Ezekiel 13:22

Ezekiel 13:22

I. Where the way of life was broad the false prophets strove to make it narrow, and where it was narrow they strove to make it broad; by their solemn and superstitious lies they frightened and perplexed the good, while by their lives of ungodliness they emboldened and encouraged the wicked. The tendency of either evil to produce the other is sure and universal. We cannot exist without some influences of fear and restraint on the one hand, and without some indulgence of freedom on the other. God has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our nature; He has told us whom we should fear, and where we should be restrained, and where, also, we may safely be in freedom; there is the fruit forbidden, and the fruit which we may eat freely. But if the restraint and the liberty be either of them put in the wrong place the double evil is sure to follow. Superstition is the rest of wickedness, and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition.

II. Nothing is more common than to see great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening, the purifying, the loving influences of Christ's spirit. Every one of us has a tendency to some idol or other, if not to many; and our business is especially each to watch ourselves, lest we be ensnared to our particular idol.

III. Things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. To some minds truth is an idol, to others justice, to others charity or benevolence; and others are beguiled by objects of a different sort of sacredness; some have made Christ's mother their idol; some Christ's servants; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's own body, the Church. If these may all be idols, where can we find a name so holy as that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience, reverence without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may be duly tendered? One name there is, and one only; one alone in heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's mother, not His holiest servants, not His blessed sacraments, not His very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us, and rose again, Jesus Christ, both God and man. As no idol can stand in Christ's place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly is preserved from all idols and has life eternal.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iv.

Reference: Ezekiel 14:1. Bishop How, Plain Words,2nd series, p. 252.