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

"My hopes from appearances are cold.  My faith has no bed to sleep upon but God’s omnipotency." -preacher Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661 A.D.)

"With clouds He covereth the light, and commandeth it not to shine, by the cloud that cometh betwixt."   - Job 36:32 [KJV]   The sun, from its first formation by its almighty Creator, shines at all times alike. There never was, is, or ever can be, any addition to, or diminution from, its light and heat. But we perceive a sensible difference. Even the intervention of a cloud coming between us and the sun, hides and obscures the glorious rays of light from us. There are fixed laws in creation. All nature acts under the direction of those laws, prescribed by our all-wise Lord.    As in nature, so in grace. As by the natural sun, so it is by the Sun of Righteousness : it shines with an equal degree of resplendent glory, of light, love, and grace at all times. But, we are not always alike sensible of it. Why not? As clouds and vapours arise from the earth, and interrupt the light of the natural sun, by coming between that and us; just so, the clouds of sin, the vapours of...

"...as an hireling, his day." -Job 14:6 [KJV]   The sufferings of Job are proverbial; but the sermons of this exercised believer, though delivered from a dunghill, were sweet sermons. The figure of an hireling accomplishing his day (and that a day, both on account of original sin and actual transgression, fleeting and full of labour and sorrow) forms a just, though sad representation of human life. But this, like all the other circumstances of our fallen state, when read through the medium of the gospel, and softened and sweetened with the blood of Christ, puts on a different aspect. It is then found in its shortness to be the better, and in its crosses to be the more sanctified; and, like Samson's riddle, "out of the eater to come forth meat, and out of the strong to bring forth sweetness;" Judges 14:14. It is the blessed property of grace, to work by contraries; so that the cross of Jesus, like the tree cast into the waters of Marah, put into our hireling li...

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." -Luke 19:10 [KJV] "The Son of man is come." What a blessed coming! The Lord Jesus seems to have taken to Himself, with the tenderest condescension to our wants, that gracious title, "the Son of man." He was the Son of God, and that from all eternity; but He delights to call Himself the Son of man. We want one like ourselves, wearing the same nature; carrying in His bosom the same human heart; one who has been, "in all points, tempted like as we are, yet without sin ; " and therefore able to sympathise with and to succour those that are tempted. A sinner like man, when made sensible of his pollution and guilt, cannot draw near unto God in His intrinsic, essential majesty and holiness. Viewed as the great and glorious Being that fills eternity, Jehovah is too great, too transcendently holy, too awfully perfect for him to approach. He must therefore have a Mediator; and that M...

"We walk by faith, not by sight."   -II Corinthians 5:7 [KJV]   Thus we quit sense for faith. So we overcome the lust of the eyes. To gratify these, is contrary to the walk of faith. Then is it any marvel, that we lose the peace, comfort, and joy of faith? But this is not what is here meant by sight, as opposed to faith. Here is an infallible truth. Though a Christian, by the eye of sense, can neither see God, Christ, the things of the heavenly world, etc. yet he walks in the firm belief of what the word of God tells him of them: and hence, they have the supreme affection of the soul, from day to day. Faith supplies the sight of them. They are as real to the mind, as though seen by the bodily eye. Thus, a lively hope of enjoying them, is kept up in the heart.    “We are always confident , ” we are sure of the existence of spiritual, heavenly, and invisible objects, as we are of our own being. O ye sons of carnal sight and sense! ye deride us: we pity you. Ye look on...

"He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as H walked." -I John 2:6 [KJV]   Sweet testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, when, from being in Christ, we are walking with Christ; and one and the same spirit runs through both. As a man never walks as Christ walked, before he is first united to Christ; so when truly united to Christ, the evidence is made to appear by loving what Jesus loves, and hating what Jesus hates. As Ruth said to Naomi, so the believer saith to the Lord Jesus: "Where thou goest, I would go, and where thou lodgest, I would lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!"    And, my soul, think what a blessed unanswerable proof doth it afford, both to thyself and to the world around, when, from abiding in Christ, we live as Christ; that is, His Holy Spirit moves in us, speaks in us, walks in us, yea, doth all in us; and as the soul of man gives life and action to the body, so Christ, who is the soul of the b...