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

" Ye are dead, and your life is hid with CHRIST in GOD." - Colossians 3:3 [KJV] We are apt to mistake the words, and pervert the meaning of scripture. This charge is brought against us by Jeremiah: “Ye have perverted the words of the living God,” (chapter 23:36.) This dejects our souls, robs Christ of the glory of our hearts, and prevents our holy and comfortable walk in Him. See if this be not the case with respect to this text. Ye believers in Christ, are dead,  (1st.) “to the law by the body of Christ , ” (Romans 7:4.) Being one with Christ by faith, you are dead to all legal hopes, from your own works.  (2d.) Dead to sin, being baptized into Christ by His Spirit (Romans 6:3.)   (3d.) Dead to the world, being crucified with Christ, (Galatians 6:14.)   O says one, and another sincere soul, I am not thus dead. I have no true faith. I find sin alive in me—legal hopes and fears cleaves to me—and too much love of the world in me, to my grief and burde...

"For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake." -Philippians 1:29 [KJV] After the Lord, by His special work on the conscience, has called us to repentance and confession of sin, as well as to faith in Jesus; after He has called us to godly sorrow; to live according to the precepts of the gospel; and to walk in the ordinances of His Church; He then calls us to suffer for and with Christ. But we cannot "suffer according to the will of God," that is, in a gospel sense and from gospel motives, till the Lord enables us in some measure to look to Him. The same Spirit, who calls the believer to walk in a path of suffering, strengthens and enables him to do so. To suffer aright, we must walk in the steps of the great Captain of our salvation, who "though a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered." The Father in this sense spared not His only-begotten Son, but led Him...

"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." -I Peter 4:7 [KJV] My soul, how hath the year been hastening from thee, and thou hastening in it from the world! Where are the days fled? They are gone to be numbered with the years beyond the flood; and thou art now standing as on the isthmus of time. "The end of all things is at hand." Friends are dying around thee, thou art dying thyself; yea, the world is dying: and the end of all things is at hand. In this state, my Lord, well may I look up to Thee! Circumstances so very solemn may well induce soberness, and watchfulness unto prayer. Yes! blessed Jesus! I would pray Thee to induce in me every suited state, that every faculty may be on the watch tower, waiting my Lord's coming.  Thou hast said: "Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry." Oh! then for grace to live by faith on Thee; and so to live, that when I change wor...