"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

" Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled." —Matthew 5:6 [KJV] To thirst after happiness is natural. To seek it from wrong objects is natural. To desire to escape a hell of misery, and enjoy a place of happiness, is equally natural. If this may be called salvation, all men wish to be saved. The most wicked may wish to "die the death of the righteous, and that their last end may be like his." This every man is capable of as a rational, intelligent being. And many are striving to make themselves righteous in order to be saved.  But to desire salvation in God's way, to hunger and thirst after Christ and His righteousness, is peculiar to the quickened only. The dead hunger not. Spiritual appetites spring from spiritual life. A natural man can as soon seek to fill his belly with the east wind, or allay his thirst with the sunbeams, as do this. To know ourselves to be miserable sinners, destitute of righ