I. There are some works of Jehovah, which proclaim his benignity and tender mercy. All his dispensations are big with a display of these most attractive and endearing attributes. They crown his providence, and shine forth with brightest lustre in the boundless riches of grace. Every land is witness to his patience, and equally so to the vast profusion of his all-bounteous munificence. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord; and all nature smiles under the tender mercies of our God. And, were this the proper place, or would the reference of our text admit of the digression, we might take a view of that beautiful scene, painted by an inspired hand, and in the most sublime imagery, in Psal. lxv. 8–13. We might meditate, with rapture and with profit, on those works of paternal goodness, which “the outgoings of the morning and the evening rejoice” to publish; when the Father of Mercies makes his “paths to drop fatness on the pastures of the wilderness,” and “crowneth” the opening and closing “year with his goodness;” when pastures clothed with flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, “make the little hills rejoice on every side,” give an universal festivity and gaiety to the face of nature, and “shout for joy” in praise of nature’s God. Or we may pass to a contemplation of a still more enrapturing scene, which the former but faintly pictures; I mean that of the human heart emerging from darkness and from barrenness under the propitious rays of the “Sun of Righteousness,” softened by the dew of divine grace, watered by the divine Spirit, that “river of God which is full of water,” clothed with that _best robe_, the Redeemer’s righteousness, and transformed from a wilderness into a little Eden, flourishing like the garden of God. Or, we might fix our meditations on that most gracious and most stupendous work of infinite mercy, the redemption of sinners through JESUS CHRIST. A work this, which is the great labor of the skies, and the grandest work of God; on which the believer employs his sweetest meditations, and from which he derives his brightest hopes. But the subject of the text, as well as the solemnity of the day, calls us, for the present, to consider _other_ works, in which, not the olive-branch of peace, but the rod of vindictive justice, is held forth; where not the goodness, but the severity of God, is the chief object; in which the desolation of the earth is his awful purpose; and by which he speaks, not in the still small voice of mercy and benignity, but in accents more awful than the noise of conflicting elements, and more tremendous than the sound of ten thousand thunders. “For, behold the Lord cometh out of his place to _punish_ the inhabitants of the earth for their _iniquity_; therefore let all the earth keep silence before him.” Isa. xxvi. 21. Hab. ii. 20.