Ezekiel 47:9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that lives, which moves, wherever the rivers shall come, shall live… The vision was designed to represent the nature, origin, progress, and results of the Gospel; and thus regarded, it suggests many important matters for consideration. 1. It is a vision of waters, and that symbolises the fertilising as well as purifying influence which the religion of Christ has everywhere exerted. 2. It is a vision of waters issuing from the temple of God; and that reminds us that the Gospel is no mere human expedient, but is indeed the revelation of God's mercy to mankind. 3. It is a vision of waters flowing out from under the altar of the house of God; and we have thereby recalled to our remembrance the truth that men are redeemed and regenerated only through their acceptance of that deliverance which Christ wrought out for them by the sacrifice of Himself on their behalf. Ancient fable tells of a great hero, that when he died the spot on which he fell was marked by the out-gushing from it of a perennial fountain; but that old story was only a kind of poetic parable of the true. 4. It is a vision of waters gradually rising. They grew deeper the longer they flowed. That illustrates the progress of the Gospel over the world. It was not to take sudden and immediate possession of the earth, but rather to flow over it as the tide flows over the shore. I. Take it in the first place in its bearing on MEN'S SOCIAL CONDITION. And here I go at once to the household. The family is the centre of human society. "Home is the head of the river," and an influence, whether blessed or pernicious, exerted there, will affect all its after course. Now, it is capable of the clearest proof that Christianity is the only thing that has given purity and loveliness to the household. The Lord Jesus has revolutionised, if not created family life. He gave sanctity to the marriage he by re-enacting the primal law, that one man should be the husband of one wife. He restored woman to her true position as the help meet and companion of her husband. He took the little children in His arms and blessed them — for that touching scene in the Gospel narrative is only a type of the work in which He is still engaged wheresoever His message of love is proclaimed. By His tender care for His venerable mother in the very climax and crisis of His own agony, He gave a sacredness to old age which has gathered to it ever since the reverence, the affection, and the benevolence of men. On the banks of the river of Christianity domestic happiness and practical benevolence do flourish in vigorous and attractive life; and if we wish to make other nations sharers with us in these priceless blessings, we must send them that Gospel out of which among us they have sprung. II. Look at the influence of the Gospel upon CIVIL LIBERTY. The Bible indeed contains no treatise on civil government, but its principles lay the axe to the root of every form of despotism. Jesus has taught us not only to assert freedom of conscience for ourselves, but to respect and defend its exercise by others. He has commanded us to "honour all men," because they wear that nature which He consecrated by His incarnation; and wherever the mystery of His Cross is even dimly understood, men are disposed, while receiving its salvation, to sacrifice themselves for others' good. Hence the whole spirit of Christianity stimulates men to look not only on their own things, but also on the things of others; and that is the disposition out of which true liberty is born. III. Look at THE DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, and you will see how, when the river of the Gospel has flowed into a nation, it has quickened that also into richer growth. Take here the stories which have been garnered up in our own mother tongue, and when you come to look into the subject you will be surprised to discover how much the Word of God has had to do with the character and quality of English literature. Up till the time when John Wycliffe sent "his poor priests" up and down England with his version of portions of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, there could not be said to be any English literature, and there was hardly any English language. Just at the very time Wycliffe was engaged in his great work, now precisely five hundred years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer was writing those "Canterbury Tales" which have charmed so many generations of readers, and which bear on them certain indications that their author had come under the widening and ennobling influence of the truths which the parson of Lutterworth proclaimed. Nor was this in itself unlikely, for both of these men were proteges of him whom we know in another connection as "Old John of Gaunt of time-honoured Lancaster." In any case. these two between them laid the foundation of our language and literature; but as from the nature of the case the Bible went into more homes and hearts than Chaucer reached, we must attribute to Wycliffe the principal share in that literary revival which the succeeding centuries witnessed in the mother country. Nay, it is somewhat remarkable that just as Chaucer's poems were contemporaneous with Wycliffe's Bible, so the age of the Reformation under Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, the day that is of Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, and the Genevan Bibles, has always been regarded as the palmiest time of English literature; while again, the age which saw Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Southey, and that whole band which made the early part of this century so renowned, was the successor and inheritor of that in which Wesley, Whitefield, and their fellow evangelists had carried religious revival over England and America. IV. Look at the influence of Christianity upon science. Its watchword is: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good"; and so, wherever the New Testament goes, it provokes inquiry, strengthens intellect, encourages independence, while, at the same time, it imparts to the universe a sacred interest, as the work of Him who is "our Father." Christianity has reared the platform on which all scientific associations stand today, and the very liberty which men of science have to utter unpopular opinions — shall I say even heretical opinions? — has been won for them by Christian men. Had all the martyrs of Christianity, and especially of Protestantism, been as weak-spirited as Galileo, we might all have still been groaning under the intolerance of the Inquisition. But in standing up for liberty of conscience and of opinion for themselves, the witnesses for religious truth have won also for science the right to hold and teach its own deductions and beliefs. Now, that is indispensable to its advancement, if not even to its existence; and so, when you examine it thoroughly, you will be constrained to admit that this mystic river has fertilised the roots of science also, and though for the moment there may seem to be a misunderstanding between some Christians and some men of science, for which, as it seems to me, both parties are to be blamed, yet the two departments never can really inspire each other, and the advancement of the one will invariably be accompanied by the progress of the other. Nor could we have a finer illustration of that fact than in the services which our foreign missionaries have rendered to the science of our times. Their labours in ethnology, geography, philology, botany, zoology, and even astronomy, have called forth the thanks of men of the highest eminence in all these departments. (W. H. Taylor.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh. |
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