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

" Is it true?" -Daniel 3:14 [KJV] Note: read all of ch. 3 A question, this from a potent monarch, backed with a dreadful threatening: enough to have put Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to the stand. Their answer must provoke their God, or their king. But did they hesitate a moment? were they at all in doubtful suspense? No: they had faith in their Lord; and they boldly replied, “O king, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.”   Our cause lies before our God. We are not left to ourselves. Our present life, our immortal soul, is in His hands. If you command us into the fiery furnace, our God will be with us. We shall be safe: He will deliver us. Either our bodies that we have shall not be burnt; or, if they are, the burning furnace shall be only a fiery chariot, to convey our souls to heaven and glory.  See the power of faith. According as they believed, so it was. The Son of God was with them: the fire could not hurt them. Hence, consider,  (1st.) ...

"Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” -Matthew 24:28 [KJV] My soul! these are the words of Jesus, none of which should be suffered to fall to the ground. No doubt much instruction is contained in this passage. An eagle is a bird of prey: and Job saith, that the eagle hasteneth to the prey as the swift ships, see Job 9:26 . In all birds of prey there is great sagacity, a vast quickness of scent to smell their proper food afar off; and thus natural instinct, added to a rapacious appetite, compel those creatures to fly swift to their prey, and to devour the carcase. Is there nothing in all this that suits thee, my soul? Oh yes: If Jesus hath given thee a real principle of life in Himself, which becomes a spiritual quickening from day to day, and from one hour to another, thy hungering and thirsting for Jesus will be as earnest and as importunate as the instinct of nature in those birds for daily food. Pause, my soul, and say— is it s...

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is ." -I John 3:2 [KJV] What Christ is to the Church, what the Church is to Christ, can never be really known till time gives place to eternity, faith to sight, and hope to enjoyment. Nor even then, however beyond all present conception the powers and faculties of the glorified souls and bodies of the saints may be expanded, however conformed to the glorious image of Christ, or however ravished with the discoveries of His glory and the sight of Him as He is in one unclouded day,—no, not even then, will the utmost stretch of creature love, or highest refinement of creature intellect, wholly embrace or fully comprehend that love of Christ, which, as in time so in eternity, "passeth knowledge," as being in itself essentially incomprehensible, because infinite and divine. Who can calcu...