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

" Keep thy heart with all diligence." -Proverbs 4:23 [KJV] Camden reports, that “Redwald, king of the east Saxons, the first prince of this nation who was baptized; yet, in the same church, allowed an altar for Christ, and another for the heathen idols.” How many professors imitate him! Their hearts are not whole with Christ. They are sons of folly. This a charge of wisdom to all her children. Consider, there is but one object can make your heart happy. There are a thousand that promise happiness, but only give misery. Keep thy heart in [the sense of] the love of God , (Jude 1:21.)   Give all diligence to this blessed end. Unless you do, vanity may prevail in the mind, error in the understanding, perverseness in the will, the affections may be inordinately set upon other objects, than thy Lord; and so thy conscience will contract fresh guilt. Then thou mayest be left to bemoan a hard heart, and an absent God: darkness may surround thee; fears and terrors hau...

"Whom having not seen, ye love." -I Peter 1:8 [KJV] How this speaks to our hearts; and cannot some, if not many of us say too, "Whom having not seen, we love?" Do we not love Him, dear readers? Is not His name precious to us as the ointment poured forth? But we have not seen Him. No, not by the eye of sense and nature; but we have seen Him by the eye of faith; for He has manifested Himself to us, or to some of us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It is, then, by faith that we see Jesus. We read of Moses that, "by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible."  So by faith we see Jesus Who is invisible; for as faith is "the substance of things hoped for," so is it "the evidence of things not seen." Thus we see that it is by Jesus coming to the soul and manifesting Himself unto it that we see Him...

"Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?" -I Corinthians 9:7 [KJV] Surely Jesus will not! Is not Jesus' church His vineyard? Did He not purchase it with His blood; and does He not water it every moment with the same? And will He not eat of the fruit of His own vine, of His own planting, and what cost Him so dear? Or doth Jesus buy a flock; daily, hourly, feed His flock; carry the lambs in His arms, and cause them to lie down in His bosom; and will He not eat of the milk of His flock? Lord Jesus, when I contemplate Thy love to our poor nature; when I behold all things, by Thine ordination, ministering to our nature; when I see such a profusion of grace, and love, and mercy bestowed for our accommodation; all things prepared for man; both worlds engaged for him; yea, man himself as if a world in himself, and another prepared for him; the sacred word designed wholly for hi...