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

"I will lift up my hands in Thy name."   - Psalm 63:4 [KJV] From the little which carnal men see of the conduct of saints, they pronounce them fools and madmen. But were they to follow them to their closets, and be witness to what passes there, between God and their souls, they would deem it the excess of folly, and the height of madness.    Two Christian friends were conversing together of the plague of their hearts, and the workings of hypocrisy and evil in their best duties. An unconverted brother of one of them overheard, and upbraided them, saying, I always thought you were two hypocrites, now I have heard it from your own mouths. I have no wandering thoughts at church—I always go with a good heart .  Brother , replied the Christian, putting a piece of money in his hand, That is your own, if, when you go to church next, you will watch your heart, and tell me honestly, if you found no wandering thoughts . The poor man faithfully returned the mon...

"For He said,  Surely they are My people, children that will not lie: so He was their Saviour." —Isaiah 63:8 [KJV] Oh what a tenderness of expression is contained in these words! Jesus not only takes His people into relationship with Him, but undertakes for their faithfulness. In the birth of God's everlasting purpose, this was done from everlasting; so that in one and the same moment, we are His people, His children, His brethren, His wife, His redeemed, His fair one, made comely in His comeliness, and in His blood cleansed, and in His righteousness justified before God.  And observe, my soul, the grounds of this relationship: surely, He saith, They are My people . Not only as God's workmanship and property, but as His purchase. Not only in first giving them being, but in giving them new being in Christ Jesus. The Lord hath taken them into covenant with Him in Christ, and granted them a charter of grace and salvation in Jesus. Sweet and precious thought. ...

"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." -Ecclesiastes 12:7 [KJV] Nature shrinks from death, even apart from that which following after death makes it to so many a king of terrors. Even where grace has set up its throne, and mercy rejoices over judgment, many unbelieving, infidel thoughts at times will cross the mind and perplex the judgment about the separation of body and soul, and the launching of the spirit into an unseen, unknown world. Faith, it is true, can subdue these perplexing thoughts, better hinted at than described, but faith needs some solid ground on which to build and rest. If, then, the soul is blessed with any assured hope or sweet persuasion of interest in the blood and obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, so as to remove guilty fears, how strengthening to faith is a view of His death, not merely as the only sacrifice for sin, but as the exemplar, so to speak, of our own. We shall a...