Then a smile broke on the set face, he stepped up to the lad, threw his arm round him, and drew him up to his side fronting the room.
'My boy,' he said, looking down at him tenderly, 'you and I, thank God, are still in the land of the _living_; there is still time to-night--this very minute--to be saved! Ay, saved, for ever and ever, by the blood of the Lamb.

Look away from yourselves--away from sin--away from hell--to the blessed Lord, that suffered and died and rose again; just for what?
For this only--that He might, with His own pierced hands, draw every soul here to-night, and every soul in the wide world that will but hear His voice, out of the clutches of the devil, and out of the pains of hell, and gather it close and safe into His everlasting arms!' There was a great sob from the whole room.

Rough lads from the upland farms, shop-boys, mill-hands, strained forward, listening, thirsting, responding to every word.
_Redemption--Salvation--_ the deliverance of the soul from itself--thither all religion comes at last, whether for the ranter or the philosopher.

To the enriching of that conception, to the gradual hewing it out in historical shape, have gone the noblest poetry, the purest passion, the intensest spiritual vision of the highest races, since the human mind began to work.

And the historical shape may crumble; but the need will last and the travail will go on; for man's quest of redemption is but the eternal yielding of the clay in the hands of the potter, the eternal answer of the creature to the urging indwelling Creator..