The idea of Redemption or Regeneration, in its highest and most Christian form, is applicable to both soul and body. The life of Christ shows us that the whole man can be regenerated as he stands; that we have not to wait for a future state, that the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst and may be assimilated by us here and now.
The term “salvation” should not be limited to the soul, but should apply to the whole man. What kind of transfiguration may be possible, _or may have been possible_, in the case of a perfectly emancipated and glorified body, we do not yet know.
In a still larger sense these terms apply to the whole race of man; and for the salvation of mankind individual loss and suffering have been gladly expended. Not the individual alone, but the race also, can be adjured to realise some worthy object for all its striving, to open its eyes to more glorious possibilities than it has yet perceived, to
“... climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, And past the range of Night and Shadow—see The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day Strike on the Mount of Vision!”
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_Q. 13. Is man helped in his struggle upward?_
_A._ There is a Power in the Universe vastly beyond our comprehension; and we trust and believe that it is a Good and Loving Power, able and willing to help us and all creatures, and to guide us wisely, without detriment to our incipient freedom. This Loving-kindness continually surrounds us; in it we live and have our real being; it is the mainspring of joy and love and beauty, and we call it the Grace of God. It sustains and enriches all worlds, and may take a multiplicity of forms, but it was specially manifested to dwellers on this planet in the life of Jesus Christ, through whose spirit and living influence the race of man may hope to rise to heights at present inaccessible.
The guidance exercised by the Divine Spirit, by which we are completely surrounded, is not of the nature of compulsion; it is only a leading and helping influence, which we are able to resist if we choose.
The problem of manufacturing free creatures with a will of their own, to be led, not forced, into right action, is a problem of a different nature from any of those that have ever appealed to human power and knowledge. What we are accustomed to make is mechanism, of various kinds; and the essential difficulty of the higher problem is so obscure to us that some impatient and unimaginative persons cry out against its slowness, and wonder that everything is not compulsorily made perfect at once. But we can see that the kind of perfection thus easily attainable would be of an utterly inferior kind.