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

"Should not a people seek unto their God?" -Isaiah 8:19 [KJV] To be sure they should. My soul, what would become of thee, in thine exercises, hadst thou not had a God in Christ to fly to, and a God in Christ to depend upon? Where wouldest thou find a bosom to pour all thy griefs into, did not Jesus say to thee, as to the sorrowful father, concerning his child, "Bring him hither to Me?" Thou knowest, dearest Lord, that there are circumstances into which I am cast, where none but Thyself can help; and even if help could be derived from man, yet who is there to whom I could seek with a certainty of success? "My friends," saith Job, "have dealt deceitfully, like a brook;" like a brook which, dried up by the summer heat, disappoints the traveller when he most needs supply to slake his thirst. Oh for grace to centre all my desires in Thee, and to seek unto Thee with all my concerns! Blessed Lord! Let that devout frame of David, in the wilderness, b...

"Abide in Me, and I in you." - John 15:4 [KJV] The Lord did not use these words as though there were any power in the creature to abide in Him. But He was pleased to use them that they might be blessed to His people when the Holy Spirit applied them to the heart; for He adds,  "And I in you."   The one is the key to the other. If we abide in Christ, Christ abides in us. It is by Christ abiding in us, that we are enabled to abide in Him.   But how does Christ abide in us? By His Spirit. It is by His Spirit He makes the bodies of His saints His temple; it is by His Spirit that He comes and dwells in them. Though it is instrumentally by faith, as we read, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;" yet it is through the communication of His Spirit in the soul, and the visits of His most gracious presence. Thus He bids us, encourages us, and influences us to abide in Him by His abiding in us. But His abiding in a child of God may be known by certain eff...