or not: and the final judgment will assuredly be in conformity with it. Do not then trifle. Remember how much you have at stake. Lose no time. Hear the threatenings of God, and tremble at them: and listen to the promises of God with lively gratitude and humble confidence. Bear in mind the issue of things with respect to the Jewish people : has not every word of God been fulfilled to them ? You shall surely, ere long, see the same in reference to yourselves. If you proudly despise the word of God, or hypocritically pretend a submission to it which you do not yield, nothing remains for you but the stroke of God's avenging rod. But if you will believe in Christ, and give yourselves up to him, you shall surely expe- rience all the riches of his grace, and finally inherit all the fulness of his glory.]
Hab. ii. 20. The Lord is in his holy temple : let all the earth keep silence before him.
TO any one who beholds the works of creation, one would suppose that there could not exist a doubt respecting the being- of a God : and to any one that contemplates an idol of his own formation, one would suppose it absolutely impossible that he should ascribe to it divine attributes, or worship it as his God. Yet experience shews, that God is thus overlooked, and that idols are almost universally substituted in his place. The very people of God themselves, to whom he had so often manifested himself in the most stu- pendous acts, were ever prone to renounce him, and to place their trust in idols of wood and stone. But a dreadful woe is denounced against all who so dis- honour God, and debase their own souls ; and the declaration of God to the whole universe is this, " The Lord is in his holy temple : let the whole earth keep silence before him."
Let us here contemplate,
I. The majesty of Jehovah —
Viewing him in contrast with senseless idols, let us contemplate him,
1. As in the temple of the universe —