In countries where earthquakes happen, a dead silence always goes before the earthquake. Nature seems hushed into an awful stillness, as if she were holding her breath at the thought of the coming disaster. The air hangs heavily; not a breath fans the leaves; the birds make no music; there is no hum of insects; there is no ripple of streams; and this while whole houses, and even cities sometimes, are hanging on the brink of ruin. So it is with God's silence,--it will be followed, when it seems deepest, by the earthquake of His judgments. And so the holy Apostle writes to the Thessalonians: "When they shall say, Peace and safety" (from the fact of God's being so still and so dumb), "Then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."--_Goulburn._ WORTHLESS HUSKS. i. 15. _And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear._ The Jews had been likened unto the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (ver. 10). As such, they are summoned to listen to a series of declarations of which this is the sum, that worship without holiness is a solemn mockery. Confining ourselves to our text only, we may see that it teaches us--+I. The worthlessness of ritualism without spirituality.+ "When ye spread forth your hands," &c. 1. _Ritualism is an essential element of public worship._ There must be some form by which thought can be expressed, and the devotions of others guided. There may be too little, or too much, but _some_ is indispensable.[1] 2. _Ritualism may be the expression of earnest spiritual life, and a help thereto._ It may be the outcome of a sincere feeling and deep piety--such was the ritual which David and his devout companions devised and elaborated for the service of the Temple. It was costly and magnificent beyond even that which is observed in St. Peter's at Rome; but as practised by them it was as spiritual as the baldest service that has ever been conducted in the barest conventicle. A splendid ritual may be acceptable to the Most High, and the followers of George Fox must not imagine that they are the only persons who worship God "in spirit and in truth." 3. But _ritualism may be, and often is, only a form._ It may mean only an exhibition of millinery, a scrupulous observance of a prescribed series of postures and genuflexions. It may be, according to a too suggestive phrase, merely a service "performed." In this case God passes it by with contempt. To all engaged in such histrionic performances He says, "When ye spread forth your hands," &c. Supplication without desire will never draw down the Divine benediction. +II. The worthlessness of prayer without purity of heart.+ "When ye make many prayers, I will not hear." 1. _Prayer is a necessity of the Christian life._ A consciousness of weakness and