratory of the chemist, the counting house of the merchant, and the abodes of society. Where are the prophets and where the spiritual influences which we can set over against this mighty tyranny? Some people talk of this as a materialistic or prosaic century — feel it to be so — because they themselves lead prosaic and materialistic lives. Yet our age has been blessed with a bright succession of true prophets, or at least prophetic souls — great teachers of the essential spirituality of the universe — men who have spoken, not only words of wisdom, but of wisdom weighted with the power of deep and passionate conviction. It is a question whether the Church of God has ever been blessed with a grander succession of true preachers than in our own day; whilst the authority of the great names outside the Church — of the Carlyles, Ruskins, Tennysons — has been essentially a moral and spiritual authority. Materialism only represents one tendency, one phase, of the life of the age; whilst great fields of life and influence have been occupied by men who have been seekers after God in the temper and spirit of old Hebrew piety, which ever cried, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might even come into His presence!" Such men have wrought in many minds an increased seriousness of thought, a deepened power of feeling, a wider sympathy, a truer spiritual insight. Then, again, the great influences which come from science are now being recognised as not necessarily materialistic. The eternal power and Godhead are more clearly, not less clearly, seen today than ever, in the majestic order of creation as revealed by the telescope and the microscope. The God of the infinitely great and infinitely little, the God who presides over the slow development of human society, from whom come the influences which form character and which move the world forward age by age, from whom comes the unconquerable tendency in things which makes for righteousness, never was, to the seeing heart and eye, more manifestly present than in the thought and life of our time. The silent, ceaseless activities of a Deity whose being is everywhere, who crowds the waters of a stagnant pool with myriads upon myriads of tiny inhabitants, and fills the vast spaces of the heavens above us with stars, suns, systems innumerable, are being recognised as still more impressive than the ancient manifestations; whilst, as our science begins to hear in many directions the "Thus far shalt thou go and no further" which limits discovery, a sense of awe in presence of the encompassing mysteries of our lot gathers about us; and signs are not wanting — the very nature of some of the more recent discoveries warrants the impression — that science herself will come to be our teacher of reverence, and her text books, which conduct us to the limits of the known, will become more and more suggestive of awe and wonder in presence of the unknown. The great Master of the unseen, the eternal, now, as ever, is Christ. Who can doubt that He has ruled the thought of the nineteenth century as of the first, or that His majestic figure will dominate the twentieth? As to the Babylon of our day, He is but waiting to smite it down. For us, at ally rate, to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, that surely is enough to banish materialism out of our life forever, to save us utterly from the dull and joyless inability to see life's greater meanings.

(W. Burkitt Dalby.)