Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’ ”
Parallel Translations
-
Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’ ”
-
Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.
-
Then said He unto me: 'Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his chambers of imagery? for they say: The LORD seeth us not, the LORD hath forsaken the land.'
Cross-references (15)
Passages linked to Ezekiel 8:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Isaiah 29:15 Woe to those who deeply hide their counsel from Yahweh, and whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us?” and “Who knows us?”
- Ezekiel 9:9 Then he said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh doesn’t see.’
- Ezekiel 8:15 Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? You will again see yet greater abominations than these.”
- Psalms 10:11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten. He hides his face. He will never see it.”
- John 3:19-20 This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed.
- Ephesians 5:12 For it is a shame even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.
- Job 22:12-13 “Isn’t God in the heights of heaven? See the height of the stars, how high they are! You say, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness?
- Job 24:13-17 “These are of those who rebel against the light. They don’t know its ways, nor stay in its paths. The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief. The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No eye will see me.’ He disguises his face. In the dark they dig through houses. They shut themselves up in the daytime. They don’t know the light. For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness, for they know the terrors of the thick darkness.
- Psalms 94:7-10 They say, “Yah will not see, neither will Jacob’s God consider.” Consider, you senseless among the people; you fools, when will you be wise? He who implanted the ear, won’t he hear? He who formed the eye, won’t he see? He who disciplines the nations, won’t he punish? He who teaches man knows.
- Ezekiel 8:6-8 He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they do? Even the great abominations that the house of Israel commit here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? But you will again see yet other great abominations.” He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, “Son of man, dig now in the wall.” When I had dug in the wall, I saw a door.
- Ezekiel 8:17 Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger. Behold, they put the branch to their nose.
- Psalms 73:11 They say, “How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
- Ezekiel 8:11 Seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel stood before them. In the middle of them Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of incense went up.
- Ezekiel 14:1 Then some of the elders of Israel came to me, and sat before me.
- Ezekiel 20:1 In the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month, some of the elders of Israel came to inquire of Yahweh, and sat before me.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (17 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain Again God questions his servant: we have explained the…
Again God questions his servant: we have explained the reason — that he may pass sentence as a judge on his own people, whence it may be more clearly evident that those who had provoked God were unworthy of any pardon. Thou seest, says he, what the elders do? Through a feeling of honor he does not here name these elders of the house of Israel, but rather reproves their ingratitude, because they so drive others with them into alliance with their impiety. For elders ought to show the way to others. Since, therefore, the profanation of the worship of God took its origin from them, hence their disgrace is increased, and they were worthy of greater reproach. Seest thou, says he, what they do in darkness? From this word I gather that the place was remote from public observation; for there were near the floor of the Temple many cells and many chambers, as we see in Jeremiah. (Jeremiah 20:2; 1 Kings 6:5.) Since, then, the ciders had their apartments there, it is not surprising that a place was shown to the Prophet which they had so stained with their paintings. But he says that they did it in darkness, because they kept secret their sacred rites; as also there were mysteries among profane nations, which were not open to any but the initiated. Since therefore the multitude was not thought worthy of those mysteries, it is therefore probable that the place among the Jews of which the Prophet speaks was like a small chapel, which the elders, and those who had authority among the people, retained to themselves. he adds, each within the recesses Some translate — in the chambers of their painting; but I take the word משכית, meshkith, for imagination, as it is also taken in other places. It properly signifies painting, but it is also transferred to the thoughts of men. Therefore when he speaks of recesses or hidden places, I do not understand chambers, though I do not deny that he alludes to those recesses by which men separate themselves from the multitude, by way of honor. In the meantime he equally reproves those tortuous and perverse counsels which the ciders of the people inwardly cherished. For those who think themselves wiser than the vulgar, have some hidden pride, and swell with concealed haughtiness; and therefore they are said by Isaiah to dig for themselves hiding-places to escape from God, while they seem to themselves cunning. (Isaiah 29:15.)
Now, therefore, we see in what sense the Prophet mentions hiding-places of their imagination, namely, because they reckon such pictures the mark of the greatest and rarest prudence. This was again prodigious, that the elders so gave themselves up to foul defilements. For among profane nations no religion held the leaders and heads of the people. We shall not find, either among the Greeks or the Latins, any of the higher classes, and of the chief governors, involved in the errors of the common people, but they pretended religion, that they might hold others in obedience. They instituted, indeed, great pomp; they pretended no small degree of reverence; but when they passed their time as friends at home, they laughed at all these trifles. Since, therefore, all the ceremonies of the Gentiles were a laughing-stock to sensible men, this was indeed a detestable prodigy that the elders of the people of Israel, in a secret place, in the very recesses of their thoughts, fabricated idols for themselves. Now the cause is expressed why they heaped to themselves that multitude of gods, namely, because they thought that God no longer regarded them This passage is badly explained when interpreters think that the elders were epicureans, who dreamt that God enjoyed case and indulgence in heaven. They bring forward other passages, which seem similar but in words only, as where, in the book of Job, the impiety of the multitude is described, he says they think that God walks upon the hinges of heaven. (Job 22:14.) But the Prophet speaks more within bounds. Hence those who take this passage generally, extenuate the force of the doctrine which ought to be elicited from these words. Why, then, had the Jews fabricated so many idols for themselves? because they thought that God no longer regarded them, as I have already explained it; and this was the sign of their gross depravity; for God had chastised them in various ways: they ought to have returned into the way, yet they were so far from repenting, that they rather champed the bit, and thus persuaded themselves to seek other deities. And this impiety has occurred in all ages. At this time it clearly appears in the Papacy; nay, even the blind may even feel it with their hands. For when God afflicts these wretched ones, at first they suppliantly ask pardon; but. when he presses upon them more severely, then they begin to rage and look hither and thither, and have a common proverb — “I know not to what saint I ought to pay my vows.” Boys learn this proverb in the Papacy, and old men always have it on their lips in perplexity. Hence Ezekiel reproves this fault, when he gives this as a reason for the aged heaping up this multitude of deities — that they thought themselves overlooked by God — Jehovah, they say, does not see us here: they do not speak simply of God’s providence, but indignantly complain of his disregard, because he did not relieve their miseries, and had deserted the land, as they afterwards explain themselves; for they immediately assert that God had deserted the land We see, therefore, that they did not speak simply against God’s providence, as if he despised human things, but that they were inflamed with fury, because God’s hand pressed them heavily, and they did not feel any help in him. Hence they descended to brutes, reptiles, various painting’s, and all kinds of abomination, because they thought that they were worshipping in vain the one true God. It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain For besides their common idolatry they had particular service,…
For besides their common idolatry they had particular service, which they had in secret chambers.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 8:12 Then said he unto me, Son of…
Eze 8:12 Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.
Ver. 12. What the ancients of Israel do in the dark?] Idolatry is a deed of darkness. The Athenians had their Eleusinia, the Romans the rites of their Bona Dea, and the Egyptians their Osiridis Pamylia, all done in the dark. The Popish temples are many of them dark, and some so stuffed with presents and memories that they are thereby made much the darker.
Read full note →
For they say, The Lord seeth us not.] Atheism is the source of all sinfulness. These fools, being in the dark, thought that God could not see what they did there.
The Lord hath forsaken the earth.] Hath cast off all care of us, and therefore we must see to ourselves, look us out some other deities. See Jer 18:15. What a base speech is that of Pliny, {a} Irridendum vero curam agere rerum humanarum, illud quicquid est, Summum! It is no way likely that God taketh care what becometh of man’s matters. Os durum! Harsh mouth!
{a} Lib. ii. cap. 7.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Hast thou seen? observed and thoroughly considered.
Hast thou seen? observed and thoroughly considered.
The ancients: see Eze 8:11.
Read full note →
Do in the dark; whether ashamed to act openly what was most absurd, or whether out of blindness doting in secret on what heathens secretly derided, though for interest they acted it openly; owning that religion which awed the people among them, and deriding it at home. But idolatrous Jews blush in public, and retire into corners to be idolaters, as thou seest in this chamber.
Every man; every one of those ancients, for still God had his remnant that kept close to God.
In the chambers; secret closet, or bed-chamber.
They say; the most shameless would give a reason for their unreasonable practices.
The Lord, Jehovah, the everlasting and almighty God,
seeth us not: either they deny his providence, and act what they durst not if they thought the Lord knew and noted it, as if they accounted Jehovah no better than idols, that have eyes but see not; or else they deny God’s care of them and their affairs, traduce him, as if he minded them not, and therefore they must choose some or other god for patron who would better help them than he had done.
The Lord hath forsaken the earth: this seems to explain the meaning of that,
he seeth us not; and so with atheism more than ordinary they would cast the blame of choosing other gods on God himself.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Then said he unto me, son of man, hast…
Then said he unto me, son of man, hast thou seen,.... Here should be a stop, as the accent "segolta" shows; hast thou taken notice of, hast thou considered, what thou hast seen, the amazing shocking abominations committed by these men? it follows, and the question is to be repeated, "hast thou seen"
what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark? their deeds being evil, such as will not bear the light, of which they had reason to be ashamed before men; and which they imagined would not be seen by the Lord, though the darkness and the light are both alike to him:
Read full note →
every man in the chambers of his imagery? the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, render it, "in his hidden" or "secret chamber"; and the Vulgate Latin version, "in the hidden place of his bedchamber". The Targum is,
"in the chamber of the house of his bed;''
in his bedchamber; that is, in those chambers of the temple, which belonged to the priests and Levites, on the walls of which were portrayed the images and pictures of their gods. Here they had their secret rites or mysteries performed, in imitation of the Heathens; who had the several mysteries of their religion privately observed; to which none were admitted but those that were initiated into them; as those of Osiris among the Egyptians; of Ceres with the Grecians; and of Bona Dea among the Romans; as Junius observes. Though some interpret this of the imaginations of their minds, according to which they framed to themselves deities, and a form of worship;
for they say, the Lord seeth not, the Lord hath forsaken the earth; this they gave as a reason of their idolatry, because the Lord took no notice of them, did not help them when in distress; but, as they concluded, had forsaken them; therefore they betook themselves to the gods of the Egyptians, Syrians, and other nations, for their assistance and protection: for these words are not the language of Epicureans, or such who deny the providence of God in general; who think that God takes no notice of the lower world, only of the upper one, as Kimchi and others interpret them; for these elders of Israel were not so ignorant and stupid as to deny the general providence of God, only distrusted his particular care of them.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Seeth not - They deny God's care of them…
Seeth not - They deny God's care of them and their affairs, and therefore they must chuse some other God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Eze 8:12. Hast thou seen what the ancients do…
Eze 8:12. Hast thou seen what the ancients do in the dark — Do secretly; every man in the chambers of his imagery — Chambers so very private, that the prophet is described as obliged to dig a hole through the wall before he could discover their idolatrous practices. For they say, The Lord seeth us not — They either deny the being and providence of God, (Eze 9:9,) or they say in their hearts, God hath cast us off, and withdrawn his wonted protection from us. They seem to have been of the same mind with Ahaz, who resolved to worship the gods of the Syrians, his conquerors, 2Ch 28:23. So these men worshipped the idols of their neighbours, whom they saw to be more prosperous than themselves. Observe here, reader, a practical disbelief of God’s omniscience and superintending providence is one chief cause of men’s treacherous departures from him. The Lord hath forsaken the earth — Looks not after the affairs of it, and therefore we had as well worship any other god as him. Or, he hath forsaken our land, and left it to be a prey to its enemies, and therefore it is time for us to look out to some other god to whom to commit the protection of it. This was a blasphemous reflection upon God, as if he had forsaken them first, otherwise they would not have forsaken him. Those are indeed ripe for ruin who are arrived to such a pitch of impudence as to lay the blame of their sins on God himself.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain In the dark - Hidden in the secret places…
In the dark - Hidden in the secret places which the seer dug through the wall to discover.
Chambers of his imagery - i. e., chambers painted with images.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain every man in . . . chambers of .…
every man in . . . chambers of . . . imagery--The elders ("ancients") are here the representatives of the people, rather than to be regarded literally. Mostly, the leaders of heathen superstitions laughed at them secretly, while publicly professing them in order to keep the people in subjection. Here what is meant is that the people generally addicted themselves to secret idolatry, led on by their elders; there is no doubt, also, allusion to the mysteries, as in the worship of Isis in Egypt, the Eleusinian in Greece, &c., to which the initiated alone were admitted. "The chambers of imagery" are their own perverse imaginations, answering to the priests' chambers in the vision, whereon the pictures were portrayed (Eze 8:10).
Lord . . . forsaken . . . earth--They infer this because God has left them to their miseries, without succoring them, so that they seek help from other gods. Instead of repenting, as they ought, they bite the curb [CALVIN].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 12. Chambers of his imagery — Has this reference…
12. Chambers of his imagery — Has this reference to the pictures on the wall (Eze_8:11), or does it intimate that all this is merely a symbolic picture representing the hearts of the leaders of Israel? It is hard to believe that all these forms of worship were actually being carried forward in Jehovah’s temple. Ezekiel may possibly only mean that in his heart every man in his “chambers of imagery” is an idol worshiper.
The Lord hath forsaken the earth — Or, land. Jehovah is here placed in the thought of these chief men on a level with the heathen gods, who were only powerful over a limited territory, and who, if they left the land for any cause, lost sight of what was transpiring there. (Compare Eze_9:9; 1Ki_18:27.) As Jerusalem and Israel were losing pre-eminence, the faith in the power of the local God became fainter and fainter. “Though the name of the leader of the band might have warned them that the Lord was listening, they boasted in their blindness that Jehovah did not see them; he had forsaken the temple and gone elsewhere.” — Plumptre.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 12. the chambers of his imagery] Or, his chambers…
12. the chambers of his imagery] Or, his chambers of imagery. The language implies that there were many chambers of imagery, and again suggests that the scene was symbolical. For “ancients” elders. On “imagery” Lev_26:1; Num_33:52.
forsaken the earth] Rather: the land. The multiplied calamities of later years suggested that Jehovah no more protected the country (ch. Eze_9:9). This was possibly the feeling of the elders and people in some moods, but in other moods they spoke differently. In ch. Eze_11:15 they say to those already in exile, “Get you far from the Lord! unto us is this land given in possession.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (12) Do in the dark, i.e., in secret. Hence…
(12) Do in the dark, i.e., in secret. Hence the difficulty of access to the place of their worship. The ordinary idolatries of Israel, as of most heathen, consisted in the worship of the true, or of a supposed spiritual Deity, by means of sensible images (comp. Exo_32:8). This was open and public enough at Jerusalem at this time; but the peculiar sin here portrayed was the actual worship of the creature by means of images and paintings. This, although joined in by the chief people of the nation, was practised secretly, perhaps, not only for the purpose of concealing its Egyptian tendencies from the Chaldæans, but also to throw over it the charm of mystery, as was so common among the heathen.
Every man in the chambers of his imagery.—By “chambers of imagery” (the same word as in Lev_26:1) is intended chambers painted with images like the one now shown to the prophet. This was not a solitary case; on the contrary, it was but an example of what was done everywhere. The people stifled the voice of conscience then, as in every age, by saying “The LORD seeth us not,” comp. Psa_10:11; Psa_94:7, &c. Yet, besides this, they argued, doubtless from the calamities that had already fallen upon their country, “the LORD hath forsaken the earth,” or. rather, the land; and therefore they must have recourse to other help. But the prophet was to see yet worse things.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Every man, etc. And this, after all, was but…
Every man, etc. And this, after all, was but a sample of the prevalence of the Egyptian influence. Other elders had, in the dark, a like adytum, a like chamber of imagery, like the Latin lararium, filled. with a like cloud of incense. And though the name of the leader of the band might have warned them that the Lord was listening, they boasted, in their blindness, that Jehovah did not see them; he had forsaken the temple, and had fiche elsewhere. They thought of Jehovah as of a local deity who had abdicated. They were free to do as they liked without fear. The words are worth noting further as the first of a series of popular half proverbs, in which the thoughts of the people clothed themselves. (see Eze_11:3 Eze_12:22 Eze_18:2, 19 33:10 37:11) All these imply some personal knowledge of what was passing in Jerusalem.
Chambers of imagery.
Read full note →
Old men who should have been the guides of the younger generation were found by the prophet to have their secret practices of idolatry in private chambers, where they kept idols unknown to the world at large. Too careful for their reputation to share in the open idolatry of the mass of the people, these venerable hypocrites aggravated their guilt by cowardly deception. Safely ensconced in the seclusion of their chambers of imagery, they revelled in the orgies of a degrading idolatry, and then appeared in the streets as sedate citizens. The shameful sin of this double living may be practised in other forms with another kind of chamber of imagery.
I EVERY MAN HAS A CHAMBER OF IMAGERY IN HIS OWN HEART. Children and poets are possessed of the most Powerful imagination; but even the dullest, most prosaic person is haunted with visionary presences, though of the most common place order. When we retire into ourselves, we unlock the door of our chamber of imagery and look at its ghostly scenes. There hang the portraits of the past, some blurred by the dust of years, others as clear as when they were first painted by the flash of a keen experience; some distorted into painful, impossible ugliness, others rounded into equally impossible perfection. There, too, are vague shadows of the future. But the most important images are designs and wishes, favourite fancies and pet ideas. These we embrace as friends; before some of them, perhaps, we prostrate ourselves in idolatrous worship. But happily we may also find there inspiring images of noble deeds, the ideals we would strive to copy in actual life. We may have left them too long in the dim chamber of imagery. We should bring them forth and clothe them with the flesh and blood of living deeds, while the bad images had better be crushed before they reach the doorway of utterance.
II THERE ARE DEEDS DONE IN THE CHAMBER OF IMAGERY. Lust is there, and adultery, covetousness, theft, hatred, and murder. So long as a man restrains his utterance he is tempted to believe that it matters not what he imagines. No greater delusion can be possible; for the true life is that which is lived within. While in his chamber of imagery, a man is his true self divested of the cloak of semblance which he wears when about in the world. What images does he there delight to gaze upon? The true character of the man will be determined by the answer to that question. Certainly evil images may come there unsought and unloved as painful temptations, and it is the duty of one who loves holiness to turn aside from such. But the images delighted in reveal the true self. The wickedness there planned and gloated over in evil thought is sin a deed of the soul. Ultimately it must come out in the life, for the imagination of the heart colours the external conduct, Shakespeare says
Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons, Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste, But, with a little act upon the blood, Burn like the mines of sulphur.
III IT IS A DELUSION TO SUPPOSE THAT GOD IS INDIFFERENT TO WHAT HAPPENS IN THE CHAMBER OF IMAGERY. The old men of Jerusalem comforted themselves with the notion that God did not see them, that he had forsaken the earth. This Ezekiel knew to be a monstrous delusion.
1. God looks into the chamber of imagery. There is a window in every soul, through which the eye of God gazes right down to the bottom of its most secret thoughts. He knows us better than we know ourselves. The cloak of hypocrisy is not as the thinnest veil between us and God. Now, this is of supreme interest, because, while it does not very much matter what our fellow men may think about us, God"s thought of us is all-important.
2. God will judge us for deeds done in the chamber of imagery. Knowing all, he will not judge only by what the world sees. Sins of the heart will be noted by God, and will bring down upon us his just wrath, even though the hands have been clean from iniquity.
3. The only effectual salvation must be ore that cleanses the chamber of imagery. "Create in me a clean heart, O God," cries David, in the depth of his penitence, knowing that the outward sins he had committed have sprung from the evil of his imagination. Therefore nothing short of the new birth which Christ brings can save our souls.
Atheism.
In the chambers of the temple courts the prophet in his vision beheld seventy elders, representing the people of Judah and Israel, engaged in idolatrous worship. The walls of the chambers were decorated with figures of the animals to which homage was rendered. Those who by reason of character and station should have been the leaders of the people in the offices of pure religion were engaged in waving the censers of the idolatrous worship, and the thick cloud of unholy incense filed the chambers. As the prophet gazed appalled at this awful spectacle, the voice of the Lord addressed him: "Hast thou seen what they do? They say, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth." Here was the true explanation of the defection of the Jews leaders and common people alike. It was atheism which led to idolatry. And atheism is far more generally at the root of all evils in society than many superficial observers are willing to allow.
I THE ELEMENTS OF ATHEISM. There are many who are not professedly and openly atheists, who are such in reality. They may not cast aside the Name of God, they may not openly repudiate the Law of God; but in their hearts they believe not in him. There may be recognized on their part:
1. Disbelief in the Lord"s omniscient observation of men. "They say, TheLord seeth us not.
2. Disbelief in the Lord"s presence and activity. "They say, The Lord hathforsaken the earth." Whoever they may be who make these assertions, and whatever their standing among their fellow men, they are practically and really atheistic.
II THE OPERATION OF ATHEISM. It is impossible that such disbelief as that described should be without influence upon the moral nature and conduct.
1. Atheism removes the restraints from sin which belief in the Divinepresence imposes. This is not the highest view to take of the question, but it is a just one; and many natures are largely influenced by the knowledge that an all-seeing God regards all their ways and thoughts.
2. Atheism removes the inspiration to goodness which belief in the Divinepresence furnishes. The knowledge that a holy and omnipotent Father is ever with us, is ever ready to encourage and assist us in all our endeavours to realize our highest ideal, must needs be a factor of great importance in our spiritual life. Let this be withheld or contradicted, and how much that is best must be withdrawn along with it!
III THE FRUITS OF ATHEISM.
1. Among these Jews at Jerusalem disbelief in Jehovah led to superstitionand idolatry no unusual conjunction.
2. Very generally, atheism leads to self-indulgence and vice.
3. And it is destructive of all higher national life. Fidelity to God is fidelityto principle, fidelity to society, fidelity to the highest conception formed of human life. Infidelity to God involves the opposite of all these virtues, and abandonment to the life of interest, of ease, of pleasure; it gives power to every temptation to sin, to every evil tendency of society. Under its influence man sinks to the merely animal life, and to such mental activity as subserves that life.
APPLICATION. We are sometimes told that in speculative atheism there is no great harm; that without belief in God men may be good citizens, and may discharge honourably the several relationships of life. Without denying that, in certain instances, the influence of Christianity may for a time abide after Christianity itself has been abandoned, we have yet to look at the proper and inevitable consequences of a general abandonment of belief in God. We shall find these so terrible, that we may well watch and pray against the first loosenings of belief in the most fundamental and precious of all truths. T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Every man in the chambers of his imagery.
Eze_8:12
Every man in the chambers of his imagery.
Read full note →
Chambers of imagery
Though we are not told that this was a human vision, or in any sense what we understand as an incarnation, yet there are terms in the description of it which might lead to that conclusion. Always it is made evident that a struggle is proceeding in Biblical history towards the miracle of incarnation. The angel would be as a man; cherubim and seraphim come before us in human outlines; yea, God Himself is not afraid to reveal His glory to us under human forms and symbols. Nothing of mere fancy is found in the interpretation that all these initial intimations, struggles, visions, point to One whose name was to be Emmanuel--God with us. In the fulness of time God sent forth His Son. In Christ Jesus we see the meaning of all these premonitions, hints, dim yet exciting suggestions. When Ezekiel is taken, in the third verse, by a lock of his hair and lifted up between the earth and the heaven, we are, of course, to understand that this was done, not literally, but in vision. Here is what we have often seen as the power of being absent, yet present; in an immediate locality, yet far away beyond the horizon; in Jerusalem, and yet at the ends of the earth; in the midst of the sea, and yet beyond the stars. Here is a counterpart of the action which has just been described. Whilst spirits are continually struggling to assume human shape, men are continually aspiring towards some new condition of being and service. There is a continual process of descent and ascent in the whole economy of God. Such double action is full of moral suggestion, and should certainly ennoble us with a feeling that as yet we know little or nothing of the possibilities of our own nature, but that a great revelation of Gods purpose in our existence is yet to be made. In the same verse there is a singular expression--where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. It has been supposed that at this time heathen idols had actually found a place in the holy temple, and this is supposed to present the most vivid and appalling proof of the corruption into which the priests and the people had fallen. Is the meaning of the fourth verso that for the last time there was an evident struggle as between the image of jealousy and the glory of the God of Israel? It has been suggested that we are not to understand by this glory the glory of the Lord which once filled the temple, but the particular glory which was seen in the vision shown to Ezekiel in the plain, a vision within a vision, a dim light in a far-off horizon, not the old glory which burned with infinite brightness, but another glory as of one preparing to vanish in judgment from the temple and the city. It is interesting to notice that we have in all these descriptions, not the view which Ezekiel took of the condition of Israel,--we have the condition of Israel as it revealed itself to the Divine eyes. It is essential to all true and lasting ministry that it should proceed upon Gods own estimate of human nature. We are not left to form our own fancies regarding human origin, or human apostasy, or human capability: in this as in all other things we nave to trust to a revelation which has been made to us, a revelation which would be the less valuable if it were not confirmed at every point by our own painful experience. We should not forget the sacred and gracious fact that, notwithstanding the rebelliousness of the house of Israel, one of their own number was sent to pronounce Divine judgment and to reveal Divine purpose. In what contrast did Ezekiel stand to his own countrymen! God has never left Himself without an Elijah, or an Ezekiel, or some other prophet, or suppliant, that has proved the continuity of Divine providence and the continuity of Divine grace. Ezekiel was to be astounded by revelations which he never could have discovered by himself. The mighty being under whose conduct he was placed brought him to the door of the court, and when he looked he beheld a hole in the wall. This hole or window was too small for entrance, hence Ezekiel was directed to enlarge it so that he might enter in--Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. All this is indicative of extreme secrecy, as if the men would have hidden themselves from the very God of heaven, as if they would have had a hole all their own, unpenetrated by Divine inspection. There was an open and public idolatry in Jerusalem at this very time, but such is the downward tendency of all evil that it was not sufficient to have a public and an almost established idolatry, but something further should be done in darkness and concealment. Stolen waters are sweet. When wickedness can be enjoyed in public it ceases to be an enjoyment. It would appear as if the darkness were necessary to bring out the full savour of a bad mans delight. By chambers of imagery understand chambers painted throughout with images such as Ezekiel saw. We are not to understand that this was a solitary instance; we are to accept it rather as indicative of the general condition and worship of the idolatrous people. Conscience had been driven away from the rule of human life. The people who were once the very elect of God said in their wickedness, The Lord seeth us not: we have found a refuge from His eye, and here we may do what we please in the gratification of our worst desires. Is this merely a historical instance? Is there no desire now to plunge into an impenetrable concealment? Is it not true now that in many enjoyments the whole delight is to be found in the secrecy of their participation? A man can hide himself from his fellow man in this matter, and can in the very act of prayer place himself within chambers of imagery, and delight himself with visions which no eye but his own can see. The painful part of all this revelation consists in the fact that the idolatry was perpetrated within the sacred enclosure of the temple. This was not something done at a distance, in some far-away grove, in some spot which but few had ever penetrated; it was actually done in the temple, in the sacred building, on the consecrated floor, and the altar itself was dragged into the unholy and disastrous service. How are the high places made low! How are the mighty fallen! A decay of veneration is a decay of the whole character. Once let us feel that all places are equally common, and the level of our whole life will go down with that conclusion. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Chambers of imagery
Though this was merely a vision, through which it was intended to present the corrupted state of Judah, we may suppose that the imagery was drawn from customs that then prevailed. These secret midnight incantations were not unusual in heathen worship. An ancient historian relates, that round the room in African Thebes where the body of one of their kings was supposed to be buried, a multitude of chambers were built, which had beautiful paintings of all the beasts held sacred in Egypt. But we need not regard this as merely a visionary representation of the state of Judah. The mind of man is a chamber of imagery in whose darkness go on works hidden from the world, and sometimes, we may fancy, hidden even from the eye of God. A hall of imagery! No phrase could better describe the mind of man,--and Memory the painter. In colours bright or dark, in the very lineaments of joy or shame or grief, she paints every deed, every struggle of the soul; our very wishes and purposes, though unacted, all are there. The world may be ignorant of what is there, but we cannot forget. Come, then, and by that door to which all have the key let us enter these halls of imagery within the human soul. Light up the torches and raise them aloft, that we may see what is upon the wall. These halls are as various as are the lives of men. We have all read of the Catacombs that lie under one of the great European capitals. They stretch under whole quarters of the city. In terrible order, arranged in innumerable galleries, are deposited the remains of more than ten generations,--a world of silence below, while heave and swell in endless confusion the surges of life above. You enter these gloomy abodes with torches, and on every side are seen the mementos of death and decay. More gloomy than this, sometimes, is the human mind. Portrayed on its walls are scenes of decay and death. Here the innocence of childhood--a fair, frail creature of the light--is slowly dying. There, on an altar whence once arose holy aspirations to heaven, the fire is gone out. Virtues once fresh and blooming sink and expire under the assaults of the world. Here is seen one, trembling and yet resolved, bartering away to the Evil One his honesty for gain; and there another surrendering his conscience for pleasure. In another space, the demolished temple, the trampled cross, are but symbols of a dead faith, And the angels weep over another scene, not because sickness and death of the body are there, but because in the soul the affections have withered into selfishness and died. And the man, as he passes through this awful gallery, recognises his own life. There are chambers of imagery in which we might gladly linger. It is said that in the Old World is a gallery of paintings in which are collected none but pictures of the Holy Family. The Virgin Mother and the infant Jesus, images of innocence and faith and heaven, smile on every side from the canvas. Some pure souls there may be who when they enter their chambers of imagery may behold such scenes alone as these;--a virtuous youth, a devout age, a Divine faith triumphing over the powers of the world. But at the best, the gallery of the mind can often present only a mingled series of pictures. We call ourselves Christians, and all unite in one form of outward homage to the same Almighty Power the Lord of heaven and earth. But each man has his chamber of imagery, and, could we enter in, how often should we find there the unhallowed rites of another worship. Enter silently this dark and concealed chamber. These are not the symbols of Jehovahs presence that we see. Here is an altar, and the god that is reared over it is Mammon. And here Power looks down from his throne; and there Pleasure stretches out her arms. The walls are covered with emblems of the world and the passions. And the man in the secret chamber of his imagery swings his censer, and bows down in adoration before the gods of his idolatry. Here, in this secret chamber, are those wishes uttered which are his real prayers, and here that bowing down of the soul which is the only true worship. We are apt to feel as if what was done in these halls of imagery was unmarked. So thought the faithless ancients of the house of Judah. Darkness and thick walls gave concealment to their midnight conclave. Yet even there the angels, to whose spiritual vision these walls were transparent, were looking in; and to the Prophet, his eyes touched with spiritual light, all became visible. Silent, unseen, and mourning spectators they stood of these rites of sin and darkness. And when we enter our chambers of imagery, may there not be other witnesses than we think? Surely it is not a vain nor unreasonable thought, that around us are spiritual beings, to whose spiritual eyes the mind lies open, even as the scenes of the visible world lie open to the bodily eye. Happy is he who suffers to abide in his mind only those thoughts and purposes which these spiritual beings may gladly look upon. But if there be no other, there is one eye that looks through all the veils of time and sense,--from whom nothing is hid while doing, and by whom nothing is forgotten when done,--before whom all things lie open. We are apt to regard as of no importance what merely transpires in the mind. Yet, in the sight of God, in the mind is the seat and source of all good and ill. In these chambers of imagery is the real life of man. Here, where are the secret counsels and plans and resolves, where the passions conquer or are subdued, where are the principles that we obey and the will that resolves,--here is the life of the man. All else is but outward show and manifestation. It is here that He looks who requires that all true worshippers shall worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is described as one of the marks of the folly and impiety of the ancients of Judah that, when met in their chambers of imagery for their unhallowed rites, they said, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth. Ah no! Shut ourselves up in the chambers of the soul, and all lies exposed to Him. The imaginations that we indulge take form and shape before Him; and the hopes that we cherish are audible prayers to the object of our worship; and the thought is as the word, and the purpose as the deed. We enter now these halls of imagery at our choice, to review the past for correction and improvement. The time comes when we must enter them for judgment. In that dread hour the memory must take a conspicuous part. It is memory and conscience that shall affirm the righteous judgments of God. For that day, in which the strong shall bow and the most devout tremble, may God in His mercy aid us to be prepared! There is yet one other view of the subject. Our life must be very much in the present and the past. We have hopes, plans, speculations for the future; yet even these, so far as they are reasonable, depend on foundations laid in the past. The future is uncertain, but the past is fixed. It exerts a steady influence. Leaving out of view the effects of its discipline on the character, who can tell its power over our present happiness? It is our very dwelling and home which we build up around us day by day. We may leave our dwellings of wood and stone; may pull them down, repair them, remove from them; but not so this spiritual dwelling, this presence and audience chamber of the memory. We build it once for all; it stands forever, and is, according to what we have made it, our home or our prison. This is the souls hall of imagery. Let us give heed to the significance of the words. We think it desirable that the apartments in which we dwell should not be deformed or unsightly; if in our power, we would have them ornamented with pictures and works of art and taste. What, then, to us is the souls chamber of imagery! It is crowded with pictures; each deed and thought, by a daguerreotype that asks no light of the sun or chemists skill, is at once and silently transferred, and takes its place immovably on the wall. Like the chamber of the ancients of Judah, it may be covered with every form of creeping things and beasts worshipped as idols, which are but the symbols of our earthly passions and appetites; or on it may be portrayed Divine pictures of hope and faith. But once there, there they remain, a perpetual presence before the memory and conscience. Each new scene we picture on the walls must remain there forever, to frown or smile upon us. Hang up in your halls of imagery what you will hereafter rejoice to see there. Suffer not to be there scenes which shall affright and sting the soul. God has granted to man the boon and the opportunity of repentance, and in His mercy granted to repentance the promise of forgiveness. If the picture of the prodigals departure is painted, there may be added the prodigals return and the fathers enduring love. If there be the picture of one forgiven much, let there be added to it that of one who loves much. By the side of the wrong we have done, may be set our efforts to repair the wrong. Over the scenes of guilt and repentance, as over the retreating waves of the deluge, there may be arched the rainbow of the Divine mercy. Repentance may not face the past. The rays of the setting sun do not disperse the clouds that gather along the western horizon, but they fill the clouds with light, and make them luminous with hues of beauty. So repentance, though it cannot efface the past, transfigures it; and while it leaves enough of the dark cloud to make us humble, it pours over it and around it a light from heaven that fills the soul with serene hope. (E. Peabody, D. D.)
Chambers of imagery
Although we do not bow down before graven images, and our women weep not for Adonis, yet we may be as really idolaters as ever were the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, or these apostate Jews. We may be doing practical homage to the Baal of power,--canonising brute force, or adoring mere success. We may be causing our children to pass through the fire to Moloch,--sacrificing their happiness and their spiritual growth at the altar of society, or fashion, or worldly prudence. We may be practical worshippers of the Astarte of licentiousness,--sacrificing health, fortune, friendship, nobleness at the shrine of lust. We may be devotees of Mammon,--ever toiling, with selfish aims, to lay up stores of wealth; or we may be devotees of fame,--labouring with all our might to secure the breath of human applause.
I. These chambers of imagery may be taken as the type of a blind materialism. If we cease to exercise faith in the God whom we see not, all our boasted civilisation will not prevent us from beginning to worship, practically, the things which we see. This century has a materialism of its own--more refined, but perhaps just as dangerous as that of the ancient Egyptians.
1. Some of our men of science seem practically to have lost God. They may not be so unphilosophical as to assert that there is no God; but they tell us that they have abandoned the conception of creative acts, and that matter is the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb. They tell us that all we see around us and all we feel within us--the phenomena of physical nature, as well as those of the human mind--have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life. They say that, if the human mind will turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith, then this is a field for what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. And then they bid us take note that there is no very rank materialism here. But is it not the simple fact that these men have practically ceased to believe in a personal God? With them nature--the universal mother--takes the place of our Father in heaven. Swinging their censers in their halls of science, they burn their incense to matter, as having in itself the promise and potency of every form and quality of life.
2. The secularist follows in the same key,--addressing himself, however, to the working man, rather than to the student. God, he says, may or may not be a dream; but man is a reality. A future life may or may not be a dream; but the present life is palpable and real. Let us therefore confine ourselves to what we see and know. Let us cherish faith in political economy and social science. Let us believe that good budgets will do vastly more for the people than the old, worn out Bible!
3. It is reserved, however, for the positive philosopher to assert that the very idea of a personal God belongs to the infantile age of humanity, and that the notion of a personal immortality is nothing but a childish fancy. Auguste Comte, the founder of this philosophy, had his peculiar chamber of imagery; for, although a materialist, he discovered that he must have something to worship. And accordingly he employed his creative faculty to fashion what he calls the Religion of Humanity, which he believed was destined to supplant all other religions of the world. By the great being Humanity is to be understood the aggregate of good human beings--past, present, and future; including, however, such of the lower animals as have been and are most serviceable to mankind! Is not this, indeed, coming back again to the chambers of imagery--to the four-footed beasts, as well as to the images of human form?
4. Only one thing can save us from the grasp of materialism. Not civilisation, not poetry, not art, not philosophy; but simply the exercise of the faculty of faith. If the light that is in thee be darkness, how dark must the darkness be! If we will not use the inner eye which beholds the unseen and spiritual, that eye will become blind, and we shall begin to worship in the dark, and in some form or other the created instead of the Creator.
II. These chambers of imagery may be taken as the symbol of a secret ungodliness.
1. Men present themselves in the sanctuary; they seem to join in the praises and prayers which are offered to the Creator; perhaps they even come to the table of the Lord, and take into their hands the memorials of His death; but where all the while are their hearts? What is the real state of their souls? Whom are they actually serving in their daily life? What are they in their business and in their homes?
2. Sometimes the iniquity which men are carrying on in the dark comes suddenly and strangely to light; some hole in the wall betrays the secret! Here is a man who has had the reputation of being thoroughly upright and honourable, and whom his friends would have trusted to the utmost; but the hidden door is at length discovered, and it turns out that he has been engaged in some fraudulent transaction--cheating his creditors, or tampering with his employers books. Here is a woman, seemingly religious, outwardly decorous, spoken of by her friends and acquaintances as worthy of all respect and affection; but it turns out that, in secret, she is allowing the habit of drunkenness to creep over her, and that her servants could tell the tale of her occasional debasement. Here, again, is a man, respectable, amiable, seemingly devout, of whom everybody speaks well: when, all of a sudden, the hidden door is revealed, and it turns out that he has been living an unchaste and brutish life.
3. Resolve to be, at least, real and genuine. Let not your worship be a sham. Be impatient of every approach to insincerity. Give your very heart to God. Be Christs, not in name only, but in deed and in truth.
III. These chambers of imagery may be taken as the emblem of an impure imagination. Whether a mans imagination be pure or impure will depend, partly on his past conduct, partly on his present character, partly also, it must be acknowledged, on his circumstances. A man may accidentally see something which he wishes he had never seen, but which, being once seen, lodges itself in the memory, and is apt thenceforth to be reproduced in the imagination. Still, the mind has a certain power of self-direction, and can deliberately turn away its gaze from the picture thus presented. The same may be said of scenes of impurity, through which a man may have passed, only too willingly, in former days. As such scenes are reproduced occasionally in the chambers of imagery,--the man, if he be altered in character, will turn away from them with revulsion. But, alas! there are many who deliberately carry the lamp of memory into this secret chamber of the soul, and cast its full light on these loathsome pictures. Oh, beware of retiring into the chamber of an impure imagination, to revel in the pictures which it presents to you. This is the surest way of shutting your eye to the vision of the Eternal; for it is the pure in heart who see God. Beware, too, of everything that tends to defile the imagination,--impure actions, impure companionship, impure literature. Guard your imagination. Watch your reveries. Seek to carry a pure mind and heart after your evening prayer, even into the land of dreams. Cherish a love of what is truly beautiful and good. Live purely; and you will people your imagination with scenes of purity. Above all, cherish a sense of the presence of the Holy One. Say not, with the worshippers in the dark chamber, The Lord seeth us not; but say rather, Thou God seest me. (T. C. Finlayson.)
Chambers of imagery
Look at that dark painted chamber that we have all of us got in our hearts; at the idolatries that go on there, and at the flashing of a sudden light of a God who marks, into the midst of the idolatry.
I. Think of some dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts.
1. Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping amidst beauty, itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of everything brought into the light? Do you think you could stand it? Well, then, go to God and ask Him to keep you from the unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live humbly and self-distrustfully, and feel that your only strength is: Hold Thou me up, and I shall be saved.
2. The walls of that chamber were all painted with animal forms, to which these men were bowing down. You and I, by our memory, by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, by our desires, are forever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. It is an awful faculty that we possess of, so to speak, surrounding ourselves with the pictures of the things that we love, and have yielded ourselves in devotion and desire unto. Just as today, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their walls, in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful evils, the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may live ugly shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can do away with the marks of that which once hath been.
II. Look at the idolatries of the dark chamber. A mans true worship is not the worship that he performs in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that little private chapel where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the attribution of supreme excellence to, and the entire dependence of the heart upon, a certain person. And the people or the things to which a man attributes excellence, and on which he hangs his happiness and his well-being, these be his gods, no matter what his outward profession is. You can find out what these are for yourself, if you will honestly ask yourself one or two questions. What is it that I want most? What is it which makes my ideal happiness? What is it which I feel that I should be desperate without? What do I think about most naturally and spontaneously, when the spring is taken off and my thoughts are allowed to go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is God! then I do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper of God. Honour, wealth, literary or other distinction, the sweet sanctities of human love dishonoured and profaned by being exalted to the place which Divine love should hold, ease, family, animal appetites, lust, drink--these are the gods of some of us. And do not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and dependence from God alone is like the sin of these men in our text, that it is sacrilege. They had taken a chamber in the very Temple, and turned that into a temple of the false gods. Who is your heart made to shrine? We were made for God, and whensoever we turn the hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that which is the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten upon Him, to other creatures, we are guilty not only of idolatry but of sacrilege.
III. Look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light. Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that were looking upon them. They were hugging themselves in the conceit, The Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth. And all the while, all unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all. Not a finger lifted, not a sign to the foolish worshippers of His presence and inspection, but in stern silence He records and remembers. And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of putting a solemn truth? There are plenty of us--alas! alas! that it should be so--to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be that the properly blessed thought of a Divine eye resting upon you should be to you like the thought of a policemans bulls eye to a thief? Why should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and strength giving and companioning of all convictions? Thou God seest me. One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifest before the judgment seat of Christ. Do you like that thought? Can you stand it? Are you ready for it? My friend! let Jesus Christ come to you with His light. Let Him come into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the Sun of Righteousness, with healing on His beams, floods your soul, making no part dark, and turning all into a Temple of the living God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Secret sins
I. The forms they take.
1. Inward infidelities. Mistrustings, scepticisms, neglects of inward admonitions, etc.
2. Inward idolatries. HEART clinging to wealth, heart pride in children, heart satisfaction in learning, worship of self.
3. Inward sensualities.
II. The outward circumstances that foster them.
1. Neglect of religious duties gives the heart space for evil.
2. The tone of society is often sceptical and frivolous.
3. Danger of sensational and questionable moral literature.
4. Character of associations in daily life and friendships.
5. The humorous is too often playful with evil, and defiling.
III. The intellectual conceptions which encourage them.
1. That sin is not really sin until expressed in overt acts (Mat_5:21-28).
2. That the Lord doth not see.
3. That the Lord is merciful. Yes, but see Psa_62:12. (R. Tuck, B. A.)
The imagination
The simplest form of imagination is dreaming. In dreaming we are dependent on past experience. We cannot dream about men and women and children, about earth and sky, about sea and land; about words and music and laughter, unless we have seen and heard things like them. Dreams are like life, and yet how unlike. All we have ever done and suffered, seen and heard, learned and experienced, may be in our dreams, but all altered into phantasmagoria--combining and dissolving, and succeeding one another with great rapidity. It is very difficult to understand under what impulse or impulses the imagination acts in dreaming. Another form of imagination is day dreaming, or reverie. We say the children see faces in the fire, and young people build castles in the air, but in point of fact these exercises are indulged in by all ages. In our leisure, and especially perhaps in the hours of the nights when we lie awake, forms and scenes flit of their own accord out of the dark background of memory. If you could find out what a man is thinking of when he is lying awake, you would have an invaluable index to his character; and by the same test, find out, if you like, what is your own character. It is common to warn the young against reverie; but it seems to me that this advice can only be given with qualifications. What we really need to be warned of in respect of reverie is the subjects of our daydreams. If our day dreams are concerning foul and forbidden subjects, this habit will waste the mind utterly. These thoughts must be caught at the threshold and kept resolutely out of the mind, or a man will soon become within a leper from head to foot. The office of the imagination is to improve on reality. It creates beside the actual world another world, finer, fairer, and more perfect. You see that in childhood; and I am often astonished in noticing the strength of the imagination in children. Give them two or three bits of wood, roughly carved and rudely painted, a few cuttings of cloth, a few bricks, a little mud or sand, and out of these things they will create a world with kings and queens, the tinker and tailor, soldier and sailor; and these figures will go through all the movements and activities of grown people, as far as these can be observed by the minds of children. And why is it that children, and children of a larger growth, are so fond of stories? It is because in a story the life is grander and fiercer than in actual life. It is an ideal, undimmed and undiminished by the obstacles and qualifications of reality. Now this explains, as you will all see, the delight afforded to us by works of art, which of course are works of imagination. Why does a song or a piece of music delight us? It is because in it there are gathered together sounds sweeter than the ordinary sounds which life gives us to hear; and in a picture there is distilled the beauty of a hundred scenes. And especially this explains the delight we have in imaginative literature. In the real world movement is slow, and the colours are grey, but in this world a year can be compressed into an hour; the colours are bright, the crisis is exciting, the end is satisfying. In the epic, one great movement succeeds another; in the drama, some great principle is fully illustrated; in a novel, love is triumphant and justice is vindicated. But is it good to live in such an unreal world? Well, that depends. No doubt this kind of reading may be carried to excess. If it is made, instead of an occasional treat, the daily bread of the mind, it will undoubtedly debilitate the mind. Fiction may give us altogether false ideas of life, making us suppose that success is to depend not upon effort and endeavour, which must be the only road to success with the majority, but on some lucky fall of fortune, or some effort of genius not accessible to one in a million. Yet imaginative literature has a real service to perform. There is poetry which shows us the mystery the world is full of, and helps us to believe in a secret, deep and interesting, in every heart by which we are approached. Now that is the right kind; that is the healthy kind. The wisdom of life very largely consists in being able to appreciate the romance of ordinary existence, and the poetry of common things. I said a little while ago that the function of the imagination is to improve on reality. Keep a grip of that. The imagination is the torch by which humanity is conducted along the path of progress. Then ordinary life cannot go on for a day without the imagination. When a workman is engaged on some piece of work, has not he in his mind an image of the perfect article, which directs every stroke he gives to the rough material? And although what he makes never comes up entirely, perhaps, to the object of his imagination, the perfection of the image in his imagination determines the perfection of the work of his hand. It was because Columbus had more imagination than the rest of Europe that he believed in a new world to be found on the other side of the globe, and it was for a similar reason that David Livingstone could not settle down among the other missionaries in South Africa, but was haunted by a vision of something beyond the desert, and through his imperative desire to go and see he was made the greatest discoverer of modern times. There are thousands of visions of an improved world that are never anything more than visions, but the world is never improved, even in the smallest particular, without there being first a vision of the improvement in someones imagination. Youth is full of visions, and thousands of them never come to anything; but woe to that young man who has no visions--no vision of his own future, no vision of the future of the world. Professor Drummond used sometimes to say that in our day young men are saved, not by the conviction of sin, but by the conviction of righteousness. That has an air of paradox, but is a great truth. What he meant was that in our day many a man was saved, not by thinking of the horrible pit into which he was in danger of dropping, but of something above him, which he knows Christ would help him to grasp; although I should be inclined to add that the sense of such an ideal which you cannot reach above you is just the very thing to give you a horror of your actual self, and an intense desire to be delivered from the besetting past. Nowhere does imagination do so much for us as when it gives us a vision of our own possibilities, of what we ought to be, and what we may be by the grace of God; or rather, let me put it in this way, the best the imagination ever can do for a man is when it supplies him with an image of Jesus Christ, so enchanting and attractive that he follows Him by an irresistible impulse, and his whole subsequent life becomes one unceasing prayer and effort to be like Him. (James Stalker, D. D.)
Imagination
It is pleasant to remember those happy incidents of departed hours, those ever fresh and verdant spots in the desert of life, on which the eye always loves to linger, that it may be for a time refreshed. It is pleasant to recall the features, the tones, the acts of some cherished companions of our earlier days, whose voice shall no more be heard on earth. What a dreary blank were life without it! Many, however, are content with this, and are fully satisfied if they succeed in reproducing the past exactly as in the past it was. Others, however, desire to soar far beyond the mere power of recollecting, and aim at such a rearrangement of the treasures of experience as to produce results far more beautiful than eye has ever seen on earth. They let a fertile and gorgeous imagination so brood over the waters of memory as to call forth a grandeur incomparably greater than the materials from which it has been produced. We might have been so made by our Creator as to have had no such faculty, and thus have been compelled to think the past without alteration of any kind. In His abounding love, however, He has endowed us with the power of using the world of nature merely as materials with which to build another world, with even brighter tints and lovelier forms than those around us. He has enriched us with a creative fancy that can burnish, as with brightest gold, the gloomiest scenes of life; people the hovel with kingly guests, and bring to the martyrs side such celestial visitants as shall transform his dungeon gloom into more than palatial splendour. The religious importance of the imagination is evidenced by the fact that the one Book from which our religious knowledge is obtained is from first to last saturated, as it were, with the most daring flights of fancy, and the boldest figures of imagery. On its every page there lie profusely scattered the fable, the parable, the allegory, the apostrophe, the metaphor. It has laid all nature under tribute, and borrowed pictures from the glittering dew drop, the graceful lily, and the blushing rose. It weaves garlands for the bleeding brow of Immanuel, the flowers of which have been culled from the gardens of an universe. The instant you divorce religion from imagination you reduce the former to a series of abstract propositions which might enlighten the minds of a few, but would warm the hearts of fewer still. Could the affirmations of a rigid logic ever enable us to grasp Him that is invisible, fling the burdens of our lives on His sympathy, or take us to His side with our every sorrow? We may describe Deity as the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Unconditioned; and the cultured understanding would assent to the truth of our description. But to the mass of men the words would be utterly unintelligible, and awake no emotion within their breasts. When, however, definition gives place to imagery, and He is pictured to us in familiar forms, all is changed; we now fondly cling to that from which previously we shrank. As we read of Him speaking in loving or, in warning tones, listening to every cry of need, pitying us as a father pitieth his children, holding our soul in life, we go boldly to the throne of grace; bowing, not before a vague product of speculative thought, but before a Father whom we can love and know. Christ, Himself, knowing well how little the majority of men care to use their reason, when the use will not yield them profitable return in terms of bodily comfort,--knowing that to the best even, when we do unfold her pinions and attempt an upward flight, we soon weary with the effort, and find ourselves unable, by her aid alone, to soar beyond the cool zone of thought, passes reason by, and, when appealing to our feelings, speaks of Himself as The Bread of Life, The Light of the world, The True Vine, The Door into the one true fold. All this presents ideas to the stricken heart that are equally beautiful and equally powerful on young and old, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. Thus He takes the feeblest by the hand and leads them to heights that philosophy and logic never could have climbed. But as the richest soil grows the rankest weeds, so the noblest powers, when perverted and corrupted, work the direst mischief. Of none is this more true than of the imagination. When we darken the chambers of our imagery, and, drawing the curtain of night before the pictures of the Lord, make it the home of idols, saying, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth, imagination aids most effectually the conspiracy against the truth, and bolsters the soul amid its cherished lies. It is no mere baseless fancy this vision of Ezekiel, it is a sadly real fact. Who has not some idols in the hearts chamber, and who views them in their actual deformity and folly? If it were possible to tear from the idols of the world every vestige of those spurious attributes with which a vicious imagination has invested them, that they may look like gods, and thus show them as they are in all their real distorted ugliness, the votaries would surely shrink from them in horror and detestation. But there are other evils wrought by this fallen angel within the chamber of our imagery. We know that according to the prevailing habit of our mind, so will be the pictures mostly drawn by us. The voluptuary is ever picturing to himself fresh indulgences, which again in their turn urge him on to their gratification. Thus, therefore, vice vitiates the imagination, and vitiated imagination plunges into deeper vice. That which was given to lighten the chamber of the heart, being thus abused, darkens it into deeper vice. That which was given to lighten the chamber of the heart, being thus abused, darkens it into deeper night. But this faculty further shows its dangerous power in the production of startlingly vivid, but perilously false, pictures of God Himself. How sad is the fact that so many are basing their eternities on a figment of their own fancy, on a creature of their own wild imagination, on a deity not found either in reason or in revelation. May the Light of the world brighten the chambers of their imagery before it be too late forever! But although it may not play thus falsely with the soul, but depict scenes that are faithful to the fact, still evil sometimes flows from this very circumstance. The scenes thus realised may be so full of love, or beauty, or of pathos, that the soul dwelling fondly on the incident may flow into a sort of harmony with it, come to delight in the contemplation, and if the incidents be religious, rest contented with a religion that consists in imagination only. Such, as they read the story of the Cross, will feel as though it were being enacted before their eyes; and they will love to stand and gaze tearfully at the Christ as He raises His head to pray for pardon on His enemies; or they will flash with anger as they see the heartless soldier strike His crown of thorns; and while they gaze with pity, and sigh for suffering so undeserved, will readily persuade themselves that they are disciples of the Master. Does not all this show they are religious? Does it not prove that their sympathies are with Christ and heaven? Does it not demonstrate their interest in the things that concern their salvation? No. It manifests nothing more than this, that they are sensitive to the sublimity of moral heroism, the pleasures of unending joy, the beauties of harmonious sounds. It is right to image our Saviour on the Cross as distinctly as possible, but only that we may rise from the contemplation with firmer resolve to tread in His footsteps. It is not by graceful genuflexions before the cross, aesthetic musings on its thrilling pathos, or sentimental tenderness over its wondrous self-sacrifice, but by talking it up on our own shoulders and following the crucified One that we can become His disciples. If imagination, consequently, no matter how high, or pure, or true, be made an end, it must hinder, even if it does not stop us in our Christian course, for God gave it only as a means to an end beyond itself. A means whereby we may more keenly become impressed with our own defects and sin and guilt; more profoundly view our own hopeless plight; and then, that the hopeless may become the hopeful, more thrillingly behold our Fathers character and love, our Christs great atonement, and the Holy Spirits eager rushing to our rescue. Imagination--a means to an end. So it is. But although the means be such as God alone could devise or bestow, still, after all, how poor is it compared with the end for which it exists! Eye, ear, and heart may do much, when trained by the Spirit of God, to construct our future home, but eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. (J. MCann, D. D.)
Secret service
One of the gravest charges brought by Ezekiel against his people was that they had covered the walls of the mind with polluted imaginations, and had set the activities of the inward world to base uses. They were condemned for what they did in the dark and in their chambers of imagery. And there are more things done in the dark than in the light, in the inward chamber than in the open street. What is done in the dark adds up by its constancy to a great total.
1. Of these toilers in the dark the first perhaps is thought; for it belongs to man to think, and he cannot help thinking if he tries. When the mind has once grasped an idea, as Hugo says, you can no more hinder its return to it than you can the return of the tide to a shore. Try not to think for five minutes, and you are bound to think. When we sleep we think; and when we are chloroformed and every nerve is deadened to physical sensation, we still think.
2. Thought works in the dark, as memory does. Memory is that strange power which recalls the past and helps us to relive it.
3. These faculties are joined by imagination, a gift which some have in great measure and most have in some degree, so that a few are poets and painters and musicians, and most can paint some picture in the mind, and hear or make some music there. The little child sails his paper boat in a pail, and says, This is Europe and that is America, and here is Columbus going over. And Olive Schreiner says she would rather be a little child and know her way up the staircase of dreams than be the wisest philosopher in the world. These are the faculties that do their ceaseless services in the dark--thought, memory, and imagination. It was the folly and the sin of these men of Israel that what they did in the dark would not bear the scrutiny of the light, and that they made their faculties the instruments of unprofitableness. It is one of the reiterated ideas of Paul that the members of the body are intended to be instruments of righteousness, and the Scriptures abound with directions for them. They are all legislated for in turn, the eye and the hand, the foot and the ear. Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. When the members of the body obey such legislation, the open street is full of upright deeds and noble words; and when the senses of the soul do it, the secret chamber becomes a palace of light. Toward the right use of the imagination and kindred qualities the Bible has many appeals. Some of these are direct; but one of them consists in the fact that the Bible itself is sprinkled through with fruits of divinely controlled imagination which make an appeal of their own, just as the books of history and the many pages of counsel and advice appeal by their very presence in the Bible to those practical concerns of which life is full. Let the intensely practical man reflect on the fictions of the Bible. It seems as full of these as life does. This book does not disdain,--it welcomes and immortalises, rather, the fanciful, the poetic, and the imaginative. There are a hundred reasons why the imagination should be used, and the main reason of its misuse is plain enough. It would seem impossible for it to be uncontrolled so long as God remains a reality, and while a recognition of deity and eternity are among the facts of life. The Lord, said these men of old, seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth. He did not see their outward acts; and even were He near He was not such a God as could look through the flesh into the chambers of the mind--and these things being so, restraint was gone. Life presents this sight over and over again. When some little lad at school is aware of the masters eye, there comes to him an incentive to diligence; and if the master disappears, though you cannot say the work will cease, yet you are sure that a temptation for it to stop will surely come, For, says the lad, the master sees me not. Or suppose you have always at your side some noble, upright friend, clean to the core, clean to the finger-tips! Then, with his presence or the very thought of it there comes a tremendous check to all unworthiness of act or dream, and a certain stimulus to all that is fair without and within. A day, a house, a book, a hymn--will help to people the inward streets with happy troops of white-robed fancies and desires. It is forgetfulness of Gods presence that induces sins of secrecy, and takes away the restraints that hinder them; and while outward sins are black enough, who shall say that these are less so? There are open iniquities, done in the sight of men--and a grim brotherhood they are; but there are sins of desire, and a wish may be a transgression and a feeling an iniquity. Thou shalt not kill, said Moses. Thou shalt not be angry, said Christ. You may think, and sink with every thought you think till you reach the unnameable slums of the intellectual world; and you may choose to remember the unheavenliest things you ever saw or said or did; and you may get pictures painted on the walls of the soul by the painter. Imagination, who has mixed his colours all in hell. Some of the most passionate prayers for pardon have been the outcome of no outward sins, but have been made on account of follies done in the dark. What any man does in the dark is the truest test of his character. It is true that words are an index of the mind, and in some degree reveal the man; but any speaker may so choose his words as to disguise himself, and though it is also certain that a tree is known by its fruits, yet deeds alone are not a perfect test of the man who does them, for we seldom wholly translate into actions our thoughts or schemes, and it is impossible for a painter to put on the canvas all the glory of his original dream. We are no better than our secrets, and these are the last test of us. You cannot judge a man by his public actions; for to many a man the crowd is either a stimulus or a restraint, and in the presence of the multitude he hides himself and wears a mask. But when the days work is over, follow him to his home, and see how he conducts himself in the semi-secrecy of domestic life; discover his manners in that seclusion; notice how he bears the scrutiny of constant love, and what he does when the alternations of joys and griefs and astonishments of life occur. But even then you do not know him altogether; and you must further ask what his thoughts are, and on what memories he most dwells, and what his actions are when there are none to see. The world is full of short-sighted judgments, and must needs be. It is God alone who judges rightly, who judges by the heart, knowing what is in man. Upon what is done in the dark depend our chances of service, and the inward conditions are the fountains of all fruitfulness. Ruskins doctrine was that no truly great picture ever came or could ever possibly come from the painter with an unclean spirit. He would unconsciously express himself in his picture; the portrait would be his own, and its colours the colours of his soul. What is done in the inward place glorifies or abases all endeavours, and the dominant influences that live there give shape and colour to all our deeds. If that place be the haunt of evil things, it will be strange if some of them do not escape; and if of good, it is certain they will find expression in many a kindly word and gladly finished duty. The secret of serviceableness and the very chance of it lies hidden from all sight like a trees root. What, then, is the atonement, and what does redemption do? What does it not do? It does not fasten the thiefs hand behind his back, or snatch the murderers knife away, or fetter the wandering feet; for it is Gods last reply to a most ancient prayer: Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me. The ministry of Jesus is to the soul. (A. J. Southouse.)
The chamber of imagery
I. Man has a wonderful power of vision beyond that of the senses. Mans power of mental vision is seen not only in the creation of dreams and the production of poetry, but also in the sorrows of the apprehensive, the joys of the hopeful, the wealth of the avaricious, and power of the ambitious, which live only in the imagination. The dullest plodder, says Dr. Thomas Brown, over the obscurest desk, who sums up in the evening his daily tables of profit and loss, and who rises in the morning with the sole object of adding a few ciphers to that book of pounds and pence which contains the whole annual history of his life,--even he, while he half lays down his quill to think of future prices or future demands or future possibilities of loss, has his visions and inspiration like the sublimest poet; visions of a very different kind, indeed, from those to which poets are accustomed, but involving as truly the inspiration of fancy!
1. Through this power God frequently reveals the greatest truths. All sciences start from hypotheses. The poet catches by intuition that which philosophers organise into systems. This material universe is but spirit in costume,--a vesture; its myriads of objects are but eternal thoughts run into palpable forms. Imagination with her keen eyes looks through the garb, sees the Divine ideas, moulds them into shapes of her own, and clothes them in an airy fabric of her own weaving.
2. Through this power man will derive much of his happiness or misery forever. One of our bards has sung in lofty and touching strains of The Pleasures of the Imagination. Blessed power this! By it the sightless bard of England made for himself a sunny paradise, amidst whose enchanted scenes he struck from his lyre those supernatural strains that shall thrill the ages yet to come. The greatest misery, too, comes out of this. Let the imagination become the creature of a guilty conscience, and it shall create a hell as dark and deep as that which Dante made.
II. The degenerating tendency in the most advanced people has ever been strong. This tendency is sufficient--
1. To repudiate the atheistic notion that the original state of man was that of savagism; and to confirm the Biblical doctrine that God made man upright, but that he sought out many inventions.
2. To show that it behoves the most advanced people to be humble.
III. The greatest sins of humanity are generally the hidden ones. Could we open the door of Englands soul, as the prophet opened the door of the chamber of imagery, our opinion of its character, I presume, would be greatly modified if not reversed. We should see selfishness in the benevolent, blood guiltiness in the humane, despotism in the outwardly liberal, lasciviousness in the chaste, arrogance in the humble, infidelity in the pious, idolatry in temples built for God. It is not the hand, nor the tongue, nor any member of the body that performs the act;--the volition is the act.
1. Man has the power to conceal sins.
2. Man as a sinner has the strongest temptations to concealment. The more wicked a man is, the more temptation he has to be a hypocrite. The depraved tradesman, lawyer, physician, and statesman must build a thick wall around their chamber of imagery, or they could not live.
IV. An insight of the hidden iniquity of a population is a necessary qualification for a true reformer.
1. It serves to impress him with the justice of human suffering.
2. It serves to impress him with the greatness of Gods love in redemption.
3. It serves to impress him with the sublime mission of Christianity.
It is to go into its most secret chambers, tear down every idol god, carry in the ark, and enthrone the Shekinah, and consecrate the soul a Temple for the Holy Ghost to dwell in.
V. The most hidden sins are destined to be exposed.
1. There are certain ways in which hidden sins are exposed, even now.
(1) There is temptation. The virtue of some men is but vice sleeping, for the want of something to call it out.
(2) There is affliction. One man is thought a model of patience, his temper is never ruffled, there is always a beautiful equanimity about him; but his circumstances change, trials thicken upon him. And now what a change, how restless--how impatient! Another is very benevolent; in comparative poverty he gives his mite readily, and often says if he had so much property how delighted he would be to lay it out in the cause of benevolence: Providence places him in this position,--and the man is a miser.
(3) There is moral conviction. When this seizes the soul, all the concealing walls are broken down, and the moral character leaps into light. Job, David, Zaccheus, Peter, the Publican, are examples.
2. There are two kinds of exposure--
(1) Unconscious. There are some men, perhaps, around you who have had an insight to your hearts, who, from outer acts, have had a glimpse of your chamber of imagery; and have pronounced their judgment, but you know it not. There are angels to whom your spirits are bare: and certain it is that God sees you.
(2) Conscious. The eye of a man has a wonderful influence upon the doer of wrong. In the prosecution of his crime let him feel the glance of another upon him, and how will it affect him! In the judgment day we shall feel all eyes upon us.
VI. A practical disregard of the constant presence and inspection of God is an explanation of all sin.
1. Because the realising of Gods presence implies supreme love to Him. The being we love supremely we keep close to our hearts. Friends separated by continents, oceans, and even death, love brings near. It is not logic, but love that makes us feel the Infinite near.
2. If they love Him supremely they will have no room in their hearts for idols. Supreme love is a soul-filling power. Where God is loved there is no room for other deities. When the sun is on the eye the stars are not. (Homilist.)
The secret chambers of the heart
In the secret chambers of our own hearts unknown to anyone but oneself, how often we paint before us the imagery of unholy thoughts--we allow ourselves to play with the fire brands of evil suggestions; to carry out in imagination those wicked longings of the sinful heart, which God has perhaps, through His great mercy, not allowed us to carry out in fact and act. Thus, alas, many a precious moment of time is wasted. We dream of seeing our enemies cast down, we plan and plot and meditate on schemes of pride or covetousness or selfish enjoyment, and set up every man in the chambers of the heart the imagery of guilty desires and foolish vanities. It has been well said, if we had a door in our hearts which let our thoughts be visible, who would dare to look his neighbour in the face? But are there not defences against these devices of the enemy in the armoury of the Great Captain? Yes! they are three in number--Prayer, Watchfulness, and Activity. (W. Hardman, LL. D.)
The chambers of imagery
What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you are photographing, printing on the walls of your immortal nature. What are you painting on the chambers of imagery on your hearts? Is that mystic shrine within you painted with such figures as in some chambers of Pompeii, where the excavators had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul? Or is it like the cells in the convent of San Marco at Florence, where Fra Angelicos holy and sweet genius painted on the bare walls--to be looked at, as he fancied, only by one devout brother in each cell--angel imaginings, and noble, pure, celestial faces that calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? What are you doing in the dark, in the chambers of your imagery? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Pictures on the wall
When a bookcase standing long in one place was removed there was the exact image left on the wall of the whole, and many of its portions. But, in the midst of this picture was another the precise outline of a map, which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was placed there. We had all forgotten everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall. Thus, Some day or another, we may remember a sin which has been covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded. (Oliver Wendell Holmes.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Ezekiel
CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY
Read full note →
Eze 8:12.
This is part of a vision which came to the prophet in his captivity. He is carried away in imagination from his home amongst the exiles in the East to the Temple of Jerusalem. There he sees in one dreadful series representations of all the forms of idolatry to which the handful that were left in the land were cleaving. There meets him on the threshold of the court ‘the image of jealousy,’ the generalised expression for the aggregate of idolatries which had stirred the anger of the divine husband of the nation. Then he sees within the Temple three groups representing the idolatries of three different lands. First, those with whom my text is concerned, who, in some underground room, vaulted and windowless, were bowing down before painted animal forms upon the walls. Probably they were the representatives of Egyptian worship, for the description of their temple might have been taken out of any book of travels in Egypt in the present day. It is only an ideal picture that is represented to Ezekiel, and not a real fact. It is not at all probable that all these various forms of idolatry were found at any time within the Temple itself. And the whole cast of the vision suggests that it is an ideal picture, and not reality, with which we have to do. Hence the number of these idolaters was seventy-the successors of the seventy whom Moses led up to Sinai to see the God of Israel! And now here they are grovelling before brute forms painted on the walls in a hole in the dark. Their leader bears a name which might have startled them in their apostasy, and choked their prayers in their throats, for Jaazan-iah means ‘the Lord hears.’ Each man has a censer in his hand-self-consecrated priests of self-chosen deities. Shrouded in obscurity, they pleased themselves with the ancient lie, ‘The Lord sees not; He hath forsaken the earth.’ And then, into that Sanhedrim of apostates there comes, all unknown to them, the light of God’s presence; and the eye of the prophet marks their evil.
I have nothing to do here with the other groups which Ezekiel saw in his vision. The next set were the representatives of the women of Israel, who, false at once to their womanhood and to their God, were taking part in the nameless obscenities and abominations of the worship of the Syrian Adonis. And the next, who from their numbers seem to be intended to stand for the representatives of the priesthood, as the former were of the whole people, represent the worshippers who had fallen under the fascinations of a widespread Eastern idolatry, and with their backs to the house of the Lord were bowing before the rising sun.
All these false faiths got on very well together. Their worshippers had no quarrel with each other. Polytheism, by its very nature and the necessity of its being, is tolerant. All its rabble of gods have a mutual understanding, and are banded together against the only One that says, ‘Thou shalt have none other gods beside Me.’
But now, I take this vision in a meaning which the prophet had no intention to put on it. I do not often do that with my texts, and when I do I like to confess frankly that I am doing it. So I take the words now as a kind of symbol which may help to put into a picturesque and more striking form some very familiar and homely truths. Look at that dark-painted chamber that we have all of us got in our hearts; at the idolatries that go on there, and at the flashing of the sudden light of God who marks, into the midst of the idolatry, ‘Hast thou seen what the ancients of the children of Israel do in the dark, each man in the chambers of his imagery?’
I. Think of the dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our hearts.
Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. With reverence, we may say of each other as we say of God-’Clouds and darkness are round about Him.’ After all the manifestations of a life, we remain enigmas to one another and mysteries to ourselves. For every man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may flame up into altogether unexpected and astonishing developments. Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, and each soul dwells alone.
There is in every heart a dark chamber. Oh, brethren! there are very, very few of us that dare tell all our thoughts and show our inmost selves to our dearest ones. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping amidst beauty, itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of every thing brought into the light. Do you think you could stand it? Well, then, go to God and ask Him to keep you from unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live humbly and self-distrustfuliy, and feel that your only strength is: ‘Hold Thou me up, and I shall be saved.’ ‘Hast thou seen what they do in the dark?’
Still further, we may take another part of this description with possibly permissible violence as a symbol of another characteristic of our inward nature. The walls of that chamber were all painted with animal forms, to which these men were bowing down. By our memory, and by that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our desires, we are for ever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. That is an awful power which we possess, and, alas! too often use for foul idolatries.
I do not dwell upon that, but I wish to drop one very earnest caution and beseeching entreaty, especially to the younger members of my congregation now. You, young men and women, especially you young men, mind what you paint upon those mystic walls! Foul things, as my text says, ‘creeping things and abominable beasts,’ only too many of you are tracing there. Take care, for these figures are ineffaceable. No repentance will obliterate them. I do not know whether even Heaven can blot them out. What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you are photographing on the walls of your immortal soul. And just as to-day, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their walls, in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful evils, the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may live in ugly shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can do away with ‘the marks of that which once hath been.’ What are you painting on the chambers of imagery in your hearts? Obscenity, foul things, mean things, low things? Is that mystic shrine within you painted with such figures as were laid bare in some chambers in Pompeii, where the excavators had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul? Or, is it like the cells in the convent of San Marco at Florence, where Fra Angelico’s holy and sweet genius has left on the bare walls, to be looked at, as he fancied, only by one devout brother in each cell, angel imaginings, and noble, pure celestial faces that calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? What are you doing, my brother, in the dark, in your chambers of imagery?
II. Now look with me briefly at the second thought that I draw from this symbol,-the idolatries of the dark chamber.
All these seventy grey-bearded elders that were bowing there before the bestial gods which they had portrayed, had, no doubt, often stood in the courts of the Temple and there made prayers to the God of Israel, with broad phylacteries, to be seen of men. Their true worship was their worship in the dark. The other was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. And the very chamber in which they were gathered, according to the ideal representation of our text, was a chamber in, and therefore partaking of the consecration of, the Temple. So their worship was doubly criminal, in that it was sacrilege as well as idolatry. Both things are true about us.
A man’s true worship is not the worship which he performs in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that little private chapel, where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the attribution of supreme excellence to, and the entire dependence of the heart upon, a certain person. And the people or the things to which a man attributes the highest excellence, and on which he hangs his happiness and well-being, these be his gods, no matter what his outward profession is. You can find out what these are for you, if you will ask yourself, and honestly answer, one or two questions. What is that I want most? What is it which makes my ideal of happiness? What is that which I feel that I should be desperate without? What do I think about most naturally and spontaneously, when the spring is taken off, and my thoughts are allowed to go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is ‘God!’ then I do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper of God. It is of no avail that we pray in the temple, if we have a dark underground shrine where our true adoration is rendered.
Oh, dear brethren! I am afraid there are a great many of us nominal Christians, connected with Christian Churches, posing before men as orthodox religionists, who keep this private chapel where we do our devotion to an idol and not to God. If our real gods could be made visible, what a pantheon they would make! All the foul forms painted on that cell of this vision would be paralleled in the creeping things, which crawl along the low earth and never soar nor even stand erect, and in the vile, bestial forms of passion to which some of us really bow down. Honour, wealth, literary or other distinction, the sweet sanctities of human love dishonoured and profaned by being exalted to the place which divine love should hold, ease, family, animal appetites, lust, drink-these are the gods of some of us. Bear with my poor words and ask yourselves, not whom do you worship before the eye of men, but who is the God to whom in your inmost heart you bow down? What do you do in the dark? That is the question. Whom do you worship there? Your other worship is not worship at all.
Do not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and dependence from God alone is like the sin of these men in our text, in that it is sacrilege. They had taken a chamber in the very Temple, and turned it into a temple of the false gods. Whom is your heart made to enshrine? Why! every stone, if I may so say, of the fabric of our being bears marked upon it that it was laid in order to make a dwelling-place for God. Whom are you meant to worship, by the witness of the very constitution of your nature and make of your spirits? Is there anybody but One who is worthy to receive the priceless gift of human love absolute and entire? Is there any but One to whom it is aught but degradation and blasphemy for a man to bow down? Is there any being but One that can still the tumult of my spirit, and satisfy the immortal yearnings of my soul? We were made for God, and whensoever we turn the hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that which is the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten upon Him, to other creatures, we are guilty not only of idolatry but of sacrilege. We commit the sin of which that wild reveller in Babylon was guilty, when, at his great feast, in the very madness of his presumption he bade them bring forth the sacred vessels from the Temple at Jerusalem; ‘and the king and his princes and his concubines drank in them and praised the gods.’ So we take the sacred chalice of the human heart, on which there is marked the sign manual of Heaven, claiming it for God’s, and fill it with the spiced and drugged draught of our own sensualities and evils, and pour out libations to vain and false gods. Brethren! Render unto Him that which is His; and see even upon the walls scrabbled all over with the deformities that we have painted there, lingering traces, like those of some dropping fresco in a roofless Italian church, which suggest the serene and perfect beauty of the image of the One whose likeness was originally traced there, and for whose worship it was all built.
III. And now, lastly, look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering worshippers of the revealing light.
Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that were looking upon them. They were hugging themselves in the conceit, ‘the Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.’ And all the while, all unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all. Not a finger is lifted, not a sign to the foolish worshippers of His presence and inspection, but in stern silence He records and remembers.
And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of putting a solemn truth? There are plenty of us-alas! alas! that it should be so-to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be, my brother, that the properly blessed thought of a divine eye resting upon you should be to you like the thought of a policeman’s bull’s-eye to a thief? Why should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and strength-giving of all convictions-’Thou God seest me’? The little child runs about the lawn perfectly happy as long as she knows that her mother is watching her from the window. And it ought to be sweet and blessed to each of us to know that there is no darkness where a Father’s eye comes not. But oh! to the men that stand before bestial idols and have turned their backs on the beauty of the one true God, the only possibility of composure is that they shall hug themselves in the vain delusion:-’The Lord seeth not.’
I beseech you, dear friends, do not think of His eye as the prisoner in a cell thinks of the pin-hole somewhere in the wall, through which a jailer’s jealous inspection may at any moment be glaring in upon him, but think of Him your Brother, who ‘knew what was in man,’ and who knows each man, and see in Christ the all-knowing Godhood that loves yet better than it knows, and beholds the hidden evils of men’s hearts, in order that it may cleanse and forgive all which it beholds.
One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ. Do you like that thought? Can you stand it? Are you ready for it? My friend! let Jesus Christ come to you with His light. Let Him come into the dark corners of your hearts. Cast all your sinfulness, known and unknown, upon Him that died on the Cross for every soul of man, and He will come; and His light, streaming into your hearts, like the sunbeam upon foul garments, will cleanse and bleach them white by its shining upon them. Let Him come into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the ‘Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, floods your soul, leaving no part dark, and turning all into a temple of the living God.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 do you see what the elders of the house…
do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark?
God is commanding Ezekiel to look at what the elders are doing. AT: "look at what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Read full note →
the house of Israel
The word "house" is a metonym for the family that lives in the house, in this case the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob over many years. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 3:1. AT: "the Israelites" or "the Israelite people group" (See: Metonymy)
the hidden chamber of his idol
"the room where no one can see him worship his idol"
translationWords
darkness
forsake
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 8:12-13 The Lord could see what the leaders of…
8:12-13 The Lord could see what the leaders of Israel were doing, and he revealed these things to his prophet (cp. Luke 12:3).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.