I. These words refer to the first and the second temple at Jerusalem. The first temple was burnt by the Chaldees, and the wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and the people carried captive to Babylon, and it was more than fifty years after that the foundation of the second house was laid. It was an occasion to stir up mixed feelings among the people. The glory of their nation had passed away. They came back as exiles, by the permission of a foreign power, to the land that their fathers had conquered. Hope and recollection struggled against each other, when they dwelt by turns on the state from which they had been cast down, and on their hopes of restoration. Jehovah would not manifest Himself in the same degree as He had before to a people who were suffering the punishment of their backslidings; and the house they had built Him was but a poor copy of the temple that had perished. Yet Haggai promised that this second temple in its poverty should be more glorious than the first, because the desire of all nations, even Christ Himself, should come to it, and the Lord of hosts should fill it with glory.
II. This teaches us that it is not the house, but the presence that sanctifies the house, that constitutes its glory. It rests with us to hinder or help the work of God according as we seek God here in earnest, or let our hearts go after covetousness.
Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln's Inn Sermons,p. 390.