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

"But GOD, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sin, hath quickened us together with CHRIST (by grace ye are saved.)" -Ephesians 2:4-5 [KJV] My dear brethren in Christ, and thou, O my soul, one chief reason why, at any time, we have so little comfort, and are so low in joy, is, we do not enough believe and live upon the love of God. Let us never think of, or look for any mercy from God, without considering that it flows from love. Is God rich in mercy to any? It is because He loves them.  Great love, everlasting, unchangeable love, is the source and spring of rich mercy. It was rich mercy, for God to give us His beloved Son to be our Saviour in time. This was because of His great love to us before time. He loved us from eternity in His Son. He loves us invariably the same through time, and under all states and circumstances.  Yea, when we were forlorn, hopeless, helpless, loathsome, and desperate, even dead in...

"And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them." -John 17:10 [KJV] Precious testimony of a precious truth. See to it, my soul, that thou suffer not these blessed words of Jesus to drop from thy remembrance; but make them the everlasting meditation, not only of this morning, but every morning, and every day, and all the day; and mark thine interest in them. All Jesus' treasures in His people and His grace, are still the Father's; for, as Jesus and the Father are one in essence and in will, so also in property.  And the Father's giving the church to Jesus, with all blessings in Him, doth not alienate the Father's right: so in like manner, all that Jesus hath are the Father's, and Christ is glorified in them. It is a blessed order in the work and purpose of redemption, to trace the Father as the original Giver, Fountain, and Source of all; and then to trace them as Jesus' by virtue of His being the glorious Mediator....

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" -Jeremiah 17:9 [KJV] The sin of our fallen nature is a very mysterious thing. We read of the mystery of iniquity as well as of the mystery of godliness; and the former has lengths, depths, and breadths as well as the latter; depths which no human plumbline ever fathomed, and lengths which no mortal measuring line ever yet meted out.  Thus the way in which sin sometimes seems to sleep, and at other times to awake up with renewed strength, its active, irritable, impatient, restless nature, the many shapes and colours it wears, the filthy holes and puddles in which it grovels, the corners into which it creeps, its deceitfulness, hypocrisy, craft, plausibility, intense selfishness, utter recklessness, desperate madness, and insatiable greediness are secrets, painful secrets, only learnt by bitter experience. In the spiritual knowledge of these two mysteries, the mystery of sin and th...