Let it not, however, be supposed, that this view of the way of healing and sanctifying makes CHRIST a servant of grace instead of the LORD of grace; that it directs us to a mere storehouse to help ourselves, instead of sending us to a living, loving, discerning Saviour, of Whom we are to crave the help and blessing which are His to give as He will. No, brethren, it exalts ordinances, but only because they are CHRIST’S ordinances, the clothes in which He is clad, as He walks among us, the garments through which power to heal is transmitted from Him to us. The use of these things without a sense of unworthiness, without humility and faith, is like the thronging of CHRIST by the crowd, not only unprofitable, but rude and profane; and this sense of unworthiness, this humility and faith, together with the power and perseverance to act upon them, are all the gifts of CHRIST, seed sown, increase given by Him according to His will. Look, then, to the Physician, as well as to the remedy, to the Giver of grace as well as to the Channel of grace; and, knowing that without Him you can do nothing, and except from Him receive nothing, beseech Him to enable you to seek grace rightly, and then to bestow it freely, not for any worthiness, for any feeling, for any deed; but simply because of your necessity, out of His boundless love. SERMON XVI. PREACHING PARABLES. EZEKIEL, XX., 49. _Ah_ LORD GOD! _they say of me_, _Doth he not speak parables_? EZEKIEL had been commissioned with the utterance of a warning, in figurative but very intelligible language, that GOD was about to bring a great calamity upon Jerusalem and all Judah; that young and old, good and bad, should be affected by it—“I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree and every dry tree”; that the judgment should be irresistible “the flaming flame shall not be quenched,” and the destruction universal; “all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.” According to some expositors, as soon as he received this commission, concluding from his past experience that the Jews would profess not to understand his message, or would say, that it was an exaggeration, or that it did not apply to them, and so disregard it, he entreated of GOD, in the words of the text, that such an excuse might be taken away by the delivery instead of a plain and unmistakeable warning: “O LORD, not a parable. Thy people will not heed parables.” Whereupon GOD, in gracious condescension to His prophet, in determination to be heard and understood by the people, substituted for this first message, not indeed wholly unfigurative language, but a simpler parable, which carried with it to all its own interpretation. But it is better, I think, to suppose, that Ezekiel does not here anticipate the people’s perversity, and so persuade GOD at once to withdraw His words; but that he narrates and grieves over the actual reception which the message,