SCARCELY SAVED by Rev. James Wells

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 30, 1881

SCARCELY SAVED.

By Rev. James Wells

A FEW years ago, the Rev. Stephen Hyslop, missionary at Nagpore, India, was fording a swollen stream on his way home. Feeling that his horse had got beyond his depth, he disentangled himself from the stirrups, and struck out for the bank. A good swimmer, he soon reached it, and grasped some tree roots, panting and waiting till he gained his breath. But the fierce flood tore him and his frail stay away; and next day his body was found, with the tree roots still in his stiffened grasp. He had reached the place of safety; he probably thought himself safe then; he had almost saved his life, yet he lost it.

Paul and his companions reached the island of Malta, dripping from shipwreck, and having lost their earthly all. They were living miracles—almost lost, but altogether saved. "They escaped all safe to land." Theirs was a hair's-breadth escape. They were scarcely saved.

Peter asks (1 Peter 4:18), "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" While the salvation of Jesus Christ is full, free, and perfect, the fact remains that the righteous are scarcely saved. The reason is not on God's side, but on man's side. It is in the weakness and treachery of the apostate heart, in the power of the evil one, and in the fascinations of sin. About the fact itself there can be no doubt. Turn to Bible biography. There is Noah, soon after the flood, drunk with the wine of his vineyard. Remember Lot—his hair singed, the smell of brimstone on his garments—a brand plucked from the burning. Then think of Abraham, David, and not to mention others, Peter, who wrote these words. A man who was almost drowned, looked back from the shore he had just reached, upon the sea, which had all but engulfed him, and he told how his whole body trembled; and thus the righteous look back with mingled fear and joy upon the precipice, from the edge of which the grace of God has snatched them. Now, if righteous men, who make religion the business of life, feel that they need it all, and that at the best they are scarcely saved, what is to become of the ungodly who do not trouble themselves greatly about the matter, but let religion look after itself? It is one of those questions which are not answered, for merely to ask it is to answer it. If men would seriously put this question, they could not escape the right answer. It is plain that in such a case the ungodly and the sinner cannot even appear.

It seems to me that the religious indifference of most easy-going people springs from two mistakes.

They think that religion is a very simple matter. It will do if they have time before death to say, "God be merciful to me a sinner." In some

unexplained way it will all be arranged by and by. They take counsel of their self-love and brutish indolence; and generally they fall into this mistake by abusing the simplicity and freeness of the gospel. They use the gospel to destroy that feeling of fear and need, without which the gospel appeals to us in vain. The gospel abused makes the gospel of none effect. While the gospel is simple and free, your salvation is a most momentous and anxious concern; for the righteous are scarcely saved.

The second mistake is this: Light-minded people apply to religion comparisons and ideas that don't belong to it. They fancy that progress toward Heaven is like walking along a solid road, and not like swimming through a deep river. They say to themselves, "Well, we are not all we should be, or might be, but still we have many good points. We have taken some steps heavenward. If we have not paid the whole debt, we have paid at least some instalments." They forget the essential distinction between lost and saved, accepted and condemned. They forget that to be almost saved is to be altogether lost; that the actions of the unregenerate are not well-pleasing to God; and that the new life must have, as its starting-point, a new birth. Somehow they manage to overlook the exceedingly plain and numerous statements of Scripture on this vital point. Christianity must be something more than a decent morality; remission of sin is not the whole of duty; conversion is not an education or a growth of nature, but the work of the Holy Spirit; half-way to Christ is not salvation; they who are not far from the kingdom are outside of it.—Rev. James Wells, Glasgow.