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

“An Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile."   -John 1:47 [KJV]  And what are we to understand by our Lord's account, in this short but sweet history of Nathaniel, of an "Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile?" If, my soul, thou wilt do as thou art directed, (1 Corinthians 2:13) attend "to the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual," thou wilt soon arrive at a proper apprehension of the Lord's account, of "an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile."   It is our mercy that, on a point of so much consequence, we are not left to mere conjecture; for the Holy Ghost hath Himself pointed out what it is to be without guile, in one of the Psalms of David (see Psalm 32) . And in his comment upon it by the apostle, (Romans 4:12) he hath followed up the same doctrine more fully; "Blessed (saith he) is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the L ORD impute...

"Ye are bought with a price."   -I Corinthians 6:20 [KJV] How deep, how dreadful, of what awful magnitude, of how black a dye, of how ingrained a stamp must sin be, to need such an atonement—no less than the blood of Him who was the Son of God—to put it away. What a slave to sin and Satan, what a captive to the power of lust, how deeply sunk, how awfully degraded, how utterly lost and undone must guilty man be to need a sacrifice like this. "Ye are bought with a price." Have you ever felt your bondage to sin, Satan, and the world? Have you ever groaned, cried, grieved, sorrowed, and lamented under your miserable captivity to the power of sin? Has the iron ever entered into your soul? Have you ever clanked your fetters, and as you did so, and tried to burst them, they seemed to bind round about you with a weight scarcely endurable?   But have you ever found any liberty from them, any enlargement of heart, any sweet going forth from the prison-house, any dropping of ...