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

"Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth?" -Song of Solomon 3:3 [KJV] An abrupt question. Very oddly stated. Had this enquirer no name for her beloved? Can she suppose every one she asks, knew who was the beloved of her soul, and was acquainted with her loss of him? The spouse of Christ here seems to be in great discomposure of mind.  Just like a tender mother, who had lost the beloved son of her womb: or an affectionate wife, in search after an indulgent husband; thinking every one has heard of her distress, asks with the utmost eagerness, have you seen him? O for more of this love of Christ in our souls!  Observe here, the actings of a gracious heart, under the sense of Christ’s withdrawing His comforting presence. That Christ, for wise and good ends best known to Himself, doth withdraw Himself, is a truth that has been experienced by all His saints. You have not been long married to Christ, if you have not taken up the words of the church of old, “Verily Thou art a God...

"The LORD possessed me in the beginning of His way: before His works of old, I was set up from everlasting."   -Proverbs 8:22, 23 [KJV] Pause, my soul, over those most blessed words, and see what glories are contained in them. May God the Spirit glorify Christ to thy view while pondering these words! Who is it that speaks them? Is it not wisdom! Even Christ, the wisdom of God, as the apostle elsewhere calls Him? But how was He possessed by the Lord, and how set up from everlasting?  Not openly in the human form, that He was in the fulness of time to take upon Him for the purpose of redemption; but, as it should seem, secretly, as subsisting in covenant engagements from everlasting.  Mediator, was it not? Not as yet made flesh, but if we may from another scripture draw the conclusion, "as the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature"   (Colossians 1:15.) What a glory, beheld in this view, doth this precious scripture, with all that fol...

"Blessed are the poor in spirit." -Matthew 5:5 [KJV] Spiritual poverty is a miserable feeling of soul-emptiness before God, an inward sinking sensation that there is nothing in our hearts spiritually good, nothing which can deliver us from the justly merited wrath of God, or save us from the lowest hell. And intimately blended with the poignant feelings of guilt and condemnation, there is a spiritual consciousness that there is such a thing enjoyed by the elect as the Spirit of adoption, that there are such sweet realities as divine manifestations, that the blood of Jesus Christ is sprinkled by the Holy Ghost upon the consciences of the redeemed to cleanse them from all guilt and filth.  And thus by comparing its own wants with their blessings, and having an inward light wherein the truth of God's word is seen, and an inward life whereby it is felt, a soul wading in the depths of spiritual poverty, is brought to feel that it must be the manifestation of the l...