more confirmed, consolidated, and
complete. Salvation is a progressive fact. In the New Testament we
have that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimes
it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the case
of every believing soul--'Ye have been saved' is said more than once.
Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in the present--'Ye
are saved' is said more than once. And sometimes it is relegated to
the future--'Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,' and
the like. But there are a number of New Testament passages which
coincide with this text in regarding salvation as, not the work of
any one moment, but as a continuous operation running through life,
not a point either in the past, present, or future, but a continued
life. As, for instance, 'The Lord added to the Church daily those
that were being saved.' By one offering He hath perfected for ever
them that are being sanctified. And in a passage in the Second
Epistle to the Corinthians, which, in some respects, is an exact
parallel to that of my text, we read of the preaching of the Gospel
as being a 'savour of Christ in them that are being saved, and in
them that are perishing.'

So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian man
lives in this world; and every one who professes to be Christ's
follower ought, day by day, to be growing more and more saved, more
fully filled with that Divine Spirit, more entirely the conqueror of
his own lusts and passions and evil, more and more invested with all
the gifts of holiness and of blessedness which Jesus Christ is ready
to bestow upon him.

Ah, brethren! that notion of a progressive salvation at work in all
true Christians has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has
all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call
yourselves Christ's followers, and are not a bit further on than you
were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions (perhaps
less so, for relapses are dangerous) than you were then--have not
advanced any further into the depths of God than when you first got a
glimpse of Him as loving, and your Father, in Jesus Christ--are
contented to linger, like some weak band of invaders in a strange
land, on the borders and coasts, instead of pressing inwards and
making it all your own. Growing Christians--may I venture to
say?--are not the majority of professing Christians. And, on the
other side, as certainly, ther