| Back to Home Page | Back to
Book Index |
Ezekiel Chapter
Eight
Ezekiel 8
Chapter Contents
The idolatries committed by the Jewish rulers. (1-6) The
superstitions to which the Jews were then devoted, the Egyptian. (7-12) The
Phoenician. (13,14) The Persian. (15,16) The heinousness of their sin. (17,18)
Commentary on Ezekiel 8:1-6
(Read Ezekiel 8:1-6)
The glorious personage Ezekiel beheld in vision, seemed
to take hold upon him, and he was conveyed in spirit to Jerusalem. There, in
the inner court of the temple, was prepared a place for some base idol. The
whole was presented in vision to the prophet. If it should please God to give
any man a clear view of his glory and majesty, and of all the abominations
committing in any one city, he would then admit the justice of the severest
punishments God should inflict thereon.
Commentary on Ezekiel 8:7-12
(Read Ezekiel 8:7-12)
A secret place was, as it were, opened, where the prophet
saw creatures painted on the walls, and a number of the elders of Israel
worshipped before them. No superiority in worldly matters will preserve men
from lust, or idolatries, when they are left to their own deceitful hearts; and
those who are soon wearied in the service of God, often grudge no toil nor
expense when following their superstitions. When hypocrites screen themselves
behind the wall of an outward profession, there is some hole or other left in
the wall, something that betrays them to those who look diligently. There is a
great deal of secret wickedness in the world. They think themselves out of
God's sight. But those are ripe indeed for ruin, who lay the blame of their
sins upon the Lord.
Commentary on Ezekiel 8:13-18
(Read Ezekiel 8:13-18)
The yearly lamenting for Tammuz was attended with
infamous practices; and the worshippers of the sun here described, are supposed
to have been priests. The Lord appeals to the prophet concerning the
heinousness of the crime; "and lo, they put the branch to their
nose," denoting some custom used by idolaters in honour of the idols they
served. The more we examine human nature and our own hearts, the more
abominations we shall discover; and the longer the believer searches himself,
the more he will humble himself before God, and the more will he value the
fountain open for sin, and seek to wash therein.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 8
Verse 1
[1] And
it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the
month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the
hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.
Sixth year — Of
Jeconiah's captivity.
Sixth month —
Elul or our August.
The elders —
The chief of those that were now in captivity. They were come either to spend
the sabbath in religious exercises, or to enquire what would become of their
brethren in Jerusalem.
The hand —
The spirit of prophecy.
Verse 2
[2] Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the
appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as
the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber.
A likeness — Of
a man; the man whom he had seen upon the throne.
Fire —
This fire might denote the wrath of God against Jerusalem.
Verse 3
[3] And
he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the
spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the
visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward
the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to
jealousy.
And —
This, and all the passages to the end of the 16th verse, was done in vision
only.
Inner gate — To
the door of the gate of the inner court.
The north —
The temple courts had four gates towards the four quarters, and this was the
north gate, which opened into the great court where Ahaz had set up his
Damascen altar, and where the idols were set up.
The image —
Baal, which Manasseh had set up, Josiah had destroyed, but succeeding kings had
again set it up.
Jealousy —
Because it was so notorious an affront to God, who had married Israel to
himself.
Verse 5
[5] Then
said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north.
So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the
gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry.
Northward —
Ahaz had removed it from the middle of the court and set it near this north
gate, to which it gave name.
Entry — In
the very passage to the temple, to affront the worship of God.
Verse 6
[6] He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the
great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go
far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater
abominations.
They —
The generality of the Jews.
Great abominations —
The notorious idolatries.
Here — In
this court, in view of my temple.
Far off —
Not that they designed this, but no other could be expected.
Verse 7
[7] And
he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the
wall.
The door —
The second door, for there were two in the north side.
Verse 8
[8] Then
said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the
wall, behold a door.
A door — A
private door, by which the priests entered into the chamber of their imagery,
to perform idolatrous worship to their images.
Verse 9
[9] And
he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here.
Are doing —
Under the approach of judgments, in this very place, under the walls of my
temple.
Verse 10
[10] So I
went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable
beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall
round about.
Every form — Of
such creatures as the Egyptians, or any others with whom the Jews had
acquaintance, worshipped.
Verse 11
[11] And
there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and
in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer
in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.
Seventy —
Heads of the tribes or families, who should have been examples of true
religion, not ringleaders in idolatry.
Shaphan —
Mentioned 2 Kings 22:9. Shaphan was forward in reforming
under Josiah and his son is as forward in corrupting the worship of God.
Verse 12
[12] Then
said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of
Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say,
The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.
Seeth not —
They deny God's care of them and their affairs, and therefore they must chuse
some other god.
Verse 13
[13] He
said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations
that they do.
Greater —
Either because added to all the rest: or, because some circumstances in these
make them more abominable.
Verse 14
[14] Then
he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD's house which was toward the
north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.
The door — Of
the outer court, or court of the women, so called, because they were allowed to
come into it.
Weeping —
Performing all the lewd and beastly rites of that idol, called by the Greeks,
Adonis.
Verse 15
[15] Then
said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and
thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
Greater —
These later wickednesses may be accounted greater, because acted in a more
sacred place.
Verse 16
[16] And
he brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house, and, behold, at the
door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about
five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their
faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.
Inner court —
The innermost, that which was next the temple, called here the Lord's house.
At the door —
Before he saw abominations in the gates of the courts, now he is come to the
very house itself.
The porch —
That stately porch, beautified with the curious and mighty brass pillars,
Jachin and Boaz.
Altar —
The brazen altar for burnt-offerings, which was placed in the court before the
front of the temple, and is here represented in its proper place.
Their backs — In
contempt of God, and his worship.
The sun — In
imitation of the Persians, Egyptians, and other eastern idolaters; these Jews
turn their back on God who created the sun, and worship the creature in
contempt of the Creator.
Verse 17
[17] Then
he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the
house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for
they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger:
and, lo, they put the branch to their nose.
Violence —
All injustice is here meant towards all sorts of men, whom they first despise
and next destroy.
Returned —
From injustice against man they return to impiety against God.
The branch — As
the worshippers of Bacchus waved their Thyrsus, the stalk wreathed with ivy,
and bowed their bodies and often kissed the branches, so did these idolatrous
Jews.
Verse 18
[18]
Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I
have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not
hear them.
Will not hear —
The time was, when God was ready to have heard, even before they cried: but now
they cry aloud, and yet cry in vain. It is the upright heart which God regards,
and not the loud voice.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
08 Chapter 8
Verses 1-18
Verses 1-4
And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel.
God’s presence a reproof to His idolatrous people
Two chief thoughts appear expressed by the symbolism; first, by
making the “glory” of Jehovah appear in Jerusalem, the prophet points the
contrast between the glorious God whom the people had abandoned and the debased
forms of worship to which they had addicted themselves, and also implies that
this worship was done in the face of Jehovah, to provoke the eyes of His glory
(Isaiah 3:8): and secondly, when Jehovah
Himself shows the idolatrous practices of the people, we see, what is
characteristic of the prophet, the effort to throw himself into the
consciousness, so to speck, of Jehovah, and look out at things from His mind,
He being who He is. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Verse 11
And in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah.
Evil secrets revealed
1. Persons may sometimes be found where we would little expect them
to be. It may happen that the irreligious shall appear among the godly, seem to
be actuated by the same spirit, and to the surprise of all who knew them,
contribute to the advancement of a good cause: “Is Saul also among the
prophets?” But how frequently is the case reversed, and those who make a good
profession, of whom we thought well, and even hoped the things that accompany
salvation, to our great surprise, are found in situations very inconsistent
with what they professed, perhaps totally foreign to all that we had thought
and hoped about them. The saint, on revisiting a place from which, like the
prophet, he may have been absent for a time, may behold with grief some with
whom he had formerly walked in sweet fellowship, gone off from their
profession, and no longer the steady ornamental friends of the cause they had
once solemnly espoused. But supposing the profession retained, how often may
those who are engaged in it be found in situations, in places and occupations,
in which their friends and religious acquaintances would little have expected
to find them!
2. Persons may even go great lengths, and take a very active part in
those things which were little to be expected from their former character or
present reputation in the church. Jaazaniah was one of the ancients or elders
of Israel. His former character at least appears to have been good, somewhat
worthy of his name, which signifies one attentive to God, or whom God will
hear,--a name probably given him by his religious parents as a son of their
vows. By his station he was to preside over the administration of the law, and
even to take care of the worship of God, as a member of the great council to
which the Jews ever looked up with veneration. But, alas! how vain is it to
trust in man! “In the midst, of them stood Jaazaniah.” He seems to have
occupied some prominent place that struck at once the eye of the prophet; he
was at any rate actively engaged, and had gone every length with his companions
in sin; he stood in the midst of them, while “every man had his censer in his
hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up.” Who knows, when once he has
deviated from the right path, how far he may go? how far he may be left to go?
nay, supposing his heart not imbued with grace, how totally, if not finally, he
may be given up to apostasy, and all manner of vice?
3. Godly parentage and the advantages of a religious education Neatly
aggravate the criminality of such conduct. The parentage of this man is
particularly noticed, and, considering the person from whom he was descended,
we may well believe he had the advantage of a religious education. His very
parentage and religious education greatly aggravated his crime. How seldom do
ungodly or apostate children reflect upon this! They despise the religion of
their fathers; they forsake, without compunction, the law of their mother. The
children of such parents will have to answer, not only for the obedience they
would have owed to God, even in a heathen country, and of whomsoever descended,
but for all these peculiar advantages; for the contempt too, or violation, of
the most sacred obligations, strengthened by the influence which natural
affection ought to have had; not merely for disrespect to parental authority,
for dishonouring their parents, but for dishonouring them in the most
beneficial discharge of their duty, and in the best character they can sustain.
4. The idea of secrecy is a great inducement and strong temptation to
engage in unworthy, inconsistent, and wicked practices. The mysteries of Pagan
superstition, and the scheme of an interior doctrine in the heathen philosophy,
are both well known. The former, particularly, may he traced to very ancient
times, when the priests began to secrete what they accounted the essentials of
religion, the foundations of even civil order, and of all morality, and to
impart them only to a few;--a grand device of the devil, for not only promoting
idolatry, but every species of wickedness, without fear of detection. How often
do persons persuade themselves that all is well, provided only they can be
concealed while indulging themselves! Such conduct, however, must indicate a
want of cordial regard to truth and righteousness for their own sake, a secret
contempt for the laws of the church, and even of moral decorum; it must shew
that the regularity otherwise displayed is only compelled by the fear of men.
5. Notwithstanding their apprehended secrecy, such persons are still
under the eye of God. (Hebrews 4:13, in connection with Psalms 139:1-12.)
6. God can easily detect and expose them to others, to their shame
and confusion. Various are the ways of detection that God hath employed.
Sometimes the habit of irregularity in profession, or of intemperance and
profligacy in manners, fostered for a time by secrecy, at length gains the
ascendency and breaks out, so that the person stands revealed in his true
colours. Sometimes, though only associates be present, their very transactions,
their riot and excess, shall make the discovery, and become the subject of
talk. Sometimes these associates, not to be trusted, shall divulge the matter,
particularly if they have to tell that a Jaazaniah, a son of Shaphan, was among
them; and the deluded man finds himself betrayed and made a sport of by those
whom he attempted to gratify. (Christian Magazine.)
Verse 12
Every man in the chambers of his imagery.
Chambers of imagery
Though we are not told that this was a human vision, or in any
sense what we understand as an incarnation, yet there are terms in the
description of it which might lead to that conclusion. Always it is made evident
that a struggle is proceeding in Biblical history towards the miracle of
incarnation. The angel would be as a man; cherubim and seraphim come before us
in human outlines; yea, God Himself is not afraid to reveal His glory to us
under human forms and symbols. Nothing of mere fancy is found in the
interpretation that all these initial intimations, struggles, visions, point to
One whose name was to be Emmanuel--God with us. In the fulness of time God sent
forth His Son. In Christ Jesus we see the meaning of all these premonitions,
hints, dim yet exciting suggestions. When Ezekiel is taken, in the third verse,
by a lock of his hair and lifted up between the earth and the heaven, we are,
of course, to understand that this was done, not literally, but in vision. Here
is what we have often seen as the power of being absent, yet present; in an
immediate locality, yet far away beyond the horizon; in Jerusalem, and yet at
the ends of the earth; in the midst of the sea, and yet beyond the stars. Here
is a counterpart of the action which has just been described. Whilst spirits
are continually struggling to assume human shape, men are continually aspiring
towards some new condition of being and service. There is a continual process
of descent and ascent in the whole economy of God. Such double action is full
of moral suggestion, and should certainly ennoble us with a feeling that as yet
we know little or nothing of the possibilities of our own nature, but that a
great revelation of God’s purpose in our existence is yet to be made. In the
same verse there is a singular expression--“where was the seat of the image of
jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.” It has been supposed that at this time
heathen idols had actually found a place in the holy temple, and this is supposed
to present the most vivid and appalling proof of the corruption into which the
priests and the people had fallen. Is the meaning of the fourth verso that for
the last time there was an evident struggle as between the image of jealousy
and the glory of the God of Israel? It has been suggested that we are not to
understand by this “glory” the glory of the Lord which once filled the temple,
but the particular glory which was seen in the vision shown to Ezekiel in the
plain, a vision within a vision, a dim light in a far-off horizon, not the old
glory which burned with infinite brightness, but another glory as of one
preparing to vanish in judgment from the temple and the city. It is interesting
to notice that we have in all these descriptions, not the view which Ezekiel
took of the condition of Israel,--we have the condition of Israel as it
revealed itself to the Divine eyes. It is essential to all true and lasting
ministry that it should proceed upon God’s own estimate of human nature. We are
not left to form our own fancies regarding human origin, or human apostasy, or
human capability: in this as in all other things we nave to trust to a
revelation which has been made to us, a revelation which would be the less
valuable if it were not confirmed at every point by our own painful experience.
We should not forget the sacred and gracious fact that, notwithstanding the
rebelliousness of the house of Israel, one of their own number was sent to
pronounce Divine judgment and to reveal Divine purpose. In what contrast did
Ezekiel stand to his own countrymen! God has never left Himself without an
Elijah, or an Ezekiel, or some other prophet, or suppliant, that has proved the
continuity of Divine providence and the continuity of Divine grace. Ezekiel was
to be astounded by revelations which he never could have discovered by himself.
The mighty being under whose conduct he was placed brought him to the door of
the court, and when he looked he beheld a hole in the wall. This hole or window
was too small for entrance, hence Ezekiel was directed to enlarge it so that he
might enter in--“Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the
wall, behold a door.” All this is indicative of extreme secrecy, as if the men
would have hidden themselves from the very God of heaven, as if they would have
had a hole all their own, unpenetrated by Divine inspection. There was an open
and public idolatry in Jerusalem at this very time, but such is the downward
tendency of all evil that it was not sufficient to have a public and an almost
established idolatry, but something further should be done in darkness and
concealment. Stolen waters are sweet. When wickedness can be enjoyed in public
it ceases to be an enjoyment. It would appear as if the darkness were necessary
to bring out the full savour of a bad man’s delight. By “chambers of imagery”
understand chambers painted throughout with images such as Ezekiel saw. We are
not to understand that this was a solitary instance; we are to accept it rather
as indicative of the general condition and worship of the idolatrous people.
Conscience had been driven away from the rule of human life. The people who
were once the very elect of God said in their wickedness, “The Lord seeth us
not”: we have found a refuge from His eye, and here we may do what we please in
the gratification of our worst desires. Is this merely a historical instance?
Is there no desire now to plunge into an impenetrable concealment? Is it not
true now that in many enjoyments the whole delight is to be found in the
secrecy of their participation? A man can hide himself from his fellow man in
this matter, and can in the very act of prayer place himself within chambers of
imagery, and delight himself with visions which no eye but his own can see. The
painful part of all this revelation consists in the fact that the idolatry was
perpetrated within the sacred enclosure of the temple. This was not something
done at a distance, in some far-away grove, in some spot which but few had ever
penetrated; it was actually done in the temple, in the sacred building, on the
consecrated floor, and the altar itself was dragged into the unholy and
disastrous service. How are the high places made low! How are the mighty
fallen! A decay of veneration is a decay of the whole character. Once let us feel
that all places are equally common, and the level of our whole life will go
down with that conclusion. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Chambers of imagery
Though this was merely a vision, through which it was intended to
present the corrupted state of Judah, we may suppose that the imagery was drawn
from customs that then prevailed. These secret midnight incantations were not
unusual in heathen worship. An ancient historian relates, that round the room
in African Thebes where the body of one of their kings was supposed to be
buried, a multitude of chambers were built, which had beautiful paintings of
all the beasts held sacred in Egypt. But we need not regard this as merely a
visionary representation of the state of Judah. The mind of man is a chamber of
imagery in whose darkness go on works hidden from the world, and sometimes, we
may fancy, hidden even from the eye of God. A hall of imagery! No phrase could
better describe the mind of man,--and Memory the painter. In colours bright or
dark, in the very lineaments of joy or shame or grief, she paints every deed,
every struggle of the soul; our very wishes and purposes, though unacted, all
are there. The world may be ignorant of what is there, but we cannot forget.
Come, then, and by that door to which all have the key let us enter these halls
of imagery within the human soul. Light up the torches and raise them aloft,
that we may see what is upon the wall. These halls are as various as are the
lives of men. We have all read of the Catacombs that lie under one of the great
European capitals. They stretch under whole quarters of the city. In terrible
order, arranged in innumerable galleries, are deposited the remains of more
than ten generations,--a world of silence below, while heave and swell in
endless confusion the surges of life above. You enter these gloomy abodes with
torches, and on every side are seen the mementos of death and decay. More
gloomy than this, sometimes, is the human mind. Portrayed on its walls are
scenes of decay and death. Here the innocence of childhood--a fair, frail
creature of the light--is slowly dying. There, on an altar whence once arose
holy aspirations to heaven, the fire is gone out. Virtues once fresh and
blooming sink and expire under the assaults of the world. Here is seen one,
trembling and yet resolved, bartering away to the Evil One his honesty for
gain; and there another surrendering his conscience for pleasure. In another
space, the demolished temple, the trampled cross, are but symbols of a dead
faith, And the angels weep over another scene, not because sickness and death
of the body are there, but because in the soul the affections have withered
into selfishness and died. And the man, as he passes through this awful
gallery, recognises his own life. There are chambers of imagery in which we
might gladly linger. It is said that in the Old World is a gallery of paintings
in which are collected none but pictures of the Holy Family. The Virgin Mother
and the infant Jesus, images of innocence and faith and heaven, smile on every
side from the canvas. Some pure souls there may be who when they enter their
chambers of imagery may behold such scenes alone as these;--a virtuous youth, a
devout age, a Divine faith triumphing over the powers of the world. But at the
best, the gallery of the mind can often present only a mingled series of
pictures. We call ourselves Christians, and all unite in one form of outward
homage to the same Almighty Power the Lord of heaven and earth. But each man
has his chamber of imagery, and, could we enter in, how often should we find
there the unhallowed rites of another worship. Enter silently this dark and
concealed chamber. These are not the symbols of Jehovah’s presence that we see.
Here is an altar, and the god that is reared over it is Mammon. And here Power
looks down from his throne; and there Pleasure stretches out her arms. The
walls are covered with emblems of the world and the passions. And the man in
the secret chamber of his imagery swings his censer, and bows down in adoration
before the gods of his idolatry. Here, in this secret chamber, are those wishes
uttered which are his real prayers, and here that bowing down of the soul which
is the only true worship. We are apt to feel as if what was done in these halls
of imagery was unmarked. So thought the faithless ancients of the house of
Judah. Darkness and thick walls gave concealment to their midnight conclave.
Yet even there the angels, to whose spiritual vision these walls were
transparent, were looking in; and to the Prophet, his eyes touched with spiritual
light, all became visible. Silent, unseen, and mourning spectators they stood
of these rites of sin and darkness. And when we enter our chambers of imagery,
may there not be other witnesses than we think? Surely it is not a vain nor
unreasonable thought, that around us are spiritual beings, to whose spiritual
eyes the mind lies open, even as the scenes of the visible world lie open to
the bodily eye. Happy is he who suffers to abide in his mind only those
thoughts and purposes which these spiritual beings may gladly look upon. But if
there be no other, there is one eye that looks through all the veils of time
and sense,--from whom nothing is hid while doing, and by whom nothing is
forgotten when done,--before whom all things lie open. We are apt to regard as
of no importance what merely transpires in the mind. Yet, in the sight of God,
in the mind is the seat and source of all good and ill. In these chambers of
imagery is the real life of man. Here, where are the secret counsels and plans
and resolves, where the passions conquer or are subdued, where are the
principles that we obey and the will that resolves,--here is the life of the
man. All else is but outward show and manifestation. It is here that He looks
who requires that all true worshippers shall worship Him in spirit and in
truth. It is described as one of the marks of the folly and impiety of the
ancients of Judah that, when met in their chambers of imagery for their
unhallowed rites, they said, “The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the
earth.” Ah no! Shut ourselves up in the chambers of the soul, and all lies
exposed to Him. The imaginations that we indulge take form and shape before
Him; and the hopes that we cherish are audible prayers to the object of our
worship; and the thought is as the word, and the purpose as the deed. We enter
now these halls of imagery at our choice, to review the past for correction and
improvement. The time comes when we must enter them for judgment. In that dread
hour the memory must take a conspicuous part. It is memory and conscience that
shall affirm the righteous judgments of God. For that day, in which the strong
shall bow and the most devout tremble, may God in His mercy aid us to be
prepared! There is yet one other view of the subject. Our life must be very
much in the present and the past. We have hopes, plans, speculations for the
future; yet even these, so far as they are reasonable, depend on foundations
laid in the past. The future is uncertain, but the past is fixed. It exerts a
steady influence. Leaving out of view the effects of its discipline on the
character, who can tell its power over our present happiness? It is our very
dwelling and home which we build up around us day by day. We may leave our
dwellings of wood and stone; may pull them down, repair them, remove from them;
but not so this spiritual dwelling, this presence and audience chamber of the
memory. We build it once for all; it stands forever, and is, according to what
we have made it, our home or our prison. This is the soul’s hall of imagery.
Let us give heed to the significance of the words. We think it desirable that
the apartments in which we dwell should not be deformed or unsightly; if in our
power, we would have them ornamented with pictures and works of art and taste.
What, then, to us is the soul’s chamber of imagery! It is crowded with
pictures; each deed and thought, by a daguerreotype that asks no light of the
sun or chemist’s skill, is at once and silently transferred, and takes its
place immovably on the wall. Like the chamber of the ancients of Judah, it may
be covered with every form of creeping things and beasts worshipped as idols,
which are but the symbols of our earthly passions and appetites; or on it may
be portrayed Divine pictures of hope and faith. But once there, there they
remain, a perpetual presence before the memory and conscience. Each new scene
we picture on the walls must remain there forever, to frown or smile upon us.
Hang up in your halls of imagery what you will hereafter rejoice to see there.
Suffer not to be there scenes which shall affright and sting the soul. God has
granted to man the boon and the opportunity of repentance, and in His mercy
granted to repentance the promise of forgiveness. If the picture of the
prodigal’s departure is painted, there may be added the prodigal’s return and
the father’s enduring love. If there be the picture of one forgiven much, let
there be added to it that of one who loves much. By the side of the wrong we
have done, may be set our efforts to repair the wrong. Over the scenes of guilt
and repentance, as over the retreating waves of the deluge, there may be arched
the rainbow of the Divine mercy. Repentance may not face the past. The rays of
the setting sun do not disperse the clouds that gather along the western horizon,
but they fill the clouds with light, and make them luminous with hues of
beauty. So repentance, though it cannot efface the past, transfigures it; and
while it leaves enough of the dark cloud to make us humble, it pours over it
and around it a light from heaven that fills the soul with serene hope. (E.
Peabody, D. D.)
Chambers of imagery
Although we do not bow down before graven images, and our women
weep not for Adonis, yet we may be as really idolaters as ever were the
Egyptians, the Phoenicians, or these apostate Jews. We may be doing practical
homage to the Baal of power,--canonising brute force, or adoring mere success.
We may be “causing our children to pass through the fire to
Moloch,”--sacrificing their happiness and their spiritual growth at the altar
of society, or fashion, or worldly prudence. We may be practical worshippers of
the Astarte of licentiousness,--sacrificing health, fortune, friendship,
nobleness at the shrine of lust. We may be devotees of Mammon,--ever toiling,
with selfish aims, to lay up stores of wealth; or we may be devotees of
fame,--labouring with all our might to secure the breath of human applause.
I. These “chambers
of imagery” may be taken as the type of a blind materialism. If we cease to
exercise faith in the God whom we see not, all our boasted civilisation will
not prevent us from beginning to worship, practically, the things which we see.
This century has a materialism of its own--more refined, but perhaps just as
dangerous as that of the ancient Egyptians.
1. Some of our men of science seem practically to have lost God. They
may not be so unphilosophical as to assert that there is no God; but they tell
us that they have abandoned “the conception of creative acts,” and that “matter
is the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own
womb.” They tell us that “all we see around us and all we feel within us--the
phenomena of physical nature, as well as those of the human mind--have their
unsearchable roots in a cosmical life.” They say that, “if the human mind will
turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to
give unity to thought and faith,” then this is a field for what, in contrast
with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. And then
they bid us take note that “there is no very rank materialism here.” But is it
not the simple fact that these men have practically ceased to believe in a
personal God? With them nature--“the universal mother”--takes the place of “our
Father in heaven.” Swinging their censers in their halls of science, they burn
their incense to “matter,” as having in itself “the promise and potency of
every form and quality of life.”
2. The secularist follows in the same key,--addressing himself,
however, to the working man, rather than to the student. “God,” he says, “may
or may not be a dream; but man is a reality. A future life may or may not be a
dream; but the present life is palpable and real. Let us therefore confine
ourselves to what we see and know. Let us cherish faith in political economy
and social science. Let us believe that good budgets will do vastly more for
the people than the old, worn out Bible!”
3. It is reserved, however, for the “positive” philosopher to assert
that the very idea of a personal God belongs to the infantile age of humanity,
and that the notion of a personal immortality is nothing but a childish fancy.
Auguste Comte, the founder of this philosophy, had his peculiar “chamber of
imagery”; for, although a materialist, he discovered that he must have
something to worship. And accordingly he employed his “creative faculty” to
fashion what he calls the “Religion of Humanity,” which he believed was
destined to supplant all other religions of the world. By the great being
“Humanity” is to be understood the aggregate of good human beings--past,
present, and future; including, however, such of the lower animals as have been
and are most serviceable to mankind! Is not this, indeed, coming back again to
the “chambers of imagery”--to the “four-footed beasts,” as well as to the
images of human form?
4. Only one thing can save us from the grasp of materialism. Not
civilisation, not poetry, not art, not philosophy; but simply the exercise of
the faculty of faith. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how dark must
the darkness be!” If we will not use the inner eye which beholds the unseen and
spiritual, that eye will become blind, and we shall begin to worship “in the
dark,” and in some form or other the created instead of the Creator.
II. These “chambers
of imagery” may be taken as the symbol of a secret ungodliness.
1. Men present themselves in the sanctuary; they seem to join in the
praises and prayers which are offered to the Creator; perhaps they even come to
the table of the Lord, and take into their hands the memorials of His death;
but where all the while are their hearts? What is the real state of their
souls? Whom are they actually serving in their daily life? What are they in
their business and in their homes?
2. Sometimes the iniquity which men are carrying on “in the dark”
comes suddenly and strangely to light; “some hole in the wall” betrays the
secret! Here is a man who has had the reputation of being thoroughly upright
and honourable, and whom his friends would have trusted to the utmost; but the
hidden “door” is at length discovered, and it turns out that he has been
engaged in some fraudulent transaction--cheating his creditors, or tampering
with his employer’s books. Here is a woman, seemingly religious, outwardly
decorous, spoken of by her friends and acquaintances as worthy of all respect
and affection; but it turns out that, in secret, she is allowing the habit of
drunkenness to creep over her, and that her servants could tell the tale of her
occasional debasement. Here, again, is a man, respectable, amiable, seemingly
devout, of whom everybody speaks well: when, all of a sudden, the hidden door
is revealed, and it turns out that he has been living an unchaste and brutish
life.
3. Resolve to be, at least, real and genuine. Let not your worship be
a sham. Be impatient of every approach to insincerity. Give your very heart to
God. Be Christ’s, not in name only, but in deed and in truth.
III. These “chambers
of imagery” may be taken as the emblem of an impure imagination. Whether a
man’s imagination be pure or impure will depend, partly on his past conduct,
partly on his present character, partly also, it must be acknowledged, on his
circumstances. A man may accidentally see something which he wishes he had
never seen, but which, being once seen, lodges itself in the memory, and is apt
thenceforth to be reproduced in the imagination. Still, the mind has a certain
power of self-direction, and can deliberately turn away its gaze from the
picture thus presented. The same may be said of scenes of impurity, through
which a man may have passed, only too willingly, in former days. As such scenes
are reproduced occasionally in the chambers of imagery,--the man, if he be
altered in character, will turn away from them with revulsion. But, alas! there
are many who deliberately carry the lamp of memory into this secret chamber of
the soul, and cast its full light on these loathsome pictures. Oh, beware of
retiring into the chamber of an impure imagination, to revel in the pictures
which it presents to you. This is the surest way of shutting your eye to the
vision of the Eternal; for it is “the pure in heart” who “see God.” Beware,
too, of everything that tends to defile the imagination,--impure actions,
impure companionship, impure literature. Guard your imagination. Watch your
reveries. Seek to carry a pure mind and heart after your evening prayer, even
into the land of dreams. Cherish a love of what is truly beautiful and good.
Live purely; and you will people your imagination with scenes of purity. Above
all, cherish a sense of the presence of the Holy One. Say not, with the
worshippers in the dark chamber, “The Lord seeth us not”; but say rather, “Thou
God seest me.” (T. C. Finlayson.)
Chambers of imagery
Look at that dark painted chamber that we have all of us got in
our hearts; at the idolatries that go on there, and at the flashing of a sudden
light of a God who marks, into the midst of the idolatry.
I. Think of some
dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts.
1. Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. The most
silvery lake that lies sleeping amidst beauty, itself the very fairest spot of
all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of
creeping abominations in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts
were, so to speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of everything brought
into the light? Do you think you could stand it? Well, then, go to God and ask
Him to keep you from the unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of
you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live humbly and
self-distrustfully, and feel that your only strength is: “Hold Thou me up, and
I shall be saved.”
2. The walls of that chamber were all painted with animal forms, to
which these men were bowing down. You and I, by our memory, by that marvellous
faculty that people call the imagination, by our desires, are forever painting
the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. It is an
awful faculty that we possess of, so to speak, surrounding ourselves with the
pictures of the things that we love, and have yielded ourselves in devotion and
desire unto. Just as today, thousands of years after the artists have been
gathered to the dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on
their walls, in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter
had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful evils,
the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may live ugly
shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can do away
with “the marks of that which once hath been.”
II. Look at the
idolatries of the dark chamber. A man’s true worship is not the worship that he
performs in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that little
private chapel where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the attribution of
supreme excellence to, and the entire dependence of the heart upon, a certain
person. And the people or the things to which a man attributes excellence, and
on which he hangs his happiness and his well-being, these be his gods, no
matter what his outward profession is. You can find out what these are for
yourself, if you will honestly ask yourself one or two questions. What is it
that I want most? What is it which makes my ideal happiness? What is it which I
feel that I should be desperate without? What do I think about most naturally
and spontaneously, when the spring is taken off and my thoughts are allowed to
go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is “God!” then I
do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper of God. Honour, wealth,
literary or other distinction, the sweet sanctities of human love dishonoured
and profaned by being exalted to the place which Divine love should hold, ease,
family, animal appetites, lust, drink--these are the gods of some of us. And do
not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and dependence from God
alone is like the sin of these men in our text, that it is sacrilege. They had
taken a chamber in the very Temple, and turned that into a temple of the false
gods. Who is your heart made to shrine? We were made for God, and whensoever we
turn the hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that which is
the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten upon Him, to
other creatures, we are guilty not only of idolatry but of sacrilege.
III. Look at the
sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light.
Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not the eyes
that were looking upon them. They were hugging themselves in the conceit, “The
Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.” And all the while, all
unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all. Not a finger
lifted, not a sign to the foolish worshippers of His presence and inspection,
but in stern silence He records and remembers. And does that need much bending
to make it an impressive form of putting a solemn truth? There are plenty of
us--alas! alas! that it should be so--to whom it is the least welcome of all
thoughts that there in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be
that the properly blessed thought of a Divine eye resting upon you should be to
you like the thought of a policeman’s bull’s eye to a thief? Why should it not
be rather the sweetest and the most calming and strength giving and
companioning of all convictions? “Thou God seest me.” One day a light will
flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifest before the judgment
seat of Christ. Do you like that thought? Can you stand it? Are you ready for
it? My friend! let Jesus Christ come to you with His light. Let Him come into
your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all these vile
shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like phosphorescent pictures in
the daytime, pale and disappear when the Sun of Righteousness, with healing on
His beams, floods your soul, making no part dark, and turning all into a Temple
of the living God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Secret sins
I. The forms they
take.
1. Inward infidelities. Mistrustings, scepticisms, neglects of inward
admonitions, etc.
2. Inward idolatries. HEART clinging to wealth, heart pride in
children, heart satisfaction in learning, worship of self.
3. Inward sensualities.
II. The outward
circumstances that foster them.
1. Neglect of religious duties gives the heart space for evil.
2. The tone of society is often sceptical and frivolous.
3. Danger of sensational and questionable moral literature.
4. Character of associations in daily life and friendships.
5. The humorous is too often playful with evil, and defiling.
III. The
intellectual conceptions which encourage them.
1. That sin is not really sin until expressed in overt acts (Matthew 5:21-28).
2. That the Lord doth not see.
3. That the Lord is merciful. Yes, but see Psalms 62:12. (R. Tuck, B. A.)
The imagination
The simplest form of imagination is dreaming. In dreaming we are
dependent on past experience. We cannot dream about men and women and children,
about earth and sky, about sea and land; about words and music and laughter,
unless we have seen and heard things like them. Dreams are like life, and yet
how unlike. All we have ever done and suffered, seen and heard, learned and
experienced, may be in our dreams, but all altered into
phantasmagoria--combining and dissolving, and succeeding one another with great
rapidity. It is very difficult to understand under what impulse or impulses the
imagination acts in dreaming. Another form of imagination is day dreaming, or
reverie. We say the children see faces in the fire, and young people build
castles in the air, but in point of fact these exercises are indulged in by all
ages. In our leisure, and especially perhaps in the hours of the nights when we
lie awake, forms and scenes flit of their own accord out of the dark background
of memory. If you could find out what a man is thinking of when he is lying
awake, you would have an invaluable index to his character; and by the same
test, find out, if you like, what is your own character. It is common to warn
the young against reverie; but it seems to me that this advice can only be
given with qualifications. What we really need to be warned of in respect of
reverie is the subjects of our daydreams. If our day dreams are concerning foul
and forbidden subjects, this habit will waste the mind utterly. These thoughts
must be caught at the threshold and kept resolutely out of the mind, or a man
will soon become within a leper from head to foot. The office of the
imagination is to improve on reality. It creates beside the actual world
another world, finer, fairer, and more perfect. You see that in childhood; and
I am often astonished in noticing the strength of the imagination in children.
Give them two or three bits of wood, roughly carved and rudely painted, a few
cuttings of cloth, a few bricks, a little mud or sand, and out of these things
they will create a world with kings and queens, the tinker and tailor, soldier
and sailor; and these figures will go through all the movements and activities
of grown people, as far as these can be observed by the minds of children. And
why is it that children, and children of a larger growth, are so fond of
stories? It is because in a story the life is grander and fiercer than in
actual life. It is an ideal, undimmed and undiminished by the obstacles and
qualifications of reality. Now this explains, as you will all see, the delight
afforded to us by works of art, which of course are works of imagination. Why
does a song or a piece of music delight us? It is because in it there are
gathered together sounds sweeter than the ordinary sounds which life gives us
to hear; and in a picture there is distilled the beauty of a hundred scenes.
And especially this explains the delight we have in imaginative literature. In
the real world movement is slow, and the colours are grey, but in this world a
year can be compressed into an hour; the colours are bright, the crisis is
exciting, the end is satisfying. In the epic, one great movement succeeds
another; in the drama, some great principle is fully illustrated; in a novel,
love is triumphant and justice is vindicated. But is it good to live in such an
unreal world? Well, that depends. No doubt this kind of reading may be carried
to excess. If it is made, instead of an occasional treat, the daily bread of
the mind, it will undoubtedly debilitate the mind. Fiction may give us
altogether false ideas of life, making us suppose that success is to depend not
upon effort and endeavour, which must be the only road to success with the
majority, but on some lucky fall of fortune, or some effort of genius not
accessible to one in a million. Yet imaginative literature has a real service
to perform. There is poetry which shows us the mystery the world is full of,
and helps us to believe in a secret, deep and interesting, in every heart by
which we are approached. Now that is the right kind; that is the healthy kind.
The wisdom of life very largely consists in being able to appreciate the
romance of ordinary existence, and the poetry of common things. I said a little
while ago that the function of the imagination is to improve on reality. Keep a
grip of that. The imagination is the torch by which humanity is conducted along
the path of progress. Then ordinary life cannot go on for a day without the
imagination. When a workman is engaged on some piece of work, has not he in his
mind an image of the perfect article, which directs every stroke he gives to
the rough material? And although what he makes never comes up entirely,
perhaps, to the object of his imagination, the perfection of the image in his
imagination determines the perfection of the work of his hand. It was because
Columbus had more imagination than the rest of Europe that he believed in a new
world to be found on the other side of the globe, and it was for a similar
reason that David Livingstone could not settle down among the other
missionaries in South Africa, but was haunted by a vision of something beyond
the desert, and through his imperative desire to go and see he was made the
greatest discoverer of modern times. There are thousands of visions of an
improved world that are never anything more than visions, but the world is
never improved, even in the smallest particular, without there being first a
vision of the improvement in someone’s imagination. Youth is full of visions,
and thousands of them never come to anything; but woe to that young man who has
no visions--no vision of his own future, no vision of the future of the world.
Professor Drummond used sometimes to say that in our day young men are saved,
not by the conviction of sin, but by the conviction of righteousness. That has
an air of paradox, but is a great truth. What he meant was that in our day many
a man was saved, not by thinking of the horrible pit into which he was in
danger of dropping, but of something above him, which he knows Christ would
help him to grasp; although I should be inclined to add that the sense of such
an ideal which you cannot reach above you is just the very thing to give you a
horror of your actual self, and an intense desire to be delivered from the
besetting past. Nowhere does imagination do so much for us as when it gives us
a vision of our own possibilities, of what we ought to be, and what we may be
by the grace of God; or rather, let me put it in this way, the best the
imagination ever can do for a man is when it supplies him with an image of
Jesus Christ, so enchanting and attractive that he follows Him by an
irresistible impulse, and his whole subsequent life becomes one unceasing
prayer and effort to be like Him. (James Stalker, D. D.)
Imagination
It is pleasant to remember those happy incidents of departed
hours, those ever fresh and verdant spots in the desert of life, on which the
eye always loves to linger, that it may be for a time refreshed. It is pleasant
to recall the features, the tones, the acts of some cherished companions of our
earlier days, whose voice shall no more be heard on earth. What a dreary blank
were life without it! Many, however, are content with this, and are fully
satisfied if they succeed in reproducing the past exactly as in the past it
was. Others, however, desire to soar far beyond the mere power of recollecting,
and aim at such a rearrangement of the treasures of experience as to produce
results far more beautiful than eye has ever seen on earth. They let a fertile
and gorgeous imagination so brood over the waters of memory as to call forth a
grandeur incomparably greater than the materials from which it has been
produced. We might have been so made by our Creator as to have had no such
faculty, and thus have been compelled to think the past without alteration of
any kind. In His abounding love, however, He has endowed us with the power of
using the world of nature merely as materials with which to build another
world, with even brighter tints and lovelier forms than those around us. He has
enriched us with a creative fancy that can burnish, as with brightest gold, the
gloomiest scenes of life; people the hovel with kingly guests, and bring to the
martyr’s side such celestial visitants as shall transform his dungeon gloom
into more than palatial splendour. The religious importance of the imagination
is evidenced by the fact that the one Book from which our religious knowledge
is obtained is from first to last saturated, as it were, with the most daring
flights of fancy, and the boldest figures of imagery. On its every page there
lie profusely scattered the fable, the parable, the allegory, the apostrophe,
the metaphor. It has laid all nature under tribute, and borrowed pictures from
the glittering dew drop, the graceful lily, and the blushing rose. “It weaves
garlands for the bleeding brow of Immanuel, the flowers of which have been
culled from the gardens of an universe.” The instant you divorce religion from
imagination you reduce the former to a series of abstract propositions which
might enlighten the minds of a few, but would warm the hearts of fewer still.
Could the affirmations of a rigid logic ever enable us to grasp Him that is
invisible, fling the burdens of our lives on His sympathy, or take us to His
side with our every sorrow? We may describe Deity as the Almighty, the
Omnipotent, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Unconditioned; and the cultured
understanding would assent to the truth of our description. But to the mass of
men the words would be utterly unintelligible, and awake no emotion within
their breasts. When, however, definition gives place to imagery, and He is
pictured to us in familiar forms, all is changed; we now fondly cling to that
from which previously we shrank. As we read of Him speaking in loving or, in warning
tones, listening to every cry of need, pitying us as a father pitieth his
children, holding our soul in life, we go boldly to the throne of grace;
bowing, not before a vague product of speculative thought, but before a Father
whom we can love and know. Christ, Himself, knowing well how little the
majority of men care to use their reason, when the use will not yield them
profitable return in terms of bodily comfort,--knowing that to the best even,
when we do unfold her pinions and attempt an upward flight, we soon weary with
the effort, and find ourselves unable, by her aid alone, to soar beyond the
cool zone of thought, passes reason by, and, when appealing to our feelings,
speaks of Himself as “The Bread of Life,” “The Light of the world,” “The True Vine,”
“The Door into the one true fold.” All this presents ideas to the stricken
heart that are equally beautiful and equally powerful on young and old, rich
and poor, learned and unlearned. Thus He takes the feeblest by the hand and
leads them to heights that philosophy and logic never could have climbed. But
as the richest soil grows the rankest weeds, so the noblest powers, when
perverted and corrupted, work the direst mischief. Of none is this more true
than of the imagination. When we darken the chambers of our imagery, and,
drawing the curtain of night before the pictures of the Lord, make it the home
of idols, saying, “The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth,”
imagination aids most effectually the conspiracy against the truth, and bolsters
the soul amid its cherished lies. It is no mere baseless fancy this vision of
Ezekiel, it is a sadly real fact. Who has not some idols in the heart’s
chamber, and who views them in their actual deformity and folly? If it were
possible to tear from the idols of the world every vestige of those spurious
attributes with which a vicious imagination has invested them, that they may
look like gods, and thus show them as they are in all their real distorted
ugliness, the votaries would surely shrink from them in horror and detestation.
But there are other evils wrought by this fallen angel within the chamber of
our imagery. We know that according to the prevailing habit of our mind, so
will be the pictures mostly drawn by us. The voluptuary is ever picturing to
himself fresh indulgences, which again in their turn urge him on to their
gratification. Thus, therefore, vice vitiates the imagination, and vitiated
imagination plunges into deeper vice. That which was given to lighten the
chamber of the heart, being thus abused, darkens it into deeper vice. That
which was given to lighten the chamber of the heart, being thus abused, darkens
it into deeper night. But this faculty further shows its dangerous power in the
production of startlingly vivid, but perilously false, pictures of God Himself.
How sad is the fact that so many are basing their eternities on a figment of
their own fancy, on a creature of their own wild imagination, on a deity not
found either in reason or in revelation. May the Light of the world brighten
the chambers of their imagery before it be too late forever! But although it
may not play thus falsely with the soul, but depict scenes that are faithful to
the fact, still evil sometimes flows from this very circumstance. The scenes
thus realised may be so full of love, or beauty, or of pathos, that the soul
dwelling fondly on the incident may flow into a sort of harmony with it, come
to delight in the contemplation, and if the incidents be religious, rest
contented with a religion that consists in imagination only. Such, as they read
the story of the Cross, will feel as though it were being enacted before their
eyes; and they will love to stand and gaze tearfully at the Christ as He raises
His head to pray for pardon on His enemies; or they will flash with anger as
they see the heartless soldier strike His crown of thorns; and while they gaze
with pity, and sigh for suffering so undeserved, will readily persuade
themselves that they are disciples of the Master. Does not all this show they
are religious? Does it not prove that their sympathies are with Christ and
heaven? Does it not demonstrate their interest in the things that concern their
salvation? No. It manifests nothing more than this, that they are sensitive to
the sublimity of moral heroism, the pleasures of unending joy, the beauties of
harmonious sounds. It is right to image our Saviour on the Cross as distinctly
as possible, but only that we may rise from the contemplation with firmer
resolve to tread in His footsteps. It is not by graceful genuflexions before
the cross, aesthetic musings on its thrilling pathos, or sentimental tenderness
over its wondrous self-sacrifice, but by talking it up on our own shoulders and
following the crucified One that we can become His disciples. If imagination, consequently,
no matter how high, or pure, or true, be made an end, it must hinder, even if
it does not stop us in our Christian course, for God gave it only as a means to
an end beyond itself. A means whereby we may more keenly become impressed with
our own defects and sin and guilt; more profoundly view our own hopeless
plight; and then, that the hopeless may become the hopeful, more thrillingly
behold our Father’s character and love, our Christ’s great atonement, and the
Holy Spirit’s eager rushing to our rescue. Imagination--a means to an end. So
it is. But although the means be such as God alone could devise or bestow,
still, after all, how poor is it compared with the end for which it exists!
Eye, ear, and heart may do much, when trained by the Spirit of God, to
construct our future home, but “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that
love Him.” (J. M’Cann, D. D.)
Secret service
One of the gravest charges brought by Ezekiel against his people
was that they had covered the walls of the mind with polluted imaginations, and
had set the activities of the inward world to base uses. They were condemned
for what they did “in the dark” and in their “chambers of imagery.” And there
are more things done in the dark than in the light, in the inward chamber than
in the open street. What is done “in the dark” adds up by its constancy to a
great total.
1. Of these toilers in the dark the first perhaps is thought; for it
belongs to man to think, and he cannot help thinking if he tries. When the mind
has once grasped an idea, as Hugo says, you can no more hinder its return to it
than you can the return of the tide to a shore. Try not to think for five
minutes, and you are bound to think. When we sleep we think; and when we are
chloroformed and every nerve is deadened to physical sensation, we still think.
2. Thought works in the dark, as memory does. Memory is that strange
power which recalls the past and helps us to relive it.
3. These faculties are joined by imagination, a gift which some have
in great measure and most have in some degree, so that a few are poets and
painters and musicians, and most can paint some picture in the mind, and hear
or make some music there. The little child sails his paper boat in a pail, and
says, “This is Europe and that is America, and here is Columbus going over.”
And Olive Schreiner says she would rather be a little child and know her way up
the staircase of dreams than be the wisest philosopher in the world. These are
the faculties that do their ceaseless services in the dark--thought, memory,
and imagination. It was the folly and the sin of these men of Israel that what
they did in the dark would not bear the scrutiny of the light, and that they
made their faculties the instruments of unprofitableness. It is one of the
reiterated ideas of Paul that the members of the body are intended to be
instruments of righteousness, and the Scriptures abound with directions for
them. They are all legislated for in turn, the eye and the hand, the foot and
the ear. “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.” When
the members of the body obey such legislation, the open street is full of
upright deeds and noble words; and when the senses of the soul do it, the
secret chamber becomes a palace of light. Toward the right use of the
imagination and kindred qualities the Bible has many appeals. Some of these are
direct; but one of them consists in the fact that the Bible itself is sprinkled
through with fruits of divinely controlled imagination which make an appeal of
their own, just as the books of history and the many pages of counsel and
advice appeal by their very presence in the Bible to those practical concerns
of which life is full. Let the intensely practical man reflect on the fictions
of the Bible. It seems as full of these as life does. This book does not
disdain,--it welcomes and immortalises, rather, the fanciful, the poetic, and
the imaginative. There are a hundred reasons why the imagination should be
used, and the main reason of its misuse is plain enough. It would seem
impossible for it to be uncontrolled so long as God remains a reality, and
while a recognition of deity and eternity are among the facts of life. “The
Lord,” said these men of old, “seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.”
He did not see their outward acts; and even were He near He was not such a God
as could look through the flesh into the chambers of the mind--and these things
being so, restraint was gone. Life presents this sight over and over again.
When some little lad at school is aware of the master’s eye, there comes to him
an incentive to diligence; and if the master disappears, though you cannot say
the work will cease, yet you are sure that a temptation for it to stop will
surely come, “For,” says the lad, “the master sees me not.” Or suppose you have
always at your side some noble, upright friend, clean to the core, clean to the
finger-tips! Then, with his presence or the very thought of it there comes a
tremendous check to all unworthiness of act or dream, and a certain stimulus to
all that is fair without and within. A day, a house, a book, a hymn--will help
to people the inward streets with happy troops of white-robed fancies and
desires. It is forgetfulness of God’s presence that induces sins of secrecy,
and takes away the restraints that hinder them; and while outward sins are
black enough, who shall say that these are less so? There are open iniquities,
done in the sight of men--and a grim brotherhood they are; but there are sins
of desire, and a wish may be a transgression and a feeling an iniquity. “Thou
shalt not kill,” said Moses. Thou shalt not be angry, said Christ. You may
think, and sink with every thought you think till you reach the unnameable
slums of the intellectual world; and you may choose to remember the
unheavenliest things you ever saw or said or did; and you may get pictures
painted on the walls of the soul by the painter. Imagination, who has mixed his
colours all in hell. Some of the most passionate prayers for pardon have been
the outcome of no outward sins, but have been made on account of follies done
“in the dark.” What any man does “in the dark” is the truest test of his
character. It is true that words are an index of the mind, and in some degree
reveal the man; but any speaker may so choose his words as to disguise himself,
and though it is also certain that a tree is known by its fruits, yet deeds
alone are not a perfect test of the man who does them, for we seldom wholly
translate into actions our thoughts or schemes, and it is impossible for a
painter to put on the canvas all the glory of his original dream. We are no
better than our secrets, and these are the last test of us. You cannot judge a
man by his public actions; for to many a man the crowd is either a stimulus or
a restraint, and in the presence of the multitude he hides himself and wears a
mask. But when the day’s work is over, follow him to his home, and see how he
conducts himself in the semi-secrecy of domestic life; discover his manners in
that seclusion; notice how he bears the scrutiny of constant love, and what he
does when the alternations of joys and griefs and astonishments of life occur.
But even then you do not know him altogether; and you must further ask what his
thoughts are, and on what memories he most dwells, and what his actions are
when there are none to see. The world is full of short-sighted judgments, and
must needs be. It is God alone who judges rightly, who judges by the heart,
knowing what is in man. Upon what is done “in the dark” depend our chances of
service, and the inward conditions are the fountains of all fruitfulness.
Ruskin’s doctrine was that no truly great picture ever came or could ever
possibly come from the painter with an unclean spirit. He would unconsciously
express himself in his picture; the portrait would be his own, and its colours
the colours of his soul. What is done in the inward place glorifies or abases
all endeavours, and the dominant influences that live there give shape and colour
to all our deeds. If that place be the haunt of evil things, it will be strange
if some of them do not escape; and if of good, it is certain they will find
expression in many a kindly word and gladly finished duty. The secret of
serviceableness and the very chance of it lies hidden from all sight like a
tree’s root. What, then, is the atonement, and what does redemption do? What
does it not do? It does not fasten the thief’s hand behind his back, or
snatch the murderer’s knife away, or fetter the wandering feet; for it is God’s
last reply to a most ancient prayer: “Create in me a clean heart, and
renew a right spirit within me.” The ministry of Jesus is to the soul. (A.
J. Southouse.)
The chamber of imagery
I. Man has a
wonderful power of vision beyond that of the senses. Man’s power of mental
vision is seen not only in the creation of dreams and the production of poetry,
but also in the sorrows of the apprehensive, the joys of the hopeful, the
wealth of the avaricious, and power of the ambitious, which live only in the
imagination. “The dullest plodder,” says Dr. Thomas Brown, “over the obscurest
desk, who sums up in the evening his daily tables of profit and loss, and who
rises in the morning with the sole object of adding a few ciphers to that book
of pounds and pence which contains the whole annual history of his life,--even
he, while he half lays down his quill to think of future prices or future
demands or future possibilities of loss, has his visions and inspiration like
the sublimest poet; visions of a very different kind, indeed, from those to
which poets are accustomed, but involving as truly the inspiration of fancy!”
1. Through this power God frequently reveals the greatest truths. All
sciences start from hypotheses. The poet catches by intuition that which
philosophers organise into systems. This material universe is but spirit in
costume,--“a vesture”; its myriads of objects are but eternal thoughts run into
palpable forms. Imagination with her keen eyes looks through the garb, sees the
Divine ideas, moulds them into shapes of her own, and clothes them in an airy
fabric of her own weaving.
2. Through this power man will derive much of his happiness or misery
forever. One of our bards has sung in lofty and touching strains of “The
Pleasures of the Imagination.” Blessed power this! By it the sightless bard of
England made for himself a sunny paradise, amidst whose enchanted scenes he
struck from his lyre those supernatural strains that shall thrill the ages yet
to come. The greatest misery, too, comes out of this. Let the imagination
become the creature of a guilty conscience, and it shall create a hell as dark
and deep as that which Dante made.
II. The
degenerating tendency in the most advanced people has ever been strong. This
tendency is sufficient--
1. To repudiate the atheistic notion that the original state of man
was that of savagism; and to confirm the Biblical doctrine that “God made man
upright, but that he sought out many inventions.”
2. To show that it behoves the most advanced people to be humble.
III. The greatest
sins of humanity are generally the hidden ones. Could we open the door of
England’s soul, as the prophet opened the door of “the chamber of imagery,” our
opinion of its character, I presume, would be greatly modified if not reversed.
We should see selfishness in the benevolent, blood guiltiness in the humane,
despotism in the outwardly liberal, lasciviousness in the chaste, arrogance in
the humble, infidelity in the pious, idolatry in temples built for God. It is
not the hand, nor the tongue, nor any member of the body that performs the
act;--the volition is the act.
1. Man has the power to conceal sins.
2. Man as a sinner has the strongest temptations to concealment. The
more wicked a man is, the more temptation he has to be a hypocrite. The
depraved tradesman, lawyer, physician, and statesman must build a thick wall
around their “chamber of imagery,” or they could not live.
IV. An insight of
the hidden iniquity of a population is a necessary qualification for a true
reformer.
1. It serves to impress him with the justice of human suffering.
2. It serves to impress him with the greatness of God’s love in
redemption.
3. It serves to impress him with the sublime mission of Christianity.
It is to go into its most secret chambers, tear down every idol
god, carry in the ark, and enthrone the Shekinah, and consecrate the soul a
Temple for the Holy Ghost to dwell in.
V. The most hidden
sins are destined to be exposed.
1. There are certain ways in which hidden sins are exposed, even now.
2. There are two kinds of exposure--
VI. A practical
disregard of the constant presence and inspection of God is an explanation of
all sin.
1. Because the realising of God’s presence implies supreme love to
Him. The being we love supremely we keep close to our hearts. Friends separated
by continents, oceans, and even death, love brings near. It is not logic, but
love that makes us feel the Infinite near.
2. If they love Him supremely they will have no room in their hearts
for idols. Supreme love is a soul-filling power. Where God is loved there is no
room for other deities. When the sun is on the eye the stars are not. (Homilist.)
The secret chambers of the heart
“In the secret chambers” of our own hearts unknown to anyone but
oneself, how often we paint before us “the imagery” of unholy thoughts--we
allow ourselves to play with the fire brands of evil suggestions; to carry out
in imagination those wicked longings of the sinful heart, which God has
perhaps, through His great mercy, not allowed us to carry out in fact and act.
Thus, alas, many a precious moment of time is wasted. We dream of seeing our
enemies cast down, we plan and plot and meditate on schemes of pride or
covetousness or selfish enjoyment, and set up “every man” in the chambers of
the heart the imagery of guilty desires and foolish vanities. It has been well
said, if we had a door in our hearts which let our thoughts be visible, who
would dare to look his neighbour in the face? But are there not defences
against these devices of the enemy in the armoury of the Great Captain? Yes!
they are three in number--Prayer, Watchfulness, and Activity. (W. Hardman,
LL. D.)
The chambers of imagery
What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you are
photographing, printing on the walls of your immortal nature. What are you
painting on the chambers of imagery on your hearts? Is that mystic shrine
within you painted with such figures as in some chambers of Pompeii, where the
excavators had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul? Or is it like
the cells in the convent of San Marco at Florence, where Fra Angelico’s holy
and sweet genius painted on the bare walls--to be looked at, as he fancied,
only by one devout brother in each cell--angel imaginings, and noble, pure,
celestial faces that calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? What are you
doing in the dark, in the chambers of your imagery? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Pictures on the wall
When a bookcase standing long in one place was removed there was
the exact image left on the wall of the whole, and many of its portions. But,
in the midst of this picture was another the precise outline of a map, which
had hung on the wall before the bookcase was placed there. We had all forgotten
everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Thus, Some
day or another, we may remember a sin which has been covered up, when this
lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of infinity, where the
wrong-doing stands self-recorded. (Oliver Wendell Holmes.)
Verses 15-18
Turn thee yet again and thou shalt see greater abominations than
these.
Of sin in its aggravations
I. What is
understood by the heinousness of sin.
1. That it is offensive to God, displeasing to Him, and grieving to
His Spirit (Jeremiah 44:4). It is an abominable thing
before the Lord; hence it is called filthiness, uncleanness, vomit, etc., all
which provoke loathing; so Revelation 3:16. It is contrary to His
nature and will, and gives Him displeasure and offence; and, if it were
possible it would disturb His repose, as smoke doth to the eyes (Isaiah 65:5).
2. It is greatly offensive to God (Habakkuk 1:13). There is no sin that God
is indifferent about, none that He can pass without a mark of His indignation
on it (Exodus 34:7).
II. In what
respects some sins are more heinous than others.
1. Some sins are in themselves, and in their own nature, more heinous
than others. Murder (Genesis 4:10); oppression (Habakkuk 2:1 l); blasphemy and contempt,
of God (Exodus 5:2); idolatry (Ezekiel 8:1-18); unbelief, rejecting of
Christ, and disobeying the Gospel (Matthew 22:1-46; John 3:19; 2 Thessalonians 1:8). But of all
sins the most heinous is the sin against the Holy Ghost (Matthew 12:31).
2. Some sins are more heinous than others by their aggravations; and
the greater and more numerous the aggravating circumstances be that attend any
sin, it is the more heinous.
(i) Being done against means whereby one might be withheld from sin (Matthew 11:21-22).
(ii)
Being
done against bonds one has taken on him against the sin, when men sin against
purposes and resolutions of amendment, against their covenants and engagements
to the Lord, whereby they are bound to stand off from such courses (Ezekiel 17:19).
1. Never think light of sin, nor slightly of Christ, and your need of
Him, since all sin is heinous in God’s sight, and exposes the sinner to His
just vengeance.
2. There will be degrees of torment in hell, though the least degree
will be dreadful (Matthew 11:21). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Hidden abominations exposed
Apply this passage--
I. To the world.
1. The abominations that are visible to all are exceeding great.
2. But the more we know of the world, the more wicked will it appear.
II. The church.
1. The outward court worshippers are, for the most part, exceedingly
corrupt.
2. Would to God we could except from this censure the worshippers of
the inner court.
III. The heart.
1. This, the Prophet tells us, is superlatively deceitful.
2. It is also, as the same Prophet informs us, unsearchably wicked.
Behold here, then--
They worshipped the sun
toward the east.
The spiritual discarded, the material adored
I. Strange
aversion.
1. To what they were averse. “The temple of the Lord.” This does not
mean the material building. These men were too material for that. They would
never cease to glory in its architectural splendour, and there was little fear
of their ceasing to regard the gold and silver by which it was enriched and
with which it was adorned. They were, as myriads are today, well content to lay
claim to and enjoy the material gifts of God, while they utterly disregarded
the more spiritual of His mercies. In the temple God dwelt, for there was in
the mysterious Shekinah light which brooded over the Ark, the symbol of His
invisible, yet awful presence-to Him they were averse. They would fain have
vetoed or expelled Him from His own house, for they desired not His presence.
This is strange aversion. Why should they turn their backs upon God? They owed
their all to Him. He beheld their fathers once as a company of oppressed
slaves, crying day and night unto Him for deliverance, and with a high hand and
with an outstretched arm He did deliver them. They possessed promises which
were to make their future still more illustrious. Yet upon Him who had been
such a Father and Friend they turned their backs. And of the law of God they
might justly have been proud. It was an expression of the Infinite mind, and
well worthy of its origin. This law Christ came not to abrogate, but to
expound, enforce, and fulfil. And the Ark. Surely there was nothing in this to
which they could reasonably be averse. It enshrined many precious memories.
What shall we say of the myriads who in England today repeat these sins? The
guilt of such is even worse than that of these “five and twenty men.” What
wrong has God done them that they are thus averse to Him and to His house? What
base ingratitude on the part of men to daily enjoy the precious legacy of
privileges the Gospel has won, and yet turn their backs upon this their best
friend.
2. By whom was this aversion expressed? Evidently by those who were
considered to be the very pick and flower of the nation.
3. Can we account for this aversion?
II. Stupid
fascination. “They worshipped the sun toward the east.” The sun is an object of
surpassing glory. It is the most sublime material emblem of God. “The Lord God
is a sun”--as He, the sun, is an object of resistless splendour; it is the
source of life, of order, of beauty, of fruitfulness, the bright-eyed monarch
of the world, the great wonder worker, seer of all the skies. But it is
material and must perish. Adoration of the material and neglect of the
spiritual is far too common a practice in our day; but to follow a multitude in
evil-doing does not make our sin any the less great. Science and philosophy are
all very good when kept in their place. But what will it avail men if they are
able to define nature’s laws, if they know not nature’s God? What avail if they
are familiar with all rocks, yet have never known Him who is “as the shadow of
a great rock in a weary land”? The laws of nature are “like so many windows in
the dark opaque walls of this world, through which we can have a transient
glance at God and eternity . . . But over these windows infidelity draws down
the blinds and shuts God out.” In Athens of old the human intellect obtained
its most subtle skill, attuned itself to the most perfect music of human
expression, and with what result? Did philosophy, art, or science lift the
Athenians nearer God? Nay, “the whole city was given up to idolatry.” Men
deified their own works, and corrupted themselves by their worship. The city
became like the cesspool of the world, and has tainted the morals of successive
centuries. Are nature and art destitute of moral power, then? No; yet they did
not make the Athenians holy, gave them no victory over themselves, brought them
no nearer to God. No objects which address themselves merely to the intellect
or fancy of man can do this. Man’s first wants are deeper than these can touch;
he has a spirit, a soul, and only as he comes in contact with God’s Spirit can
he rise; no lever but the Gospel can effectually lift up humanity. Let us first
give our hearts to God, and then by Nature, as well as by Scripture, He will
give us much instruction concerning Himself. He will “speak to us in every
primrose and daisy, and whisper to us in every breath of morning air.”
Demosthenes may have his inferior orations; Shakespeare his inferior histories,
comedies, or tragedies; and Milton may fail in his Paradise Regained to
equal his Paradise Lost; but God can have no inferior productions:
Nature is as perfect as Scripture. Yet God in Christ is alone to be the object
of our soul’s worship, and the great Sacrifice of Calvary the ground of our
soul’s hope. (W. Williams.)
To provoke Me to anger.--
Greatness of sin
1. The greatness or littleness of sin is to be measured, not by
man’s, but God’s account of it. “Is it a light thing to the house of Judah?”
They think it so, but it is otherwise. The interrogation sets out the greatness
of it. Is it so? no, it is not light, but grievous.
2. To sin where God manifests His presence, and vouchsafes the means
of grace and choice mercies, is a great aggravation of sin, and grievous
provocation of Divine majesty.
3. Violence is a spreading sin.
4. Injustice is abomination unto God, and the more it spreads, the
greater abomination it is.
5. State oppression and church corruption go together. If there be
violence in a land, there will be corruptions, pollutions, abominations in the
sanctuary.
6. Men’s intentions to please God oft prove provocations of God. They
intended not to provoke God, but returned in their apprehensions to worship God
in the temple, and to please Him; not their purpose, but the event was the
provocation. So in verse 6, their abominations drave God far from the
sanctuary. They did not purpose and intend to drive God away, but that was the
event and issue of their actions, with which they thought they pleased God. (W.
Greenhill, M. A.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》