What is here asserted is of course not a distinction between the soul or spiritual part of man’s being and another part of his being which is subject to physical necessity, but one between the individual and his moral environment. The former distinction is real, and it may be necessary for us in our day to insist on it, but it was certainly not thought of by Ezekiel or perhaps by any other Old Testament writer. The word “soul” denotes simply the principle of individual life. “All persons are Mine” expresses the whole meaning which Ezekiel meant to convey. Consequently the death threatened to the sinner is not what we call spiritual death, but death in the literal sense—the death of the individual. The truth taught is the independence and freedom of the individual, or his moral personality. And that truth involves two things. First, each individual belongs to God, stands in immediate personal relation to Him. In the old economy the individual belonged to the nation or the family, and was related to God only as a member of a larger whole. Now he has to deal with God directly—possesses independent personal worth in the eye of God. Secondly, as a result of this, each man is responsible for his own acts, and for these alone. So long as his religious relations are determined by circumstances outside of his own life his personality is incomplete. The ideal relation to God must be one in which the destiny of every man depends on his own free actions. These are the fundamental postulates of personal religion as formulated by Ezekiel. The first part of the chapter is nothing more than an illustration of the second of these truths in a sufficient number of instances to show both sides of its operation. There is first the case of a man perfectly righteous, who as a matter of course lives by his righteousness, the state of his father not being taken into account. Then this good man is supposed to bear a son who is in all respects the opposite of his father, who answers none of the tests of a righteous man; he must die for his own sins, and his father’s righteousness avails him nothing. Lastly, if the son of this wicked man takes warning by his father’s fate and leads a good life, he lives just as the first man did because of his own righteousness, and suffers no diminution of his reward because his father was a sinner. In all this argument there is a tacit appeal to the conscience of the hearers, as if the case only required to be put clearly before them to command their assent. This is what shall be, the prophet says; and it is what ought to be. It is contrary to the idea of perfect justice to conceive of Jehovah as acting otherwise than as here represented. To cling to the idea of collective retribution as a permanent truth of religion, as the exiles were disposed to do, destroys belief in the divine righteousness by making it different from the righteousness which expresses itself in the moral judgments of men.