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the name of the Master, every worker everywhere, is in duty bound to deal with mankind so that men will be truly saved, so that society will experience salvation, so that Christ's ideal will be reached. Never was the world in need of this unselfish idealism and spirit more than at the present.

A cynic once gave the following definition of a Christian: "A Christian man is a man whose great aim in life is a selfish desire to save his own soul, who in order to do that goes regularly to church, and whose supreme hope is to go to heaven when he dies." We fear that this definition has been too often true. It is our business to forestall the possibility of its repetition. The coming generation should have better ideals and illustrations of the saved self. If a so called Christian civilization had not been so permeated with the spirit of national selfishness, the European horror would not have been a fact. God forbid that we should train people to think that Christianity is synonymous with the development of a national as well as an individual empirical selfhood. God hasten the day when the true selfhood of nations shall be secured and maintained, for how can the kingdom come unless this be a fact?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PREPOSITIONS OF SALVATION

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RUTH is conceived and developed in the mind. It sometimes comes like a flash to the soul. We know it before we can tell it. It is also empirical and the experience of it struggles for expression. Our Heavenly Father has made it possible for man to make known his thoughts and experiences. Language is the vehicle of the mind and heart. Vocabularies are demanded to carry thought and feeling out into the world and picture the sights of the soul. Languages did not drop from Heaven ready made, they came into being because man had something to tell. Words are but windows through which the light of the inner being shines that others may see. What would we do without the ability to state and describe what we think and experience? How could we see anything together if language was not possible? How could thought make any contribution to humanity's progress if man had not been able to write nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs? Word painting is as much an art as coloring in oil. He who knows how to use a language to express the great thoughts of his mind and to portray the divine experiences of his soul, is as truly a master as a Raphael or Rubens. Religious history has come down to us in written languages. There have been many. The record of the religious development of the Jewish nation is before us in the most precious Book in the world. Two

great languages were used to make it known to us, the Hebrew and the Greek. In fact it has come to us in one language, namely the Greek. Students well know the value of this to early Christianity in view of the fact that the language of the Roman empire at that time was almost entirely Greek. Scholars testify that of all earth languages there is no one so rich, so beautiful and so capable of expressing the shades and varieties of thought, as the Greek. That the Bible should be preserved, that the great truths therein contained should be expressed and that all the treasures of its spiritual wealth should be handed on to humanity, in this remarkable language, is more to us than a coincidence. It is worthy of recognition as a distinct and wonderful providence of the true God. We should be everlastingly grateful to him because of it.

It is also a fact that the greatness of profound truths is oftentimes made real in the little words of a language. A long word will have attached to it a short one and this tiny attachment is what makes the larger word stand out before us in all the majesty of its worth and meaning. In fact we would have difficulty at times to ascertain the significance of the great word were it not for the small one. It is the preposition, or that particle of speech which comes just before or just after the noun or the verb that gives to us the value of the thing expressed. So important are these prepositions that laws of nations are interpreted in the light of them, courts proceed to judge in view of them, and systems of theology are made out of them. It is particularly true that they are illuminating interpreters of religious truth. Oftentimes not only side lights are thrown upon great

fundamental essentials in religion but the whole light of what God has taught humanity through experience shines out in them and is actually focused upon the human mind and heart through them. And in no language does the power of a preposition to manifest truth reveal itself more, if as much, as in the Greek. Recently I took occasion to examine in my own inadequate way, the significance of some of these prepositions contained in one single passage of Paul's writings and I was perfectly amazed to note what it was my privilege to discover. I found that the genius and range of salvation were wonderfully laid open to all who would take time to study them. The passage to which I refer is found in the letter to the Colossians the first chapter and the thirteenth verse. "Who has delivered us out of the power of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His beloved son -in whom we have the redemption-the release from sins" (Translation by Ferrar Fenton.) In these masterful lines from Paul's pen we have a conception of salvation, intensified by prepositions, which will live as long as the world stands. These little words do not represent some passing idea of Christian salvation which only has to do with temporary conditions and forms. Perusal of them impresses one with their permanent significance. They stand for the great essentials which the modern religious world recognizes to be so important. If this were not true, we would not be emphasizing them today. Paul, to be sure, was writing them to the small band of disciples at Colossae, (a church which he did not establish. Epaphras having that privilege while the apostle was busy at Ephesus,) and they were written primarily with the Pagan world in which this church

was situated, in mind, although they implied much to Paul himself as he thought of his experience as a zealous devotee of Judaism, yet both of these considerations do not make the application of the truth expressed at all irrelevant to us today. While our civilization is far in advance of the Pagan and our Christianity an improvement upon the Judaism of Paul's day, and therefore we live in a very different world from that of the first century of the Christian era, yet salvation is essentially the same today and implies an experience which is identical in its fundamental phases with that which was outlined by Paul in these words. In fact it should imply much more today than it did then. Its negative and positive characteristics should be even more sharply outlined at this stage of the world's religious and moral development than then. The Christianity of Christ demands more of us today than when these words. were written. Paul was constantly recognizing Pagan training and environment together with the influence of Judaistic externalism, and the members of that first council at Jerusalem in considering how much they ought to expect from the Gentile Christians, were singularly sympathetic, fair and lenient with them, imposing only that which was reasonable in view of all conditions and opportunities. Today the councils of the church have reason to make the standards of salvation far higher to humanity than they did then. All progress in Christianity suggests deeper meaning to salvation, imposes greater moral and religious obligations and calls humanity to nobler ideals than that which has preceded. Every mountain top shows another higher and grander, just in advance. This is what it signifies to experience

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