Page:What Religion Is (1920).djvu/19

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RELIGION

will not do at all. Salvation is the entrance to the strait gate and the thorny path. Saved from sin? That is more like it, but if we dwell much on it, it soon becomes too narrow. We seem to stumble as soon as we try to explain. We begin to qualify, to. restrict our meaning. The old absolute word is the right one. We cry out to be “saved.”

We gather our meaning best from the answer. When are we saved and how? Commonly we feel safe when we have nothing to fear. But safe and saved are not quite the same. Something has happened. We were not safe, but now we are. And how? Nothing outside will do it; no strength, no prosperity. Something has changed within us. We are different, or at least, awakened. And now we are saved, absolutely, we need not say from what. We are at home in the universe.