saved until there is a complete submission to the will of God.

All the abundance of the divine mercy, the infinite wealth of love, the wonderful exhibition of the divine willingness, is contingent. The experience of full salvation is predicated upon man's return to a true allegiance to God. All that the Father has done in the way of preparation, the unlimited outflow of prevenient grace, is done that the Father may freely bestow eternal life upon all who will believe on his Son.

True belief implies submission to God. Genuine faith produces obedience to the authority of Christ and conformity to his will. To all who thus return to God he gives everlasting life. Wonderful gift; mysterious, incomprehensible, elusive, indefinable principle, which God calls life, with the qualifying adjective eternal added.

Who can tell us what life is? We know much of its phenomena, but what is life? What is eternal life? The world is full of life, but death is always present.

"Death rides on every passing breeze,

And lurks in every flower.

Each season has its own disease,

Its peril every hour."

The air is variegated with birds of beautiful plumage and melodious voices. The summer atmosphere swarms with living creatures. The falling snowflake brings down from its aerial home a world of animalculine life. The waters of the earth are peopled with innumerable forms of life. The earth itself is instinct with life. Its countless tribes creep or run or climb, or remain qui

escent.

Everywhere life is manifesting its presence; but it is of brief continuance. The momentary life of the inhabitant of the snowflake, or the twenty-four hours of the coral, or the threescore years allotted to man, mark the duration of earthly existence. But the flowing stream rolls on; it issues from a continuous fountain, and swells and enlarges as it sweeps onward. The same stars rise and set upon this generation that shone above the tent of Abraham, or shed their radiance on the glory of Rameses. For six thousand years this stream of life has emptied its ceaseless flow into eternity with no perceptible increase of that unknown quantity.

Does any one measure the significance of that term in the text, "everlasting life"? Who can put that divine phrase in the alembic of thought, separate it into its original parts, and give a complete analysis of its essence? Is there one scientist on the earth who will arrest a single ray of solar light, analyze it, and give its primary elements? Is there one expert physiologist that can tell the origin and constituent qualities of that mysterious force which we call life?

But the text speaks of "everlasting life," endless life, eternal life. It is more than a period of unlimited happiness, more than existence with unlimited duration. God is its origin and source of perpetuation. It is fellowship with him. It is his own life animating the tripartite child of God as in the morning of his first creation.

No new qualities will be added in heaven; the accumulating eons make no contributions to it. Time is not a factor in its existence or engagements.

significance is in its origin and continuance.

Its

Everlasting life! Language staggers under the weight of its meaning. The imagination sits silent and bewildered, and contemplates its import with folded wing. Life with its unlimited possibilities unfolding through endless years! The surroundings may change continually, but no new element or quality is added to the life. New delights, new joys, new sources of enjoyment, may surprise the soul at every beat of the heart, but it is the same life marching to the music of endless years. Time may grind down the mountains till those granite heaps are reduced to a level with the plain; the pitiless waves may corrode the shore till the rocky barriers disappear and the mad waters are set at liberty; these disintegrating forces may continue operative until the entire globe is reduced to its original elements - but there will be no diminution of the eternal years. New stars may begin their courses, grow old, and pass away; but the tide of everlasting life sweeps on with ceaseless flow. New constellations may be reared in space, measure their course, and disappear; but it will yet be morning in heaven, and the swelling tide of endless life pours on afresh, and feels the bounding pulse of everlasting youth.

IX.

REDEMPTION VS. EVOLUTION.

[This is a Full Text of the Sermon as Preached at the National Camp-meeting at Sewickley.]

"He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.". -I JOHN iii. 8.

THE Scripture clearly and distinctly sets forth the fact that there is an eternal and uncompromising hostility between sin and holiness; between Jesus Christ and his adversary. The fact is very definitely stated that the entire process of the recovery from sin, so far as it relates to salvation, is by divine power. We must discriminate between that which is involved in the act of salvation and the growth of Christian manhood after the work of salvation begins.

The salvation of the human soul is not by evolution, but by redemptive agencies. In the process of salvation, evil is not subjugated and made tributary to the spiritual advancement of the individual, but the odious thing is to be utterly destroyed.

Sin is not a necessary factor in the government of God, embraced in his original plan. Sin is the uncoerced act of a moral agent, an act which, when executed by our federal head, instantly changed the relations of all the spiritual forces in the universe, and

inaugurated a curse whose destructive waters have overflowed all lands and swept the shores of all ages.

For the arrest of this curse, and for the destruction of its cause, the Son of God was manifested. Whatever is under the dominion of the devil, or emanates from him, is uncompromisingly opposed to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And the highest good of man and the glory of God require that the offending thing be utterly destroyed.

A certain class of public teachers affirm that sin is a necessity; that it is an essential factor in the government of God; and that its ultimate tendency is toward a healthy condition of society; and that a state of sinfulness is the normal condition of the soul. They assume that evil is like an abscess on the body, which carries off effete and poisonous matter, and is the result of a recuperative process which is imperceptibly carried forward, and will necessarily end in perfect health. They declare that sinning is a necessary process, that no one can abstain from it, and that holiness will eventually be evolved from this mass of corruption.

These teachers affirm that all instrumentalities and all agencies are alike with God. That everything indiscriminately aids in the accomplishment of his purposes. That wicked men and devils as effectually do his will as the burning seraphs that circle the throne. They affirm that "so soon as a purpose leaves the sacred precinct of the volitions, God seizes it, and makes it subserve his ends, even though it should have been evil in the worst sense in its conception."

It is impossible to harmonize this theory with the facts in the case, It is a strange philosophy that thus