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… Let us look at this law of altar cubits a little while, for it admits of divers and useful illustrations. Take the alphabet, your English alphabet. There are some six-and-twenty letters in it. That is the measure of the alphabet after the cubits. Now pronounce the alphabet. You cannot! You have got all the letters in one huge mouthful, and cannot pronounce them. And most of the letters are themselves dumb, waiting for the vowels to touch them to music and into life. But suppose a man should say that was the English language — there you have the English literature, there you have the Paradise Lost and the Principia and Hamlet and all the poetry that has ever been written, and all the philosophy that has ever been reamed or published, you have it all in so far as the whole is expressed in the English language. In a sense, yes; in another sense, no. And yet without the alphabet where should we be? Who could move? Who could express themselves in the English tongue? Are you content with the alphabet? Yes; when it comes to the higher things you are. You smile at the notion of being contented with the alphabet when I refer to letters, to literature, to poetry, and to philosophy, but how many are there who have been in the Church forty years and are in the cradle still — in the alphabet still — and who, when they go to church, want to hear the alphabet pronounced. I wait! But unless you say A, B, and right down to Y, Z, there are some measurers, not sent from heaven, who say you have not preached the Gospel. The Gospel is a sky, a wind, a pathos, a spirit, as well as an alphabet. It has its writings, it can hand them to you, but ask for its inspiration, it breathes through all the centuries and makes a man live according to its kind. (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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