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

"WORTHY IS THE LAMB." -Revelation 5:12 [KJV] This the song, this the glory of angels and redeemed sinners heaven . To know, believe in, love, and follow this Lamb, constitutes our heaven upon earth. Sin is our hell. But this Lamb of God taketh away our sin. Then heaven is in our souls.  O that ever we should be ashamed of this Lamb, who is heaven’s wonder and heaven’s glory! Is not this thought of being ashamed of God’s Lamb, like a dagger to our heart? Lamb of God, have mercy upon us! Why is our dear Saviour called a Lamb?  (1st.) Because of His immaculate purity. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners: without a spot of sin, or stain of impurity.  (2d.) He was meek and inoffensive like a lamb. A lamb has no weapon of hostility. It never hurts any one. It cannot defend itself against assaults. It becomes an easy prey. All this Christ was in His life.  Therefore, (3d.) like a lamb, He was taken and slain. He was the very paschal Lamb, t...

"The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen." -II Kings 4:1 [KJV] My soul, how doth this affect thee? Art thou in debt? By nature and by practice thou wast miserably so, unless the debt be cancelled. As a creature, and as a sinful creature, thou art in thyself for ever insolvent. Thou hast nothing to pay, and art shut up in a total impossibility ever to pay. And how much owest thou unto my Lord?  Alas, my soul, thou owest millions of debts to thy Almighty Creditor. The law thou hast broken; justice demands retribution; conscience condemns; Satan accuses; and the creditor is come to take not thy two sons only, but both thy two parts, soul and body, to the prison of death and hell, unless some almighty Surety hath stept in and paid the dreadful debt, that thou mayest be free. At death, and at judgment that follows, the everlasting release, or the everlasting imprisonment, will take place . And who knows whether the decision may not be to-morr...

"The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." -Proverbs of Solomon 27:7 [KJV]   Afflictions, trials, and sorrows are very bitter things. And they must needs be bitter, for God never meant that they should be otherwise. When He takes the rod, it is to make it felt; and when He brings trouble on His children, it is that they may smart under it. Our text therefore does not, I believe, mean that the "bitter thing" is sweet when it is taken, for then it would cease to be bitter; but it is sweet on account of the blessed nourishment that is brought to the soul out of it . I remember reading, many years ago, the travels of Franklin to the North Pole; and a very interesting book it is naturally. But there is one incident mentioned in it which just strikes my mind. In wandering over the snows of the circumpolar regions there was no food to be got for days and, I think, weeks, except a lichen or kind of moss that grew...