CONTENTS The church is here evidently under exercises. Some mighty foes come against her, and her resource can only be found in her God. The Psalmist thus speaks of his confidence, confesses that God's ways are dark and mysterious, but a happy end shall be to all his appointments. To the chief mus... [ Continue Reading ]
Every verse tends more and more to confirm the foregoing observation: Being in an agony (saith the evangelist), he prayed more earnestly, and the sweat of his face was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Luke 22:44.... [ Continue Reading ]
There is somewhat very singular, and, at first reading, very strange, in these expressions. Doth the remembrance of God, as a gracious covenant God, tend to increase affliction? Surely every remembrance of God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, must have a blessed tendency... [ Continue Reading ]
Jesus spent whole nights, we are told, in prayer to God. No doubt the love of God to Israel, through all the eventful pilgrimage of his church's warfare, occupied his holy mind. It is blessed, in our present exercises, to look back and compare them with former deliverances, either in our own instanc... [ Continue Reading ]
These are blessed inquiries, and all tend to lead the soul to God, and to induce the happy issue in which the questions end. No, God hath not cast off his people whom he foreknew. God hath not, God will not. He hath spoken peace to Israel, and he will not unsay it. Then it is our infirmity, and not... [ Continue Reading ]
Here is a devout reference to the history of the church in past times: and very ample are the pages in that history to give comfort to a troubled soul, when the Holy Ghost, as the Remembrancer of Christ, takes down the sacred volume, turns to the many blessed passages of God's faithfulness there rec... [ Continue Reading ]
What a beautiful and sublime manner of expression is here, in the waters seeing God. The prophet hath a similar thought: Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation... [ Continue Reading ]
REFLECTIONS READER, ponder over the weighty contents of this blessed Psalm. Do we see Christ in it? Did Jesus so cry in the days of his flesh? Did he accomplish salvation for his people, when he bore their sins and carried their sorrows? Oh! then, let us delight to trace his footsteps amidst all the... [ Continue Reading ]