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

" And Israel said, It is enough ." -Genesis 45:28 [KJV] His soul seems fully satisfied with the Lord’s dealings and dispensations. He could ask no more. There was a perfect calm in his mind. He sings a sweet requiem to his soul. Like David, when he says, “return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the L ORD hath dealt bountifully with thee. For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the L ORD in the land of the living , ” (Psalm 116:7-9.)   Most precious resolution for such great bounties! Come, Christian, canst thou say with the hoary-headed patriarch, to-night, It is enough? What, could God have done more for me, which He hath not done? Could that one word, sounded in the ears of Jacob, “Joseph is yet alive,” cause such transports of joy to rush so suddenly upon him, as to be too impetuous to be resisted? How should that blessed word, Jesus is yet alive, transport thy soul? Was Joseph governor...

"Accepted in the Beloved. " -Ephesians 1:6 [KJV] We are ever looking for something in self to make ourselves acceptable to God, and are often sadly cast down and discouraged when we cannot find that holiness, that obedience, that calm submission to the will of God, that serenity of soul, that spirituality and heavenly-mindedness which we believe to be acceptable in His sight. Our crooked tempers, fretful, peevish minds, rebellious thoughts, coldness, barrenness and death, our alienation from good, and headlong proneness to ill, with the daily feeling that we get no better but rather worse, make us think that God views us just as we view ourselves. And this brings on great darkness of mind and bondage of spirit, till we seem to lose sight of our acceptance in Christ, and get into the miserable dregs of self, almost ready to quarrel with God because we are so vile, and only get worse as we get older. Now the more we get into these dregs of self, and the more we ke...

"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." -I Corinthians 6:11 [KJV] It is profitable at times to see our mercies, and to trace them to their source, by considering what we once were, the better to apprehend what we now are. "Such," the apostle saith, when speaking of the vilest of the vile, "were some of you:" dead in trespasses and sins, hateful, and hating one another. But now, being washed from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, there is a justification by Christ, and a sanctification in Christ; and by the effectual work of God the Spirit in the heart, the believer stands complete before God, in the name of the Lord Jesus. This is a blessed testimony to the soul of the poor sinner, whom the Holy Ghost hath convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. For God the Father gave the promise, in the old testament...