Bible Commentaries

Verses 1-26

Ezekiel 41:1

Neither Jesus Christ, nor Luther and Knox, when they proclaimed the downfall of a corrupt hierarchy, thought of establishing society, by way of reform, upon a secular basis. All alike treated the system they attacked as the perversion of something good and sacred, all alike substituted another Church for that which they destroyed. Our modern reformers who wish to hand over what they take from the Church to the State are of a different type. They are of those who do not understand that there must always be a Church, organized or not, where there is a human society. These are like children, who confound air, the most necessary of realities, with vacuum or nothing at all.

Prof. Seeley.

Do not be misled so as to suppose that science and the intellect are or can be the sources of social progress or change. It is the moral births and outgrowths that originate; science and the intellect only give form to these. It is a common notion, and one apparently gaining ground, that science may, as it were, take society by the hand, and become its high priest, and guide to a glorious kingdom. And this to a certain extent is true. Science may become high priest, but the result of its priestly offices will entirely depend on what kind of a deity it represents what kind of a god society worships. Science will doubtless become its guide, but whither it leads society will entirely depend on whither society desires to be led.

Edward Carpenter, England's Ideal, p. 67.

Reference. XLI. 7. H. W. Webb-Peploe, Calls to Holiness, p. 75.