A Goodly Heritage

How few duly consider the tremendous dangers to which they are exposed by sin! Flight there is none, for God is everywhere. Resistance there is none, for God has all power. Self is ruin, because self is sin; and sin the cause of the ire. But against all this righteous anger, there is a shield most righteously provided in Christ Jesus. But God's abhorrence of evil is not our only adversary. There is the evil one, red with the blood of myriads of our race. He lays an ambush at every turn. Now a shower of darts pelts pitilessly. Now the weight of incessant batterings descends. Now a sudden arrow flies swiftly in the dark; and suddenly we fall, ere danger is suspected. He never slumbers, never is weary, never relents, never abandons hope. He deals his blows alike at childhood's weakness, youth's inexperience, manhood's strength, and the totterings of age. He watches to ensnare the morning thought. He departs not with the shades of night. By his legions he is everywhere, at

"Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?" This question, along with others, the Almighty proposed to the holy and patient Job, in order to his deeper and more complete humiliation. There are awful mysteries in the nature of death, which baffle the inquiries of the wisest, and appall the spirit of the boldest of mankind. Man, standing alone, is unequal to the conflict with an enemy whose nature and powers surpass his investigation. Blessed be God, there are opposite mysteries of love and power, exhibited in behalf of dying Christians, by which the least of the Redeemer's flock becomes a mighty conqueror in this solemn warfare. It is not, however, by shallow and trivial thoughts and emotions, that the soul ascends into the strength which prevails over death: It is by profound, deep-felt, and, in most cases, long-continued meditation, that the soul, invigorated by grace, hath access to this light of victory and

The groves of the original paradise were fair and pleasant, fragrant and fruitful; but, through the instability and ingratitude of man, sin found its way into that paradise, and death immediately followed. The land of Canaan was prepared by Divine goodness for the posterity of Abraham, as a kind of second paradise; but, behold the effects of sin! See, in the preceding chapter of this book, what denunciations of wrath issued forth from the God of Israel, against his favorite land. Death and desolation did overspread the consecrated territory. It is, my brethren, the universal lot of mankind, to be subject to the empire of death, the king of terrors; therefore, wherever the salvation and happiness of man are spoken of, attention must be paid to this capital evil; if provision be not made against this calamity, nothing is done. The Israelitish nation and church, residing in Canaan, was the theater, on which the great anointed Deliverer of mankind was now to be exhibited to the vie

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth! This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh? These people did not intend to give up the Savior, they were only going to help Him; they did not intend to cast off the Spirit, they were only going to perfect that which was lacking in His work; they had begun in the Spirit, and were going to the law to be made perfect. Ah! says Paul, the law belongs to the children of the flesh; to them it speaks; the works of it are the works of the flesh. Your perfection from thence will be only perfection in the flesh, and where you go for perfection there you must go for righteousness. Christ is our righteousness and sanctification too; go to the law for one, and you must go to the law for the other; by going for perfection there that yoke will entangle you again, and

Those that have felt the bondage, wrath, terrors, and death, that the law works, will prize their liberty, and take heed how they approach that blackness and darkness again; but those that never felt its power can play with it as with a bird, for they are alive without it. It is vain that ministers send men to Sinai in order to promote holiness: "the works of the flesh are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions. heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness." And will sending men to the law destroy these? Nay, says Paul, these are the motions of sin, which are by the law that works in our members to bring forth fruit unto death, Rom. 7:5. Nor was the law manifested to destroy these works of the devil, but to make them appear exceeding sinful; nor does the law weaken sin but aggravate it; for "the strength of sin is the law." It is grace that makes the believer what he is,

Election secures every minister in his station, and all the success that shall attend his labours. It has been observed that those, who have been the most forward at lampooning me for an Antinomian, have been the greatest novices in divinity; and, while they have been contending for the law as the only rule of life, they have preached the greatest confusion, discovered the greatest ignorance of the nature of the law, and have evidently appeared in the strongest bondage: "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity;" he that binds grievous burdens on other men's shoulders goes a sure way to load his own back. No wonder that legions are flocking back to Sinai; it is a proof that the law is not dead to them, nor they to it; they begun in the Spirit before they had been killed by the letter. Their first husband, it is to be feared, is not dead, therefore they are not loosed from that law: and being adulteresses, the first husband has taken them up and brought t

 A.W Pink “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free” — Ephesians 6:5-8. How intensely practical is the Bible! It not only reveals to us the way to Heaven, but it is also full of instruction concerning how we are to live here upon earth. God has given His Word unto us to be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path: that is, for the regulating of our daily walk. It makes known how God requires us to conduct ourselves in all the varied relations of life. Some of us are single, others married; some are children, others parents; some are masters, others servants. Scripture supplies definite precepts and rul

The heathen had semblances or images of well-nigh every virtue. He had many excellences, here and there, which put Christians to shame. Wretchedly corrupt as life was upon the whole, still not individuals only, but even nations, had great single virtues. The heathen had self-devotion, contentment, contempt of the world, and of the flesh; he had fortitude, endurance, self-denial, abstemiousness, temperance, chastity, even a sort of reverence for God whom he knew not; but he had not humility. The first sin, the wish to be as God, pride, spoiled them all. Man, in his natural state, claims, as his own, what is God's; and so he displeases God, whom he robs of His honour. And so the first beginning of Christian virtues is to lay aside pride. It is to own that we have nothing, that so we may receive all and hold all of God; and when, as being in Christ and partaking of His riches, we begin to have, still to own that, of our own, we have nothing. But not only in general or towards God hav

When the tide is out you may have noticed, as you rambled among the rocks, little pools with little fishes in them. To the shrimp, in such a pool, his foot depth of salt water is all the ocean for the time being. He has no dealings with his neighbour shrimp in the adjacent pool, though it may be only a few inches of sand that divide them; but when the rising ocean begins to lip over the margin of the lurking place, one pool joins another, their various tenants meet, and by-and-by, in place of their little patch of standing water, they have the ocean's boundless fields to roam in. When the tide is out — when religion is low — the faithful are to be found insulated, here a few and there a few, in the little standing pools that stud the beach, having no dealings with their neighbours of the adjoining pools, calling them Samaritans, and fancying that their own little communion includes all that are precious in God's sight. They forget, for a time, that there is a vast and expansiv

Evil ministers are a great cause of sin and misery upon the people they have charge of. It is an addition to the priests' judgment that they drag so many with them into it. 2.  Albeit naughty ministers be great plagues and snares to people, yet that will not excuse a people's sin, nor exempt them from judgment, and therefore the people are threatened also. The sending of evil ministers may be so much the fruit of people's former sins, and they may be so well satisfied with it as may justly ripen them for a stroke. 3.  As pastors and people are ordinarily like each other in sin, and mutual plagues to each other, so will they be joined together in judgments, for "there shall be, like people, like priest," that is, both shall be involved in judgment (though possibly in different measure, according to the degree Of their sin), and none of them able to help or comfort another. 4.  Albeit the Lord may spare for a time, and seem to let things lie in confusion, yet