See the cause of my happiness. James Smith, My Saviour, 1860

My soul, meditate for a few moments on what Jesus is to you and what Jesus has done for you. Look back and glance at the circumstances in which He found you and the deliverance which He wrought for you.

1. The circumstances in which Jesus found you.

Jesus found me out of the way. God by his law had marked out a way in which his creatures should walk. Its character was holiness, and its end his glory. But all we, like sheep, had gone astray. We had turned every one to his own way. We were in the path of death and destruction, and on the way to hell.

We were not only out of the way, but we were enslaved. We were slaves of sin, the drudges of the world, and led captive by the devil at his will. We were diseased as well as enslaved. We were lepers from head to foot. We had the plague of the heart. The whole head was sick, and the whole heart was faint.

We were imprisoned as well as diseased. We were shut up in unbelief and sin. Our cell was cold and damp, dark and narrow, and our imprisonment was not merely for a few years, it was for ever. We were dead, though still conscious, and to some things alive, dead in trespasses and sins.

In this state we were, and we loved it well. We neither desired nor sought deliverance. Left to ourselves, we would have wandered on in darkness until we had perished in our sins. We would have continued the slaves of sin and Satan forever. Our disease would have preyed upon our vitals to all eternity. Our prison walls would have enclosed us still. We would have remained dead in sin. We would have suffered all the pangs of damnation forever.

2. The deliverance which Jesus wrought for you.

Jesus saved me. He saved me from the roaring lion, who goes about seeking to devour me. He saved me from my raging lusts, so that sin shall not have dominion over me. He saved me from righteous wrath, and I, being justified by His blood, shall be saved from wrath through Him. He saved me from death, the king of terrors, depriving the monster of his sting, and giving me the victory over him. He has also saved me from the flaming furnace of hell, from that lake of fire, and those floods of flame in which the lost must welter for ever.

See the cause of my happiness. I have a Savior, a Savior who is divine, a Savior who has ever loved me, a Savior who lived, labored, and died for me, a Savior who pleads for me before the throne of His Father, a Savior who is in His Father's house preparing a place for me. A Saviour, who will soon come and receive me to Himself, that so I may be for ever with Him.

Yes, I have a Saviour, one who watches over me, walks through the wilderness with me, and rejoices to do me good.

Reader, have you a savior? Can you use these two precious words, my savior? Have you realized that you were lost? Have you fled to His cross? Have you fallen into His arms? Have you been cleansed by His blood and clothed in His righteousness? Do you possess His Holy Spirit? Make sure work, O make sure work. Eternity is just at hand. Death is coming. Judgment follows. And then, an eternity of happiness or woe. Your eternal all depends on having Jesus for your Savior. No one can save you but Jesus. No one can support you in sickness, comfort you in death, or give you the victory over the grave but Jesus.