complete there will be no more war, and you are under a delusion of Satan (I do not hesitate to characterize it as a hallucination of the Devil), if this side of death and the resurrection you expect a complete sanctification. Progress, yes. Perfec

tion, no.

When complete, then, there will not be in you a spot, or wrinkle, or blemish, and you will be faultless before the throne of God. But the Scripture is express that the date of this perfection is the second coming of Christ, that blessed appearance of our Lord. Twice in one letter does Paul emphasize this fact (1 Thess. 3:13, 5:23, Revised Version). Hear and mark well his words: "To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at (not until) the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." "And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame, at (not until) the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Let us keep that thought before us. Jesus is a Saviour. He is a Saviour in the double sense of the two Joshuas. Joshua the High Priest (Zech. 3:1), and Joshua that led his people into the Promised Land. He is "my Saviour," to lead me into the Promised Land, and until my feet press that golden shore, until I can reach out my hand and pluck the fruit of the tree of life, until I can drink of the water of life that bursts from under the throne of God, and singing

and sparkling as it goes in its clearness and its cleanness, my salvation is not complete.

Young people who repent of their sins and who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, are assured in the words of the Scripture of their salvation, but they sometimes mistake-they think that means salvation completed; it does not. I say your warfare is not yet ended. If you do from your heart repent of your sins and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, then from the penalty of sin you are forever exempt, you will never come under condemnation, and all the devils in hell cannot drag you away from the grace of God. But I would not have you to believe that is all of your salvation. You are to be saved from your sins, not only as to penalty, but from its dominion, the complete and eternal salvation of body, soul and spirit; but you are not to conclude because you are justified, that the work of salvation is stopped in you. He who commences the good work in you will carry it on. He will complete it. The consummation will come, but many a trial is before you. You must attend a hard school. There is yet a deadly battle to be fought. There is to be a wrestling of your soul against the law of your carnal nature.

There are, meanwhile, delectable mountains upon whose crests God may permit you for a little while to stand, and from whose summit you may for a short space look over the intervening distances and dangers, and behold the heavenly city, but you are

not there. You have been permitted to climb the top of Pisgah and view the landscape o'er, but Jordan is between you and that happy shore. You must come down then from that mountain and address yourself patiently to the prosecution of your journey. To no man on this earth do I say that there is absolute and final deliverance from sin of the Spirit until death comes.

You ask me if death purifies us. It does not. It has never been supposed that it did. In no sense is death a saviour. But here is the thought of it. It is the graduating lesson. It is commencement day. It is final release from the war state. You have known, perhaps, of a wild animal making his den in some dark, inaccessible cave, and from that secure retreat issue forth at convenient times to make his depredations. You try to prevent this; you worry him with dogs and hunt him home. But you may rest assured that until the house where he lodges is destroyed you are not rid of him; that unless that home and shelter into which in time of peril he has retreated is altogether taken down, he is not going to move utterly away. So our body is the home, the tenement of the soul, and as long as we are in the body the subtle law that connects body and soul will obtain, and flesh and blood will restrain, hinder and oppose the spirit.

The last education of discipline to which the soul is subjected is the conquest of that intense reluctance and struggling with which the soul resists evictment

from the body. But when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved then we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, and then, and then only, is any man's spirit perfected. But the salvation is not complete even then. As long as death holds in his grasp my body, as long as that body sleeps in the grave the deliverance is not full and final.

But when Jesus comes and speaks to the dust and raises the body, not as it was sown, not mortal, but immortal; not corrupt, but incorrupt; not a natural body, but a spiritual body, then, and never till then, shall be brought to pass the saying that "death is swallowed up in victory." Then salvation is completed. And it is with this view of salvation that I preach to you to-day. And all on earth that I offer you to-day, or have any warrant to offer you as instantaneous, is deliverance from the penalty of sin and implanting in you a spirit that loves righteousness and hates sin; in other words, regeneration and justification. I cite the ordinance. I ask baptism to speak from its yielding waves and tell me its significance, and it says, "I symbolically represent the first thought of salvation. I represent the cleansing that comes to the soul, the washing. away of sin. I represent deliverance from the penalty of sin." I ask the other ordinance, the Lord's Supper, What do you signify?" "I symbolize that other part of salvation, the work of sanctification, the feeding upon Christ, the drawing my spiritual

food from him, the constant strengthening of my soul by repeated acts of faith, of drawing nourishment, of going from strength to strength, and grace to grace and glory to glory."

And thus the ordinances confirm the idea of salvation presented. I say this, however, that while sanctification is not instantaneous, nor complete in all parts till our Lord comes, you may have if you will, such gifts of spirit power, such evidence of divine presence, such infilling of the spirit through Christ's indwelling and reigning, as the average Christian has never conceived of.

Now, to make the application of this. In all sincerity I am authorized to offer to any man, woman or child here to-day who will comply with the conditions which God prescribes, your deliverance from the condemnation of the law, and I mean that this deliverance is eternal. I mean if you live a thousand years that you will never come under condemnation. I mean also a spiritual change from a state of nature to a state of grace, so that henceforward God will deal with you as sons and not as slaves, and that this justification and regeneration are instantaneous and complete and will never be added to. Yes, you will be delivered from the penalty of sin. I mean that if you to-day comply with the conditions which God has prescribed there will be in you a new creation, however faintly or feebly it may manifest itself. Spoken of as a light, it may be just a spark. Spoken of as a life, it may be an