r a word is, the more likely are common ideas about
it to be hazy. We substitute acquaintance with the sound for penetration
into the sense. A frond of sea-weed, as long as it is in the ocean,
unfolds its delicate films and glows with its subdued colours. Take it
out, and it is hard and brown and ugly, and you have to plunge it into
the water again before you see its beauty. So with these well-worn
Christian terms; you have to put them back, by meditation and thought,
especially as to their bearing on yourself, in order to understand their
significance and to feel their power. And, although it is very hard, I
want to try and do that for a few moments with this grand thought that
lies in my text.

I. Here we have the Christian view of man's deepest need, and God's
greatest gift.

'Ye have been saved.' Now, as I have said, 'saved,' and 'salvation,' and
'Saviour,' are all threadbare words. Let us try to grasp the whole
throbbing meaning that is in them. Well, to begin with, and in its
original and lowest application, this whole set of expressions is
applied to physical danger from which it delivers, and physical disease
which it heals. So, in the Gospels, for instance, you find 'Thy faith
hath made thee whole'--literally, '_saved thee_' And you hear one of the
Apostles crying, in an excess of terror and collapse of faith, 'Save!
Master! we perish!' The two notions that are conveyed in our familiar
expression 'safe and sound,' both lie in the word--deliverance from
danger, and healing of disease.

Then, when you lift it up into the loftier region, into which
Christianity buoyed it up, the same double meaning attaches to it. The
Christian salvation is, on its negative side, a deliverance from
something impending--peril--and a healing of something infecting us--the
sickness of sin.

It is a deliverance; what from? Take, in the briefest possible language,
three sayings of Scripture to answer that question--what am I to be
saved _from_? 'His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His
people from their sins.' He 'delivers'--or saves--'us from the wrath to
come.' He 'saves a soul from death.' Sin, wrath death, death spiritual
as well as physical, these are the dangers which lie in wait; and the
enemies which have laid their grip upon us. And from these, as the
shepherd drags the kid from the claws of the lion or the bear's hug, the
salvation of the Gospel wrenches and rescues men.

The same general conceptions emerge