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

"Every one who useth milk, is unskillful in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe."   - Hebrews 5:13 [KJV]   This is a sharp reproof. As then, so now there are many who need it. The word rendered unskillful, in the margin of our bibles, is, hath no experience. Christian experience is much talked of, but too little understood. Many are ready to give a long detail of experience which they have had of one thing and another, but you can find nothing of the word of righteousness in it. It all begins in self, ends in self, and tends to exalt self. O! there is a great deal of self-seeking, self-soothing, and self-complacency, in what is called Christian experience.    But real Christian experience is that inward proof or trial, which our minds have of the word of righteousness; how the belief of it has brought relief to our guilty consciences, ease to our troubled souls, and rest to our weary minds. From hence, Christ, the sum and substance of the word of...

"And they called the name of that place Bochim." -Judges 2:5 [KJV]   Surely it was enough to induce such an effect, when the preaching of an angel informed the people, that the LORD, for their sins, would not drive out their enemies before them. The place might well be called *Bochim, and they themselves might hear the name *Bochim, weepers . But, my soul, thou hast lately been to a place which is yet more calculated to make it memorable, by weeping, when thou didst attend Jesus at the ordinance of His supper. For there Jesus Himself was, and is, the everlasting Preacher, Who sheweth thee His hands and His side, pierced and streaming with blood, for thy sins.    Didst thou not hear Him speak to thee Himself, in His own words, "They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born?" -Zechariah 12:10. Didst thou not...

"I will lay thy foundations with sapphires." -Isaiah 54:11 [KJV]   Before we can stand firmly in the things of God we must have a good foundation, something solid for our faith, our hope, our love, our all, to rest upon. This God promises to lay for His afflicted Zion: "I will lay thy foundations with sapphires." "A gift," we read, "is a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it." Every testimony, then, that God gives to the soul, every promise brought into the heart, every manifestation of mercy, every visit of love, or application of truth, we may call, in a spiritual sense, a sapphire; for it is indeed a precious stone, radiant with heaven's own hue. When God thus lays His sapphires in the soul, they afford a solid foundation for faith. And as they are laid by the hand of God Himself, they must be firm; as they are sapphires, they must be indestructible.    These sapphires, it is true, may every one of them be buried ...