es that listened to
Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same
neglect of God's message was grounded then on the same misapprehension
of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people
now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles
whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the
incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it,
and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the
threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are
prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain
English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that their alarms
were disbelieved altogether.

Even the people that did not go the length of utter unbelief in the
prophetic threatening took the comfortable conclusion that these
threatenings had reference to a future date, and they need not trouble
themselves about them. And so they said, according to my text, 'They of
the house of Israel say, The vision that he sees is for many days to
come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.' 'It may be all
quite true, but it lies away in the distant future there; and things
will last our time, so we do not need to bother ourselves about what he
says.'

So the imagined distance of fulfilment turned the edge of the plainest
denunciations, and was like wool stuffed in the people's ears to deaden
the reverberations of the thunder.

I wonder if there is anybody here now whom that fits, who meets the
preaching of the gospel with a shrug, and with this saying, 'He
prophesies of the times that are far off.' I fancy that there are a few;
and I wish to say a word or two about this ground on which the
widespread disregard of the divine message is based.

I. First, then, notice that the saying of my text--in the application
which I now seek to make of it--is a truth, but it is only half a truth.

Of course, Ezekiel was speaking simply about the destruction of
Jerusalem. If it had been true, as his hearers assumed, that that was
not going to happen for a good many years yet, the chances were that it
had no bearing upon them, and they were right enough in neglecting the
teaching. And, of course, when I apply such a word as this in the
direction in which I wish to do now, we do bring in a different set of
thoughts; but the main idea remains the same. The neglect of God's
solemn message by