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

"By the obedience of one, ( or by ONE obedience ) shall many be made righteous."   - Romans 5:19 [KJV]   J oyful truth to miserable sinners. O that this word was ever upon our minds, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways, saith the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8.) Our thoughts are, to make ourselves righteous by our own obedience; and our ways are, to be justified before God by our own righteousness. But the Lord calls us to forsake these unrighteous thoughts , as well as wicked ways, and to submit by faith, to His thoughts and His ways, to be made righteous by the obedience of ONE.     Consider, (1st.) this negative implies that no obedience but ONE, can make any sinner righteous. O professor, what art thou seeking after, and striving to be and to do? What is the end of thy praying, reading, hearing, communicating, striving against sin, and seeking to excel in obedience, etc.? Is it to make thyself righteous? then it all proceeds from unbelief of...

"Thou hast avouched the LORD this day to be thy God.—And the LORD hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people." -Deuteronomy 26:17, 18 [KJV]   What a most lovely view doth this scripture hold forth of the solemn transaction between God and His people! What an amazing thought, that the High and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity, should condescend to propose and confirm such a covenant! and, my soul, dost thou think that, in the charter of grace, sealed as it is in the blood of God's dear Son, this covenant is less blessed or less sure? Doth not God confirm it in every promise? Is it not read and ratified in every ordinance? And doth not that Holy Spirit of promi se set his seal to the whole, "whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemption?"   Pause over the blissful subject! Ponder it well, this solemn evening! Surely, every service, every ordinance in the church of Jesus, becomes a confirmation of the blessed truth. What, indeed, is the gospel itsel...

"And floods upon the dry ground." -Isaiah 44:3 [KJV]   How often does the soul, born and taught of God, feel that it is this "dry ground!" It would fain be fruitful in every good word and work; it would be adorned with every grace of the Spirit within, and with every good and godly fruit without. Let no one think that the child of God is careless or indifferent either as to inward or outward fruit. There is nothing too holy, too heavenly, too spiritual, or too gracious which the child of grace would not desire inwardly to experience and outwardly produce. But he feels that he cannot by any exertion of his own produce this fruitfulness after which he sighs. As well might a barren field convert itself into a fruitful garden without being tilled by human hand or without rain from the sky, as a soul that feels and knows its own barrenness produce by its own exertions a crop of the fruits of righteousness.    But the Lord that knows the desire of the heart, and its inw...