work. A dead world is not to be quickened on easy terms. We must see
mankind in some measure as God sees them if we are to do God's work
among them. So-called Christian teachers, who do not believe that the
race is dead in sin, or who, believing it, do not feel the tragedy of
the fact, and the power lodged in their hands to bring the true life,
may prophesy to the dry bones for ever, and there will be no shaking
among them.

The great work of the gospel is to communicate divine life. The details
of the process in the vision are not applicable in this respect. As we
have pointed out, they are shaped after the pattern of the creation of
Adam, but the essential point is that what the world needs is the
impartation from God of His Spirit. We know more than Ezekiel did as to
the way by which that Spirit is given to men, and as to the kind of life
which it imparts, and as to the connection between that life and
holiness. It is a diviner voice than Ezekiel's which speaks to us in the
name of God, and says to us with deeper meaning than the prophet of the
Exile dreamed of, 'I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live.'

But we may note that it is possible to have the outward form of a living
body, and yet to have no life. Churches and individuals may be perfectly
organised and perfectly dead. Creeds may be articulated most correctly,
every bone in its place, and yet have no vitality in them. Forms of
worship may be punctiliously proper, and have no breath of life in them.
Religion must have a body, but often the body is not so much the organ
as the sepulchre of the spirit. We have to take heed that the externals
do not kill the inward life.

Again, we note that this great act of life-giving is God's revelation of
His name,--that is, of His character so far as men can know it. 'Ye