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soul from all those propensities to evil which now so strongly pre- dominate in us ; it brings in, in fact, the undoing of all that Adam did. Salvation is the total restoration of man from his fallen estate ; and yet it is something more than that, for God's salva- tion fixes our standing more securely than it was before we fell. It finds us broken in pieces by the sin of our first parents, defiled, stained, accursed : it first heals our wounds, it removes our diseases, it takes away our curse, it puts our feet upon the rock Christ Jesus, and having thus done, at last it lifts our heads far above all principalities and powers, to be crowned for ever with Jesus Christ, the King of Heaven. Some people, when they use the word " salvation," understand nothing more by it than deliverance from hell and admittance into heaven. Now, that is not salvation : those two things are the effects of salvation. We are redeemed from hell because we are saved, and we enter heaven because we have been saved beforehand. Our everlast- ing state is the effect of salvation in this life. Salvation, it is true, includes all that; but still it would be wrong for us to imagine that that is all the meaning of the word. Salvation begins with us as wandering sheep ; it follows us through all our many wanderings ; it puts us on the shoulders of the shepherd ; it carries us into the fold ; it calls together the friends and the neighbours ; it rejoices over us ; it preserves us in that fold through life ; and then at last it brings us to the green pastures of heaven, beside the still waters of bliss, where we lie down for ever in the presence of the Chief Shepherd, never more to be disturbed.
Let us group the uses of the word "salvation" under these three classes — (i.) Salvation from physical infirmity ; (ii.) National Salvation ; (iii.) Salvation from Sin.
i. Salvation from Physical Suffering.
The healing of the cripple was on the face of it a physical salvation. Bodily pain and discomfort, continued through many years, unless it be transfigured by patience and resignation into a consummate blessing, may crush out its very heart and hope from a human life. And anyhow, pain is a disorder and anomaly in nature. When it is inevitable, we may be sure that God has
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some high and merciful purpose in inflicting it. When it is not inevitable, our business is, if we can do so, to cure it. Our Lord worked then by the agency of the Apostles what He works now by the generous hearts, and kind hands, and cultivated under- standings of those whom He guides, in hospitals and elsewhere, to the relief and cure of bodily pain. His precepts, His charity, His unseen but energetic Spirit, are the source of the best and noblest inspirations of our modern philanthropy, even where the cause is unrecognized or unsuspected. And as the result is, in its degree, a salvation, so the inspiring force is the grace and charity of the Saviour.
TJ Europe was thrilled by the story of the steamer Berlin which fought its way from Harwich across the North Sea to the Hook of Holland in the teeth of a terrible gale. At half- past five in the morning (February 20, 1907) it was dashed on the North Pier and broken up. The fore part of the steamer went under and carried the greater part of the passengers and crew to death. On the following day eleven survivors were rescued. Three women remained behind, exposed to the biting cold and the terrific lash of the breakers. It seemed impossible that they should survive the long and exhausting exposure, and hope of their being saved almost died out. But Captain Sperling, as noble a hero as ever faced the perils of the deep, determined to make an effort on their behalf. We are told he could not sleep for thinking of the awful plight of these women, alone there on the wreck for two days and a night. And so he matured his plans, and when the moment for action arrived dared everything, swam through seething billows to the wreck, and passed the women one by one along the rope to safety. And next day the world rang with the news that the three women were saved by the heroic deed of this noble man. Saved ! Yes, it was a real salvation. There was no doubt about the meaning of the word and the significance of the transaction. They were saved from hunger, saved from cold, saved from death by exhaustion or by drowning. We can all appreciate the nature of this salvation — the saving of human lives from the angry sea.1
ii. National Salvation.
When St. Peter talked of " the salvation " in the Court of the Sanhedrin, he would have meant and he would have been under- stood to mean something much greater in itself, and much wider
1 A. R. Henderson.
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in its range of application, than any bodily cure ; something of which a bodily cure was a mere figure and presentment.
1. Salvation was already a consecrated word in the language of Israel. It had been so for centuries. It meant very generally the deliverance of Israel from outward and inward enemies; it meant the deliverance of Israel as a whole ; it meant especially a national salvation. That was the point of St. Peter's reference to Psalm cxviii., which was composed for the first observance of the Feast of Tabernacles in the newly rebuilt Temple, after the return from the Babylonish captivity. St. Peter quotes the famous lines in which Israel, lately restored to the land of her ancestors, is spoken of as a " stone which the builders rejected, and which had been made the head of the corner." The new Temple would have naturally suggested the figure. Israel, rejected and downtrodden by the proud nations who aspired to build up the future of the Eastern world, had been lifted by God into a place of honour: Israel was to be in some way the corner-stone of that temple of souls which God would build for the future of humanity.