The other word was Salvation. Here again our term of Latin derivation
gives no more than the faintest impression of the beauty beyond beauty
in that which the sacred writer used. _Soteria_--a Safe Return! That is
all. Nothing complicated; nothing high-strung; nothing casuistical. Only
a--Safe Return! Yet all human experience can be read into the little
phrase, with all human liberty to wander--and come back. True, one son
may never leave the Father's home, so that all that it contains is his;
but there is no restraint on the other son from getting his knowledge as
he will, even to the extent of becoming a prodigal. The essential is in
the Safe Return, the _Soteria_, when the harlots and the husks have been
tried and found wanting.

I do not exaggerate when I say that the simplicity of these conceptions
was so refreshing as almost to give me a new life. One could say to God,
with the psalmist, "Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me
from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of
deliverance"--and mean it. One could conceive of it as possible to turn
toward Him--and reach, the objective. The way was open; the access was
free; the progress as rapid as thought could make it. One could think of
oneself as _knowing God_, and be aware of no forcing of the note.

"We can know God easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define
Him." Once having grasped this truth I began to see how natural knowing
God became. The difficulty of the forced, of the artificial, of the mere
assent to what other people say, of which the Caucasian to his credit is
always impatient, seemed by degrees to melt away from me. No longer
defining God I no longer tried to know Him in senses obviously
impossible. I ceased trying to _imagine_ Him. Seeing Him as infinite,
eternal, changeless, formless because transcending form, and