"WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED."
IT is the question of the ages, the question of all lands, the question of all thinking, meditative hearts. Instinctively the child of humanity knows that he is not saved. He may by philosophy and vivid imagination reason himself into believing that "there is no death, what seems so is transition," but when he sees its operation upon his fellow men in a thousand forms, and comes to feel the frigid fingers of the dead messenger clutch his own heart, his philosophy vanishes, and he longs for some assurance beyond himself; something to save him from the dread visitor. FOR salvation from mere physical death man will exhaust his every resource, summon to his aid the great and skilful, separate from home, and expend every cent of property, that he may live a few fleeting years longer. He can not afford to die now. His work is not finished. He can not bear to have so many things left undone. But the dread visitor oftener denies his request than grants it, and he falls only one more victim to the death-roll of nations. IF man have a keen conscience, if he see his own innate corruption, if his conscience tell him of the sure judgment which awaits the evil-doer, he sees and feels a greater destruction, a thing more dread, than the temporal sleep of death. Bondage to sin and the corruption of sin is more than mere dying. It is this awakening which wrings from the lips of the myriads, the ages through, the questions, "What must I do to be saved?" "Lord what wilt Thou have me to do?" SATAN has sought to lead men to endeavor to answer the question for themselves; and to do this, huge systems of self-salvation have been piled up. Fastings, penance, scourging, self-torturing, self-immolation, starving, and a hundred other things, have been used by the tortured human mind to save self from sin. Men have made long pilgrimages on hands and knees till their toilsome journey could be traced by the blood upon the sands. Men have worn hair shirts, peas in their shoes, exposed themselves to cold and heat that they might put away sins and save themselves. Like the pitiable, loathsome object in our picture, worshiped sometimes for his devotion, men have held the hand above the head till the muscles lost power and the joints became ossified, and the nails grew like birds' claws, and the arm could not be moved. But in it all there is no salvation from sin and selfishness. In the language of Simeon Stylites, the "Pillar Saint," who spent long years upon a pillar in cold and heat, in sun and snow, yet feeling still that all these tortures had not freed him from the sin: "O Jesus, if Thou wilt not save my soul,
Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?
Who may be made a saint if I fail here?
Show me the man hath suffered more than I.
For did not all Thy martyrs die one death?
. . . . . . . . But I die here
To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.
Bear witness, if I could have found a way
(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)
More slowly painful to subdue this home
Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practise, O my God." And so the soliloquy runs on of the man who pleads his sin may be forgiven, because he suffered, and still he feels the sin. And still the sin remains. THE Creator of heaven and earth does not tantalize the soul. He has answered the question which His own Spirit has awakened in the heart. He has met the need which He has enlightened the soul to see, the conscience to feel, the heart to hunger for. And it all comes to man solely because of God's love and man's needs. "'Tis not the stubborn fasts or stated prayers that make us saints." It is only God's power, God's creative might, God's love in Christ Jesus, which makes the change. The blood of Christ washes away the sin. His righteousness, His life, possesses us. He takes the poor, mean body and makes it a temple for His Holy Spirit, a vessel meet for service. He is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption. 1 Cor. 1:30. He does all this for us solely because we believe, and in all things come into harmony with, His blessed will. But there is no glory in that to the human, no boasting, no praise. The love, the power, the grace, the goodness, is all of God; to Him be all the glory. "What must I do to be saved?"—"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Soul, you can not buy it. You can not earn it. You can not win it by suffering. It is yours by the free gift of God. And if you receive it, to Him you will render all the praise and all the service of a redeemed soul.