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

      We do not find rest, hope nor comfort in our faith, BUT IN CHRIST.  If you will give careful thought to that statement, it will be of great help to you. Faith is not a foundation, a refuge, nor a source of help.  Faith is a means, a look, an empty hand.  It is Christ who is our refuge, who protects from every storm.  He is our Rock on which we build.  He is our source of every mercy and our only plea.  My faith may be weak or weaker, but He cannot fail.  If all my debts have been paid by my Surety, I do not have to be ashamed to come before God.  The praise and credit goes not to my boldness and faith but to my Gracious Benefactor!  I am not debt-free because I believe (though I do, and that faith united me to Him) but because HE SET ME FREE AND PAID MY DEBT.  Christ is our confidence and our assurance.  The moment I seek a reason for hope in anything I do, even in the blessed grace of faith, I forfeit an...

My God! How cheerful is the sound! How pleasant to repeat! Well may that heart with pleasure bound, Where God hath fixed His seat. What want shall not our God supply From His abundant stores? What streams of mercy from on high An arm almighty pours! From Christ the ever-living Spring, These ample blessings flow: Prepare, my lips, His name to sing, Whose heart has loved us so. Now to our Father and our God Be endless glory giv’n, Through all the realms of man’s abode, And through the highest heaven. -old Gospel hymn,   "O For A Thousand Tongues"    "Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.  Serve the LORD with gladness: come before His presence with singing.  Know ye that the LORD He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.  Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.  For the LORD is good; His mercy is ev...

"My hopes from appearances are cold.  My faith has no bed to sleep upon but God’s omnipotency." -preacher Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661 A.D.)

"With clouds He covereth the light, and commandeth it not to shine, by the cloud that cometh betwixt."   - Job 36:32 [KJV]   The sun, from its first formation by its almighty Creator, shines at all times alike. There never was, is, or ever can be, any addition to, or diminution from, its light and heat. But we perceive a sensible difference. Even the intervention of a cloud coming between us and the sun, hides and obscures the glorious rays of light from us. There are fixed laws in creation. All nature acts under the direction of those laws, prescribed by our all-wise Lord.    As in nature, so in grace. As by the natural sun, so it is by the Sun of Righteousness : it shines with an equal degree of resplendent glory, of light, love, and grace at all times. But, we are not always alike sensible of it. Why not? As clouds and vapours arise from the earth, and interrupt the light of the natural sun, by coming between that and us; just so, the clouds of sin, the vapours of...

"...as an hireling, his day." -Job 14:6 [KJV]   The sufferings of Job are proverbial; but the sermons of this exercised believer, though delivered from a dunghill, were sweet sermons. The figure of an hireling accomplishing his day (and that a day, both on account of original sin and actual transgression, fleeting and full of labour and sorrow) forms a just, though sad representation of human life. But this, like all the other circumstances of our fallen state, when read through the medium of the gospel, and softened and sweetened with the blood of Christ, puts on a different aspect. It is then found in its shortness to be the better, and in its crosses to be the more sanctified; and, like Samson's riddle, "out of the eater to come forth meat, and out of the strong to bring forth sweetness;" Judges 14:14. It is the blessed property of grace, to work by contraries; so that the cross of Jesus, like the tree cast into the waters of Marah, put into our hireling li...

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." -Luke 19:10 [KJV] "The Son of man is come." What a blessed coming! The Lord Jesus seems to have taken to Himself, with the tenderest condescension to our wants, that gracious title, "the Son of man." He was the Son of God, and that from all eternity; but He delights to call Himself the Son of man. We want one like ourselves, wearing the same nature; carrying in His bosom the same human heart; one who has been, "in all points, tempted like as we are, yet without sin ; " and therefore able to sympathise with and to succour those that are tempted. A sinner like man, when made sensible of his pollution and guilt, cannot draw near unto God in His intrinsic, essential majesty and holiness. Viewed as the great and glorious Being that fills eternity, Jehovah is too great, too transcendently holy, too awfully perfect for him to approach. He must therefore have a Mediator; and that M...