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

"Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat! I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments. Will He plead against me with His great power? No; but He would put strength in me." -Job 23:3, 4, 6 [KJV]   My soul, are these thy breathings? Dost thou really long, and, like David, even pant, to come before the throne of grace? Art thou at a loss how to come, how to draw nigh? Wouldest thou fill thy mouth with arguments, and have thy cause so ordered as to be sure not to fail? Look to Jesus! Seek from Him the leadings of the Spirit; and while thine eye is steadily fixed on thy great High Priest within the vail, still wearing a vesture dipped in blood, see to it that thy one great plea is, for a perfect and complete justification before God and thy Father, upon the sole footing of righteousness. Yes, my soul, plead earnestly, heartily, steadily; and, like Jacob, wrestling with God, upon the sole footing of righteousness: Wouldest...

  "And Israel strengthened himself, and sat up on the bed." -Genesis 48:2 [KJV] This was an interesting moment in the life, or rather the death, of the patriarch, and may serve, my soul, to shew what ought to be the conduct of the believer in his last expiring hours. The imagination can hardly conceive any situation equally momentous, in every point of view, both as it concerns a faithful God, a man's own heart, and the church the dying saint is going to leave behind. What can form a more lovely sight than a dying saint, sitting up in the bed, (if the Lord permits the opportunity) and recounting, as Jacob did, the gracious dealings of the Lord, all the way along the path of pilgrimage - "The God which fed me," said Jacob, "all my life long unto this day: the angel (and who was this but Jesus?) which redeemed me from all evil." Pause, my soul. Anticipate such a day. Figure to thyself thy friends around thee, and thou thyself strengthened, just to sit...