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

"Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." -Revelation 2:10 [KJV] My soul! thy last evening meditation, by faith, was on Pisgah's top. This evening, do thou attend to what thy Saviour speaks in this scripture of the prospect of a prison. This forms the state and condition of the believer. The transition he is sometimes, and suddenly, called to make, is from the house of feasting to the house of mourning. He is here but in a wilderness at the best; and whatever accommodations he meets with by the way, the apartments of joy and sorrow are both under the same roof, and very often it is but a step from one to the other: yea, sometimes, and not unfrequently, when Jesus hath been feasting with His people, and they with Him, before the cloth hath been taken away, and the blessing offered ...

"The L ORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." - Jeremiah 31:3 [KJV] There can be no new thought in the mind of God. New thoughts, new feelings, new plans, new resolutions continually occur to our mind; for ours is but a poor, fallen, fickle, changeable nature. But God has no new thoughts, feelings, plans or resolutions; for if He had He would be a changeable Being, not one great, eternal, unchangeable I Am. All His thoughts, therefore, all His plans, all His ways are like Himself, eternal, infinite, unchanging, and unchangeable.   So it is with the love of Christ to the Church. It is eternal, unchanging, unchangeable. And why? Because He loved as God. Never let us lose sight of the glorious Deity of Jesus. He loved Him in eternity as the Son of God, prior to His incarnation. That was but the fruit of His love. We can, therefore, assign no beginning to the love of Christ, fo...