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SERMON X.

THE PROPHECY OF HABAKKUK PRACTICALLY APPLIED.

НАВ. ііі. 2.

“O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord revive thy work in the midst of the years; in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy."

THE prophecy of Habakkuk consists but of three short chapters. There is no peculiar difficulty in it: norare the three chapters together longer than many a single chapter in the New Testament. My meaning is, without entering into any minute explanation of particular expressions, to take a general view of the whole book; expounding it so far as it is necessary for such a purpose, and then showing the application which may be made of it to ourselves.

I. The book consists of two parts. The former only is properly a prophecy :-the latter is the prophet's prayer or act of adoration addressed by him to God, after having received the prophecy from God to be communicated to the people.

The first chapter opens with Habakkuk's complaint of the iniquity of the people among whom he had been called to minister. And at the 5th verse we have the Lord's reply, in which he declares what he is about to do in consequence of that wickedness which his servant so truly had described, and with so much reason had bewailed. He would raise up the Chaldeans, "that bitter and hasty nation." They should march through the breadth of the land; they should be terrible and dreadful; their horses should be swifter than leopards, and more fierce than the evening wolves: they should come all for violence; they should scoff at kings and deride every strong hold:"-in short, carry all before them. And then, at the 11th verse, this part of the divine denunciations is concluded with a very remarkable prediction, intimating, I suppose, the great pride of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Chaldeans, and the extraordinary manner in which he should be punished by madness, as is related afterwards as matter of history in the book of Daniel. Then," that is after he has executed my wrath upon Judea,

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" then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, imputing his power unto his god,"--namely, to his idol, Bel, the false god of Babylon. Habakkuk having received this message, makes answer at the 12th verse, and so doing, he shows how pious and wise and right a view he had of God's proceedings.----He humbly acquiesces in the calamities threatened; but he intimates that he does not expect his country to be utterly ruined by them, or suppose that God meant to forsake his people, or to uphold their adversaries for ever. "Art thou not from everlasting," (he says) "O Lord, my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord thou hast ordained them" (our enemies) “for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction." * They would be thrown aside, he supposes, when they had done their work:-for they were most wicked in themselves, utterly ignorant that God was employing them as his instruments, and as utterly regardless of God, and of giving him the glory of their successes, as the fisherman would be if he should "sacrifice to his net, or burn incense to his drag," because by means of them he earned his living. "Shall they, therefore," (he asks in conclusion,)

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empty their net and not spare continually to

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slay the nations?"* In other words, shall these Chaldeans, O Lord, go on to oppress thy people for ever, as if they lay at their mercy like a draught of fishes dragged in a net to land? Having made this inquiry. At the first verse of the second chapter the prophet puts himself into an attitude to wait for Jehovah's answer. I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved." + And then the Lord's answer follows; introduced, first by a direction to the prophet to do what was customary with God's special messengers at that time; namely, to write the prophecy in large characters, and hang it up in some public place where all might read it : and secondly, by a direction to the people to wait God's time for their deliverance in faith, hope, and patience:-" Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul," (that is the soul of the oppressing enemy,) "behold his soul, which is lifted up, is not upright in him: but the just" (the pious Israelite who would wait

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upon God) "shall live by his faith."* then comes a prophecy of deliverance to Israel and of destruction to the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans are rebuked for their insatiable ambition, their pride, their cruelty, their sensuality and idolatry; and warned that they had consulted shame and ruin to themselves by their oppression of others. Jehovah is declared to be in his holy place, as it were taking continual notice of their impious proceedings; all the earth is commanded to keep silence before him; and both his worshippers and his insolent foes who persecuted them, are certified that the time was drawing near, when all should own his sovereignty and behold his greatness. "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."† No doubt the final triumph of the gospel, and the absolute downfal of all the enemies of Christ's church, are prefigured by the events here foretold, and in this way, at least, intimated in the prophecy; but the deliverance of the Jews from captivity, and the destruction of the Chaldean monarchy, were the matters primarily intended: and accordingly the accomplishment of the prophet's vision, or rather the first and proximate accomplishment of it, will