THIS GOD IS OUR GOD

"For this God is OUR GOD for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end." Psalm 48:14

Strong language this! But not too strong for faith to employ. In some believing minds, of doubting, though not of doubtful faith; of fearful, yet not of despairing hearts; it may sound like a vain-glorious boast, and appear a claim almost too presumptuous for a sinful mortal to prefer. Nevertheless, it is truth, and, more or less profound, is the experience of every child of God, and may be the language without any exaggeration of the weakest believer that ever touched the fringe of the Savior's robe. We too much forget that what has been the spiritual attainment of the saints in a past dispensation, may be equally the experience of the saints in every succeeding one. If, amid the twilight shadows of the old economy, believers could embody their faith in language as strong as this, why should believers, dwelling amid the full blaze of the present dispensation, upon which the Sun of Righteousness has risen in noontide splendor, speak in language more timid and doubtful?

Saving Faith and its Divine Object have been the same in every dispensation and age of the Church. The faith of Adam, the first and greatest sinner of his race, which looked to the Promised Seed, before, yet the gates of Eden were closed upon him, is essentially and objectively of "like precious faith," with which the penitent thief washed himself in the crimson fountain flowing at his side. Thus we must be careful of supposing that there is any eminence in the divine life, to which other saints have attained, unattainable by us. That there is any sacred height in grace, holiness, and assurance which they have reached to which we may not ascend- or, that there is any knowledge of Christ, any conformity to His likeness, any intimate relations with Him experienced by others, which may not be our experience too. Thus, strong and bold as is the language of David, there lives not a child of God who may not adopt it as his own, and exclaim, "For this God is OUR GOD for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end."

With an exposition of this truth, the present volume approaches its close. Let us consider some of the sacred ideas suggested by the remarkable expression– "THIS God." It is evident that the inspired speaker refers to some especial attributes of God upon which he had been expatiating, which designate Him as the covenant and redeeming God of His people. "This God- this very God- this great and glorious God, is our God." What, then, are some of these distinctive attributes which especially identify Jehovah as the "OUR God" of His people?

In the first place, 'This God' of REVELATION is 'our God.' This God, who has made such a divine and wonderful revelation of Himself- His Being and mind, His will and heart; in His word, is, 'our God.' In other words, the God of the Bible is ours. All that that inspired and precious volume declares concerning Him, all the thoughts of His mind it reveals, all the love of His nature it makes known, all the teaching of His Spirit it conveys, all the precious promises, all the gracious invitations, and the glorious hopes, and solemn warnings and faithful admonitions it contains, are ours, because the God of the Bible is ours. Accept the Bible as your own. Read it as the letters of your Heavenly Father addressed personally to you. Let no sophistry shake your confidence in its divine inspiration. Beware of that false reasoning that teaches that God's Word is in the Bible, but that the Bible is not God's Word. The giant evil of the day is infidelity unblushingly assailing the truth, and impeaching the integrity of the Sacred Scriptures. Be vigilant and prayerful here. Lose your Bible, and you lose your all. If, then, the God of revelation is yours, the revelation of God is equally yours. All that this blessed volume contains belongs of a right to you. The Divine Redeemer, the glorious gospel, the free salvation, the precious promises, the gracious invitations, the rich consolations, the blissful hopes, the holy admonitions, all, all are ours, because the God who wrote the Bible, who gave the Bible, who has preserved the Bible, and who dwells in the Bible, is 'OUR God.'

May the hand of your faith upon this Divine Charter of blessings, and exclaim, "It is mine, all, all is mine, because the God who inspired it is my God. In giving me Himself He gave me all that was His and this is His most precious gift, next to His beloved Son, whom it reveals. Let me believe it firmly, deal with it reverently, read it devoutly, and walk in its divine precepts holily, and do all in my power to give to all who may not possess, as I do, this heavenly chart, this divine compass, this unerring light in the soul's solemn travel to eternity."

"Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure! you are mine!
Mine to tell me where I came;
Mine to teach me what I am;
"Mine to chide me when I rove;
Mine to share a Savior's love;
Mine are you to guide my feet;
Mine to judge, condemn, acquit.
"Mine to comfort in distress,
If the Holy Spirit bless;
Mine to show by living faith
Man can triumph over death;
"Mine to tell of joys to come,
And the rebel sinner's doom
Oh, you precious book divine,
Precious treasure! you are mine!"

This INCARNATE GOD is 'our God.' The great truth of the Bible is- "God manifest in the flesh"- the Incarnation of the Son of God. And the belief of this truth, an essential doctrine of salvation, is equally essential to our being saved. No soul can possibly have eternal life who disbelieves, and, disbelieving, rejects this great cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God."

From these words we infer that, apart from faith in the Divinity of Christ, and a believing and personal reliance upon His Atonement, no man living can be saved. But how assuring and comforting is the truth that this Incarnate God is 'our' God! This God who left the heavens and came down, not in the nature of angels, but of men, who was "made flesh," who was "made in the likeness of man," and as Man was encompassed with our sinless infirmities, hungered and thirsted, wearied and sorrowed as we, lived a life of toil and poverty, was sustained by charity, was assailed by persecution, moved in comparative obscurity and solitude, and then died a felon's death– this wondrous Being, this God in our veritable nature, this Incarnate God, this Jesus is our God.

Claim your relation to, and your possession of, this God-man, my reader. He is bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. He is "very man of very man," as He is "very God of very God." You have not a human element that did not enter into His humanity. Nothing that was human– for sin is a Satanic and not a human element, an accident and not an original concomitant of our creation- was foreign to Him. It is, therefore, your privilege to claim Him as your Elder Brother, "in all things made like unto His brethren," and in all your afflictions of mind, body, and estate, to repair to Him as a "brother born for adversity."

Oh, what a distinguished blessing from among our precious and endless catalogue of blessings is this– the blessing of knowing that Jesus is ours! That all the fullness of the Godhead essentially dwelling in Him, and all the fullness of the manhood mediatorially His, belongs to us! That every perfection of His being, and every element of His nature, and every pulse of His life, and every fiber of His heart- His every thought and affection and feeling- is ours! "Behold the Lamb of God!" "Behold the man!" for this God, this very God-Man, this very Man-God, is ours!

Christ loves you to recognize your personal interest in Him. He is honored by your claim of free grace to all that He personally and officially is. He is glorified by your continuous coming to the "unsearchable riches" of His grace, wisdom, and love, and from their inexhaustible fullness making large and unlimited draughts. "All things are yours, for you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Receive, then, this "great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," which, in other words, is the great mystery of love, and prefer your personal claim to its untold wealth exclaiming, "This incarnate God, this God who stooped to my nature, who girded Himself with my sinless weaknesses and infirmities, my sickness and sorrows, is my God; all the sinlessness of His nature, all the sympathy of His manhood, all the tenderness of His love, all the filial oneness of His relation as the Elder Brother, all is mine!"

This REDEEMING God is our God. The Redemption of man is the achievement of God. Not so evident is creation a divine work– the sun, the moon, and the stars which He has made evidencing 'His eternal power and Godhead'- as is the work of man's salvation. Upon this, His last and greatest work, He has concentrated the boundless resources of Deity. Here His glory meets in its focal power and splendor. God spoke the universe out of nothing, and formed man from the dust of the earth, but in the Redemption of man, He became incarnate in the person of His beloved Son, exhausting heaven of its richest treasure, and conferring that treasure upon man in the person of Jesus the Savior, 'His unspeakable gift.'

Behold your divine possession! This Redeeming God is our God. This God who has redeemed us at a cost so dear and precious to Himself, as the gift, the sufferings, and sacrifice of His only-begotten and beloved Son, who charged all our sins to Him, laid all our curse upon Him, exacting from Him, as our Surety and Substitute, the utmost penalty of our transgressions and hell-deserving; this God of redemption, this redeeming God is our God. If, then; and this is the logical deduction of faith- if the God of Redemption is our God, it follows that the Redemption of God is ours. This is our warrant to believe in Christ, and to trust in God, and to commit our souls to Jesus, and to accept unhesitatingly, unreservedly, His complete and free salvation; this God, who provided so suitable and so great a redemption, is our God: therefore, we are justified in casting ourselves upon the infinite merit, the atoning work, the sacrificial death of Jesus; yes, upon Jesus, our personal Savior Himself, and believe and be saved.

Trembling, fearful saint, oh, possess this your possession! If the God who redeemed you is yours, then avail yourself of all the precious blessings flooring from that great redemption– a present salvation, a full forgiveness of all sin, completeness in Christ, peace with God passing all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.

With your personal unworthiness, with your countless sins, with your deep poverty, you have nothing to do. The only object that is now to engage your thoughts, and fix your eye, and inspire your hopes, is Jesus! If you were under a great pecuniary liability, and an wealthy friend were to assume your responsibility, and cancel it to the utmost fraction, you would justly reason- "Why need I more be troubled about this matter? Why yield to fear and despondency? I am released from responsibility, my obligation is cancelled, my debt is paid, and I am legally discharged from all liability, arrest, and judgment. I will emerge from the shadows of my imprisonment into the bright sunshine of heaven, and will walk at liberty, bearing with me my legal protection and my full discharge, none daring to make me afraid."

Apply this simple reasoning to the salvation of your soul, and see to what a blessed conclusion and happy peace it will conduct you. Christ bound Himself in the covenant of grace to be our Surety. He became responsible to the moral government of God His Father for all its claims upon His people. He said, in terms virtually in accordance with that engagement, "Upon Me let their sins meet; with Me let their curse rest; upon Me let their punishment and condemnation fall. All that my Church owes I will pay; all for which My Bride is responsible I will discharge; all that My saints have most righteously incurred I will freely and fully endure. Let these go their way."

Oh, wondrous love! Oh, matchless grace! Oh, self-sacrificing mercy! Wonder, O heavens! be astonished, O earth! With such an all-sufficient Savior, with such a full, finished, and free discharge from the guilt of sin, the condemnation of the law, and the arrest of justice, will you any longer pursue your heavenly journey- your soul bowed down to the ground, like a bulrush, your harp of song silent upon the willow, your path bedewed with tears, and the desert vocal with nothing but your sighs, groans, and complaints? Rise! He calls you! Jesus bids you come and walk in the light and joy of His salvation. Uplift your head, take down your harp, retune and sweep its strings to the high praises of Emmanuel, for your great debt is paid, and "there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." With the Church of the Old Testament let the Church of the New sing, but with a louder and sweeter strain, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness."

This COVENANT GOD is our God. God has ever been a covenant God to His Church. Whether it be the Old Covenant or the New- the covenant of the law or the covenant of grace- the covenant with our father, the first Adam, or the covenant with Christ, the Second; He has always sustained the endearing relation of the covenant God of a covenant people. But it is especially by the nature, obligations, and promises of the new covenant of grace made in and by Christ, that God, even our own God, has bound Himself to us. The old covenant of works made with Adam, the federal head of his race, the terms of which were, "Do and live; sin and die," was broken by our first parents, and by its violation compromised the present and eternal happiness of their posterity. But the new covenant of grace entered into by the Sacred Three on behalf of elect sinners, on whom grace and glory were eternally and forever settled in Christ Jesus, their covenant Head, Surety, and Mediator, is absolute and new, filled with all spiritual blessings, signed and sealed by the blood of the New Covenant, accepted and ratified, on the part of God, by His raising up Christ from the dead. "I will," says God, "make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." "This is my blood of the new covenant" says Christ.

And similar to this is the prayer of the apostle- "Now the God of peace, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect." Take hold, then, by faith, beloved, of this covenant; for the God of this covenant is your God. 'By two immutable things in which it is impossible for Him to lie,' He has engaged Himself to be your covenant God, to supply all your need, to guide your journeyings through the wilderness, to keep you by His power, and to conduct you safely from grace to glory, from earth to heaven.

Again, I say, take hold of the covenant! All your history is arranged, all your needs are provided for, all your trials, and afflictions, and sorrows are appointed in this covenant. Not more truly is it like a rainbow round about the throne of heaven, bright like an emerald, than it is round about your person and your path, as to that throne and to that heaven your covenant God is gently, skillfully, surely leading you.

This tried, this proved God is our God. The religion of the true believer is experimental; it is the religion of the heart. He has no dealings with an unknown, imaginary God. He does not know God from the hearing of the ear, or from the reading of books, or from the religious conversation of others merely, but He knows Him from personal acquaintance, from heartfelt experience, from close and constant dealings. There has been a manifestation of God in Christ to his soul, and with Job he can say, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You." And with the converted Samaritans, "Now we believe, not because of your saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."

Oh to be a true, an experimental Christian! The religion of the ear, or of the eye, or of the imagination, or of the intellect, will not, and cannot bring the soul to heaven. The abodes of endless woe are peopled with souls who went down to its regions of despair with no better religion than this! Oh, give me the humility of the publican, the trembling faith of the diseased woman, the flowing tears of the penitent Magdalene, the last petition of the dying thief, rather than the most intellectual religion or the most gorgeous ceremonial that ever the mind invented, or the eye beheld.

But our God is the tried, the proved God of His people. His Word has been tried, and proved divine. His promises have been tried, and proved true. His veracity has been tried, and proved faithful. His love has been tried, and proved unchangeable. His compassion has been tried, and proved real. In a word, His children can all testify, by personal, holy, and loving experience, that God is all that His revealed Word declares Him to be, and that the Lord Jesus is all that the prophet declares Him to be- the 'Tried Stone' for sinners to build upon, and for saints to trust in.

Oh, the blessedness of knowing that this prayer-hearing, prayer-answering, and prayer-exceeding God; this promise-making and promise-keeping God; this love-unchanging, and covenant-keeping God is 'our God!' What encouragement have we to deal personally, constantly, and closely with our God in all the circumstances and events of daily life! We repair to Him in need, in difficulty, and in trial, in the firm persuasion that in the history of His Church He has proved all that we now require Him to be; that all that He has been He is now; and that what other saints have found Him in their experience we shall find Him in ours.

"Come, all you that fear the Lord, and I will tell you what He has done for my soul." "And what He has done for my soul," every believer might have added, "He will also do for yours. I came to Jesus as a sinner, and He saved me. I called upon God in trouble, and He heard me. I said unto Him, You are my God; and He said, you my people." Oh, repair, then, to the Lord as to one whom others have found to be all you want in your present circumstances, and have found faithful to His promises, all-sufficient in His aid, unchangeable in His love, a very present help in time of trouble.

And if you feel that you dare not venture with your sin and need and burden; upon a faith so feeble and slender as your own, go on the faith and testimony of others, believing that God is what He says He is, because they have found Him so; and He who has proved a Father and Friend and Helper to them will not turn away His mercy from you, nor your prayer from Himself, and send you away unblessed. It is an instructive incident in the life of Jesus, that when the friends of the palsied cripple unroofed the house and let him down in the midst where Jesus was, it is recorded, "And when Jesus saw their faith (not the faith of the palsied man), He said unto the sick man with the palsy, Son, your sins be forgiven you."

Thus are we instructed by this remarkable incident, that a poor, miserable sinner may venture to come to Christ on the believing assurance of another- as many of the Samaritans went to see the Savior on the testimony of the woman who said, "Come, see a man that told me all that I ever did; is not this the Christ?" And when the believing soul has taken hold of Christ, it is henceforth then both its duty and privilege to become a true witness for Christ, exclaiming, "Now we believe, not because of your saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."

"Now will I tell to sinners round
What a dear Savior I have found;
I'll point to Your redeeming blood,
And say, Behold the way to God."

The suggestive incident to which we have just referred, is equally encouraging to those who are anxious for the salvation of their unconverted relations and friends. The poor paralyzed man had no power to come to Christ himself; but his believing friends brought him to Jesus. Precious sympathy! Wondrous faith! No marvel that He in whose eye faith is so precious a thing, now crowned their faith by an immediate response, granting even more than was asked.

Our unconverted loved ones are spiritually impotent! The malady of sin has paralyzed and deadened their whole being, and they "will not come to Christ that they might have life." Let us, in default of all spiritual power on their part, bring them in the arms of believing and importunate prayer to Him, and, despite every obstacle and discouragement, uncover the roof, if need be, and lay them down at Jesus' feet, whose Spirit alone can quicken, and whose touch alone can heal. Who can tell?

We only venture further to remark that, this PARENTAL, RECONCILED GOD is our God. This God, who has so clearly and so often revealed Himself in His Word as a reconciled Father to His people, and whom Christ has taught us so to approach Him, stands to us in the close and endearing relation of, "Our Father." Oh, costly and precious privilege of looking up to this great, this holy Lord God, and exclaiming, "My Father, God!" It is in this character He would have you recognize Him, in this relation He would have you come to Him, in this light He would have you view and interpret all His dealings both of mercy and of judgment. "And because you have become his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father. Now you are no longer a slave but God's own child. And since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you."

Hesitate not, then, beloved, in all your needs and trials, in all your mental and spiritual depressions, in all your conscious waywardness and disobedience, and in all the corrections and rebukes of His discipline- hesitate not still to love Him, to trust in Him, to submit to Him as your Father. Are you in need? He is pledged to supply it. Are you bereaved? His hand has done it. Are you sick? His providence has sent it. Are you in the garden of sorrow, with the cup of adversity trembling in your hand? Take it, drink it, looking up to Him with a filial, loving, submissive spirit, and exclaiming, "The cup which MY FATHER has given me, shall I not drink it?"

We reach an impressive and precious part of our subject- the ETERNITY OF OUR DIVINE PORTION. "This God is our God forever and ever." Everything here in this present world is changing. "The world passes away." A rope of sand, a spider's web, a silken thread, a passing shadow, an ebbing wave, are the most fitting and expressive emblems of all things belonging to this present time's state. The homes that sheltered us in childhood we leave; the land which gave us birth we leave; the loved ones who encircled our hearths pass away; the friends of early years depart; and the world that was so sunny, and life that was so sweet, is all beclouded and embittered; the whole scenery of existence changed into wintry gloom.

Still more sad and depressing are the spiritual vicissitudes to which our soul is constantly exposed. The waning of love, the decays of grace, the fluctuations of faith, the languor of life; true symptoms of spiritual declension of soul; are among the most startling and affecting illustrations of the mutability of all temporal and spiritual things.

But in the midst of all, "This God is our God FOREVER AND EVER!" All beings change but God. All things change but heaven. The evolutions of time revolve, the events of earth go onward, but He upon whom all things hang, and by whom all events are shaped and controlled, moves not. "I, the Lord, do not change." "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever."

Is this God our God? Then He is ours forever! Our affairs may alter, our circumstances may change, our relations and friends may depart one by one, and our souls in a single day pass through many fluctuations of spiritual feeling; but He who chose us to be His own, and who has kept us to the present moment, is our covenant God and Father forever and ever, and will never throw us off and cast us away.

Such, too, is the immutability of Jesus. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end." We need the influence of this truth! Christ unchangeable– to soothe and solace us under the saddening, depressing effects of life's vicissitudes. We need it, too, and yet more deeply, amid the incessant fluctuations of our Christian experience through which we pass- the ebb and flow of the life of God in our soul. To know that no congealing of our love to Him can chill His love to us; to remember that, though we believe not, yet He is faithful, and cannot deny Himself- that our unbelief cannot make void His promises, nor our mutations affect the stability of His covenant- oh, this is strong consolation indeed, for which let our heartfelt praises ascend!

"Forever and ever!" Solemn words! Reader, what will YOUR forever and ever be? You die once, but to live and die no more! Your soul is immortal. Your being ceases not. Death, so far from being an annihilation, is not even a momentary suspension of your existence. Your present life, if life it may be called, for which you toil so incessantly, guard so assiduously, and love so intensely, is a transient, troubled dream; yet more, it is the tide that floats you rapidly upon its eddies onward to the solemn, endless future.

"Life is like a painted dream,
Like the rapid summer stream,
Like the fleeting meteor's ray,
Like the shortest winter's day,
"Like the fitful breeze that sighs,
Like the waning flame that dies,
Darting, dazzling on the eye,
Fading in eternity."

What will your eternity be? Where, how, and with whom will you spend it? Will it be forever and ever in heaven, or, forever and ever in hell? There is no middle state, no dream-land island between those two vast Continents. A deep and wide gulf divides them, and there is no passing from the one to the other. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." Of the first it is said, "And the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever!" and of the second, "Those who are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness as the stars, forever and ever." Decide this momentous question now; antedate your future condition by seeking an interest in a present salvation, by accepting at this moment a divine and personal Savior; in a word, by repentance toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. "Behold, NOW is the accepted time, NOW is the day of salvation."

"He will be our guide, even unto death." The path to a future world is, in truth, difficult and perilous. Thousands of deathless souls undertake to travel it in the light of their own fire, in the sparks that they have kindled. Some, by the dim ray of reason; others, by the glowworm light of nature; yet others, by the treacherous light of their own righteousness. All these are false beacons; beacons which shine but to bewilder, and lead but to ensnare all those who trust to them.

"But watch out, you who live in your own light and warm yourselves by your own fires. This is the reward you will receive from me: You will soon lie down in great torment."
Isaiah 50:11. But God in Christ is the guide of the just. By His light they see light along all the dangerous way. Guided by that light, they walk through darkness, as at noon; their path to heaven, as the shining light which shines more and more unto the perfect day. Beloved, an unknown future is before you– a future of the present life; and a yet more real and solemn future of the life that is to come. But, tremble not, nor be dismayed. God, even your own God Father, is Your Guide and Christ, Your Shepherd, goes before you, and with a skillful, faithful, and gentle hand, will guide you safely to the end– yes, even unto death.

"Unto death"– what a precious and solemn assurance is this! Death is that crisis of our being we all must meet, yet all so dread. Its sting, its terror, its wrench, its obscured and changeless consequences all enshrouded in a mystery so awful and profound; is just that one event of life, the anticipation of which throws a shadow so dark over all brightness of existence. But faith in the Divine assurance that, this great and glorious, this incarnate and redeeming, this covenant and faithful God is 'our God, even unto death,' dissolves our fetters, dispels our fears, and we can anticipate, and even at times long for, the blissful moment that confronts us with the foe, unclothes us of mortality, and invests us with the robes of immortality and eternal life, and we are "clothed with our heavenly dwelling."

Cast from you, then, all your bondage through the fear of death, seeing that, down to the last moment, your God in Christ will be with you, at the presence and sight of whom, Death itself will turn pale and die. Oh, if this God is your God in life, do you think that, having guided and guarded you so long and so far on your journey, He will, at that solemn moment, when heart and flesh are failing, leave your side, and abandon you to go down 'the valley' all solitary and alone? Never! "This God is Our God Forever and Ever; He will be our guide even unto death"- in death- through death- and beyond death- Forever and Ever!

Oh, that blissful word 'forever!' Forever in heaven- forever and ever associated with saints and angels- forever and ever gazing on the beauty of Jesus- forever and ever basking in the sunshine of His glory- forever and ever chanting the song of the Lamb- forever and ever swimming in the ocean of God's love- forever and ever growing in knowledge and holiness and glory- forever and ever with the Lord! Oh, who would not forsake the world, and crucify the flesh, and bear the cross, confess and serve the Savior, live for Him, and die for Him who has by His death, resurrection, and ascension, so blessedly opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers!

"Forever with the Lord!
Amen, so let it be!
Life from the dead is in that word
'Tis immortality.
"Forever with the Lord!
Father, if 'Tis Your will,
The promise of that faithful word
Even here to me fulfill.
"So when my latest breath
Shall rend the veil in twain,
By death I shall escape from death,
And life eternal gain.
"Knowing as I am known,
How shall I love that word!
And often repeat before the throne,
Forever with the Lord!"

Confide in Him for the new year upon which you have embarked. Commit your every way unto Him, trust also in Him, and He shall bring to pass all that He has ordained and appointed for you in the everlasting covenant. Cast not about to know how this need shall be supplied, this difficulty met, and this affliction sustained; but, trust to the wisdom, and skill, to the faithfulness and love of your divine and heavenly Guide, until He brings you to glory. Let your one and only aim be to obey, please, and honor Him. Taking care of His glory, He will watch over your interests for time and for eternity. Take heed how you walk, and seek that a new epoch of time, a yet untried stage and untrodden path of your pilgrimage, shall be more holy, more Christ-exalting, more God-glorifying, and more heavenly than any you yet have passed.

The Divine command is, "Speak unto the children, that they go forward." Forward in obedience and duty- forward in service and suffering- forward in conflict and toil- forward, Christian, forward, even though the foe pursues, and the pathless water roll at your feet. Onward, Onward, "For the Lord your God knows your walking through this great wilderness." Blessed Lord! "You shall guide me with Your counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside You."

'Tis Jesus, the First and the Last,
Whose Spirit will guide us safely home;
We'll praise Him for all that is past,
And trust Him for all that is to come.

"For this God is OUR GOD for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end." Psalm 48:14