Ezekiel 47:9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that lives, which moves, wherever the rivers shall come, shall live… The prophet beholds in vision a stream of water issuing from the temple buildings, and flowing eastwards until it falls into the Dead Sea, making even those bitter, fatal waters rich with life. In the first instance this mystic stream was a symbol of the miraculous transformation which the pious Jew expected the land of Canaan to undergo in order to fit it for the habitation of Jehovah's ransomed people. In Palestine nature was often stern and unpropitious, and large tracts of country were utterly inhospitable. The prophets cherished the expectation that one day, when Israel was wholly obedient, God would renew the face of nature, and all Palestine would blossom as the rose. But these mystic waters demand a still larger interpretation. The thought and aspiration of Israel looked forward to a time when the Messiah would send forth a tide of living influence through the nations, cleansing the corruptions, and making everything in human society and life to realise its ideal. Under the magic influence of the Gospel of Christ the most hopeless lands and classes revive, and the bitter, burning regions of sin and misery become as the garden of the Lord. "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." I. SPIRITUALITY IN RELATION TO PERSONAL CHARACTER. That momentous issues depend upon personal character, upon the cultivation and exercise of the moral virtues, most men acknowledge. A few thinkers give intellectual perfections a place above moral qualities, but the vast mass of thoughtful men perceive that character is essential and supreme. Now, morality, true morality, requires peculiar inspiration and force to sustain it; it must be rooted in the spirit, and draw its life from eternity. Of course, the secularist scouts this fundamental conviction Of ours. He smilingly protests, What a wonderful being your poor mortal is; nothing will satisfy him but divinities, eternities, infinities, heavens, hells, boundless hopes and boundless fears: surely we can keep ourselves in order and behave decently without all these vast motives and pressures. Well, to the carnal eye we may seem poor creatures, but we need these great and solemn beliefs, and we cannot get on without them. One of these days we go into the fields, and there on the sod grows a daisy — wee, simple, modest flower. But when you come to think, what a costly flower it is! The daisy owes its shape to the action of the vast terrible law of gravitation working through all the realms of space, to refresh it the ocean must yield its virtue, to vivify it the electric forces must sweep through the planet, to colour it millions of vibrations must shoot through the light ether, to build it up, unfold it, perfect it, requires an orb ninety-five millions of miles away, an orb five hundred times bigger than all the planets put together, a million and a half times bigger than the earth itself. "Vain little daisy, will not less than this do for you?" says the critic. No; less will not do, it will have the great sun, the sea, the imperial forces of gravitation, electricity, and light, or it will not grow, or it grows a misshapen, discoloured thing. So, in infidel eyes, we mortals may seem poor creatures, but nevertheless we require immense stimulations and restraints for our perfection and safety, and any attempt to narrow our sky means moral impoverishment and destruction. Many men discuss morality as if it were altogether a matter of knowledge, good judgment, and common sense; morality means utility; show men that their interest and happiness will be best secured by virtue, and they will follow the right pathway. But these philosophers ignore some of the most patent and most potent facts of human nature; the blinding processes of desire, the sophistry of selfishness, the madness of lust, the defiance of self-will, the irrationality of temper and impatience, the illusions of a wanton fancy, all these must be withstood and mastered before we can do the just, the noble, and the pure, and it is only in high, spiritual considerations and influences that we find the availing force; and, let me add, these spiritual considerations and influences are found at their highest in the Christian faith. The world had given great attention to morality before Christ came. Outside Palestine there was the boasted ethical system of the Stoic, and within Palestine the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. Great and earnest thinkers in Greece, Rome, and India elaborated moral codes, defined the various virtues, and set forth strong and eloquent reasons why men should, be virtuous rather than licentious. What did those various and admirable systems of conduct lack? They lacked life; they lacked the force to assert themselves. A recent traveller through the wild wastes of the country beyond Tripoli reports that in the deserts he found great patches of brilliantly-coloured flowers, apparently in vivid and mysterious bloom, in the dried-up torrent beds of a land from which the scorching sky had licked up every atom of moisture far and wide. Upon nearer approach the unique phenomenon was explained. It was found that the flowers had been actually mummified in the drought and heat, and, with their natural tints preserved, were as permanent as if cut in paper. It was thus with the morality of Greece and Rome, and that of the Scribes and Pharisees; and they surprise us with patches of brilliantly-coloured virtues in apparently vivid and mysterious bloom, but closer examination shows that the virtues were only like the mummified flowers on the Sahara — all was speculative, academic, formal, traditional, the natural tints being preserved, but the virtues were dry and dead, only cut in paper. What a mighty change followed the coming of our Lord! "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." Christ revealing the holy God, the spiritual universe, the spirituality of human nature, the pouring forth on humanity the Holy Spirit, put a soul into morality; He gave it a sound root in a vital soil, and henceforth the righteousness of God eclipsed the righteousness of man. We are often accused of not being sufficiently teachers of morality, the Evangelical movement is accused of being defective on the ethical side, but we have a great deal to say for ourselves. Our business is, first of all, to insist on those spiritual, Evangelical doctrines, without which virtue has no root, no force, no permanence. Right in the front of John's Gospel is our Lord's conversation with Nicodemus, and everywhere our Lord is more full of the spiritual doctrine which underlies all morality than He is in the description, or analysis, or application of the several virtues. If we preach conversion we find morality its only vitalising and sustaining root. And it is only as we persist to preach the great spiritual doctrines that we kindle the enthusiasm essential to virtuous life. "No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic," wrote Professor Seeley; and it is certain that no theory of utilitarian morality can kindle any such enthusiasm. We want the sun here, not the aurora borealis. We want the thought of the just and gracious God, the glow of the love of God, the sense of Christ's pure presence and fellowship, the purifying, uplifting hope of immortality. Let us then be anxious that spiritual doctrine shall have its full place in our personal life, let us cherish a vivid faith in the unseen and eternal, and a rare strength and beauty shall steal into our character and conduct. "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." Oh! if we could but persuade men to taste the powers of the higher world, how decorum, etiquette, propriety, civility, chivalry, policy, prudence, and all the rest of those pretty words would disappear in the transfigured shapes of consummated virtue! And let us not despair even of the most sunken and desolate victims and areas of immortality. We have critics who argue, Some physically are born cripples, some intellectually are born idiots, and some morally are born vicious and incurable, and there is nothing for them but exclusion or extinction. But this will not do. It is a wonderful feature of our day, of its glorious humanity, that if a man is a cripple, we do not give him up; mechanical ingenuity supplies him with legs and arms, and other marvellous substitutions and repairs; if he is blind he is taken in hand, and by most skilful discipline educated into seeing; if he is dumb he is put to school and taught to talk; and even if he is an idiot we do not abandon him, — we build asylums where love and science combine to repair the ruin of the brain, and woo reason back to her throne. I know these struggles of mercy are sometimes unavailing, and at other times the cures wrought are pathetically incomplete, but they are nevertheless the glory of our age, we refuse to abandon the most hopeless, we seek and save that which is lost. And if we act thus in the physical and mental worlds, shall we be less devoted and enthusiastic in the moral world? Surely this is the special sphere of our power and glory. There is a fine picture in Manchester representing the river of Lethe. On the one side of the river, miserable, distorted, ghastly, withered old men and women are dropping into the flood, but on the other bank they emerge in sunshine and summer, young, beautiful, strong, with music and song, walking in glory. We have got the very river that the poet dreamed about; all who are morally sick, diseased, loathsome, helpless, hopeless, stepping into the crystal tide, suffer a glorious change and walk in newness of life. "Everything lives whither the river cometh." II. SPIRITUALITY IN RELATION TO NATIONAL LIFE AND PROGRESS. The condition of all national growth is not material, military, or mental, but spiritual, and when you have gauged the spiritual elements of a nation you know what its potentialities and prospects of growth are. When the crystal river first gushed forth at Pentecost, into what a wild, waste desert it ran, into what a vast Dead Sea it fell! But the spiritual, evangelical doctrines vindicated themselves, and green bits began to relieve the awful desert, and the sea of death began to sweeten. Wherever men preached the pure Gospel, the virtue of it was manifest in raising and beautifying whatever it was allowed to touch. The river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God cleansed the earth of the foulness of the old paganism. You see its efficacy once again in the glorious reformation of the sixteenth century. There were two great streams of influence sent forth in that memorable period. One was intellectual, artistic, literary, and philosophical, and finds its representative in Erasmus; the other was purely spiritual, and finds its representative in Luther. Which of these movements, which of these men, brought about in the world that better state of things which all but blind men see? Now, where there are two possible causes for any phenomenon, it is easy to make a mistake and impute the effect to the wrong cause. For fifty years we have been told that England owes her mild climate and rich landscapes to the influence of the Gulf Stream, but now scientists assure us that the Gulf Stream is a pure myth, and that we owe everything not to marine currents, but to aerial currents. We have hitherto imputed our national power and progress to Luther, and to the doctrines of grace he preached. Are we wrong in this? Was it Erasmus and culture that saved us? No, we are not wrong. Writers of a certain school say that "Erasmus would have impregnated the Church with culture, while Luther concentrated attention on individual mystical doctrines." The fact is that the culture represented by Erasmus was identified with Roman Catholicism, it did impregnate the Church, and Italy, Spain, Austria, and to a large extent France, are the result of the intellectual, political, and ecclesiastical movement represented by Erasmus. Holland, Scandinavia, England, Germany, and America are the creations of the pure, Evangelical doctrines of Martin Luther. Mr. Lilly, a Roman Catholic, has just published a book in which he writes scornfully of Martin Luther because he was a peasant. His Master was; and it was because the peasant of the sixteenth century took us back to the peasant of the first century, because he took us back to the pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, that flowed from the throne of God, that the Protestant world today is the fairest portion of the earth, whilst all beyond is desert, or choked with thorns and briars. Again, two other movements, and two other names, challenge our attention. Two memorable streams of influence were sent forth in the eighteenth century — Voltaire represented one great movement and John Wesley the other. Now, do we owe the immense improvement of modern civilisation to the philosopher or to the evangelist? Are we to find the origin of what is truly human and progressive in modern life in spiritual doctrine, or in philosophic and sceptical criticism? What have the principles of Voltaire done for France? Voltaire, whatever might be his intentions, led his followers to what proved a river of blood, of tears, of death, to a volcanic stream, to a current of burning, blasting lava — he did not drain the Dead Sea, he set it on fire, and hosts perished in the awful cataclysm. John Wesley led the mobs of our great cities to God in Christ, he turned the river of life down our streets and highways, he caused it to flow like a crystal Niagara into the Dead Sea of our national corruption, and the wilderness became a fruitful field, and the fruitful field was counted for a forest. We must never forget that everything touching the strength and progress of our nation, and of mankind at large, depends upon our faithfulness to spiritual doctrine and fellowship. Let nothing political or social tempt us away from our strictly spiritual faith and programme. There are many wonderful methods suggested for improving society. The purification of the world, the perfection of civilisation, the bringing in of the golden age! all is delightfully plain, simple, and, certain — good fathers, pure mothers, happy homes, and the New Jerusalem. Let us make men and women and children godly as our fathers did, and everything good will slowly and silently grow into nobler forms, and everything evil will slowly and silently drop away. "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." In that Gospel we have a river of God full of water which we know can clothe barrenest spots with velvet, and turn Dead Seas into crystal theatres of rejoicing life. And the spiritual power does not lessen with time. At the distance of a thousand cubits the waters were to the ankles; at the distance of a thousand cubits more the waters were to the knees; a thousand more and they were to the loins; a thousand more and they were waters to swim in. Oh! for this deepening tide of spiritual grace and power. May it come and spiritualise our churches, may it vitalise our conventional morality, may it wash away our national sins, may it transfigure our slums with the white lilies of purity and the roses of joy, may it cause righteousness and peace to spring forth before all the nations! (W. L. Watkinson.) 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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