Him and His life, and to come to Him, and receive from Him an
eternal life, which this world did not give us, and cannot take away
from us; which neither man, devil, nor angel, nor the death of our
bodies, the ruin of empires, the destruction of the whole universe,
and of time, and space, and all things whereof man can conceive or
dream, can alter in the slightest, because it is a life of goodness,
and righteousness, and love, which are eternal as the God from whom
they spring; eternal as Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever; and nothing but our own sinful wills can rob us of
them.

This is eternal life, and therefore this is salvation. A very
different account of it (though it is the Bible account) from that
narrow and paltry one which too many have in their minds now-a-days;
a narrow and paltry notion that it means only being saved from the
punishment of our sins after we die; and a very unbelieving, and
godless, and atheistical notion too; which, like all unbelief hurts
and spoils men's lives.

For too many say to themselves, 'God must save me after I am dead,
of course, for no one else can: but as long as I am alive I must
save myself. God must save me from hell; but I must save myself
from poverty, from trouble, from what the world may say of me or do
to me, if I offend it.' And so salvation seems to have to do
altogether with the next life, and not at all with this; and people
lose entirely the belief that God is our deliverer, our protector,
our guide, our friend, now, here, in this life; and do not really
think that they can get on better in this world by knowing God and
Jesus Christ; and so they set to work to help themselves by cunning,
by covetousness, by cowardly truckling to the wicked ways of the