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

" But that on the good ground, are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the Word keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." -Luke 8:15 [KJV] Disciple, tread warily on this good ground. Speak cautiously about it. Lest thy soul be lifted up, and thou shouldest say, I made myself to differ . My nature is better to receive the seed, and my heart more honest and good to retain it, than others. Know thyself by nature upon a level with wayside, stony-ground, and thorny hearers. See what is predicted of these blessed hearers. Examine if we are of the happy number: if so, let us fall down in humility, and cry, What hath God wrought! Let us give all the glory to the God of all grace .  (1st.) “That on good ground.” It is made good by the labour of the husbandman: tilled, cultivated, and made fit to receive the seed, by the grace of the Spirit, in an honest and good heart. No man has such a heart naturally. The heart is deceitful above all things, a...

"If there be a Messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man His uprightness; then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom. " -Job 33:23, 24 [KJV] My soul, how precious are those views, in looking back upon where the first discoveries of grace were made. Moses never forgot the first visions of God at the bush; neither did Jacob outlive the remembrance of the first Bethel-visit of a God in Christ to his soul; and why should I? Hast thou not known this Messenger, this Interpreter, One among a 'thousand to shew unto thee' God's uprightness? Oh yes, Jesus by His Spirit hath shewn to me that my "God is righteous in all His ways, and holy in His works."   When by the blessed discoveries which had been made to me in His word, by His ordinances, providences, judgments, mercies, like the poor creature described in this sweet scripture, when reduced to a mere ske...

" Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at ." -Zechariah 3:8 [KJV] A sinner saved is a spectacle for angels to contemplate. As the apostle says, "We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels and to men." The ancients used to say that "a good man struggling with difficulties was a sight for the gods to look at." We may say, with all Christian truth, that the mysteries of redemption are "things the angels desire to look into" (I Peter 1:12) and among the mysteries of redemption, what greater than a redeemed sinner?  That a man who deserves, by sin original and sin actual, nothing but the eternal wrath of God, should be lifted out of perdition justly merited into salvation to which he can have no claim, must indeed ever be a holy wonder. And that you or I should ever have been fixed on in the electing love of God, ever have been given to Jesus to redeem, e...