THREE SALVATION EPOCHS.

There have been three great epochal days of religion in the annals of time, viz: a day of law, a day of vicarious sacrifice, and a day of sanctifying fire. Mount Sinai, Mount Calvary and the upper room on Mount Zion, are the three pre-eminent moral peaks in the might}' roll of redemption's history. Like the three radiating points from a lightning-rod, they pierce the eternal heavens of grace, and bear down to earth and man the supernatural currents of spiritual renovation. The gospel in its broad Bible sense is the gospel of God, or convincing, heart-searching law; the gospel of Jesus, or substitutionary sacrifice for sin; and the gospel of the Holy Ghost, or Pentecostal light and fire. In order to possess the full sweep of Scriptural religion we must successively pass through these epochs in our experience. We must pass through the day of law, and have the law pass through us; searching our hearts, condemning our guilty spirits and shutting us in to deep repentance. We must pass through the day of vicarious atonement, and have the day of atonement pass through us, releasing us from all guilt, reconciling us to God and making us heirs of heaven. We must then pass through the day of Pentecost and have the day of Pentecost pass through us, sanctifying us from the seed-principle of hereditary sin, and filling us with positive holiness. Oh, how narrow the view of religion in the minds of many Christians! There is mighty progress in genuine Bible religion, but a progress marked with great epochs, and not the snail-crawling gradualism that gets nowhere. These three redemption days are related to three worlds.

Mount Sinai with its solemn sin-searching sentence is God's great blockade in the sinner's road to hell. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," is mercy's forewarning barricade across the mouth of the pit. Some think it a great point to stop sinning, but it does not require even conversion to make a soul stop sinning; repentance will make a man stop sinning. God will never par don any till he has utterly abandoned all practice and secret purpose of sinning. The law condemns past sin, makes us quit sinning and with its voice of doom, forms our thunder-cloud shield from going to torment.

Mount Calvary relieves us from past guilt, re deems us from this present evil world, separates us from the life of the world and puts the principle of eternal life in the soul.

The Pentecost fills the soul with entire purity and love, thoroughly fitting it to go any time to the heavenly world. The law checks us from plunging into hell, the vicarious cross saves us from the beggarly elements of this world, the baptism of the Holy Ghost saves us into the heavenlies.

This is not all; in a full Bible experience these three days are permanent co-residents in the same breast, flowing like parallel streams along the line of a holy life. The baptism of the Holy Ghost purifying the soul from original sin, makes the law glorious, and deposits the God-written decalogue within as the jewel of a sanctified conscience. The holiness of the law is fulfilled in us. True holiness must have Mount Sinai enshrined within; it is in harmony with Sinai.

The baptism of Pentecost also makes the great day of atonement an abiding reality in the soul. The crucifixion and the flowing blood, enshrined in our hearts, moves along with us as an abiding source of purity. Oh! how the sanctifying Spirit reveals to us the infinite virtue of Christ's blood, glorifies the crimson cross, makes the rugged tree bloom with eternal charms, makes the purple wounds of Jesus sweeter to our spiritual taste than honey!

The law were a failure without crucifixion, and the crucifixion were a failure without Pentecost. Glory be to the triune God, that the three great epochs of redemptive history can be Divinely crowded into the space of a human breast; Sinai, Calvary, and the upper room furnace, twined into blissful and immortal union in the soul, and bearing us onward like a trinity of Mississippi rivers through the channels of time to the tropic sea of glass under the great white throne. Salvation from going to hell, salvation out of earth, and salvation into the boundaries of heaven — at once the trinity of grace and the triumph of man.