(i.) In its _nature_. Is there a word in universal language which has as much meaning in it as this word salvation? It takes within its range all time and all eternity. Though specially designed for man, it has its influence upon every order of being God has made, and presents the most glorious manifestations of God himself which the world possesses. It glares upon sin with indignation, but throws its arms of mercy around the sinner; offers to him a deliverance from the guilt and power and pollution and inbeing of evil; gives him the favour and image of his Maker; assures to him victory over his final adversary; introduces him to, and acquits him before the great white throne; and arrays him in all the glories of an everlasting heaven. To understand it fully comes not within the range of angelic intellect; and yet it demands our highest regard, as it has had the attention of enquiring prophets. 'Tis true they had not the light upon it that a better dispensation has given to us. It is not to be expected that they should be penetrated with its glory as we ought to be; but they were so impressed by its grandeur, that their thoughts were raised above all merely temporal deliverances, and they felt that their own interests were wrapped up in the theme. "And thus," we are told, "did this sweet stream of their doctrine, as the rivers, make its own banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after ages; and by the confluence of more such prophecies, grew greater as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the gospel in the New Testament both acted and preached by the Great Prophet himself whom they foretold as to come, and recorded by his apostles and evangelists, and thus united into one river clear as crystal. This doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath refreshed the city of God, his Church under the gospel, and still shall do so till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity." (ii.) This salvation _in its provision_, is _of grace_. "Who prophesied _of the grace_ that should come unto you." The apostle does not mean to say by this clause, that there is something in the theme _exclusively_ adapted to those to whom he wrote. But we understand him to mean, in general terms, that the ancient seers searched diligently into that system of mercy, which should in after times, and under the Christian dispensation, be more fully revealed. The word "grace" may have reference to _the manner_ in which this scheme should be made known; intimating that it was by _divine favour_ that the new economy supervened upon the old. But we take it rather to denote _the gospel salvation itself_. It is altogether a system of grace. In its projection; in its development; in its accomplishment; in its application; in its final consummation, it is all of grace. "By grace ye are saved."