SALVATION.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5023, 17 February 1885, Page 3

SALVATION.

[To the Fdifcor of the Evening Star ]

Sir, —Few things are more talked about and less understood than the term sslvation. One might think that this, snbject has had hundreds of volumes written upon it ; and all the teachers of religion talking about it, and the Salvation Army talking about nothing else, one might think that it must sirely be understood by all. But is it so ? By no means. Enquire of thosr who talk the most about it, and see what aortofan answeryou willget. They tellyou they have got salvation, that they have got converted, that they are washed in the blood of the Lamb, 4liat they have got their natures changed, and such like phrases; but when you try to come to the real meaning you are as much in the dark at last as at first. And the fact is, no such change takes place; it is all purely imaginary. I admit that man has a religious faculty, and like all other faculties, it needs cultivation. I would as soon deny that I had a stomach or lungs as deny this, but to say that people get something at those revival meetings is false and foolish ; as though God kept a large vessel full of something ready to be poured into us if we only can succeed in persuading him to do so. There if no mysttry in being religiously excited, any more tfian in being excited in getting money, cr by music, or pleasantly excited iv any way, but every time people get excited in this way, they do not say that tbeirnaturcis chaDged. If anyone has neglected to cultivate music, or the faculty of religion and commences to do so, it does not require a change of nature. If I have not been using my feet or bands for a proper purpose,.do I require to have new feet or hands to do so? If the intellect, the moral nature, and the affections have not been devoted to o right purpose, and we commence to apply them properly, it needs no mysterious change. When a drunkard ceases to drink, that is salvation to him ; and so it is in all other wrong doing: when tbe covetous, thte revengeful, the proud, tbe idle, the selfish, the false, the bigoted, the intolerant, and the ignorant, give up this wrong way of doing, and practise the opposite, then they are saved from all those sins, and God himself cannot save them in any other way. But this would be making salvation so plain that a child could understand it, and that would not-do for those who make a trade of getting people converted and sanctified. That something which they get they lose, and sometimes they arc in-dreadful doubt whether they have it or not. According to the above definition of salvation, all are religious to a certain extent whether they know it or not; those that live the most in harmony with God's physical, moral, and religious laws are the most saved; a man might be saved from drunkenness and not from covetousness. Tim shows the folly of us praying to God for him to convert or sanctify-us, when we have to do it by working out our own salvation.—l am <tc, Ujs'cle John,