"Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it bears a very definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from the power of sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive. But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from sin, but "because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath of God." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the antithesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the antithesis of damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the nobleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this is _not_ the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word "salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of the living God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful flames of the destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here; we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which offers to take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to refute. "Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e passo."