SERMON XXII. THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES. EZEKIEL XXxvii. 3. Can these bones live? BEFORE I speak to you about the meaning of these words, before I make any attempt to help you in discerning some of the power that is in them, and some of the manifold uses to which they may be applied, I must remind you of the passage in which they stand. It is one of the grandest in the writings of the prophets, the sublime vision in which Ezekiel is carried in the Spirit of the Lord, and set down in the midst of the valley full of dry bones. Many of you, I trust, know it well: but doubtless there are some amongst you who will not recollect all the details; and therefore I will read you the whole account in his own words. The hand of the Lord, he says, was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and lo, they were very dry. And He said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest. Again He said to me, Prophesy upon these bones; and say to them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you; and ye shall live and I will lay sinews upon you, and will : bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you; and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise; and behold, a shaking; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them; and the skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them. Then said He to me, Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied, as He commanded me; and the breath came into them; and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. In the verses next following, the prophet tells us the reason and purpose for which this vision was vouchsafed to him, and explains what it was specially meant to foreshew. But we will rather consider this grand vision as it stands by itself, without reference for the present to its immediate purpose. We shall easily see that there are several things which it may signify, divers truths of the highest moment which it sets livelily and powerfully before us. This is plain on the face of it. For what does it treat of? Life, and death, in their barest, most glaring contrast; life, and death, and the way in which the one is to pass into the other,-life, and death, and the huge gulf between them, and how that gulf is to be bridged over,—life, and death, with their unfathomable mysteries, and their world-pervading power. Life, and death! They compass us on every side: whithersoever we cast our eyes, we see the workings of one or the other: we see them perpetually battling and struggling and wrestling; and now one gains the mastery, now the other. But what they are in themselves, we know not. No eye of man has ever seen either. No foot of man has ever reacht the hidden cave in which either of them dwells, the dark fountains from which they spring. Yet we see their workings about us, and around us, and above us, and below us, far and near, on high and in the deep. Nor is this all. We feel them within us, in our own flesh and blood, in our own hearts and souls and minds. In all these we feel the workings of life; and in all these we ever and anon feel a foretaste of the workings of Death, as though he were stretching out his cold, clammy hand, and laying it upon us. By pain and by pleasure we know them, by hope and by fear, by joy and by sorrow. Though their goings are unsearchable, of one thing we have the fullest certainty, that the time will come, when in this battle, so far as it is waged in our bodies, Death will bear away the victory, when Life will quail beneath him, and go out like the flame of a candle if a puff of wind rushes upon it. We know that, however we may feel the stirrings and prancings, the strength and the swiftness of Life within us now, we shall all in no long time, ere very many years roll by, have wasted away, until nothing remains of us, nothing that eye can see, or any sense of man can discern, except just such a litter of dry bones as the prophet saw in his vision. For the vision which Ezekiel saw was not a thing confined to that one valley where he saw it. Were it not that the earth is ever manifesting the workings of life, and blotting out the workings of Death,-were it not that she ever swallows up and hides the spoils which Death has won in his victories over Life,-whithersoever we went, we should see a vision much like that which displayed itself to the eyes of the prophet, when he was first carried in the Spirit into the valley. We should see, whithersoever we went, that in all lands there are vallies, or hills, it may be, or open plains, which are in like manner full of dry bones. Nay, are not we, my brethren, at this very moment in the midst of such a place? Here, while we are sitting in church, with the word of Life sounding in our ears, and the Spirit of Life hovering over us, are we not at the same time surrounded by a field of dry bones? What is the churchyard? Suppose that some mighty arm were to lift up the earth now spread over the bodies of those who, generation after generation, for six hundred years, have been laid in their last bed beneath the shadow of this house of God,-suppose that everything which is now covering the remains of these bodies were to be swept away,-what should we see, but a vision of dry bones? And what would be the feelings, what would be the thoughts, which at such a sight would rise up within us? what would be the question which would start to our lips? If we had never heard of another life after this, if we had never had the hope of immortality set before us, we should sink in utter dismay at such a spectacle of the miserable dregs of what was once bright and joyous and hopeful. We should be almost crusht by the thought, that Death should have such power to extinguish Life, and that, while Life lasts so few years, Death should last for ever. But if we had heard of another life after this, of a life into which such as depart from this life are to enter, still, when we saw this poor wreck of so many generations, should we not be moved to cry out, Can these bones live? Surely it would be by some exclamation of this sort, that we too should give utterance to our feelings, were we to see what the prophet Ezekiel saw,- were we to see what this - churchyard hides from our sight, or what is hidden beneath any other churchyard in the land. For in every churchyard there would be the same vision, a vision of dry bones. Even if we had no personal interest in the fate of the bones, if we merely bethought ourselves of what they once were, when they were clothed with flesh, and the breath of life played about them, how they acted and suffered, how they loved and hoped and feared, and were driven to and fro by the same throng of thoughts and feelings, of cares and passions, by which our own bosoms are moved,-we could hardly refrain from giving vent to our compassion and awe by crying out, Can these bones live? But when we remembered that the fate of these bones, whatever it may be, will be our own fate also, and the fate of all whom we love and revere, or ever have loved and revered, a fate from which no one of us shall escape, that they and we shall ere long leave nothing behind us, which the eye of man can discern, except just such dry bones as are lying beneath the earth around us,-when we bethought ourselves that in less than a hundred years the vision which now meets our eyes will be entirely changed, that all of us, who are now sitting here in this church side by sidè, parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours, will have slipt out one after another, and have lain down for our last sleep in this churchyard,— most of us in this very churchyard, some perchance in another, and that of this whole fair sight, which is now filling our eyes, and warming our hearts, nothing will remain but a heap of dry bones,-then, unless we are already enabled to return a sure, undoubting answer to the question, we should surely cry with gasping and quivering hearts, Can these bones live? |