The Pulpit Commentary — Haggai — Section 11

susceptible of improvement or deterioration, according as it ie exercised or neglected. It may be clarified, intensified, quickened, strengthened; or it may be dulled, darkened, weakened, deadened. Through diligent personal culture the soul may become sensitive to nicest distinctions of right and wrong e.e an aneroirl barometer to smallest variation• in the atmosphere; or, through want of use, it may become hard as a fossilizerl organism or as a petrified log of wood. 3. Spiritual improvement. No one is likely to make progress in religion without an intimate acquaintance with his own ways. Without this one may even not suspect that his religion is defective. In proportion 11s one knows what in himself is dark and needs illumining, or feeble and reqnire~ Btrengthening, or low and demands upraising, or rleficient and calls for supplementing, or wrong and wants correcting, will one advance in moral and spiritual attainment. Learn: 1. The dignity of man. 2. The responsibility of life. 3. The duty of circumspection. Vere. 6-11.-Hara times. I. A FREQUENT OCCURRENCE. Poor harvests and profitless trade, famine and idleness, lack of bread and want of employment, nothin'.!; to eat and nothing to do. The two commonly go together. Examples of famines were in ancient times those which occurred in Canaan (Gen. xii. 10), in Egypt (Gen. xii. 54), in Samaria (1 Kings xvii. 2; 2 Kings vi. 25), in Jerusalem (Jer. Iii. 6); in modern times those which have taken place in India, China, and other parts of Asia. II. A SORROWFUL EXPERIENCE. When the husbandman has laboured, and, perhaps through long-continued drought, has obtained an altogether insufficient return for his labours. When through deficient harvests the people of a country are reduced to a state of semi-starvation. When through this failure in the sources of wealth the wheels of a nation's industry are stopped. When strong men who would willingly work can find no work to do. When wages already scanty are eaten up by exorbitant prices. III. A PROVIDENTIAL JUDGMENT. Hard times: 1. .Are of God's sending. To say that bad harvests and dull trade are the results of natural (physical and social) laws does Dot show them to be disconnected with God. The Almighty is behind both nature and society. Jehovah claimed that the state of matters in Judah after the exile was his doing. 2. Have their occasions, if not their causes, in sin. Haggai's countrymen had been made to suffer because of their indifference to religion and devotion to self-interest (ver. 9). Were modem nations to reflect more deeply, they might discover connections between their characters and their conditions, their sins and their sufferings. IV. A SALUTARY DISCIPLINE. Intended as all chastisement is: 1. To arrest atf•n- tion. Inconsiderateness a principal sin of men and nations. 2. To convince of sin. A remarkable proof of depravity that moral perceptions require to be awakened by physical corrections. 3. To excite repentance. Though confessions under the lash are not the same thing as penitence, yet they may and should be, and often are, accom- panied by penitence. 4. To promote amendment. Though punishment is not exclusively reformatory in its character, yet it is mostly (on earth at least) inflicted with design to benefit the sufferer. LESSONS. 1. Religion in individuals and nation~ the best defence against bard times. 2. Repentance and prayer the beet resort in bad times. Vers. 12-15.-.Ancient temple-builders. I. UNIVERSAL ACTIVI'PY. "They came and did work "-a.II of them: "Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the high priest, and 1111 the remnant of the people." There we.s not an idler amongst them. Evury person was engaged at something in connection with the building. The spectacle was: l. The reproduction of an old scene, when in the wilderness of Sinai, orders having been isijued for the construction of a tabernacle, "as many as were willing-hearted camP, both meu and women," and contributed their aid to the work (Exod. xxxv. 20-29). 2. The foreshadowing of a later scene, when the infant Church of the New Testament was assembled in the upper room, and" there came a sound from heaven a~ of a rushing mighty wind, which filled all the house where they were sitting," and "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, antl all he~au to speak with tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts ii. 1-4). 3. The picture of a (possibly) present acene. What fa wanted is the carrying over of this scene of universal activity into the  T.IIE BOOK OF ,HIA.OOA.I. [CblI, I, 1:--16.