Habakkuk 3:16-19

If we read these verses as we ought to read them, implying the spiritual effect wrought upon the mind of the Prophet, and in like manner what may be supposed in the same way to influence every child of God; they describe to us the wonderful and blessed consequences wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, in the contemplation of Jesus and his great salvation. Convinced by God the Spirit of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, there will be trembling under a sense, of iniquity, and like another Prophet, our comeliness will be turned into corruption. Daniel 10:8. While from the same sovereign and Almighty teaching, the soul of the poor self-condemned, and self-loathing sinner, will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of his salvation! I beg the Reader, while admiring the beautiful expressions of the fig-tree blossoms, and the fields yielding meat; not to overlook the infinitely more important things veiled under those figures; for the whole is but figure. Fig-trees do not blossom; neither is the grass of the field food for man. But these expressions are all spiritual, and highly descriptive of the rich provision in Christ; when ordinances, which are like the pleasant plants and fruits of the earth, and all things else fail. These words of Habakkuk, are the strong faith of the man living wholly upon Christ, when the fig-tree of ordinances, when the fruit of the vine, in all the means of grace, when there is even a famine of hearing the word of the Lord; yea, believers, which are the flock of the fold, are cut off; so that like Elijah, he considers himself alone, and not one of the herd remaining in the stall. Ezekiel 34:31; Micah 7:14. The close of Habakkuk's prophecy is, as might be expected in a man of strong faith like him. And every true believer in Christ, who can from the heart adopt the same language of faith, to rejoice in the Lord Jesus himself, the fountain of joy, when the streams of all creature comforts fail, may, and ought to say with Habakkuk, the Lord God is my strength, he will make me to walk upon mine high places. For my poor opinion on the address of this prayer of Habakkuk, I refer the Reader to what I have offered on the title of Psalms 4:1; which is to the same purport.