The Pulpit Commentary — Hebrews — Section 397

w_icked abides-he is angry with the wicked every day-but it would be clean against his character as a pitiful and long-suffering God to have Sinai continually involved in smoking flame and roaring tempest. Sinai is God's appointed halting-place for us somewhere in the solemn and arduous journey of life. Zion is the goal of the journey. Many of those who trembled along with Moses at the literal Sinai have snrely bee:u gathered with Moses since upon the heavenly Zion. III. NoTE POINTS IN THE coNTnABT. Sinai was in the wilderness, and there is some reason to suppose that it has now more of the wilderness than ever, that it~ desolation is greater than when the children of Israel camped there. Zion was in the city. Men lived about it all their lives. He who comes to Zion comes to an abiding company. The earthly Jerusalem where the ark dwells, typifies that heavenly Jerusalem where the God of the ark really dwells. Thence the messengerR of God issue forth on their errands of righteousness and mercy, and thither they return to resume the service of the higher, holier sphere. At Sinai just men, struggling with their sense of sin, were made to feel their imperfection. On Zion just men are gatnered in their purity of heart and spiritual completeness, enabled for ever to look on the face of God. The two con- trasted pictures must not be pushed too much into detail. Let the imagination rather try to group each as a whole. The passage suggests two frameworks, in one of which we may gather the peculiarities of the old covenant, and in the other the peculiarities of the new.-Y. Ver. 27.-The purpo.~e of the shakings. This chapter, which bas been full of comfort- ing elements, rises to the highest kind of comfort at the close-that to be drawn by the believing heart from the conviction that stable good is coming out of all present vicissitudes. Terrible as was the shaking at Sinai, that only affected an infinitesimal part of the crust of the earth for a short time. There remains a far more terrible and. searching experience. The shaking at Sinai was only a sign of Jehovah's power, but the shaking yet to come will be more than a sign; it will bring a result the most desirable of any we can imagine. Heaven and earth will be shaken, so that the heavenly Jerusalem, the place of Jebovah's glory and the abode of his saints, may at last appear in all its strength ant! all the excellency of its beauty. The altercate rising and falling-the one generation going and the other coming~f the present scheme of things will cease. The thiags of eternity will then be finally freed from all the weights and encumbrances of time, sin, and death. I. 'l'HIB GREAT CATASTROPHE OF THE FUTURE. Vain to speculate on the mode of its happening. Far more important to be well assured that this catastrophe is coming, and to rejoice that something inexpressibly glorious and beautiful lies beyond. Or::ly then will the perfect men in Christ Jesus be constituted into the perfect society. Only some such revolution in human affairs as is here indicated can set things right finally and completely. Good and evil are not to be for ever mingled. The Lord who has so often shaken the earth will shake both earth and hr:aven. Then it will be seen who is on the rock and who on the sand, who bas built gold and silver and. precious stones, and who wood, hay, and stubble. II. THINGS WHICH CAN BE SHAKEN OUGHT TO BE SHAKEN. Shaken in order that they may be utterly removed from us. Each of the elect and glorified now within the walls of the new Jerusalem is there because be has known within his own experience what it is for both earth and heaven to be shaken. The whole process of life is but a continun.l loosening and steady progress towards the dissolution of all the corruptible frame. We are in the hands of both Builder and Destroyer. The spiritual life is strengthened and enriched, while the natural is weakened and diminished. That it is so shows thnt it ought to be so. All bitter and trying experiences only bring the weak and unworthy to the surface and cast it out. Like the corn placed in the ground, we must.be ready to decay and die; that even as it presently breaks forth to the air and sunlight, so we may break away from our limitation and darkness into a _sinless and sorrow less eternity. '!'his truth may be illustrated (1) from the physical frame; (2) from the present mixed relations of life. III. A very practical question is-HAVE WE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNS~KEN THINGS'? Do we know the work of the Lord Jesus to be our only secure refuge amid the tempest,; and earthquakes of our life? Can we look away through vicissitudes of time and sense,  892 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEDR1<.,WS. [cH. xm. 1-26.