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

"...be thou in the fear of the L ORD all the day long. For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off." - Proverbs 23:17, 18 [KJV] The Lord is here addressing Himself to a soul labouring under temptation, and passing through peculiar exercises; and this is the exhortation that He gives it: "Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long;" watching His hand, submitting to His will, committing everything into His care and keeping; not hardening your heart against Him, but looking up to Him, and worshipping Him with godly fear; "for surely there is an end."   You may be tempted, exercised, and surrounded with difficulties, and see no outlet; but "surely there is an end;" and, when the end comes, it will make all plain and clear. This quiet submission, this watching and waiting, a man can never be brought to unless he has seen an end to all perfection; an end of his own strength, wisdom, and righteousness. To sit still i...

"...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 tha...

"He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." -I John 2:6 [KJV] Sweet testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, when, from being in Christ, we are walking with Christ; and one and the same spirit runs through both. As a man never walks as Christ walked, before he is first united to Christ; so when truly united to Christ, the evidence is made to appear by loving what Jesus loves, and hating what Jesus hates. As Ruth said to Naomi, so the believer saith to the Lord Jesus: "Where thou goest, I would go, and where thou lodgest, I would lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!"   And, my soul, think what a blessed unanswerable proof doth it afford, both to thyself and to the world around, when, from abiding in Christ, we live as Christ; that is, His Holy Spirit moves in us, speaks in us, walks in us, yea, doth all in us; and as the soul of man gives life and action to the body, so Christ, Who is the soul of the be...

"That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."   -II Timothy 3:17 [KJV] What perfection does the Holy Ghost speak of here? Certainly not perfection in the flesh; that is but a wild dream of free-will and Arminianism. But perfection here and elsewhere means a being well-established and grounded in the faith , as we find the Apostle speaking (Heb. 5:14), "Strong meat belongeth to them that are  of full age"   (literally, as we read in the margin, "perfect"), "even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Christian perfection does not then consist in perfection in the flesh, but in having arrived at maturity in the divine life, in being what I may call a Christian adult, or what the Apostle terms "a man in Christ."   When Paul therefore says, "Let us therefore, as many as be  perfect,"   he means "being no more children, tossed to and fro, and ca...

"A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the L ORD for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this." -Psalm 22:30-31 [KJV] It is precious, yea, truly blessed also, to discover the happy correspondence subsisting between the several parts of scripture, in their testimony concerning the features of God's people. Jehovah, in His threefold character of person, is always found as engaged in it; and each One in the holy and undivided Three gives assurance to it. "I will pour My Spirit, (saith God the Father speaking to the person of His dear Son, as the Israel of His people) upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring," Isaiah 44:3 . "A seed, (saith Christ, or, as it might be rendered, and indeed is rendered in the version of the psalms read in the churches, My seed) shall serve Him."   This is the very seed which the Lord hath blessed, and which all that s...

"The secret of the L ORD is with them that fear Him; and He will shew them His covenant."   - Psalm 25:14 [KJV] "The secret of the Lord" (that is,  present  possession)  "is  with them that fear Him; and He  will  shew them" (that is, something  future ) "His covenant." This shews, that while all the people of God, who fear His name, have the secret with them, that is, a measure of the secret, yet all the people of God have not the covenant revealed to them at the same time with the secret. The "secret" is in the present tense; the "shewing of the covenant" is in the future.   It is very sweet to see how the Holy Ghost has discriminated between these blessings. If, for instance, it had run thus, "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He shews to them His covenant," some doubting, desponding child of God might say, "How can I be one of those that fear God? for it says, God shews to them Hi...