PERSONAL SALVATION A CHARACTER SALVATION.
A SECULAR publication, the Torch of Reason, prints that sublime panegyric of love (1 Corinthians 13) with little variation in the text, but in form as it often appears in this paper. It prints after it the following from David Hume, the historian, as expressing the same thought:— In all creatures that prey not upon others, and are not agitated with violent passions, there appears a remarkable desire of company, which associates them together, without any advantages they can ever propose to reap from their union. This is still more conspicuous in man, as being the creature of the universe who has the most ardent desire for society, and is fitted for it by the most advantages.—“A Treatise of Human Nature,” vol. 2, p. 150. The reader will note how tame and weak is Hume’s “ardent desire for society” compared with Paul’s love. (See the love poem on page 11 of this paper.) The ardent desire for society may be wholly selfish; love is wholly unselfish. Yet in the light of Paul’s teaching the Torch remarks:— Yet strange anomaly! The apostle Paul, with his Christ, and God, and PERSONAL redemption, was the father of all Anarchists, from the “Levelers” down to Czolgosz. Only “the believers were accepted.” They only were to be saved. “Where all must go, each must go ALONE.” That narrow tribal limitation of LOVE broke the Roman Empire, excommunicated the human race and plunged it into one eternal hell. Now it is natural for the human race, we know, to desire some other kind of salvation, some other kind of redemption, from personal. It is not so meant, but it is nevertheless, the strongest sort of evidence of a consciousness of personal failure. We know we come short; we fall below our own ideals; in ourselves personally we can not meet the demands of justice. How to supply our defects is the question. Penance, pilgrimage, torture, have been the attempted solution by many. “Good works” always fall short, so filled are they with selfishness. The Roman Catholic believes that “the church” has a large fund of righteousness or merit to supply all defects of her children. Protestants, and now it seems, our infidel friends, the one class departing from the Gospel, the other rejecting it, are demanding the salvation of the race en masse. Either the race has a fund of unused, undeveloped merit, or somehow, never demonstrated in the past, it must grow into it. And the race passes on to hopeless ruin and despair, endeavoring by something it does not possess, and can never earn, to achieve its own salvation. There is but one salvation, the personal salvation in the sublime love of which Paul sings, and which is personified perfectly in Christ Jesus. Salvation must be personal, because character is personal. He who is truly righteous is not righteous by any other save his Creator. He loves God, and the love of Him who is love perfects character. Rebellion, anarchy, and all the other hell brood came from love perverted, from Lucifer, the perverter, who desired to reign alone, to the present generation with its multitude of “children of disobedience.” “Personal redemption” is not a matter of personal antagonism to others; it is a matter of relation to the law of love. “Only believers are accepted,” because in the very nature of the case only a believer can be accepted; for only a believer is in harmony with the government of God. And it is not for human tribunal to pass upon his faith; that rests with God. Moreover, the one who believes has a burning desire that others shall share in the same salvation by coming into perfect harmony with God. And he who is in perfect harmony with God is in accord with all the perfect harmonies of the universe. He is not therefore alone. There is nothing anomalous with his faith. It binds him in association first of all with the King of the universe—glorious company—and through Him with all the realities and real beings of eternity, while he who rejects the only means that can save him, elects to abide in nothingness. Heaven could be no place of enjoyment to him who is not in harmony with its government. But the man who wants everybody to be saved is the man who is in harmony with heaven. Such an one was the apostle Paul.