Ezekiel 37:28

REFLECTIONS

READER! make a long pause over this most blessed Chapter; look up for the renewal of that Holy Spirit to shed his influences upon you, who put breath into those dry bones the Prophet saw; that so the glories of the doctrine here taught may appear fully to your view, and their saving effect be fully felt upon your mind. Consider this lower world! Is it not indeed a valley, and full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness? By nature, and by practice, the whole world is dead in trespasses and sins. Who then but God the Spirit can put life into those bones, that they may live? Come, Lord, we pray thee, with all thy sweet and genial influence upon the souls of thy people, and while they groan under a sense of sin, and the oppressions of the enemy, do thou, Lord, put thy blessed Spirit in them, that they may live!

Chiefly, ye ministers of my God! learn from this divine subject, and of the Lord's own preaching by the Prophet; in whose strength all spiritual labours must be carried on with the least hopes of success; and on whose blessing depends the fruit of all your ministry. All the congregation of the faithful are in themselves, simply no other, than those bones of the valley. The dead in every Church-yard, long buried there, are no more dead to any bodily act, than the dead in trespasses and sins are to any spiritual exercise, And when we behold a minister of Christ addressing his flock, he is to all intents and purposes, as much as the Prophet in the valley, calling upon the dead to hear the word of the Lord; or as one in the Church-yard would be, in bidding the dead around him to arise at the sound of his voice. Both are alike incompetent to any energy. And the recovery of either must be a miracle. If these things were but properly impressed upon every Preacher's mind, with what earnestness would he plead and wrestle with God in prayer, before he entered upon his labours, for a blessing from the Lord! Will such an one (if peradventure he should condescend to read these observations), forgive me, if I close the Chapter with an earnest exhortation, that this solemn view of the subject may have its proper weight upon his mind. And oh! that the Lord the Spirit may induce every heart, so engaged in holy things, to be continually looking up to him for his blessing, both upon himself and his people. Lord, I would say! breath upon the dry bones of the valley, and bid them live; then shall we know that the Lord hath spoken it, and the Lord hath performed it!