It is of the first moment that men should have right and adequate impressions of the truth. A man's life is properly moulded through his intelligence. His intelligence moulds his tastes, feeds his emotions, inspires his purposes, directs his life. Clear convictions of truth and duty possess unspeakable value.

I. MORAL OBTUSENESS IN MEN IS A GRIEF TO GOD. Eyes have been conferred for the sole reason that men may see; and ears, that they may hear. Yet men often misuse and neglect them. By indulgence in vicious likings they wilfully blind the inner eye and make deaf the inner ear. "None are so blind as those who will not see." "If the eye be evil, the whole body is full of darkness." If the sole channel of truth be choked, the man is the victim of falsehood. This is a grief to God, and he adopts a thousand methods to illumine the dark understanding. He sometimes blinds the eye of sense that the eye of the mind may open. He finds his way into the heart of men through some other avenue hitherto untried; for he who made man will find some method of access to his soul.

II. A NOVEL FORM OF PROPHECY - A DRAMA IN ACTUAL LIFE. Instruction, as a rule, is addressed to the ear; but for the deaf and for infants it is often addressed to the eye. So, in olden times, God often gave to men an object lesson. We have the narrative of such an event in the fourth chapter, where Ezekiel was required to lie on free side of his body during three hundred and ninety days. When Zedekiah the prophet was summoned to the court of Ahab, to give counsel respecting the projected war, Zedekiah entered the king's presence furnished with horns of iron. The appearance of these was to add impressiveness to the prophet's words. So when Paul was journeying for the last time to Jerusalem, Agabus, a prophet, came to him at Caesarea, and, taking Paul's girdle, bound his own hands and feet, then added, "So shall the Jews bind the man that owneth this girdle." This appeal to the eye by living action strengthens conviction in the minds of spectators of the truth and importance of the message. By every possible method God accommodated himself to the necessities of the people for whom he still designed kindness.

III. MEDIATORAL SERVICE BY MAN FOR MEN. The labour of a true prophet is no sinecure. It is the hardest of toil. He must have no care for himself in his solicitude for others. To be a true prophet he must be like-minded with God. The self-forgetful, self sacrificing love of God must flow in his veins. He must be completely devoted to the good of those to whom he is sent. No labour must be accounted arduous, no pain severe, in order to success in his undertaking. Now Ezekiel is required to array himself in an emigrant's attire; provide himself with the usual baggage for foreign travel; take his staff in his hand; carry his equipment on his shoulder; leave his home in the sight of men, yet with face veiled; and dig a hole through the city wall, to secure exit from the city. To do all this in the town of Tel-Abib would excite public attention, surprise, and wonder. The people would consider the prophet mad. Yet this was the very end God had in view, viz. to arrest attention and to produce reflection. This strange action would indicate the strength of Ezekiel's faith, and strong faith awakens faith in others. He was willing, like Paul, "to become all things, so that by any means he might save some."

IV. INQUIRY LEANS TO CLEARER REVELATION OF TRUTH. The knowledge which man gets in response to inquiry is more appreciated and more pondered than that which is given unasked. A great triumph is gained over the sluggishness of our nature when a spirit of inquiry is stirred within. If a man desires knowledge, it is an omen for good; it is the dawn of blessing. Clearer and fuller information can come through the gateway of the ear than through the gateway of the eye. The people to whom Ezekiel addressed himself were those of the Captivity at Tel-Abib. They were fostering a false hope (aided by vain counsels sent from brethren in Jerusalem) that their captivity would be very brief, and that new political combinations would result in speedy restoration to Palestine. Thus their minds would be disturbed; their simple trust was diverted from God, and they were losing the spiritual benefit which the exile was intended to bring. Inquiry after the truth would lead the way to mental tranquillity and submission. The clear fulfilment of prophecy would strengthen faith in God.

V. FOLLY OF ALL EFFORT TO EVADE GOD. In the fourteenth verse we read, "I will scatter toward every wind all that are about to help him, and all his bands." This announcement would embrace the Egyptian host which came to help Zedekiah, as well as his own people. To resist Jehovah is to resist the granite rock. A single word from God ought to suffice in order to obtain our readiest obedience. Patriotism is an excellent virtue in its place, but very often it is only a poor admixture of vanity and selfish ambition. Pious trust and pious obedience are far superior. To be wise we must always be on the side of God. God's will is supreme, and, in the end, is irresistible. Oneness with that will is life and peace.

VI. TO KNOW GOD - THIS IS THE FINAL ISSUE. It is instructive to observe how that this is the frequent refrain: "They shall know that I am the Lord." This was a lesson which the Hebrews would not learn in days of prosperity; therefore they were led into the deep shades of adversity to acquire it. The discipline, though severe, was successful. Experience is an excellent school, though a costly one. It cured them of their foolish belief in idols, and wrought in them the conviction that the unseen Jehovah alone was God. Yet in many persons this knowledge was only intellectual. It did not command their affection, nor draw after it spontaneous service. The knowledge of God which becomes to us salvation, is an experimental knowledge. It is knowledge of God as our God - our reconciled Father. We know him with personal intimacy. We admit him to the inmost chamber of our hearts. He becomes Emmanuel, i.e. God with us - God in us. We grow up into his likeness, We imitate his qualities. We yield to him will and heart and life. - D.

Eyes and ears are for many reasons the most important and valuable organs of the human body, the chief "gates" — to use the language of Bunyan — to the famous town of Mansoul. The one brings us into contact with form, the other with sound; the one has relation to space, the other to time. No part in the human frame is so wonderful in their execution as these. "The eye," says one, "by its admirable combination of coats and humours and lenses, produces on the retina, or expansion of nerve at the back of the socket or bony cavity, in which it is so securely lodged, a distinct picture of the minutest or largest object; so that, on a space that is less than an inch in diameter, a landscape of miles in extent, with all its variety of scenery, is depicted with perfect exactness of relative proportion in all its parts." Nor is the ear less wonderful. "It is a complicated mechanism lying wholly within the body, showing only the wide outer porch through which the sound enters. It conveys the sound through various chambers to the inmost extremities of those nerves which bear the messages to the brain. So delicate is this organ, that it catches the softest whispers, and conveys them to the soul, and so strong that it hears the roll of the loudest thunder in the chamber of its mistress." Now, the text — as well as other parts of Scripture — teaches that man's spiritual nature has organs answering to those organs of the body. The text calls us to notice the spiritual disuse of these faculties.

I. It involves the greatest DEPRIVATION.

1. The disuse shuts out the grandest realities of existence. What are the immutable principles of rectitude, what is the great spiritual universe, what is God Himself, to the man who is morally blind and deaf?

2. The disuse shuts out the sublimest joys of existence. What are the charms of physical to moral beauty, the beauty of holiness and God? What are the charms of physical harmony to those of that great moral anthem that fills the spiritual universe with rapture and delights the ear of God Himself? How great then the deprivation of the spiritually blind and deaf! God is with them, His pure, happy heavens lie about them, and they know it not.

3. The disuse deteriorates the faculties themselves. Unused organs often die out.

II. It involves the greatest WICKEDNESS.

1. It is an abuse of talent. All the powers we possess, we possess as trustees, not as proprietors; they are entrusted to us for a specific purpose.

2. It is an abuse of the greatest talents. These spiritual faculties are the highest we have — higher than bodily power, higher than intellectual ability, higher than natural genius.Conclusion —

1. The sad condition of the unregenerate world.

2. The deeply needed mission of Christ.

(Homilist.)