Yes, my friends, this is the lesson which we have to learn from Joel’s prophecy, and from all prophecies. This lesson the old prophets learnt for themselves, slowly and dimly, through many temptations and sorrows. This lesson our Lord Jesus Christ revealed fully, and left behind him to his apostles. This lesson men have been learning slowly but surely in all the hundreds of years which have past since; to know that there is one Father in heaven, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things; that they may, in all the chances and changes of this mortal life, in weal and in woe, in light and in darkness, in plenty and in want, look up to that heavenly Father who so loved them that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for them, and say, ‘Father, not our will but thine be done. All things come from thy hand, and therefore all things come from thy love. We have received good from thy hand, and shall we not receive evil? Though thou slay us, yet will we trust in thee. For thou art gracious and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness. Thou art loving to every man, and thy mercy is over all thy works. Thou art righteous in all thy ways, and holy in all thy doings. Thou art nigh to all that call on thee; thou wilt hear their cry, and wilt help them. For all thou desirest, when thou sendest trouble on them, is to make them wiser and better men. _And that thou canst only make them by teaching them more about thyself_.’ SERMON XXI. SALVATION. ISAIAH lix. 15, 16. And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness it sustained him. THIS text is often held to be a prophecy of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I certainly believe that it is a prophecy of his coming, and of something better still; namely, his continual presence; and a very noble and deep one, and one from which we may learn a great deal. We may learn from it what ‘salvation’ really is. What Christ came to save men from, and how he saves them. The common notion of salvation now-a-days is this. That salvation is some arrangement or plan, by which people are to escape hell-fire by having Christ’s righteousness imputed to them without their being righteous themselves. Now, I have nothing to say about that this morning. It may be so; or, again, it may not; I read a good many things in books every week the sense of which I cannot understand. At all events it is not the salvation of which Isaiah speaks here. For Isaiah tells us very plainly, from _what_ God was going to save these Jews. Not from hell-fire—nothing is said about it: but simply from their _sins_. As it is written, ‘Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from _their sins_.’