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

" If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed." —John 8:31 [KJV] As mutual love subsists between Jesus and His believing members, so there is a mutual choice of each other. Hence, saith the church, "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." —Song of Solomon 6:3 So also there is a mutual inhabitation; every believer dwells in Christ, and Christ in him. This matter is only comfortably experienced by continuing in the truth. For "whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God; he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son." —II John 9 Many profess to be disciples of Jesus in name. But what profit is this? If souls have not been sick of sin, alas, Jesus will be a physician of no value to them. If souls have not seen themselves lost, their state accursed, and their case hopeless and desperate, so that none but Jesus can restore and save them, they will but lig...

"As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it: so will I do for My servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all .” -Isaiah 65:8 [KJV] It is blessed to trace our mercies to the fountain head, and to find them all folded up from everlasting in Jesus. What was it that preserved our whole nature when blasted and withered by the fall? Was it not because Jesus, the promised seed, was in it? And what is it that preserves every individual among the children of God during the dark season of their unregeneracy, but the same precious cause? He that looks on (and who is this but Christ Himself?) amidst all our perishing circumstances, by His powerful and all-prevailing intercession, commands the destroyer not to touch His people; for though in themselves loathsome, yet in Jesus they are fair and lovely.  My soul, learn hence thy security. The whole cause for which thou wert preserved until called, and, when called, pre...

"For the L ORD God is a sun and shield." -Psalm 84:11 [KJV] Is not the sun made to shine? It is his office to do so. So it is with the Sun of righteousness; He is made to shine. And does the natural sun lose any of his light by shining? Why, the more he shines, the more light he seems to have. For ages he has shone as brightly as now. His beams were as glorious before we had birth or being, and will be as glorious when the eyes which now see him are mouldering in the dust. Thousands of harvests has he ripened, millions and thousands of millions has he fed; but he shews no sign of exhaustion or decay. And does Jesus lose anything by communicating His light, life, love, and grace? He is all the more glorified thereby; and the more you look to Him as the Sun, that as such He might shine into and upon your soul, the more you glorify Him as the Sun of righteousness. When in the morning we throw the shutters back, or draw up the blinds, it is to receive the sun into...