Apostles were commanded to publish it to the world, and yet think himself at liberty to disregard it ? Shall the very recital of it beget suspicion, as though no- thing were desired but to establish the Shibboleth of a party ? Let us put away such unbecoming jealousies, and enter in a fair and candid manner into the inves- tigation of the words before us : let us consider that they were among the last words of our blessed Lord while he sojourned upon earth ; that they contain his final commission to his Apostles, and, in them, to all succeeding pastors of his Church ; that they are distinguished by our Lord himself by that honourable appellation, " The Gospel," or glad tidings ; and that they were delivered by him not only as the rule of our faith, but as the rule of his procedure in the day of judgment : let us, I say, consider the words in this view, and, with hearts duly impressed and open to conviction, attend to what shall be spoken, while we endeavour to explain the import — vindicate the reasonableness — and display the excellency — of this divine message : and the Lord grant, that, while we are attending to these things, the " word may come, not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance."
I. In explaining the import of our text, we shall have little more to do than to ascertain the meaning of the different terms ; for the sense of them being once fixed, the import of the whole will be clear and obvious —
Salvation can mean nothing less than the ever- lasting happiness of the soul. To limit the term to any temporal deliverance would be to destroy utterly the truth as well as the importance of our Lord's declaration : for though it is true, that they, who believed his prophecies relative to the destruction of Jerusalem, escaped to Pella, and were rescued from the misery in which the Jewish nation was involved, yet the followers of our Lord in that and every age have been subjected to incessant persecutions and cruel deaths ; nor was that deliverance either of so