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

  I bless the Christ of God, I rest on love Divine And with unfaltering lips and heart, I call the Saviour mine His cross dispels each doubt, I bury in His tomb Each thought of unbelief and fear, each lingering shade of gloom. I praise the God of peace, I trust His truth and might He calls me His, I call Him mine, My God, my Joy, my Light In Him is only good, in me is only ill My ill but draws His goodness forth, and me He loveth still. ‘Tis He Who saveth me, and freely pardon gives I love because He loveth me, I live because He lives My life with Him is hid, my death has passed away My clouds have melted into light, my midnight into day.   -Hymn, “This is My Father’s World”     -------0-------       “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondered the hearts.”  -Proverbs 21:2 [KJV]   One of the many accomplishments of the death of Christ was reconciliation.   He restored us to love, rather than enmity toward God. ...

"I will put a division between My people and thy people: to-morrow shall this sign be."   -Exodus 8:23 [KJV]   Thus speaks the sovereign Jehovah to the haughty, stubborn monarch Pharaoh. Loving children delight to treasure up in their memories the words of an affectionate father: they love to reflect on them, and draw comfort from them. O that we may do so to-night, by this speech of our heavenly Father!    Consider, (1st.) here is a people distinguished from a people. The Lord has a people among a people, chosen out of a people. These He particularly calls His own— My people . They are so, by everlasting love, eternal choice, and covenant grace.    (2d.) Though near and dear as they are to the Lord, yet they may for a season continue under the power of, and suffer oppression from their enemies. Though the love of the Lord’s heart is ever set upon you, and the eye of His providence is ever over you, yet He may seem to leave you. O! tarry the Lor...

"Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD; yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau , " -Malachi 1:2, 3 [KJV]   My soul! sit down this evening, and ponder over some few particulars of the characteristics of grace, and behold its freeness, fulness, unexpectedness, greatness, sovereignty, and undeservedness; and yet, if possible, more astonishing than either, in its distinguishing operations. The Lord Himself invites His redeemed people to this blessed study; and when a poor sinner can receive it, and mark his own interest in it, nothing more tends to humble the soul to the dust before God, and compels it to cry out, under a deep sense of its own unworthiness, "Lord, how is it that Thou hast manifested Thyself to me, and not unto the world?"    In this demand of God, the question is decided and answered. "I have loved you, saith the Lord. But ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?" or as some read it, wherefore hast Thou done so, when we were ut...

"Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." -Psalm 90:8 [KJV]   Thus Moses the man of God testified, and so Job found it: "For Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth" (Job 13:26). But though the Lord sets His people's sins in the light of His countenance, and brings them to bear with weight and power upon their conscience, and thus for a time at least lets them sink and fall into distress and grief, He will support them under the heavy load, that they may not altogether be crushed by it.    I do think, that if there is one single grace more overlooked than another in the Church of God at the present day, it is the grace of repentance. Though it lies at the very threshold of vital godliness, though it was one main element in the gospel that Paul preached, for he "testified both to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance toward God, and faith ...