^ By holding fast at home Christ's truth in greater purity ; by growth in love ; by devotion deepened and increased ; by more frequent and earnest communion; by a wider, more enduring, more steadfast unity ; by being more filled with the Spirit ; by being transfigured into Christ's likeness ; by sitting always beneath His Cross; by bearing His burden; by learning to do common things in a higher spirit of self-sacrifice and grateful love to Him ; — by those, beyond all other ways, shall we become able as a Church to cast abroad a brighter light of truth and to gather in more largely the fulness of the heathen to our Saviour's fold.*
^ People think we missionaries go out to those parts of the world, and from morning to night do nothing but preach sermons. It is quite a mistake. It is not the preaching of a sermon so much as the living the life that tells on the native heart. It is
^ J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 47.
' G. Packer. * Bishop S. Wilberforoe,
EPHESIANS I. 22, 23 17
by living a Divine life, by striving to follow in the footsteps of Him who came to express the Father's love, that we win the heart of the savage, and raise him up to become a true man in Jesus Christ.i
One holy Church of God appears
Through every age and race, Unwasted by the lapse of years. Unchanged by changing place.
From oldest time, on farthest shores,
Beneath the pine or palm, One Unseen Presence she adores,
With silence, or with psalm.
Her priests are all God's faithful sons,
To serve the world raised up ; The pure in heart, her baptized ones,
Love her communion-cup.
The truth is her prophetic gift,
The soul her sacred page ; And feet on mercy's errand swift.
Do make her pilgrimage.
0 living Church, thine errand speed,
Fulfil thy task sublime; With bread of life earth's hunger feed;
Eedeem the evil time ! ^
* James Chalmers; Autobiogra;phy and Letters, 274, ' Samuel Longfellow.
EPH.-COL.
Salvation the Gift of God.
Literature.
Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Mission Ser7)wn,s, iii. 109.
Beeching (H. C), Inns of Court Sermons, 168.
Campbell (D.), The Roll Call of Faith, 1.
Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 203.
Dale (R. W.), Christian Doctrine, 148.
Davies (D. C), 2'he Atonement and Intercession of Christ, 108.
Drummond (H.), Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 331.
Grant (W.), Christ our Hope, 215.
Harris (H.), Short Sermons, 182.
Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 186.
Jeflfrey (R. T.), The Salvation of the Gosfel, 171.
Kuyper (A.), The Work of the Holy Sinrit, 378.
Lynch (T. T.), Three Months' Ministry, 49.
Maclaren (A,), Expositions : Ephesians, 98.
„ „ Creed and Conduct, 31.
Murray (W. H.), The Fruits of the Spirit, 168. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, vii. 321. Pulsford (J.), Christ and Hie Seed, 65.
Romanes (E.), Thoughts on the Collects for the Trinity Season, 163. Roose (J. S.), Our Protestant Faith, 89. Salmon (G.), Gnosticism and Agnosticism, 272, 292. Spurgeon (C. H.), Messages to the Multitude, 55.
„ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xviii. (1872), No. 1064 ;
xxvii. (1881), No. 1609. Tholuck (A.), Hours of Devotion, 182.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xxii. No. 1222. Watts-Ditchfield (J. E.), Here and Hereafter, 11. Webb-Peploe (H. W.), Calls to Holiness, 97. Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 371 (Stevenson) ; xxix. 100 (Sunnian) ;
xlvii. 221 (Stalker) ; Ixv. 161 (Fairbairn). Church of England Magazine, Ixii. 272 (Cardale). National Preacher, xxviii. 91 (Harding). Preacher's Magazine, xx. 7 (Faiibairn).
Salvation the Gift of God.
By grace have ye been saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God.— Eph. ii. 8.
These are pregnant words to be written by a prisoner at Eome. St. Paul was always most free in spirit when he was most fettered in body. The longer he lived in drear captivity the riper grew his spirit. This, the last of his great Epistles, is like the swan-song sung in view of inexorable death. For him eternity is filled with God. The Father folds in His bosom the blessed Son, and the Son helps to create the beatitude of the Father. There he reads the mystery, hidden from the ages, but now revealed, that all men might be one in Christ. Then he looks down on man, dead in trespasses and sins, but redeemed in Christ, according to the eternal purpose of God. Then he looks up and sees principalities and powers in heavenly places, learning through Christ the manifold wisdom of God. Then, glancing out, he sees renewed humanity, the Church of Christ, with all its graces and with all its glory. He traces all this to Divine grace working through human faith, all of God, all through man, and the more God passes into man, the more grandly man becomes the image of the living God.
I.
The Nature of Salvation.
1. It is a salvation from spiritual death. — In the Bible the ' word " salvation " is not a technical theological term. It means deliverance generally. Any special import in a particular passage must depend on the context. In the present instance the context clearly shows what kind of salvation St. Paul is thinking
22 SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD
of. This is neither rescue from earthly poverty and pain — the lower old Jewish salvation, nor escape from future torment — the lower Christian salvation. It is deliverance from a present spiritual death. The soul is saved from itself.