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

"...and take the helmet of salvation." - Ephesians 6:17 [KJV]   It is excellently said, “Resolve for hardships, or lay down thine arms.   Few come at the beat of Christ’s drum to His standard. Many that list by external profession under Him, after a while drop away and leave His colours. It is suffering work they are sick of. Many men are more tender of their skin than of their conscience. They had rather the gospel had provided armour to defend their bodies from death and danger, than their souls from sin and Satan.” -Gurnal’s Christian Armour   All this is, because they have not on the helmet of salvation. What is this? “For an helmet, the hope of salvation” (I Thessalonians 5:8.) Do not all naturally hope to be saved? Yes, some in one way, and some in another. But all natural hopes are false hopes. Therefore they die and perish. But this helmet is a supernatural and divine hope. All men have not faith. Therefore they have not Christ, who is the helmet of...

"And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work, and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD our God hath cursed ." -Genesis 5:29 [KJV]   I still think, and believe that I always shall think, that holy men of old possessed great superiority of faith to new testament believers, in the attention they paid to the choice of names given to their children. Our choice, for the most part, is from caprice, or respect to our relations or earthly connections; they had an eye to heaven. Thus, in the instance before us, Lamech evidently called his son, Noah, which signifies rest, in reference to "the rest which remaineth for the people of God;" and, as such, had an eye to Christ, the promised seed, in whom alone that rest was to be found. I do not presume to suppose that Lamech thought this child to be himself the promised seed, as our first mother Eve did at the birth of Cain, when she said, "I have gotten...

"The substance of a diligent man is precious." -Proverbs 12:27 [KJV] If the Lord has done anything for our souls by His Spirit and grace, and given us anything to taste, handle, realise, and enjoy for ourselves, we know there is a substance and reality in the things that we believe. Religion is our chief employment; our daily meditation or exercise—the main concern of our thoughts and what lies with the greatest weight upon our minds. And justly so; for it is our all. If we have religion, the religion of God's giving, it will be uppermost in our heart. It is true we are surrounded with and often hampered by a body of sin and death; we have many worldly cares and anxieties which will intrude upon our minds; and those engaged in business have many things especially to drag them down from heaven to earth. Still, religion will be for the most part uppermost in a man's soul, where God has begun and is carrying on a gracious work. Not but what he is often very...