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

" I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." -Romans 7:9 [KJV] Would you read the best experience of a true believer in Christ, that ever was written? Here it is in this chapter. Try your own. Judge of others by this. Commend me to a holy, humble Paul’s experience. If we are taught by the same Spirit, ours will answer to his, as face does to face in a glass, in the following particulars.  (1st.) A sense of sin will be revived in the conscience, which no human palliates, or lulling opiates can keep in a swoon any longer. You will so see, feel, and be sensible of its dread and terror, that you will confess yourself to be totally destroyed by it, and your case to be quite desperate under it.  (2d.) This is effected by the law. “For by the law is the knowledge of sin,” (Romans 3:20.) “When the commandment came.” That is, when the purity and spirituality of the holy and perfect law of God comes into your heart and co

"O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock." -Song of Solomon 2:14 [KJV] Jesus is the hiding-place, the only hiding-place from sin and self. "Thou art my hiding place," said David of old. This was shewn to Moses, in figure, when the Lord put him into the cleft of a rock, which Toplady has so beautifully versified, to paint the longing desires of his soul: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!" It is on this "Rock of Ages" that God has built His Church. As a rock, He is deep as well as high—so deep as to have under-bottomed the depths of the fall, so high as to be God's fellow, seated at His right hand. As a rock, too, He is broad as well as long—broad enough to bear millions of living stones built on Him, and long enough to reach from eternity to eternity. The apostle, therefore, prays that the Church at Ephesus may comprehend with all saints, "what is the breadth and length, and depth and height, an

"And he looked up and said, I see men as trees, walking." -Mark 8:24 [KJV] I have often considered the case of this man as holding forth a sweet and comfortable lesson of instruction, to the small attainments of the followers of Jesus. Perhaps our gracious Lord, in the method He was pleased to adopt, in the opening of this man's eyes by gradual means, intended so to instruct His people. My soul, look at it in this point of view; it may be profitable to thee. When the Son of God, Who came to give light to the spiritually blind, as well as to restore vision to the eye of the body, first touched this poor man's eyes, the effect was that when he looked up, the men he saw were only like "trees, walking;" the sight was imperfect, and the objects obscure. And such is it very frequently in our apprehension of spiritual things; but then it should be remembered, and remembered with great thankfulness, that this imperfection of our sight differs altogeth