Psal. lxviii. 7. _O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people; when thou didst march thro' the wilderness; the earth shook, the heavens also dropped, at the presence of God. Even Sinai itself was moved, at the presence of God; the God of Israel._ By this he means, the giving the law. _Exod._ xix. 8. _And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke; because the Lord descended on it in fire: and the smoke ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly._ Again, Psal. cxiv. when he is describing the passage over the _Red-sea_, and that over _Jordan_; he brings in the machinery of earthquakes, to testify the divine presence. _When Israel went out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from among a strange people; the sea saw it and fled. Jordan was driven back._ _The mountains skipped like rams: and the little hills like young sheep._ Then he asks the question, _What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? and thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?_ _Ye mountains that ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills like young sheep?_ He answers: _Tremble thou earth at the presence of the Lord: at the presence of the God of Jacob._ He fails not to attribute these marvellous appearances, to their true cause. Tho' he knew full well, that the God of nature administred the ordinary course of the earth by second causes; yet he could not be so blind but to perceive, when the waves of the ocean retreated; when the waters of _Jordan_ divided; when mount _Sinai_ was all in fire, smoke, lightning and thunder, with the trumpet of God sounding, and the whole mountain shaking: he could not but perceive the presence of the author of nature, in these extraordinary appearances. But every where in sacred scripture earthquakes are particularly singled out, above all other natural _phænomena_, as having more of the majesty and terrific pomp, to denote an immediate operation of God's hand; to excite our fear, and shew his anger, as in our text, _because he was wroth_. In imitation of the sacred writers, the heathen poets, both _greek_ and _latin_, express the anger of their _Jupiter_ by an earthquake: _Terrificam capitis concussit terque quaterque Cæsariem; cum qua terram, mare, sidera, movit._ Ovid. The moving meteors in the free air, lightning, coruscations, fire-balls, tempests, thunders, or the dreaded comets, tho' frightful enough; yet people that do not think to any purpose, hope, as they are at a distance, to escape their effects. But when the terror comes home to us, to our feet; when the earth moves on which we stand; what heart is not moved? When our houses _shake_ over our ears, the greatest courage is _shaken_.