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

You (dear child of God) know that there are a million opportunities in a single week for your foot to slip, and for your soul to be ruined.  ...You must all have passed some such difficult places, and, in looking back, I can only myself say, “ Unto Him that has kept me from falling, when my feet had well nigh gone, and my steps had almost slipped, unto Him be glory for ever and ever. ”

Reflect upon your tendency to sin. The giddiness of that poor brain, the silliness of that deceitful heart.  Think, how apt you are to choose danger, how the tendency is to cast yourselves down, how you rather are inclined to fall than to stand, and I am sure you will sing more sweetly than you have ever done, “Glory be to Him, Who is able to keep me from falling.”

" Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image." -Genesis 5:3 [KJV] Not in the image of God, in which Adam was created, but after the likeness of himself, an apostate spirit, fallen from God, into all the cursed, proud, wrathful tempers of a wicked devil, and all the vile, filthy lusts of a brute beast. Awful difference between God’s creation, and man’s procreation! Where can we turn our eyes, but we see the dreadful effects of it? The Holy Ghost hath left this truth upon record for our instruction.  Consider, (1st.) that we are begotten sinners, not created such by God. David confesseth this: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5.) He does not charge his sinful nature to God, and impiously demand, Why hast Thou made me thus? Ever beware of such doctrines, which have the least tendency to make a holy God the author of sin.  (2d.) See whence you sprung. Boast not of your high birth and noble pedigree....