ilish pleasure of a
sneer, crush what is finest, and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart
of any fellow-creature. Never confound any human soul in the hour of its
weakness. For then, it may be, in the hour of thy weakness, Christ will
not confound thee.

SERMON VIII. THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.

HEBREWS XII. 26-29.

Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this
word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are
shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be
shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be
moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.

This is one of the Royal texts of Scripture. It is inexhaustible, like
the God who inspired it. It has fulfilled itself again and again, at
different epochs. It fulfilled itself specially and notoriously in the
first century. But it fulfilled itself again in the fifth century; and
again at the Crusades; and again at the Reformation in the sixteenth
century. And it may be that it is fulfilling itself at this very day;
that in this century, both in the time of our fathers and in our own, the
Lord has been shaking the heavens and the earth, that those things which
can be shaken may be removed, as things that are made, while those things
which cannot be shaken may remain.

All confess this to be true, each in his own words. They talk of this
age as one of change; of rapid progress, for good or evil; of unexpected
discoveries; of revolutions, intellectual, moral, social, as well as
political. Our notions of the physical universe are rapidly altering,
with the new discoveries of science; and our notions of ethics and
theology are altering as rapidly. The era assumes a different aspect to
different minds, just as did the first century after Christ, according as
men look forward to the future with hope, or back to the past with
regret. Some glory in the nineteenth century as one of rapid progress
for good; as the commencement of a new era for humanity; as the
inauguration of a Reformation as grand as that of the sixteenth century.
Others bewail it as an age of rapid decay; in which the old landmarks are
being removed, the old paths lost; in which we are rushing headlong into
scepticism and atheism; in which the world and the Church are both in
danger; and the l