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 fleshless 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 in B telligible to our limited understandings. Scattered over the pages of sacred Scripture, let them also be collected and arranged in systematic order; how beautifully they fit! doctrine to doctrine, duty to duty; till-all connected with each other, all "members one of another"they rise up into a form of perfect symmetry, presenting that very system which, with minor differences 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 to heaven, it has also 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 distributed 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, appears 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 silent and solemn shades man still walks in 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 splendour 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 colours-lichens, grey, 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 colours of the loom, spread an elastic carpet around 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, 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 slight exercise of fancy, in such a scene one could see Nature engaged in her adorations-we could 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 globeas in that spot-plants of all forms and families seem confusedly scattered, amid this apparent disorder the |