grace than Christ Jesus : and without hesitation we should go to him from day to day, and from hour to hour, to receive it out of his fuhiess. We should not dream of meriting it at his hands, or of earning it by any thing that we can do: we should receive it as freely as the Israelites did the waters that •issued from the rock; and should go to it as the only source of all that we need. Did the Israelites, think you, attempt to dig wells in the wilderness, when they had access to that stream ? So then should we go to Christ for grace con- tinually, and derive from him all that our necessities re- quire ]
2. We are to rely upon it with confidence —
[We should never, for a moment, entertain doubts or fears respecting Christ's sufficiency to supply our wants. Whatever dangers threaten us, we should say, " There be more with us than with them^:" and, " If God be for us, who can be against us'^?" He has told us, that, whatever be our necessities, "his grace is sufficient for us:" and therefore, instead of dreading trials, lest we should be vanquished by them, we should " take pleasure in them, that the power of Christ may rest upon us, and his strength be magnified
in our weakness'" " Knowing in whom we have
believed," we should look upon " our enemJes as bread for us^," and view their assaults as preludes only to victory and triumph ]
Let me now add,
1. A word of caution —
[The circumstance of there being such a fulness treasured up for you in Christ does not in the least degree supersede the necessity for exertion on your part ; no, nor of fear and watch- fulness. To your latest hour you must be like Paul, who " kept his body under, and brought it into subjection ; lest by any means, after having preached to others, he himself should be a cast-away ^" You will see in the context, that you are to " endure hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ™:" and your strength in Christ is not to render you forgetful of, but to fit you for, the warfare, which he has called you to main- tain" ]
2. A word of encouragement —
[Now, for eighteen hundred years has grace been flowing from the Lord Jesus for the supply of all his people. But do you suppose that his power to communicate is therefore
g 2 Chron. xxxii. 7. '' Rom. viii. 31. > 2 Cor. xii. 10.
k Numb. xiv. 9. i 1 Cor. ix. 27. "' ver. 4.
" Eph. vi. 10, 11,