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

"These all died in faith." -Hebrews 11:13 [KJV]   An officer in the Navy, who held me exceedingly in derision on account of religion, was taken dangerously ill. To my great surprise, he sent for me. I found him in distress of soul: spoke freely to him of our lost estate, of Christ’s love and salvation, and prayed with him. He wept sore: clapping his hands to his breast, he cried out, “O, my God! have I got a soul?” As though he had never known it before.    Turning to the place where I kneeled, he said, “Where have I lived, that I never heard these things before? O I shall never forget what I have heard this night!” I visited him to his last moments, and trust he died in the faith, and hope to see him in glory. “Heaven is a house full of the miracles of Christ’s free-grace,” says one. There is the once idolatrous Manasseh; the murdering, adulterous David; the persecuting Saul; the Christ-denying Peter, etc.    O my God, shall wretched I be ther...

"Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Zion." -Psalm 65:1 [KJV]   Is this the language of my heart? Am I indeed waiting until that Jesus be ready to receive my poor praise? Hath God the Holy Ghost prepared my heart? Oh then, hasten to Him, my soul, with thy morning offerings, poor as they are; for sure I am, Jesus is waiting to be gracious. God will accept both thee and thy offering in Him the Beloved.    Go forth to meet Him as early and as often as thine heart can wish: depend upon it, thy Redeemer will be beforehand with thee, and is waiting thy coming. Neither thy praise nor thy prayer can outrun His love; for both are the blessed effects of His grace, and of His own quickenings.    Precious Jesus, grant me to come as often as I need Thee. And, Lord, if Thou wilt grant me this blessing, I shall never be from Thee, for I need Thee every moment.   -preacher Robert Hawker (1753-1827 A.D.) 

"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." -Ephesians 1:4, 5 [KJV] It is a very solemn but a very true assertion, that no man can quicken his own soul; and it is an equally solemn, we might almost say, a tremendous truth, that the gospel only comes in power to those whom God has chosen unto eternal life.  Indeed the one flows from the other; for if no man can quicken his own soul, it necessarily follows it must be of sovereign grace that it is quickened at all. Once you allow the fall, and acknowledge that a man is by nature so thoroughly dead in trespasses and sins that he cannot raise himself up out of this state to newness of life, then the doctrine of election necessarily follows.   A living soul may reason thus: "Am I quickened? Yes. Di...