Subjects of Meditation for a Time of Trouble

1. Our frailty and entire dependence as creatures on the self-existent and infinitely glorious Jehovah.

2. Our awful inconceivable guilt as apostates from Him who made man in His own image, after His likeness; the entire depravity of our natures as fallen, and our personal actual transgressions by omission and commission, in youth and riper years, before we knew, or rather, were known of God, and since; and most particularly in sins against Christ, His Gospel, Spirit, and grace, etc.

3. The believing contemplation of Christ in His person, covenant engagements, mediatory work, all-sufficiency, grace, truth, and saving benefits.

4. The patience, long-suffering, and abundant grace of the Heavenly Father, as it has been so richly manifested in the Son of His love and in His dealings with us.

5. The shortness of time, the certainty of death, the vanity of the world, the solemnity of judgment, the preciousness of the mercy-seat, the necessity of entire sanctification.

6. The glory of the exalted Redeemer, the perpetuity of His intercession, the fidelity of His promises, His power to guide unto death and through it, the blessedness of those that are at home with Him in the mansions which He has gone to prepare, the unutterable blessedness, transport, and triumph which are stored up in the words of eternal life--”I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

Excerpted from Rich Gleanings from Rabbi Duncan, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1984, pp. 396-397.