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

"For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."   -I Timothy 6:10 [KJV]   How hard to persuade a man, that there is any evil in that which he loves! Evil in money! what evil can there be in that which will purchase all things? Truly, we may say of money as one said of a pack of cards. Being asked, what harm there is in them? replied, None at all: they are very innocent things, if you will not meddle with them. So is money. But there is a curse in the love of it. There is the root of all evil. What mighty ills have not been done by this? Why, the love of money will dethrone God in the heart, and make a man an idolater. “Covetousness is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5.) Can there in all the world be a greater evil than this? Is not this the root of all evil? Do not all evils spring from hence?    Love of money was the same in the apostle’s days a...

"And they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, LORD GOD Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." -Revelation 4:8 [KJV]   Make a solemn pause, my soul, over these words; and when thou hast found a fixedness of thought, that every faculty may be engaged in the contemplation, ponder well this divine perfection of Jehovah, the holiness of His nature, by which an eternal distinction is drawn between Him and all His creatures. None but Jehovah can be essentially holy. Angels, who have never sinned, have indeed a holiness; but it is derived from Him, it exists not in themselves, and, in point of comparison, is but as the shadow to the substance; moreover, being in their nature mutable creatures, their holiness may be changed also: the fallen angels are proofs in point. But with Jehovah, holiness is in Himself; the peculiar glory of His nature, and inseparable from His very existence.   Pause over this view, for it is scriptural, and truly blessed. Go...

"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." -I Peter 1:18, 19 [KJV]   O the unspeakable depths of the goodness and mercy of God! O the riches of His super-abounding grace! When there was no other way of redemption, God sent His only-begotten Son, that by His precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, we might be redeemed from all the consequences of our vain conversation received by tradition from our fathers; and not only from all its consequences, but from its power and practice. It is a knowledge, a personal, experimental knowledge of this redemption, which lays us under a spiritual obligation to walk worthy of our high calling.    And it acts in this way. A view by faith of the bleeding, dying Lamb of God, a seeing and feeling what H...