Egyptians did: but to worship the God who made sun and stars, earth and rivers, and to put their trust in Him to guide all heaven and earth aright; and to make all things, sun, earth, and weather, ay, and the very burning mountains and earthquakes, work together for good for them if they loved God. Therefore it was that God gave His law to Moses on the burning mountain of Sinai, amid thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, to show them that the lightnings and the mountains obeyed Him. Therefore it was that the earthquake opened the ground and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who rebelled against Moses. Therefore it was that God once used an earthquake and eruption to preserve David from his enemies, as we read in the eighteenth Psalm. And all through David’s Psalms we find how well he had learnt this great lesson which God had taught him. Again and again we find verses which show that he knew well enough who was the Lord of all the earth. In Isaiah’s time, it seems, God taught the Jews once more the same thing. He taught them, and the proud king of Assyria, once and for all, that He was indeed the Lord—Lord of all nations, and King of kings, and also Lord of the earth, and all that therein is. He taught it to the poor oppressed Jews by that miraculous deliverance. He taught it to the cruel invading king by that miraculous destruction. Just in the height of his glory, after he had conquered almost every nation in the east, and overcome the whole of Judæa, except that one small city of Jerusalem, Sennacherib’s great army was swept away, he neither knew how nor why, in a single night, and utterly disheartened and abashed, he returned to his own land; and even there he found that the God of Israel had followed him—that the idols whom he worshipped could not save him from the wrath of that God to whom Assyria, just as much as Jerusalem, belonged. For as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, his two sons smote him with the sword, and there was an end of all his pride and conquests. . . . Now Nisroch was the name of a star—the star which we call the planet Saturn; and the Assyrians fancied in their folly, that whosoever worshipped any particular star, that star would protect and help him. . . . But, alas for the king of Assyria, there was One above who had made the stars, and from whose vengeance the stars could not save him; and so even while he was worshipping, and praying to, this favourite star of his which could not hear him, he fell dead, a murdered man, and found out too late how true were the great words of Isaiah when he prophesied against him.