There is a vast difference between such an affection and that selfish and unhallowed friendship to God which terminates on our own happiness as its supreme motive and end. If a man in his supposed love to God has no ultimate regard except to his own happiness, if he delights in God not for what He is but for what He is to him, in such a sentiment there is no moral virtue. There is indeed great love of self but no true love of God. But where the enmity of the carnal mind is slain, the soul is reconciled to the divine character as it is. God Himself in the fullness of His manifested glory becomes the object of devout and delighted contemplation. In his more favored hours, the views of a good man are in a great measure diverted from himself. As his thoughts glance toward the varied excellence of the deity, he scarcely stops to inquire whether the being whose character fills his mind and in comparison of whose dignity and beauty all things are atoms and vanity will extend his mercy to him. His soul cleaves to God and in the warmth and fervor of devout affection, he can often say, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on the earth that I desire beside Thee, as the hart pants after the waterbrooks, so pants my soul after Thee, O God.”
Gardiner Spring

Spurgeon PS1815

Spurgeon PS1815

EXPOSITION.

So tremendous was the shock of God’s assault in arms that the order of nature was changed, and the bottoms of rivers and seas were laid bare. “_The channels of waters were seen_;” and the deep cavernous bowels of the earth were upheaved till “_the foundations of the world were discovered_.” What will not Jehovah’s “_rebuke_” do? If “_the blast of the breath of thy nostrils_,” O Lord, be so terrible, what must thine arm be? Vain are the attempts of men to conceal anything from him whose word unbars the deep, and lifts the doors of earth from their hinges! Vain are all hopes of resistance, for a whisper of his voice makes the whole earth quail in abject terror.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.

Verse 15.–“_The foundations of the world were discovered_;” i.e., such large and deep chasms, or apertures, were made by the violence of the earthquake, as one might almost see the very foundations, or as Jonah calls them, _the bottoms_, or rather, _the extremities of the mountains_, in the bottom of the sea. #Jon 2:6|.–^Samuel Chandler.

Verse 15.–The Lord interposed with the same notoriety of his presence, as when the waters of the sea were driven back by a strong east wind, and the deep turned into dry ground (#Ex 14:21,22|), to give the Israelites a safe passage out of their thraldom, and to drown the Egyptians.–^Henry Hammond.

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