With the widening horizon, we note a correspond- ing change in the depth of the conception. Salvation becomes not only a broader, but a more intensive term ; less e.\tornaI, more spiritual; less local, more permanent. It not only ali'ects more men, but it aflects them more profoundly. Its subject is the whole man. It reaches soul as well as body. It delivers from sin as well as from suflering. It 3ot only removes causes of evil ; it creates forces ul 2ood. As nothing is too large, so nothing is too small to fall within the range of its activity. Life and death, things present and things to come, are alike subject to the control of that Christ who is able to save to the uttermost.
This double prowth may be well illustrated in connexion with the doctrine ot election. At first the Divine choice centres in Israel the nation, or in those heroes or prophets whom (Jud has set apart for special service in connexion with the national deliverance. Tlien other nations are included in the Divine plan. God chooses E^^'pt as \vell as Israel. Cyrus the Persian 10 tits servant, set apart to do a special work in the execution of His redemptive purpose. To the broa<ler view-point of the NT, \^■ith its juster estimate of the worth of the individual, election is no lonf^er confined to a few, Alt Christians are elect, called to be saints(Ko 16)according to the Divine purpose. And as the range of the Divine choice widens, so its content deepens. Christians are elect unto salvation (2 Th 213), with all the richness of meaning which the Christian revelation has put into the word. The object of the Divine choice is not merely deliverance from future punishment. Men are called to the Ciiristian life as a whole, with its good works (Eph 21''), its Joys and graces, its brotherly service, ita missionary zeal, its willintrness to spend and be spent, yes, if need be, even to be cast away (Ro 9^), if thereby others may be saved. Thus the Individualism of the NT doctrine of election, so far from being ft narrowing of the conceptioo, U rather a mark of its true anivervalism.
(6) In the life after death. — With the expansion of the conception of salvation in this life, we find the Biblical outlook reaching across the grave, and taking in the life after death. Nothing is a more striking witness to the strength and richness of the Hebrew conception of God than the way in which it succeeded in transforming the pagan conception of Sheol which at the first the Israelites had snared with their contemporaries. We have alreatly traced the steps in tiiis moralization of the life after death, and need not repeat them here. From a gloomy, passionless, joyless exist- ence, Sheol liriomes the scene of God's presence and power. It has its garden of life, where the righteous await contentedly the greater joys of the resurrection. Christianity furtlier emphasizes and enriches this conception. Whatever new elements Christ has brought into the thought of God and His salvation are carried over into the life immediately after death. Christ's activity is not merely contined to the living. In the spirit He preaches even in the realm of the dead (1 P 8"). The shifting and uncertain imagery through
which the human imagination had endeavoured ta picture the nature of ' that undiscovered country * 13 now reinforced or superseded by a definite con- ception. To die means to depart and to be with Christ (Ph 1^) ; to enter into the Father's home, where the elder brother has gone before to prepare a place and a welcome for each returning traveller (Jn 14^). Whatever the joys still remaining at the Parousia, they are not diU'erent in kind from those upon the experience of which one enters immediately after death. The highest blessedness of heaven will consist in communion with Christ. ' It is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is' (1 Jn 3^).
(c) The Biblical doctrine of salvation reaches its climax in the conception of a redemption of the universe. Foreshadowed in the OT doctrine of new heavens and a new earth, developed in the period between the Testaments in extravagant and non-spiritual forms, it remains an element in the Biblical conception to the last. It is not God's purpose merely to save men out of the world, but to save the world. Whatever is hopelessly evil — whether in nature, man, or spirit — shall at last be utterly destroyed. No foe wUI longer remain to dispute the authority of Christ or mar the glories of His eternal Kingdom. The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Co 15^). Not till then will Christ's saving work be finished, and He restore to the Fatlier the power given to Him, tliat in the redeemed universe God may be all in all (1 Co 15^). This doctrine of a cosmic salvation, wrought out most fully by St. Paul, but implied also in other parts of the NT, has three main elements: (1) the redemption of physical nature with its destruction of suffering and death ; (2) the redemption of mankind with its destruction of sin ; (3) the redemption of the angelic world with its destruction of tlie spiritual forces which now oppose the Kingdom of God. Thus in terms naturally suggested by the tliought of his day, but witli a vigour and breadth of conception worthy of the largest generalizations of our modern science, the apostle presents the work of Christ in its unity as one great process, running through the ages, reaching out to take in the uttermost bounds of space, penetrating to the pro- foundest depths of spiritual experience in order to bind together all thinm in earth and heaven in one universal purpose of salvation (Eph 1, Col 1).