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

"My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen Thou me, according unto Thy word."   - Psalm 119:28 [KJV]   While the wicked are gay, alert, and merry, many of God’s beloved children go bowed down, from day to day, with heaviness of soul. When they compare themselves with the men of the world, under such seasons, they are tempted to write bitter things against themselves, and to pass a verdict in favour of others. Soul! in the heaviest season, and most dejected frame you ever experienced, say, Could you find it in your heart to wish to change lots with them? What! quit your faith in Jesus, and hope of eternal enjoyment of Him—for what? the momentary gratifications and short lived pleasures of time and sense.    Alas! my soul is in such heaviness, that I doubt whether I have either a spark of faith or a ray of hope in Christ. My soul melteth: it bears no image nor impression of any grace, or of the power of any truth. Faith fails: hope decays: my heart sinks. ...

"Thy dead men shall live; together with My dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." -Isaiah 26:19 [KJV]   Thy morning meditation was a blessed portion, to shew thee, my soul, how the justification of the believer is effected by the person of his glorious Head. When Jesus died on the cross, not as a private person, but as the public Head of His church, then He paid the full debt of sin: and when He arose from the dead, the full release was given to our whole nature in Him. Jesus received the discharge; the bond He had entered into for His people was cancelled, and His resurrection became the proof of theirs also. But as the justification of all the persons of His redeemed is in Him, and by Him, so another sweet confidence is in Him also: Jesus is not only the cause of their being justified, but of their being glorified also . In these precious words we have, firs...

"The election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." - Romans 11:7 [KJV]   Those that are blinded by the god of this world, have no knowledge of what power and feeling and savour and dew are; they see not these things, they are blind to their reality, they are dead to their importance; but the living family of God, who are brought by His blessed Spirit into some apprehension of eternal realities, have eyes to see what power is, and hearts too, to desire to feel its manifestation. Nay, it is the very seeing what reality and power are which makes them desire to experience the savour of eternal things in their conscience; and because they do not feel them as they wish, it makes them often fear that they are blind altogether (Isaiah 59:10).    But the very inquiry, the very anxious cry, the very groaning desire, the very fervent supplication to the Lord that He would not let them live and die without a testimony from Himself, that He would lift up the lig...