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

"Keep thy heart with all diligence." - Proverbs 4:23 [KJV] Camden reports, that “Redwald, king of the east Saxons, the first prince of this nation who was baptized; yet, in the same church, allowed an altar for Christ, and another for the heathen idols.” How many professors imitate him! Their hearts are not whole with Christ. They are sons of folly. This a charge of wisdom to all her children. Consider, there is but one object can make your heart happy. There are a thousand that promise happiness, but only give misery. Keep thy heart in [the sense of] the love of God   (Jude 1:21.) Give all diligence to this blessed end.  Unless you do, vanity may prevail in the mind, error in the understanding, perverseness in the will, the affections may be inordinately set upon other objects, than thy Lord; and so thy conscience will contract fresh guilt. Then thou mayest be left to bemoan a hard heart, and an absent God: darkness may surround thee; fears and terrors haunt ...

"Then I restored that which I took not away."   - Psalm 69:4 [KJV] Whose words are these? They can be none but the words of Jesus; for none ever made restoration but He; and none but He could say, I took nothing away . And what was taken away? God's glory was taken away by sin; and consequently, man's happiness also. For when Adam sinned, he robbed God of His glory, and robbed himself and all his posterity of God's image, and with it all happiness. Nay, my soul, thou hast done the same, in every renewed act of disobedience. And in breaking the divine law thou hast justly lost the divine favour. And hath Jesus, all precious Jesus, restored all these? Yes, blessings on His name, He hath! And what renders it ten-fold more gracious, He hath so done it as never to be lost any more. By His finished work of salvation He hath restored to God His glory. And by His obedience and death, as our Surety, He hath restored to man his happiness. The favour of God we l...

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." -Psalm 23:4 [KJV] Death, the gaunt king of terrors; Death, who with his scythe in his resistless hand, mows down whole millions of the human race; Death, who awaits his victims at every corner; Death, that must soon lay you and me low in the grave, casts a shadow wherever he comes. He visits the sick room, and casts a shadow there; he hangs over the cradle, and his shadow falls on the infant's face; he comes in the Indian letter from abroad, or with the black seal and mourning envelope put into our hand at home; and these tidings or these tokens cast a deep shadow over our hearts. Indeed, where is the place where death does not cast his shadow? where the house where this shade has never fallen? In fact, he never comes without it. He is "the last enemy;"  he is the final fulfilment of the original curse. A...