Ezekiel 10:17

When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also.

Feet and wings

Flying creatures have wings for the air and feet for the ground. This touch of nature is put on God’s cherubim. The prophet intends no special religious lesson here, but the fact he cites may be used to convey such.

I. The subject of Christian experience, what it is and how to be maintained. We have faculties of locomotion, feeding, sense, perception, etc., by which we act our parts on foot, as it were. We have attributes of faith perception, love appropriation, spiritual imagination, in which we become aerial creatures, resting suspensively in things above the world. This uplifting produces the transcendent mystery of experience in Christian conversion. We rise by trust in God--admitting the full revelation of His truth and friendship. Can the soul thus lifted stay in that serene element? It has gravitations which pull it all the while downward, and settle it on its feet, as the flying creatures fold their wings when they settle. Let us trace some of the instances and ways in which it ceases to live by faith. When a man of enterprise thinks of independence, how easily, how insensibly he ceases to hang on Providence as he did. His prayers lose their fervour. God is far less dear and less consciously present; and how long will he have the consciousness of His presence at all? The moment any disciple touches ground with but the tip of his foot, and begins to rest on earthly props, a mortal weakness takes him, and he goes down. Only a calm and loving return to his trust will recover him, and God is faithful enough to be trusted at all times. Let there be this rest by faith, and he will carry himself more steadily in studies, toils, or engagements. Sometimes obscurations may occur, but he has only to believe the more strongly and wait till they be cleared.

II. Many persons miss ever going above a service on foot, by not conceiving at all the more ethereal range of experience into which true faith would lift them. Sometimes they become reformers or philanthropists. They mean business in their religion, caring little for the fervours that are not fervours of work, The combining and roiling up of great masses of opinion are the means by which they expect to carry their projects. Censure and storm and fiery denunciation are close at hand. They, many times, do not conceive that they are disciples because of their repentances, or their prayers, or sensing of God by their faith, or any other grace that separates them from the world. They have much to say of love, but they visibly hate more strongly than they love. They never go above to descend upon the reform by inspirations there kindled; they keep on their feet, and war with the evils on the same level with them. Sometimes they attempt self-culture in the name of religion. They could mend defects, chasten faults, put themselves in the charities they have learned from Christ, perhaps, to admire; but the work is a far more hopeless one than they imagine, if there is no uplifting help from gracious inspirations. Oh, if they would go up to Christ, or to God in a true faith culture, faults would fall off, as blasted flowers from a tree, by the life principle therein. Sometimes they suppose they are religious because of a certain patronage they give to the Church and the Word. Not being in the gift of spiritual discernment, their tastes will be the better; and as there are always a great many reasons why a thing should not be done to any single reason why it should, they assume to be specially qualified critics. They contribute these critical powers, while others, less gifted, may contribute their prayers! Such negatives do not belong to the range of the Spirit, but to the nether world of fashion or opinion or custom. The critics have feet, but no wings. If they could give themselves over in trust to the Saviour, instead of giving their opinions and tastes, their contributions would be of worthier significance. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)