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

"Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light."   -Ephesians 5:8 [KJV]   Unregenerate persons, raised from indigence to opulence, do not love to hear of their pedigree: they see not the hand of the Lord in it. What detracts from their character and merit, hurts them. But disciples of Christ like to hear of, love to look back upon what they were by nature, that they may ascribe fresh praise to the Lord, who of His mere grace “raised their degenerate souls out of the dust, and lifted their needy souls from the dunghill, and has set them with the princes of His people” (Psalm 113:7, 8.)     We are here reminded, “Ye were” —what? dark , having some glimmering light of God, His truth, His ways, etc. Nay more, darkness itself. Blind to them, as if totally deprived of sight. Ignorant of them as a beast: as dark, respecting them, as we should be of natural objects without the sun. We walked in darkness, and knew not th...

"The hidden manna." -Revelation 2:17 [KJV]   We have an authority from Jesus Himself, to say, that He, and He alone, is the manna of the gospel; for in His discourse with the Jews, He called Himself, in allusion to the manna of the wilderness, "the living bread," and "the bread of God which came from heaven," of which, He said, "whosoever should eat, should live for ever." But when Jesus imparts this blessed food to His people, it is hidden. And, indeed, many of the properties of it are made more blessed, from the very nature of its secrecy.   My soul, ponder over the subject a few moments, this evening, and behold in it, how truly gracious it is in the Lord, to hand to His people in secret, those enjoyments of Himself, of which the world is altogether unconscious. Mark the outlines of it, and trace it in its effects in thine own experience. Though Jesus was preached to the world, both by the law and the prophets; and when appearin...

"He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." -II Samuel 23:5 [KJV]   O the blessedness of having a manifest interest in the blood of the covenant, and thus to have a testimony that God has made a covenant with His dear Son upon our behalf; that our names are written in the book of life; and that Christ is our Mediator at the right hand of the Father! What are all earthly blessings compared with this? What are health and strength and riches and all the goods of this life; what is everything that the carnal heart can desire or the covetous mind grasp; what is all compared with an interest in the everlasting covenant, and in the love and blood and righteousness of the Lord the Lamb? What is earth, with all its attractions, compared with an interest in the precious, precious blood of a dying Jesus?  You will find it so when you come to lie upon a bed of languishing and pain; when the cold drops of sweat stand upon your forehead, an...