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

     "If a minister be erroneous, how should the flock be sound?  No readier way to destroy a whole town than by poisoning the cistern at which they draw their water." -preacher Wm. Gurnall (1616-1679 A.D.)

"If thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it."   -Exodus 20:25 [KJV]   This chapter abounds with legal terror. Here, the glorious Jehovah is giving the law with thunderings and lightnings, and the sound of a trumpet. The mountain smoking. Poor sinners, trembling and fleeing, saying, “Let not God speak with us, lest we die.” Most awfully tremendous! Well might St. Paul call it, “the ministration of death and condemnation,” (II Corinthians 3:7, 9.) But blessed, blessed be God, it contains precious gospel-grace to law-condemned sinners. Here, rejoice, and say, Let God speak, and we live . For here is an altar commanded. God is accessible to us. “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me.”     Here is gospel-grace. That beloved Son typified, Who was made like unto us, and appeared in our earthly nature. Thou shalt offer thy burnt-offerings and peace-offerings upon it. “Our God is a consuming fire , ” (Hebrews 12:29.) Yet, “we have an altar , ” (Hebrews ...

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD." -Isaiah 55:8 [KJV]   My soul, hast thou ever considered the blessedness in this verse, as it concerns the great work of salvation? Ponder over it, this evening. There is nothing, perhaps, in which there is a greater and more striking difference than there is between our crude and contracted notions of redemption, and the perfect and unerring thoughts of Jehovah on this point. Our conduct towards each other is so limited on the score of pardon, that though we may forgive a first or second offence, yet if it be repeated too many, nature revolts at the offender, and seems to take a kind of justification in withholding any farther acts of clemency. Hence; we frame the same standard to judge by, concerning God.    But with God, abounding sin calls forth abounding grace, and, like the tide, riseth above high water-mark, yea, overflows all the banks and surrounding ground; so much so, indeed...

"O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?" -Hosea 6:4 [KJV] Most of the Lord's people have some peculiar thing that they want to have granted. Most living souls have some peculiar temptation from which they want to be delivered. If some of the Lord's family could sum up all their desires in one petition, it would be to have the pardon of their sins sealed upon the conscience .    If others of God's people could crowd up in one sentence all the wants of their soul, it would be to be brought into the enjoyment of gospel liberty . If others could condense in one short prayer the chief desire of their heart, it would be to be delivered from some powerful temptation, or be preserved from some peculiar besetment. And if others could get into one request the longings that heave in their bosom, it would be to be relieved from some special trial or trouble that at times seems as though it would weigh them down to the dust.    When the Lord, then, does but enable them to come...