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

" Ye are dead, and your life is hid with CHRIST in GOD." - Colossians 3:3 [KJV] We are apt to mistake the words, and pervert the meaning of scripture. This charge is brought against us by Jeremiah: “Ye have perverted the words of the living God,” (chapter 23:36.) This dejects our souls, robs Christ of the glory of our hearts, and prevents our holy and comfortable walk in Him. See if this be not the case with respect to this text. Ye believers in Christ, are dead,  (1st.) “to the law by the body of Christ , ” (Romans 7:4.) Being one with Christ by faith, you are dead to all legal hopes, from your own works.  (2d.) Dead to sin, being baptized into Christ by His Spirit (Romans 6:3.)   (3d.) Dead to the world, being crucified with Christ, (Galatians 6:14.)   O says one, and another sincere soul, I am not thus dead. I have no true faith. I find sin alive in me—legal hopes and fears cleaves to me—and too much love of the world in me, to my grief and burde...

"For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake." -Philippians 1:29 [KJV] After the Lord, by His special work on the conscience, has called us to repentance and confession of sin, as well as to faith in Jesus; after He has called us to godly sorrow; to live according to the precepts of the gospel; and to walk in the ordinances of His Church; He then calls us to suffer for and with Christ. But we cannot "suffer according to the will of God," that is, in a gospel sense and from gospel motives, till the Lord enables us in some measure to look to Him. The same Spirit, who calls the believer to walk in a path of suffering, strengthens and enables him to do so. To suffer aright, we must walk in the steps of the great Captain of our salvation, who "though a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered." The Father in this sense spared not His only-begotten Son, but led Him...

"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." -I Peter 4:7 [KJV] My soul, how hath the year been hastening from thee, and thou hastening in it from the world! Where are the days fled? They are gone to be numbered with the years beyond the flood; and thou art now standing as on the isthmus of time. "The end of all things is at hand." Friends are dying around thee, thou art dying thyself; yea, the world is dying: and the end of all things is at hand. In this state, my Lord, well may I look up to Thee! Circumstances so very solemn may well induce soberness, and watchfulness unto prayer. Yes! blessed Jesus! I would pray Thee to induce in me every suited state, that every faculty may be on the watch tower, waiting my Lord's coming.  Thou hast said: "Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry." Oh! then for grace to live by faith on Thee; and so to live, that when I change wor...

" Ye are all one in CHRIST JESUS." -Galatians 3:28 [KJV] Will a covetous man be contented with the notion that he is rich? If your body was in pain, would it give you ease, to think of a remedy, without experiencing its salutary effects? What avails all the refined notions of eternal union, without experiencing that the soul is vitally united to Christ, by the power of the Spirit, through faith? O my soul, I charge thee not to rest satisfied, with the notion of the doctrine of union, without the comforts of the grace of being united to Christ, and being one with Him in heart and affection. O my Jesus, to Thee I look and pray, to find and feel more and more the sweet experience of this. Give it my soul, out of Thy fulness.  Consider, (1st.) The persons here spoken of, ye. Ye Jews, who had the form of godliness, without the power: ye Gentile sinners, who once had neither the form nor the power of Christianity: ye apostate sinners, who yesterday were haters of God...

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." - II Corinthians 5:7 [KJV] The nature of faith is to trust in the dark, when all appearances are against it; to trust that a calm will come, though the storm be overhead; to trust that God will appear, though nothing but evil be felt. It is tender, child-like, and therefore is an implicit confidence, a yielding submission, a looking unto the Lord. There is something filial in this; something heavenly and spiritual; not the bold presumption of the daring, nor the despairing fears of the desponding; but something beyond both the one and the other—equally remote from the rashness of presumption, and from the horror of despair. There is a mingling of holy affection connected with this trust, springing out of a reception of past favours, insuring favours to come; and all linked with a simple hanging and depending of the soul upon the Lord, because He is what He is. There is a looking to, and relying upon the Lord, because we hav...

"For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His." -Hebrews 4:10 [KJV] My soul, see to it, that among other blessed evidences of thine union and rest in Christ, thou hast this also "We which have believed," the apostle saith, "do enter into rest." Our dependence on, and knowledge of Jesus, are such, that we really and truly enjoy the blessings of redemption. And as God the Father, when He had finished creation, rested from all His works which He had made; and as Jesus, when He had finished redemption, entered into His glory; so true believers, when they have once found Christ, and redemption in His blood, no longer weary themselves in the works of sin, or the works of self-righteousness, by way of justification before God; but cease from every thing in self, and rest with complacency and delight in the rich, free, and full salvation that is by Christ. My soul, what sayest thou to this blessed...

" To reveal His Son in me." -Galatians 1:16 [KJV] From hence begins spiritual life: a life from God, in God, with God, and to God. By the gospel the Son of God is revealed to us. By the Spirit, He is revealed in us. External revelation by the word, and internal by the Spirit, are both necessary to salvation. Though St. Paul was separated from his mother’s womb, to be called by the grace of God, yet he had not this inward revelation of Jesus Christ to his heart, till he heard the external word of Christ with his ear, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” (Acts 9:4.) Hence learn to prize, both the outward testimony of the word and the inward testimony of the Spirit.  Consider, (1st.) to reveal, signifies to discover, or make clear to a person, what he did not know before. So, (Philippians 3:15) “If in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal this unto you.” So the gospel is a revelation of Jesus Christ, without which we could never have known...