Then, as the great paragraph approaches its climax, the note of warning sounds again (ver. 25). The convert, fresh from the reminder of the "voice" of the sprinkled blood of the better covenant, is cautioned not to "refuse" it, not to "decline" it ([Greek: me paraitesesthe]). The primary reference is manifestly to that perpetual danger of the Hebrews, the temptation to turn back from the Gospel, with its spiritual order and its hopes of things not yet seen, to the outworn Dispensation, with its externally majestic circumstances of glorious ritual and imposing shows of polity and power. They would need again and again to open the soul's ears and eyes, and steadfastly to recollect, against all appearances, that we "_are come unto_ the Mount Sion," if they were to resist the magnetic forces which drew them back towards Sinai--and towards death. So they were to hear the sweet voices of heavenly love, and festal life, and blood-bought covenanted peace, sounding from the true Sion, with joy indeed but also with holy dread. They were to _fear_ lest they should "decline" them, lest sense should conquer faith and the soul be lost under the mountain of condemnation after all. "For if they did not escape who on earth declined Him who spoke oraculous warning ([Greek: chrematizonta]), much more shall we not escape, turning from Him who 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."