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

"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth: if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy" -Psalm 137:5-6  [KJV] My soul! Sit down this evening, and contemplate the languishing state of Zion. Did ever the church of Christ lie in more desolate circumstances than now? Amidst a great profession of zeal for religion, how little possession of the divine life is to be met with among men! And who is there that seriously lays it to heart? For whom doth a throne of grace witness, that they are holy mourners for Zion, and are earnestly wrestling, night and day, with the Lord, that He would visit Zion, and make His glory to appear? Where is the priest, the minister of the Lord, that is weeping between the porch and the altar, and saying,  "Spare Thy people, O LORD! and give not Thine heritage to reproach?" (Joel 21:17) And where are the people that seriously lay it to heart?    

"O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles." - Psalm 43:3 [KJV] A living man cannot, in his right mind, bear the idea of standing still, that is to say, standing still so as to have no spiritual work going on within; and still less can he bear the idea of going backward. He wants to go forward. He is often dissatisfied with his state; he feels how little he knows; he is well certified of the shallowness of his attainments in the divine life, as well as of the ignorance and the blindness that are in him; and therefore, laboring under the feeling of his own shortcomings for the past, his helplessness for the present, and his ignorance for the future, he wants to go forward wholly and solely in the strength of the Lord , to be led, guided, directed, kept, not by the wisdom and power of the creature, but by the supernatural entrance of light and truth into his soul.   The mercy-seat is continually covered w