en saved_,'--a past act, done once,
and with abiding present consequences, which are realised progressively
in the Christian life, and reach forward into infinitude. So the
Scripture sometimes speaks of salvation as past, 'He saved us by His
mercy': sometimes of it as present and progressive, 'The Lord added to
the Church daily those that were (in process of) being saved': sometimes
of it as future, 'now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' In
that future all that is involved in the word will be evolved from it in
blessed experience onwards through eternity.

I have said that we should try to make an effort to fathom the depth of
meaning in this and other familiar commonplace terms of Scripture. But
no effort prior to experience will ever fathom it. There was in the
papers some time ago an account of some extraordinary deep-sea soundings
that have been made away down in the South Pacific, 29,400 feet and no
bottom, and the wire broke. The highest peak of the Himalayas might be
put into that abyss, and there would be hundreds of feet between it and
the surface. He 'casts all our sins,' mountainous as they are, behind
His back 'into the depths of the sea'; and no plummet that man can drop
will ever reach its profound abyss. 'Thy judgments are a great deep,'
and deeper than the judgments is the depth of Thy salvation.

And now, brethren, before I go further, notice the--I was going to say
theory, but that is a cold word--the facts of man's condition and need
that underlie this great Christian term of salvation--viz. we are all in
deadly peril; we are all sick of a fatal disease. 'Ah!' you say, 'that
is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master,
and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words to
and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is
another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words
about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost
coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined
to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm and
unquenchable fire--these are parts of Christ's representations of the
condition of humanity, and these are the conceptions that underlie this
great thought of salvation as being man's deepest need.

It goes far deeper down than any of the superficial constructions of
what humanity requires, which are found among non-Chri