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: — In Scripture mountains are used to set forth —

I. THE PLACE OF SPECIAL COMMUNION WITH GOD. The Bible often refers to mountains as if, in a special sense, they belonged to God. Actually all things are God's — valleys as well as hills, plains as well as mountains. But I believe you never meet with God speaking of these other things as He does of mountains. He doesn't say, "My valleys," "My rivers," but He does say, "My mountains." And when we stand and look at a mountain, with its top piercing the clouds, the thought may well come to us, If the valleys and plains have been given to man, God has reserved the mountains for Himself. If man is able to scale them he is unable to live upon them. And there are some whose summits can never be reached. Yes, if we want to banish little earth-born thoughts, and cares, and troubles, if we would exclude them by the entrance of greater thoughts, then climb the mountain, go to its summit if you can, and you are likely to come back another man. It is in accord with all this that our Saviour, when He wanted His three disciples to lose sight of earth while they beheld His heavenly glory, took them away to a mountain-top. And whenever He Himself wanted to leave the world behind Him, and to find a place where He could feel His Father to be very near, and have intimate communion with Him, "He went up into a mountain to pray."

II. GOD'S GREAT POWER. The old Hebrew teachers, when they wanted to show the people how strong the arm of Jehovah was, used, in effect, to point to the mountains, and say, "Let me tell you what Jehovah can do with them." Isaiah is rich in imagery of this sort. At one time the prophet wished to make the people feel the immense disparity between themselves and God, and he asks them the significant question, "Who hath weighed the mountains in scales?" When the prophet again wishes to tell us what mighty things God has done, and especially to call attention to the quiet, easy, noiseless way that God can bring about marvellous events, how splendidly he effects this by saying, "The mountains flowed down at Thy presence"! When Jeremiah wished vividly to picture to the people the terrible judgments which his prophetic eye could see that God was about to bring upon their land because they had been rebellious, among other things he says: "I beheld the mountains, and, lo! they trembled." When Nahum seeks to make the impenitent sinner sensible of the terrors of the Lord, even though He is slow to anger, he says, "The mountains quake at Him, the hills melt, and the earth is burned at His presence." And Habakkuk shows that Jehovah's power is not to be trifled with when, more than once he says, "The mountains saw Thee, and they trembled." Yes, these immovable hills tremble when they see God; and what, then, will impenitent sinners do — men who take no notice of what God has to say to them; who keep their thoughts bound down to earthly things, and never acknowledge God in any of His ways?

III. GREAT ANTIQUITY AND UNCHANGEABLENESS (Habakkuk 3:6; Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 54:10).

IV. SYMBOLS OF IMMENSE OBSTACLES AND DIFFICULTIES (Matthew 17:20; 1 Corinthians 13:2).

1. The pathway of every individual life has its obstacles. Not only do we pass through cloud and sunshine, and along rough places and smooth, but sometimes we have to confront obstacles which seem to be as much beyond our power to move aside as the high mountain would be. But take courage, friend! for if you can't remove it, if you can't get it out of your way in an instant — as most of us in our impatience would like to do with all our mountain-difficulties — yet by steady and persistent effort you may master the mountain and get the right side of it by and by.

2. But mountains are put, too, in Scripture as symbols of difficulties which lie in the way of Christ's conquest of the world. The Alps lay in the way of Hannibal and Napoleon when they were seeking to conquer Italy; and vaster mountains still seem to lie in the way of Christ's conquest of the world. The unwillingness of the people to listen to the message of reconciliation is a mighty mountain in the way of the victorious march of the Saviour; and even when they listen the unbelief and cold indifference of men stand out like a vast mountain with snowy summit and ice-bound sides. We might well believe that these difficulties would never be overcome if God had not said they should be. But God can make even these icy mountains shake and tremble and melt away. The thing that is impossible with men is possible with God. Out of these very mountains God can make a way. He can convert a Saul, the persecutor and unbeliever, into Paul, the persuasive preacher. And if we have faith we shall not only climb mountains by an incessant effort, but we shall be able to put some of them out of the way (Isaiah 40:4, 5).

(J. Clarke, B. A.)

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KJV: Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:

WEB: mountains and all hills; fruit trees and all cedars;