Hosea 5:15

REFLECTIONS

MY soul dost thou behold in this Chapter, the false teachers here described? Ponder well the awfulness of such characters, who to please men, and find favor with the great, set their nets in the Mizpahs, and Tabors, of the present hour, to harass and afflict the people of God. Whatever Hosea knew of this in his day, he could not know more than the present time affords, of such deceivers and antichrists. Surely there never was a period of the Church, when in what is called the Church itself, so little is known, and so little proclaimed, of the person, work, office, and character, of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Christ, if at all spoken of, is for the most part spoken of by such men, not as He really is, the whole sum and substance of the Bible the whole of ordinances; and of means of grace; but seen only in the back ground of the subject, and cautiously mentioned, and as cautiously recommended to the people. Reader! observe the Lord's jealousy, I beseech you, in this chapter, and mark it well. Oh! for grace to make Christ what God the Father makes him: the whole, substantially so, of all the covenant; yea, the very covenant itself. Jesus is the first, and the last; the author and finisher; the object, means, and end, of everything that concerns salvation. If we seek for pardon, where shall we seek it, but in Christ? If for peace, He, and he alone is our peace, when the Assyrian shall come up into our land. Need we a promise? Jesus is the sum of all, yea, himself the promise. He is the whole of the law; the substance of all the types, and shadows; the body of all the prophecies: to him give all the prophets witness. My soul! see that thou draw improvement from every scripture, in discovering Jesus in that scripture: for, until thou hast found Him, to whom all scriptures witness, and of whom all scriptures testify; thou knowest nothing yet, as thou oughtest to know. Blessed Lord! grant this, both to Writer and Reader, if it be thy blessed will, that we may know thee, whom truly to know is life eternal! Amen.