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

"...as an hireling, his day."   -Job 14:6 [KJV] The sufferings of Job are proverbial; but the sermons of this exercised believer, though delivered from a dunghill, were sweet sermons. The figure of an hireling accomplishing his day (and that a day, both on account of original sin and actual transgression, fleeting and full of labour and sorrow) forms a just, though sad representation of human life. But this, like all the other circumstances of our fallen state, when read through the medium of the gospel, and softened and sweetened with the blood of Christ, puts on a different aspect. It is then found in its shortness to be the better, and in its crosses to be the more sanctified; and, like Samson's riddle, "out of the eater to come forth meat, and out of the strong to bring forth sweetness;" Judges 14:14 . It is the blessed property of grace, to work by contraries; so that the cross of Jesus, like the tree cast into the waters of Marah, put into our hireling li...

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." - Luke 19:10 [KJV] "The  Son of man is come."   What a blessed coming! The Lord Jesus seems to have taken to Himself, with the tenderest condescension to our wants, that gracious title, "the Son of man." He was the Son of God, and that from all eternity; but He delights to call Himself the Son of man. We want one like ourselves, wearing the same nature; carrying in His bosom the same human heart; One Who has been, "in all points, tempted like as we are, yet without sin;" and therefore able to sympathise with and to succour those that are tempted.   A sinner like man, when made sensible of his pollution and guilt, cannot draw near unto God in His intrinsic, essential majesty and holiness. Viewed as the great and glorious Being that fills eternity, Jehovah is too great, too transcendently holy, too awfully perfect for him to approach. He must therefore have a Mediator; and tha...