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

" And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." —Romans 13:11 [KJV] It is an affecting case, but a real truth, that wise virgins are apt to slumber and sleep as well as the foolish. Through the pressures of a body of sin and death, and the opiates of worldly ease and self-indulgence, they sometimes fall into a drowsy state, and a sleepy frame of soul. Hence, they lose their former delight in religious duties and spiritual exercises. Their love to God and their brethren in Christ grows cold; their zeal for the glory of Jesus and His precious truths decline.  The enemy takes great advantages against them, and would triumph in their entire destruction. But that can never be, for the Lord prevents it. "He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." Will the loving father suffer his dear children to sleep in their beds till devoured by raging flames? If we being ev...

" Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." —I Corinthians 16:13 [KJV] Believers in the Lord Jesus now partake of an everlasting salvation. No enemy can deprive them of the full enjoyment of it in glory; because "they are kept by the mighty power of God." But we are daily to consider, it is "through faith," —1 Peter 1:5 . Do we believe in the atonement of Jesus' blood; do we rely on the perfection of His righteousness? Why so? Because the word of the Lord is the warrant for our faith.   Hence, O soul, the exhortations from the same word to duty are equally binding on thy belief and practice. The same Lord Who has saved us from our enemies, calls us to watch against them. Jesus, Who is gone to prepare a place for us in glory, directs us how to demean ourselves in the way to it. Shall the Christian soldier neglect the command of the Captain of his salvation, when the glory of God and the peace and comfort of his own...