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

"Is His mercy clean gone for ever? doth His promise fail for evermore?" -Psalm 77:8 [KJV] It is one thing for God to desert, and another to disinherit. The former He frequently does by His children; the latter He never did to any one of them. He may change in His conduct to them, but never in His love for them. That is a sweet expostulation of the Lord’s, “How shall I give thee up Ephraim?”   (Hosea 11:8.) It reminds us of the tender affection of a loving father to a disobedient son, with a pen in his hand, just going to execute a deed to disinherit him.  But love pleads: his fatherly bowels yearn; his heart melts. Though he is disobedient, yet he is my child, my heir, the son of my loins; I cannot give him up; I cannot cut him off; I will not do it! The love of God to His children infinitely exceeds that of the most tender parent . He allows there may be such monsters in nature, for a mother not to have compassion on the son of her womb. But, says the Lord,...

"And they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." -Acts 4:13 [KJV] Oh! for the same grace to rest upon me, as upon those faithful servants of my Lord; that, like them, I may manifest the sweet savour of Jesus'  name in every place; wherever I am, with whomsoever I converse, in every state, and upon every occasion, that all may witness for me, and every thing bear witness to me, that I have been with Jesus! I would entreat Thee, my honoured Lord, that I may honour Thee so before men, that after my morning visits to Thy throne of grace, my mid-day communion, my evening and nightly fellowship, my return to the society of men might so be distinguished as one that had just been with Jesus. And as it might be supposed, if an angel was to come from heaven that had seen Thy face, and heard Thy voice, and been an eye witness of Thy glory; so, Lord, having by faith enjoyed such views, I might delight to tell, as He would relate to the inhabitants of the ...

"And He taught them many things by parables." -Mark 4:2 [KJV]   The Scripture employs two beautiful figures to illustrate the reception of the divine testimony. One is the committing of the seed to the ground, as in the parable of the sower. The husbandman scatters the seed in the bosom of the earth, and the ground having been previously ploughed and reduced to a beautiful tilth, opens its bosom to receive the grain. After a little time the seed begins to germinate, to strike a root downward, and shoot a germ upward; as the Lord speaks, "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear."   This emblem beautifully represents how the testimony of Jesus Christ finds an entrance to the soul, takes root downward and carries a shoot upward. The root downward is into the depths of a tender conscience, and the shoot upward is the aspiration, breathing, and longing of the soul for the living God.  The other figure is that of grafting. "Receive ...