THE GOSPEL IN EZEKIEL. The Messenger. Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man.-EZEKIEL XXXvi. 16, 17. HAVING Scattered over an open field the bones of the human body, bring an anatomist to the scene. Conduct him to the valley where Ezekiel stood, with his eye on the skulls and dismembered skeletons of an unburied host. Observe the man of science how he fits bone to bone and part to part, till from those scattered members he constructs a framework, which, apart from our horror at the eyeless sockets and flesh less form, appears perfectly, divinely beautiful. In hands which have the patience to collect, and the skill to arrange these materials, how perfectly they fit! bone to bone, and joint to joint, till the whole figure rises to the polished dome, and the dumb skeleton seems to say, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Now as with these parts of the human frame, so is it with the doctrines of the Gospel, in so far as they are intelligible to our understandings. Scattered over the pages of sacred Scripture, let them also be collected and arranged in systematic order, and how beautifully they fit! doctrine to doctrine, duty to duty; till, all connected with each other, all "members one of an other," they rise up into a form of perfect symmetry, and present that very system which, with minor dif ferences but substantial unity, is embodied in the confessions, creeds, and catechisms of Evangelical Christendom. I have said, so far as they are intelligible to us; for it is ever to be borne in mind, that while the Gospel has shallows through which a child may wade and walk on his way to heaven, it has deep, dark, unfathomed pools, which no eye can penetrate, and where the first step takes a giant beyond his depth. There is a difference, which even childhood may discern, between the manner in which the doctrines and duties of the Gospel are set forth in the Word of God, and their more formal arrangement in our catechisms and confessions. They are scattered here and there over the face of Scripture, much as the plants. of nature are upon the surface of the globe. There, for example, we meet with nothing corresponding to the formal order, systematic classification, and rectangular beds of a botanical garden; on the contrary, the creations of the vegetable kingdom lie mingled in what, although beautiful, seems to be wild confusion. Within the limits of the same moor or meadow the naturalist gathers grasses of many forms, he finds it enamelled with flowers of every hue; and in those forests which have been planted by the hand of God, and beneath whose deep shades man still walks in rude and savage freedom, trees of every form and foliage stand side by side like brothers. With the Sabbath hills around us, far from the dust and din, the splendor and squalor of the city, we have sat on a rocky bank, to wonder at the varied and rich profusion with which God had clothed the scene. Nature, like Joseph, was dressed in a coat of many colors- lichens, gray, black and yellow, clad the rock; the glossy ivy, like a child of ambition, had planted its foot on the crag, and, hanging on by a hundred arms, had climbed to its stormy summit; mosses, of hues surpassing all the colors of the loom, spread an elastic carpet round the gushing fountain; the wild thyme lent a bed to the weary, and its perfume to the air; heaths opened their blushing bosoms to the bee; the primrose, like modesty shrinking from observation, looked out from its leafy shade; at the foot of the weathered stone the fern raised its plumes, and on its summit the foxglove rang his beautiful bells; while the birch bent to kiss the stream, as it ran away laughing to hide itself in the lake below, or stretched out her arms to embrace the mountain ash and evergreen pine. By a very slight exercise of fancy, in such a scene one could see Nature engaged in her adorations, and hear her singing, "The earth is full of the glory of God." “How manifold are thy works, Lord God Almighty! in wisdom thou hast made them all." Now, although over the whole surface of our globe, as in that spot, plants of all forms and families seem confusedly scattered, amid this apparent disorder the eye of science discovers a perfect system in the floral kingdom; and just as-although God has certainly scattered these forms over the face of nature without apparent arrangement-there is a botanical system, so there is as certainly a theological system, although its doctrines and duties are not classified in the Bible according to dogmatic rules. Does it not appear from this circumstance, that God intended his Word to be a subject of study as well as faith, and that man should find in its saving pages a field for the exercise of his highest faculties? We are commanded to compare "spiritual things with spiritual;" we are to "search the Scriptures," to dig for their treasures, to dive for the pearls. Hence the prayer of David, "Give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments." While the trees and flowers that clothe the fields of nature are scattered without much apparent order over the wide surface of the earth, still there are mountain regions lying within the tropics, where, in the course of a single day, the traveler may find laid out in regular arrangement, every vegetable form peculiar to every line of latitude between the equator and the poles. Leaving the palms which cover the mountain's feet, he ascends into the regions of the olive; from these, to a more temperate climate, where the vine festoons the trees, or trails its limbs along the naked rock; still ascending, he next reaches a belt of oaks and chestnuts; from that he passes to heights shaggy with the hardy pine; by and by, he enters a region where trees are dwarfed into bushes; rising above that, his foot presses a carpet of lowly mosses; till, climbing the rocks where only the lichen lives, he leaves all life beneath him; and now, shivering in the cold, panting in the thin air for breath, he stands on those dreary elevations, where eternal winter sits on a throne of snow, and, waving her icy scepter, says to vegetation, "Hither shalt thou come, and no farther." Like some such lofty mountain of the tropics, there are portions of the Divine Word, where, in a space also of limited extent-within the short compass of a chapter, or even part of it-the more prominent doctrines of Salvation are brought into juxtaposition, and set side by side, almost in systematic order. This chapter offers to our attention one of the most |