Ezekiel 36:10 - Homiletics

Multiplying men.

I. THE TRUE WEALTH OF A PEOPLE IS IN ITS POPULATION . God makes this promise to the house of Israel, that he "will multiply men." The land is desolate for want of inhabitants, the fields untilled for want of laborers, and the cities lying in ruins for lack of men to build up the waste places, The restoration shall be signalized by a return of the captives and a consequent increase of population. Now, the striking fact is that this multiplication of the population is noted as a great good for the land. Other things being equal, every country is strong in proportion to the number of its able-bodied citizens. In times of war this is obvious; the strong nation is one that can command a large army. But in industrial relations the same is equally true. The more producers there are the more wealth must be produced—either in the form of food or in the form of commodities that may be exchanged for food purchased elsewhere. These plain facts are obscured by bad social habits.

1. Overcrowding in cities . The waste places should be built—not the reeking fever-dens crammed with an overflowing population of sickly creatures, who have no energy for work, and whose surroundings do not permit decent living. One of the greatest evils of our day is the depletion of our rural districts and the pressing of the population into the cities. What is needed is not a reduction of the population, but a scattering of it over the face of the land at home and also throughout the colonies. The mistake that led to the building of the tower of Babel is still fatally prevalent.

2. Unworthy living . Too many men are not doing men's work—idle rich men who consume without producing, and idle poor men who are always near the border-land of crime, on the further side of which they would become positive destroyers. We cannot have too many true men, but they must be men indeed—workers, not drones.

II. THE STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH IS IN ITS MEMBERSHIP . The word "Church" stands for a community. The great Catholic Church of all nations and creeds is the whole body of Christians. This obvious fact is too often neglected. Thus the Church is sometimes regarded as an institution apart from the souls of which it consists; it is said to have its rights, its triumphs, while no thought is given to the people in it. This is a pure delusion—the glorification of an empty abstraction. Again, for the Church some would substitute its officers. The Christian ministry is regarded as the Church. This was the case in the Middle Ages, when popes and great ecclesiastical dignitaries contended with emperors and kings for the privileges of the Church. In those contests little account was taken of the interest of the people—the townsfolk and village folk who constituted the body of the Church. But in these democratic days the rights of the people are being better recognized, and now we are coming to see that the Church is just the men, women, and children that constitute it, viewed in their corporate relation as the body of Christ on earth. The Church is honored when men are multiplied in her midst. She cannot be in health if the missionary spirit dies out of her. But while she gathers in the heathen her first duty is to train her own children. She should thus grow her own members. Here, however, we need a caution. Mere numbers will count for nothing apart from character. Statistical Christianity is a poor production. We want true men—living souls united to Christ and working for his glory. Still, the honor of the Church is not in remaining small and select, and keeping her privileges to herself and neglecting the world, but in multiplying men. She should he a great popular institution, true to the spirit of Christ, who called himself "the Son of man ."