In the preceding chapter Ezekiel had delivered very animated and encouraging predictions of the prosperity of the houses of Israel and Judah. There is a fulness in these predictions which will scarce admit of our applying them exclusively to events which have already occurred. Ezekiel prophesied during the Babylonish captivity; and we may believe that the words which he was commissioned to utter, had a primary reference to the then desolate estate of his country and nation. When he speaks of dispersion and captivity, and when he pours forth announce ments of restoration and greatness, it may well be supposed that there is, at least, an allusion to the existing circumstances of the Jews, and their approaching deliverance by Cyrus. And it is possible that those, who first heard his predictions, received them only in their primary sense, and looked not on to a more thorough fulfilment, worthy of the splendor of the figures, and the amplitude of the language. But to ourselves, who can compare the event with the prophecy, it must be evident that a deliverance, greater than any past, was foreseen by Ezekiel. Even if it could be shown that the condition of the Jews, after their return from Babylon, answered to the prophet's lofty descriptions of national prosperity, we should be unable to interpret the predictions without having respect to yet future things. There can hardly be dispute that the ten tribes, which constituted the kingdom of Israel, have never been restored to their own land, but are still in some mysterious seclusion, exiles from Palestine. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were led

captive by Nebuchadnezzar, and sent back by Cyrus. Undoubtedly, certain individuals, who belonged to the kingdom of Israel, were mixed with these in captivity and in restoration. But as a body, the ten tribes have never yet been restored; so that, if predictions, which refer to the house of Judah, could be proved accomplished by their return home from Babylon, the like account could not be given of those which have to do with the kingdom of Israel.

And if you examine the predictions of Ezekiel in the foregoing chapter, and in that which contains our text, you will perceive that Israel is so associated with Judah, that no restoration can be ultimately intended, which does not include both. This might be proved of each part of the prophecies in question; but we will confine ourselves to the close of the second of the chapters. The prophet is directed to take two sticks; to write on one, "For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions;" on the other, "For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions." These sticks, thus inscribed, are to be held in the hand of Ezekiel; they are to become one stick in his hand; and then he is to utter a prediction, explanatory of this symbolical transaction, declaring that both Judah and Israel should be gathered back from their dispersions; that they should no longer be two nations, but be combined, like the sticks, into one people under one king. You can give no fair interpretation of such a prophecy as this, if you limit its scope to the events of past days: for you can find no account in

history of such a restoration of the twelve tribes, and of their re-establishment as one nation under David their prince.

Accordingly, we conclude that yet future occurrences passed before the view of the prophet. We believe that the seer had his eye on a restoration of the children of Abraham, of which none that has yet happened can have been more than a type. And we refer these chapters, though without denying that they may have had a primary and partial accomplishment in events connected with the close of the Babylonish captivity, to a glorious season, when God shall bring to their own land the people whom he hath cast off in displeasure, and who have been wanderers for centuries over the habitable earth. Then, when from the east and west, from the north and south, there shall have flowed into Judea the sons and daughters of those to whom the land was originally given, and the re-instated people shall hold the sovereignty of the globe beneath the sceptre of the long-rejected Christ, will there be a deliverance worthy of the triumphant strains of Isaiah, and a greatness commensurate with the majestic descriptions of Ezekiel.

Such is the first point which it is necessary to settle before entering on the examination of our text and its context. We must determine the period whose occurrences the prophet delineates ; else we may easily go far wrong in explaining his sketches. But this is not all; there is a second preliminary to which we would direct your attention. The Jews are to be regarded as a typical nation, so that their history is figurative, and may be studied as a parable. You cannot ask proof of this; for it is hardly possible to read the books of Moses, to follow the Israelites into their prison in Egypt, and then through the wilderness to their rest in Canaan, without feeling that what happened to this people describes, as by a figure, what happens to the church. There is manifestly a moral in all that occurs; or, to speak more accurately, our spiritual history is traced in the events which befell the Jews as a nation. With them we are naturally slaves under an imperious task-master; with them we are delivered from bondage, though by a

mightier than Moses; with them we march through a wilderness, dreary in itself, but rendered more appalling by our murmuring and unbelief, to a land that floweth with the milk and the honey. And it may be, that this typical character of the Jews extends beyond these simple and self-evident particulars. We should be disposed to say of the history of this people, taken in its spreadings over the future as well as the past, that it is the exact miniature of that of the human race. The Jews have lost their peculiar position in the favor of God, and are wanderers from the land which is specially their own. But they are yet to be restored to their forfeited place, and to enjoy in Canaan a higher than their first dignity. Thus the human race, having apostatized from God, is left for a while in the dreariness of exile, but is reserved for the richest splendors of immortality. Men, therefore, in general, may be to angels what the Jews are to the rest of humankind. Angels may read in the records of the fallen but yet beloved race, precisely what we read in those of the rejected, but not forgotten, people. And as we look forward to the restoration of the Jews, as big with interest to all the dwellers on this globe, so may angels expect the final "manifestation of the sons of God," when Christ and his church shall shine out in their glory, as fraught with the mightiest results to every rank of intelligent being.

But without examining, more at length, the respects in which the Jews may be regarded as a typical people, we may consider the general fact so readily acknowledged that we may safely assume it in any process of reasoning. And as a consequence on this allowed fact, we may suppose that, when we meet with a figurative delineation of things that were to happen to the Jews, it is to be also treated as a figurative delineation of things that relate to the whole human race. At least, and this is probably as far as we shall find it necessary to go in our present discourse, there can be no ground for calling an interpretation fanciful, if, after treating a parable as descriptive, in the first instance, of the state or expectation of the Jews, we assign it a spiritual meaning, and apply it, in the second

place, to our own circumstances, or those of the church.

Now we have thus cleared the way for our entering on the examination of that very singular portion of holy writ with which our text is associated. We have determined that, so far as it is prophetic of occurrences in the history of the Jews, its accomplishment is to be mainly sought in the future rather than the past; we have also ascertained that, though in its primary application, it belongs only to a solitary people, it may be regarded as referring, in its spiritual meaning, to the whole human race. Let these preliminaries be borne in mind, and they will aid us in avoiding mistake, and discovering truth.

The portion of Scripture which we are about to investigate, is, as we have just hinted, one of the most singular which its pages present. It relates what may be considered as a vision granted to the prophet Ezekiel, though the narrative might pass for that of an actual occurrence. Ezekiel, after uttering predictions which breathe the future glories of Israel and Judah, is "carried out in the Spirit of the Lord," and set down in a valley full of bones. These bones, so numerous that they lay on all sides of the prophet, appeared to have belonged to men long dead, for "they were very dry," as though they had been for years thus scattered and exposed. As Ezekiel gazed on this ghastly spectacle, there came to him from God the question of our text, "Son of man, can these bones live?" It was a hard question, at a time when "life and immortality" had not been "brought to light by the Gospel" and therefore the prophet, without casting doubt on the power of the Almighty, returns the modest and half-inquiring answer, "O Lord God, thou knowest." The heavenly voice then commands him to prophesy upon these bones, to address them as though they were living and intelligent, and to predict their being reconstructed into symmetry, and re-animated with breath. The prophet betrays no reluctance: he does not hesitate because it seemed useless to address these fragments of skeletons; but at once obeys the command, and delivers the message. And whilst he was in the very act of uttering the prophecy, lo, a noise was heard as of a rustling

among the bones; they began to move, as though instinct with life, each seeking his fellow, so that bone came to bone with the very nicest precision. Then "the sinews and the flesh came upon them;" the sinews bound them, and the skin covered them: and thus the valley was filled with human bodies. These bodies, however, were as yet without breath; but the voice of the Lord was again heard, directing the prophet to prophesy to the wind, that it might come and breathe upon the slain. This having been done, the breath came into the carcasses; they started from the ground as animated things, "and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army."

Such was the vision granted to Ezekiel; and God immediately informed him of its purport. He told him that these bones were the whole house of Israel; and that, however desolate the condition of that people might appear, he would yet open their graves, and cause them to come out of their graves. As the bones had been rebuilded into human bodies, so should the disjointed and shattered people of Israel be reconstructed into a kingdom; and God would put in them his spirit, and make them live, and place them once more in their own land. It admits, therefore, of no dispute that the parable-for such may the vision justly be styled-was primarily designed to predict a restoration to Palestine of its rightful but exiled possessors. But with this design we are at liberty to connect another, that of representing, under figures derived from things happening to the Jews, truths in which all men have interest. And thus our business, whilst endeavoring to explain the parable more at length, will be to apply it to the children of Abraham, in the first place in their national, and in the second in their typical capacity, and to show in both cases the fidelity of the representation.

Now you are to observe the position in which the vision stands: it is not a detached thing, but occurs in the midst of a continuous prophecy, having manifest respect to what precedes, and what follows. The two chapters, the 36th and 37th of the book of Ezekiel, contain one noble prediction of glories to be reached by Judah and Israel: