Clefts of the Rock, the Believer's Grounds of Confidence in Christ

The name of this Volume will best interpret the design of its pages. They purpose, however inadequately, to set forth the leading grounds of safety and security, comfort and peace, which are to be found in the adorable character and completed work of the Divine Redeemer--"Clefts," to the shelter of which we can repair, alike "in all time of our tribulation and in all time of our wealth,"--in the prospect of "the hour of death and of the Day of judgment." To every believer, the words of Balaam's parable in a nobler sense may be applied, "Strong is your dwelling-place, and you put your nest in a rock," or those of the great Prophet, as rendered in the Septuagint translation, "His place of defense shall be in a lofty cavern (or cleft) of the strong Rock." It is the complex Person of "IMMANUEL, God with us"--the might and majesty of Omnipotence in conjunction with the tenderness of humanity--"Our God, yet our Brother--our Brother, yet our God," which makes Him the sure and unassailable Stronghold He is. The 'Clefts, ' where His people are invited to flee, are in a Rock--but, that Rock is "THE ROCK OF AGES " Contemplating His Deity, they can utter the Psalmist's challenge, "Who is a ROCK like OUR GOD?"--yet they can add, "A MAN shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." It was the consciousness of being sheltered in these divine clefts, that enabled the great Apostle to say, in his own name, and in the name of all in every age who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them--"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.