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

Dear friends, let me tell you, once for all, that you cannot make yourselves fit for heaven, you cannot clothe yourselves with the garments of salvation, and you cannot renew your own nature. Somebody says, "But, sir, you discourage people by telling them that they cannot change themselves." That is the very thing I want to do. "Oh, but, I want to set a man working!" says one. Do you? I want to set him not working; that is to say, I want him to have done with any idea that salvation is of himself; I want him to drop that thought altogether, and just to feel that, if his salvation is to come out of himself, he has to get everything out of nothing, and that is not only difficult, but impossible . He has to get life out of his own death, to get cleanness out of the filthy ditch of his own nature, out of which it can never come. Discouragement of this sort is the very thing I always aim at in my preaching. I am afraid that there are many people who are made...

"The election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." -R OMANS 11:7 [KJV] Those that are blinded by the god of this world, have no knowledge of what power and feeling and savour and dew are; they see not these things, they are blind to their reality, they are dead to their importance; but the living family of God, who are brought by His blessed Spirit into some apprehension of eternal realities, have eyes to see what power is, and hearts too, to desire to feel its manifestation. Nay, it is the very seeing what reality and power are which makes them desire to experience the savour of eternal things in their conscience; and because they do not feel them as they wish, it makes them often fear that they are blind altogether [ISAIAH 59:10 ] . But the very inquiry, the very anxious cry, the very groaning desire, the very fervent supplication to the Lord that He would not let them live and die without a testimony from Himself, that He would lift up the light of...