SALVATION.

"What must I do to be saved?"

Do you know what being saved really implies in your own case? Are you sincere when you take up this inquiry? Such are the first and most important things to be considered. There is no salvation for a reasonable creature who will not so much as think for himself, on a subject so momentous. And the fact is too often, that men ask what they shall do to be saved, with no disposition to be saved, and who had rather not be saved, in the most important sense of the word.

Let us soberly, and in the fear of God, search into this matter. It is infinitely important. A mistake here is most deplorable, for it hurts the soul. But we need not mistake. God has made plain the safe way, though it is not broad enough for us to walk in it with all the load of encumbrances, that an earthly mind carries about. But if we are sincere, and are willing to put off or to bear upon us just what God requires, we may not be afraid, there is no danger which ought to terrify or dishearten us.

To be saved-what is it? What happens when a human soul is saved? We may apprehend this better if we will bear in mind, that salvation is often in scripture spoken of as something past or present, as well as a future good. It is deliverance from evil. Now there are evils within us, and without us, evils which have gone, and evils which may come out of the dark and distant futurity. Salvation respects chiefly but one of these, yet its

consequences embrace the whole.

But one of these! Yes. The evils that dwell deep

within the heart, which cling to the soul itself and are a part of its character, these are the evils to which, chiefly, salvation by Christ has respect. He saves from sin. And now honestly confess, is there at this moment, has there ever been a burden heavier to you than your own sins? What enmity from abroad is like the strife in your own bosom, where thought conflicts with thought in ceaseless combatings, and desire and fear, passion and conscience, the spirit and the flesh war so tumultuously?

Has God stricken the body, and entailed on life maladies that have little respite and no cure? The evil is bitter. No wonder the wearied sufferer longs for deliverance. But suppose there dwells in him a portion of the mind that was in Christ. Pain, at each fresh wound, encounters a more yielding and acquiescent spirit. Resistance and complaint cease. There is a gentleness and quiet afterward, that bespeak a comfort never known to those whose freedom from disease is but a liberty to indulge in sin, or pursue some one of the thousand shadows which are mistaken for pleasures. You can understand this. You can easily enter into the case, and certainly know that if a sick body be encumbered with a soul diseased, the evils to be borne are enhanced most frightfully. You can understand then, that the mind itself is what must be saved, or deliverance from all other evils will do no good. Give a man health, fortune, fame, power, learning, friends, any and every good which can be named; if he is disposed to neglect or contemn God, to indulge his passions and appetites without scruple of conscience, to oppress and injure others, and to give up himself to chance and sin, he is accursed-his very bless

ings are curses— -his whole state is a perdition. This is not conjecture. It is fact. It is history. It is as true as anything you credit on the testimony of your own senses. Try the case yourself and you will find it precisely so. All who have tried it have so found it. We know from the very nature of man, that the state of the soul determines for weal or wo, and produces either the miseries which are unmixed with comfort, or the happiness which no outward evil can destroy. He shall save his people from their sins." Jesus blesses us when he turns us from our evil tempers, and desires, and pursuits. Then are we saved, when we are rescued from sin. And only so far as sin is destroyed within us, have we any part in the blessings of Christianity.

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Do you ask now, what you must do to be saved? You are only inquiring how you shall be freed from that earthliness of mind which shows itself in a forgetfulness of God, self-indulgence, vain desires, inordinate ambition, pride, envy, malice, covetousness, discontent, love of the world, and all other evils of the internal condition. If you ask sincerely, you really wish to put away from you every sin, great or small as it may seem. You wish not merely to seem good like those you admire, but to be good like them. It is your purpose to do with all your strength, as soon as you know what you must do, all that is necessary to save your soul. Consider how much is implied here. Be not deceived. Do you really desire to become, at any cost, a pure and thus a happy being ;to yield yourself to God, to bind yourself to Jesus, to cast in your lot with his friends, and to live on earth the life you hope to live in heaven? Beware lest you mistake a mere restless discontent with yourself and things

around you, for a desire of salvation. How many in such a frame have fled to the company of the faithful with no faith in their own hearts, and have increased guilt when they supposed they were seeking salvation. They fled from hell, but not from sin. They were uneasy because they were in an evil condition, not because they were of an evil mind.

It is we

And

The first thing to be done, if we would be saved, is to set about an investigation of our minds, that we may know what it is which we, in particular, must be delivered from, in order to our being completely good, and so prepared for complete happiness. Much evil results often from confounding ourselves with other people. We want to make their case our own. But in truth we are not at all concerned with their case. who are asking what we must do to be saved. each one must be saved in a manner conformed to his own present need, not to any foreign pattern. We have a particular spiritual state. We know where we have been blameworthy, where we have sinned against God, our neighbor, and ourselves, and it is with that we have to do, and nothing beyond or abroad. That evil propensity on which you can, as it were, lay your finger and say, I have indulged this unrestrainedly, this is one of the foes which have wounded my conscience and tormented my heart, is the evil you are to be saved from. Make the whole a strictly individual matter, and let other people mind their own case in the same way. Your salvation will not then be hindered by any idle and delusive comparisons, which feed pride, and abet prejudice, or produce despondence and distract the thoughts from the main points to be considered.

Having well ascertained our own spiritual state, the work to be done is before us. The means of accomplishing it are prescribed in the New Testament. But we are not to take up the sacred volume now as a general directory, but as a special guide, to be used, not as the mariner may use a map of the world, but as he uses the particular chart which marks out the course of his present voyage. Some rules meet all cases. Some are specially adapted to one or more. These we must select and dwell upon; not to the neglect of other useful parts of scripture, but as the parts to be most closely applied to our own needs. Generalities have no place where we are engaged upon what is special. It is what the bible says to persons of the character you find yourselves to be of, that first and most peculiarly demands your study. And this you must use as the instrument with which you are to attempt to eradicate your own sins, praying, at every effort, to Him who cherishes and succeeds all holy purposes by his quickening spirit.

We have used the word effort, and it is a very important one. Salvation is sought by many, as if it were of the nature of a cure by medicine, and not a recovery by exertion. But in truth, if you wish to break up a moral disease, effort is vitally important. By doing just the opposite of all we have done, so far as that was wrong, we come to be habitually good. Suppose the sin of a too quick and violent resentment be one of those we have hitherto

indulged. How are we to get quit of it? When we are next provoked, by striving to suppress every word and deed corresponding to the resentment rising within. If we succeed, we have gained one victory, and we have won it by effort. And so in every sin, whatever it be, our