This is the just and unavoidable conclusion of all that went before. There can be no source, no spring, no fountain, but in Jesus. Everything of life, and light, and salvation, grace here, glory hereafter; all are in Christ: not only from Christ, but in Christ. A God incarnate must be the only possible source of blessedness, both now and forever. Oh! what a thought, to comfort the soul under all barrenness, deadness, and languishing frames whatever.
REFLECTIONS
MY soul! what sayest thou to this blessed Psalm, as to thy personal experience of the glorious things contained in it? Most plain and evident it is, that the foundation upon which the temple, as a type of Christ, is founded, is Christ Jesus. Other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, Jesus Christ. But, my soul, art thou founded in him? and are all thy fresh springs in Him? See the foundation of everything out of Christ! Look into houses, families, churches: if Christ be not the rock, on which every individual is built, how shall it be said of any, when Jehovah counts, and writes up the people, that this Man, even Jesus, was born in that soul? How shall that promise of Jesus be fulfilled: Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God: and I will write upon him my new name! - And, my soul, see to it, as an evidence of these precious glorious things, that all thy resources, all thy happiness, grace, righteousness, joy, glory, be all in Jesus, and flowing from him alone, in all thy refreshments.
Oh! ye elder brethren, the Jews; ye that are the descendants of Zion, behold Him, concerning whom Jehovah hath recorded, a Person and a Person shall be born in her! May this almighty Redeemer hasten the time of his arising in Zion, to turn away ungodliness from Jacob! And ye, no less, the Gentiles yet to be called in, behold ye! Philistia and Tyre! ye, people of Ethiopia! see the register of Jehovah, This man was born. Lord! hasten the hour when Ethiopia, and Seba, and the multitude of the isles, shall stretch forth their hands unto our God. Amen.