the grace of God, or the work of Christ? We render praise to God from whom all our blessings come, by Jesus Christ through whom all our blessings come.

Probably an ordinary Calvinist would accept our statements as to the work of God's Spirit in those who are saved. He might accept it as satisfactory that all good comes from God -not only the revelation of the Christian redemption, or the impulse to accept it, but the spiritual act in which God's grace is welcomed, and by which it becomes a power in the life. But, in order to safeguard his conception of grace, the Calvinist might think it wiser explicitly to lay down his Calvinistic thesis, that in the non-elect and unsaved God never so works as He does in those who believe. In fact, this is our main quarrel with Calvinism—not as to God's action upon those who are saved, but as to God's inaction in the case of those who are not saved. Is it reverent to argue upon the Divine activity, as if God were one of the forces of nature? Should we not expect that there will be mystery in the tumult of forces good and evil, personal and supernal, which struggle together in the heart of one who is just entering upon the Christian life? Of course, if you define man in himself as diabolical (but no man is ever wholly left to himself in this world), it may seem that grace must be omnipotent, and therefore irresistible. But, if you keep to the truth, that there is both good and bad in every man, so that the worst man living may yet be reclaimed, and the best man living, if he grow presumptuous, may yet be lost, then you are prepared to conceive that God may work effectually without working irresistibly. In a word, you need not make spirituality exclude morality.

The ordinary Calvinist might accept our attribution of all grace to God as sufficiently reverent, though insufficiently safeguarded by us. But Dr. Hodge's criticism of our views would cut deeper. According to him, "The main point of difference between the later Lutheran, the Arminian, and the Wesleyan schemes, and that of Augustinianism is, that according to the

1

1 Systematic Theology, vol. ii. p. 330.

latter, God, and according to the former, man, determines who are to be saved.' Observe, Dr. Hodge does not merely insist that the power which saves must be Divine, or that the glory of salvation must accrue to God. He insists that God must determine who is to be saved and who is to be lost. Selfevidently, he thinks, God must do so; any theology which holds different views is at once discredited. In plain words, Dr. Hodge considers it unworthy of God's dignity to lay a free offer of salvation before sinners. For the very making of an offer implies that the recipient of the favour, not the giver, decides whether or not it is to be accepted. If a landlord offers to enable his tenantry to emigrate, he does not, for the sake of his dignity, provide that some of them shall be compelled to accept his offer, and that the rest of them shall be compelled to decline it. Say the people are poor; say that he pays travelling expenses for the 'elect,' and refuses to allow any one to pay travelling expenses for the 'reprobate ;' then his proposals are not a free offer at all. So, if one wishes to invite the neighbourhood generally to a reception, but is resolved to make sure of having certain people, and to make not less sure of excluding certain others, then one does not affect to throw one's gates open to all comers; one does not pretend to make a free offer if dignity or duty clogs the offer with conditions. Naturally, then, when I find that God Almighty, the most righteous and most loving, makes a free offer of salvation, I assume that it is genuinely free and bona fide, not merely in the Calvinistic sense-for the bona fide offer of salvation by a Calvinistic God is quite compatible with a fixed resolution to destroy you eternally—but in the straightforward and simple sense of the words. Who is Dr. Hodge, that he should act as guardian of the Divine dignity? Is he in sympathy with the God whom he affects to represent? To my mind, all those Calvinistic conceptions of God's glory 'savour not the things which be of God, but those which be of men ;' they are pagan conceptions. Self-seeking is the first and last principle of their deity; self-sacrifice, of the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, if they were right, that sinners cannot be allowed to accept or reject Christ's gospel, why is the gospel represented in the form of a free offer? Surely, if it is unworthy of God to let the choice of sinners play a part in salvation, it is infinitely more unworthy of God to appeal, to beseech, to implore, to lament-when there is no freedom to take or reject His 'free' offer. One knows what such a proceeding would be on the part of any man. It would be a singularly base and cruel fraud. And it does not change its nature, because theologians choose to impute it to God, the most righteous and most loving.

We hold, then, that God gives a universal sufficient grace with the hearing of the gospel. We do not pretend to say how it is possible for some to choose life and for others to choose death. But freedom, morality, probation, essentially involve this possibility of contrary choice. The moral evolution of character is due to the soul's turning to God, as He is revealed in duty and in grace, or to its turning away from God. Salvation is of God's will; sin is not of God's willleast of all the sin of rejecting Christ. Their destruction, if any souls ultimately perish, must be by God's permission, and must subserve God's glory, but cannot possibly be of the counsel of God's will, as salvation is. This, however, ought rather to be discussed in connection with the doctrine of election.

X.

In the doctrine of election or predestination we carry back the history of the world, and especially the history of redemption, to their roots in the purpose of God Almighty, who worketh all in all. But, in this earthly life, we see only fragments of God's plan; and therefore we must beware of framing inadequate conceptions of the great God. More than this: God is revealed to us so far as He pleases to reveal Himself, and in such aspects as He pleases. First, perhaps, He is revealed as almighty power; then as a moral lawgiver:

then He is revealed as drawing nearer to us, in reward and punishment. But we do not truly know God till we know Him as a redemptive power. That is to say, God reveals Himself to us as the strength of moral endeavour, coming to us graciously in Christ, with forgiveness for our sin, and with efficient help against temptation, adapting His moral gifts so as they must be constituted if they are to avail for the sinful. Now this is what conscience and Scripture unwearyingly set before us as the true and relevant manifestation of God. Nature is the work of God's will; moral law is a disclosure of God's will; but the will in man to do right is the personal purpose for good of God Almighty Himself. Not if it stops. short at legalism and self-righteousness. But if it goes on to humility, to repentance, to trust in a Divine power greater and better than ourselves-then, I say, the good will is God in us, dwelling in us by His Spirit.

Now, we are not entitled to alter our conceptions of God in obedience to supposed intellectual necessities. We may insist that everything which happens is, in a sense, due to God's will; and we may, by following that line of thought, come to conceive of God as bare omnipotence. But there are mysteries in God which we cannot expect to fathom; and both wisdom and reverence bid us think of God as He has taught us to do,—as the righteous One, and the creator of righteousness in our hearts.

It is not, then, merely on account of the Christian doctrine of man that we insist upon a Christian doctrine of God, interpreting God not fundamentally as omnipotence, but as righteousness and love. That is the Christian revelation itself. Yet it is true that the doctrine of man prepares us for a moral doctrine of redemption. The doctrine of man unfallen teaches us that God has called into being a separate finite will. So long as the will of the creature is in harmony with God, this potential dualism may remain potential. But, when sin enters the world, the dualism becomes actual. Sin is not of God's making. Even the Westminster Confession feels constrained

to affirm that God permitted the fall (vi. § 1). Of course we may be jeeringly asked wherein the permission of Omnipotence differs from constraint. But we do not pretend to explain such mysteries. Only we cling to the revelation of God in our moral consciousness; and it teaches us that we are with God, the omnipotent God, in fighting against sin. We see, therefore, that God's fore-ordination embraces a sphere in which we can only define God's will as permissive. To this sphere all evil belongs. We see that God's moral government, as we know it in this world, includes a multitude of wills distinct from God's own, and partly independent of Him, who are either finding their way back to God, or setting themselves against Him. By what reason are we to make the sphere of redemption one of arbitrary sovereignty? If God is moral in permitting and judging evil, He is also moral in redeeming from it. If men are free in non-moral acts, or in the sin which destroys themselves, they are surely not less free in yielding themselves to God.

We believe, therefore, in God's election of grace, because God is revealed to us as the God of the good will and of redemption. But we disbelieve in God's decree of reprobation-because God is revealed to us as the source of the will for good, and as the God of redemption. Nor do we trust irreverent and inhuman syllogisms in such a region as this. If we encounter mysteries here, they are only what we should expect.

How different the result of the mechanical conception of grace! According to it, God is an infinite Will. There is no revealed character in God; or rather the revealed character of God-His legal righteousness—is man's eternal enemy. Our hope is to escape from God's character. God might have left us to perish-ecce signum, He has left multitudes to perish. The Atonement does not reveal anything in God higher than penal justice, for it is dominated by the requirements of penal law, and its extent is arbitrarily limited. The Calvinist worships a God of legality, or a God of force, or a God