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

" A building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ." -II Corinthians 5:1 [KJV] My soul, after thy last evening's meditation on the shortness and unsatisfying nature of life, let thy present thoughts be occupied in beholding, with steady faith, the great contrast to it: and see whether thy confidence be as strong, and well founded, as the apostle's. His was not a mere hope only, but an assurance in Jesus. "We know, (saith he) that if this tabernacle (our body) were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Dost thou know this?  Is Jesus thy foundation? Hath God thy Father built for thee? And doth the Holy Ghost set His almighty hand to the work, in sweetly witnessing to the writings, and sealing the deed, that it is thine? Oh! the blessedness to know this, to live already in the enjoyment of it; and while the pins of thy earthly tabernacle are daily loosening, and taking out, to be...

"Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof."   - Ecclesiastes 7:8 [KJV] Thus saith the wise man, and it is often true in natural things, but invariably so in divine. Rarely at first can we foresee what will be the issue of any matter which we take in hand. We may begin it with much hope, and find in the end those hopes sadly disappointed. We may begin it with much fear, and find from the event those fears utterly groundless. Whatever we take in hand it is very rare that our expectations are fully carried out, for we have again and again to learn that "man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps," and that there are many devices in a man's heart, nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that and that only, shall stand.   But so far as we are amongst the family of God, and as such are under especial guidance and divine teaching and leading, whether our first expectations are accomplished or not, the end stamps wisdom and goodness...