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

"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD." -Lamentations 3:40 [KJV] This book is justly styled, the Lamentations. The dear children of God were now in captivity and deep distress. Jeremiah most pathetically enumerates and laments their great calamities. We shall never get out of this book of Lamentations, while in the body. We daily see cause for lamentation, on one account and another: and, indeed, if we did not, it would be a bad sign, that, our eyes were blinded by self-righteous pride, or our hearts hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. “As sorrowing, yet always rejoicing , ”  is the Christian’s motto. Times of calamity, and seasons of distress, call for self-examination and soul-searching. This will keep down murmurings and complaints.  (1st.) Let us search, look for, and enquire after something that may support and comfort us, and teach us to improve our distress. Soul, let thy circumstances be what they may, thy Lord’s advice is ever seasonable...

"He shall not speak of Himself." -John 16:13 [KJV] I have found, in time past, a very great blessedness in this short but sweet account, which Jesus gives of the gracious office of the Holy Ghost; and therefore I would make it the subject of my present evening meditation. I find what the Lord Jesus said concerning the blessed Spirit, in this most delightful part of His divine ministry, to be true. For look wherever I may, through the bible, it is of Jesus only  the Holy Ghost is continually speaking, and not of Himself. And hence, by the way, I learn how to form a most decided testimony of the faithful preachers of the word. For, if God the Holy Ghost, in His glorifying the Lord Jesus, is never found to be speaking but of Jesus; surely all His faithful servants, who act by His authority, and are commissioned and ordained by Him to the work, will never preach themselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord. And how blessed is it to be taught of Jesus, by the Holy Ghost!  It is astonish...

"A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident."   -Proverbs 14:16 [KJV]   I believe no living soul can be satisfied with a notional religion: though a miserable backslider, and driven into the fields to feed swine, he cannot feed on their husks, but sighs after the bread of his Father's house. The eyes being enlightened to see the nature of sin, the justice and holiness of God, and the miserable filthiness of self, the quickened soul can find no rest in anything short of a precious discovery of the Lamb of God; and the more that the soul is exercised with trials, difficulties, temptations, doubts, and besetments of various kinds, the more does it feel its need of that blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.   What is a Christian worth without inward trials and exercises? How dead and lifeless are our prayers; how cold and formal when the soul is not kept alive by inward exercises! Where are the sighs, cries,...