Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/174

148 "And are you sure of all who worship with you in your place of meeting?" "Quite sure." "How do you know that?" "Because they are all saved." "But what certainty have you of that?" "Why, if a man is saved, he knows it, and tells you so." "Then, your belief is that no one is a Christian until he feels he is saved?" "Of course." "And you hold that, once saved, a man cannot fall away?" "Of course, that is the teaching of the Bible."

"Would you take this Bible, and give me your authority for it?" "Yes, here it is,—Acts ii, 47,—'The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved.

"But that, as it stands in our English Version of the Bible is not the exact meaning of the text; the original Greek in which the Acts were written means this: 'The Lord added to the Church such as were being saved,' which is just what is stated in the Catechism: 'I thank our Heavenly Father that He hath called me to this state of Salvation.' Our state of salvation may be compared to a state of health; we may fall out of health, as a Christian may fall away from a state of salvation; this is the real meaning of the words."

"Oh," said he, "I don't believe that."

"Well, I can assure you it is the meaning of the text; it has been my business to study Greek closely, and what I tell you is not only on my own authority, but that of the best scholars, to whom the original Greek of the New Testament is as familiar to them as the English version of it in our Bible." "I don't care for your Greek, my Bible is enough for me," was his answer.

"Well," said I, "let us take another passage from