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

"To remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." -Acts 20:35 [KJV] My soul, do not forget these words of thy Lord, after the Holy Ghost had been pleased thus sweetly to give them to the church. It is extremely probable, that Jesus had more than once expressed Himself in those gracious words to His disciples, though none of the evangelists have recorded them. But God the Holy Ghost would have them communicated to the church, and therefore the apostle Paul folds up his parting sermon to the church at Ephesus with them. And blessed be that eternal Spirit for this, among a thousand other instances of glorifying the Lord Jesus!   And now, my soul, do not forget the words of thy Lord, but bind them as frontlets between thine eyes, and beg of the Holy Ghost to engrave them on thine heart. Is it, my Lord, more blessed to give than to receive? With Jesus, indeed, it hath been for ever thus: for thou canst receive nothing but broken h...

"But the dove found no rest for the sole of her fool, and she returned unto him into the ark."   - Genesis 8:9 [KJV]  What a restless being is a tempted child of God! How unable he often is even to rest locally, to take his chair, and sit quietly by his fire-side! Like Noah's dove, he can find no rest for the sole of his foot on the floating carcases of a ruined world.   It is recorded of the prisoners, who in the first French revolution were awaiting in their dungeons the summons to the dread tribunal of blood, that some passed nearly the whole of their time in walking up and down their cells. So sometimes under trials and temptations, we pace up and down the room as if we sought to dissipate the exercise of our minds by the exercise of our bodies; or rush into the streets and fields to pour the heart out in sighs and groans, the restless mind acting and reacting upon the body.   And as an exercised child of God often cannot rest locally, so cannot he rest spiritual...