warns from heaven" (ver. 25). The contemner of the ban of Sinai
fell "stricken through" the body. The "decliner" of the admonition to
turn no more to the hill of doom, but boldly to climb the hill of peace,
will fall stricken through the soul. That warning voice, which once
shook the desert, has now promised (ver. 26)--for a promise, the promise
of an eternal redemption, lies deep in that threatening (Hag. ii.
6)--that not earth only but heaven is yet to feel His shaking, and once
for ever when it comes. He, "yet once more," shall work one vast
"removing"; and then (ver. 27) a stability irremovable shall finally
come in. "The things that have been made," the terrestrial and material
"figures of the real" (ix. 24), are to pass away, never to return, in
order that "the things incapable of disturbance" ([Greek: ta me
saleuomena]) "may remain." And what are these things? Nothing less than
the spiritual, ultimate, all-fulfilling truths and glories to which the
"things made" served as preparation, type, and foil, but which
themselves to all eternity shall know no successors, no "new order"
through which God shall otherwise "fulfil Himself." For what are they,
in their inmost essence? They are the truths which spring always from
the Incarnate Son, and return always into Him; "the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory."

So let the disciples clasp their sublime privileges, and greatly
rejoice--and also greatly fear to "decline" them, to surrender them, to
treat them lightly. They "are in receipt ([Greek: paralambanoutes]) of a
kingdom unshakable," for they have become the willing vassals of the
eternal David of the true Israel, in whose kingship they too are kings,
reigning over "all the power of the enemy." But, for the very reason
that they hold a royalty, and such a royalty, let them address
themselves to a life of adoration, and reverence, and awe, deep as that
of the holy ones who, close to the throne above, veil their faces and
their feet evermore with their wings, not in terror but in a joy full of
wonder and of worship. "Let us have grace," let us _take and use_ the
grace which in the covenant is ours,[R] and in it let us live this life.
For it is to be a life all the while not of alarm and doubting, but _of
grace_. Only it is to be lived as before Him who is (ver. 29) "consuming
fire, a jealous God" (Deut. iv. 24), "jealous" against all "forsakers of
their own mercy" (Jonah ii. 8), rejectors of His Son,