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

“ Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. ...I will speak of the glorious honor of Thy majesty, and of Thy wondrous works. And men shall speak of the might of Thy terrible acts: and I will declare Thy greatness.” -145 th Psalm When I consider the absolute independency of God and the necessary total dependence of all created things on Him, their first cause, I cannot help standing astonished at the pride of impotent, degenerate man. He is so prone to consider himself as a being possessed of sovereign freedom and invested with a power of self-salvation, able, he imagines, to counteract the designs even of infinite wisdom and to defeat the agency of Omnipotence itself. “ Ye shall be as gods,” said the tempter to Eve (Genesis 3:5); and “ye are as gods” says the same tempter to her apostate sons. One would be apt to think that a suggestion so obviously false and flattering, a suggestion the very opposite of what we feel to be our

"For we walk by faith, not by sight" -II Corinthians 5:7 [KJV] The nature of faith is to trust in the dark, when all appearances are against it; to trust that a calm will come, though the storm be overhead; to trust that God will appear, though nothing but evil be felt. It is tender, child-like, and therefore is an implicit confidence, a yielding submission, a looking unto the Lord. There is something filial in this; something heavenly and spiritual; not the bold presumption of the daring, nor the despairing fears of the desponding; but something beyond both the one and the other—equally remote from the rashness of presumption, and from the horror of despair. There is a mingling of holy affection connected with this trust, springing out of a reception of past favours, insuring favours to come; and all linked with a simple hanging and depending of the soul upon the Lord, because He is what He is . There is a looking to, and relying upon the Lord, beca

“ And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him: for they know His voice.” -John 10:4 [KJV] In the countries of the east, the shepherd goes before the sheep and they follow him. When he says, “Let us go to the well,” they follow him. When he says, “Let us go down into that dark valley,” they go after him. So it is with Christ. Christ never called a sheep to go where He never went Himself. He has borne all that He calls His sheep to bear. Christ went in a lower level of sorrow than you will be called to go. Do not be alarmed then when you are called to suffer, you will not be called to go where He has not gone. Do not be afraid to put down your tender feet where He put down His. And it is still true that He goes before you. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall th