Hosea 7:16

REFLECTIONS

READER! let this Chapter, as many other Chapter s of the same nature and doctrine are highly calculated for, lead your heart and mine, under the teachings and influences of God the Holy Ghost, to take a double view, and in one and the same moment, behold the corrupt and fallen state of man, and the infinite grace and goodness of God. I do not say, that the Lord took occasion from man's misery to magnify the exceeding riches of his grace in providing salvation; for His love was before our misery; and his covenant grace in Christ existed before all worlds. But I may say, that in every instance of divine favor the Lord doth make the glory of his grace to shine towards his redeemed; and where sin aboundeth, grace doth much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord!

Reader! when you and I look into ourselves, what do we see but evil, and that continually? When now the Lord hath healed us in Jesus, how is our iniquity discovered? Our hearts are always ready to the lust of evil, like the baker's oven! How have we, like Ephraim, mixed ourselves with the heathen, and learned their works? And though we return, yet how often is it deceitfully, and not to the Most High! is it not so? Think then, how gracious, long suffering, and slow to anger, the Lord is? Gracious Lord Jesus! how shall we ever rightly and fully value the infinitely precious and costly sacrifice of thy blood and righteousness? How indeed shall creatures such as we are, rightly value what our utmost conceptions cannot fathom, or comprehend? Oh! for grace, to have some glimpses of those infinite dimensions of Almighty love, in all its heights, and depths, and breadths, and lengths, which passeth knowledge! Oh! to behold thee, thou blessed Lamb of God, in thy unceasing worthiness before the throne; and never, never to forget that thy blood speaketh more for thy boughten ones, than all their sins speak against them. Yea, dearest Lord, do thou enable me to cherish the sweet thought in my soul day by day; that a sense of the remains of indwelling sin in my nature, may not overwhelm me in despair; that thou art still appearing as a Lamb that hath been slain, in the presence of God for thy people, and canst, and wilt save to the uttermost all that come to God by thee, seeing that thou ever livest to make intercession for them. Amen.