lands you? The gifts and the election of the unchangeable God are as unchangeable as Himself, affirms St Paul; and, whatever we may do, he does not scruple to carry his principle to its full logical results. Thus, in those noble Chapters in his Epistle to the Romans, ix. to xi., he argues that, since God has called and chosen Israel, "all Israel must be saved," although, as he frankly admits, that stiffnecked race had long rejected the salvation of God. And if "all Israel " is to be saved, saved by the discipline of a coming age, since it certainly has not been saved in this age, who then can be lost? for who has sinned more deeply or with a more settled obstinacy? With the same logical consistency, the same impassioned earnestness, he argues, in Chapters v. and viii. of the same great Epistle, that as, by the unrighteousness of one, all men were condemned, so, by the righteousness of One, "all men" will be justified unto life; that the salvation of Christ will extend even beyond the limits of human sin that even the inanimate creation, made subject to vanity and corruption by the sin of man, shall be redeemed from that involuntary bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God. St Paul had "the courage of his convictions." plain to him that, sooner or later, the purposes of the unchanging God must be achieved in all their integrity and breadth. He was sure that Israel had been called

Clearly

It was

in order that Israel might be saved, and that it might save the world; he was equally sure that by and through Christ the world had been called, and called in order that the whole human race might be saved : and therefore he was also sure that, by some means, in some of the ages, in the age to come if not in the present age, this redeeming purpose would be fulfilled, that both Israel and the world at large would be lifted into life everlasting. And even if we shrink from adopting this conclusion, if we believe that what the Apostle says in these Chapters must be limited by what he says elsewhere when his heart was not so hot and so large within him,1 we may at least adopt his method of argument, and conclude:-What we see to be true of the unchanging God at any time must be true of Him through all the ages of time. Whenever, hitherto, He has elected a people for Himself, it has been that, through them, He might save and bless those who were less openly and avowedly favoured than they were. And, therefore, in the ages to come, if there be a saved and elect people, these too will be chosen not for their own sakes alone, and saved not

1 This device of limiting Scripture by Scripture, which is a very different thing from "comparing Scripture with Scripture," and striking an average of their contents, is surely a very questionable one, and can hardly be resorted to by those who hold the stricter views of Inspiration without glaring and perilous inconsistency, though it is they who for the most part have recourse to it, especially when the scope of the larger and nobler Scriptures is to be curtailed.

L

simply that they may revel in their own blessedness, but that they may carry the tidings of salvation and the hope of blessedness to those who are still in the grasp of their sins.

But if that be so, how can the lot of those who even in that world are still tied and bound by the chain of their sins be a fixed and hopeless lot? God will not send us on a bootless errand, an errand in which success is impossible. If, then, this be the true doctrine of the Election, and we be of the elect, we may hope that in the ages to come God will make us the ambassadors of his love, and so bless us in our labour of love as that St Paul's largest hopes may be fulfilled, "all Israel" and "the fulness of the Gentiles," i.e., the whole race of man, being recovered to righteousness and life.

(3). We may draw a similar inference from the true function of Punishment, so soon as we see how the punitive--i.e., the natural and inevitable--consequences of sin illustrate an invariable law of the kingdom and providence of the unchangeable God. Throughout the Bible we are taught that these miserable yet most happy consequences are designed by God to be corrective and even redemptive; that their true purpose is to castigate and chasten men, to open their eyes to the exceeding sinfulness of sin, to teach them to loathe and renounce it. What is the whole

Book of Job but a subtle and manifold commentary on this thesis, that the sufferings of men are not simply penal and retributive, but corrective and remedial ? that, by these, God is ever seeking to withdraw man from his evil deeds, to bring back his soul from the pit that it may grow light in the light of life? The Bible is full of statements and illustrations of this law of the Divine Kingdom-from which I select but two, one from the Old and one from the New Testament. The prophet Habakkuk, after that terrible description of the supreme judgment of his time with which his prophecy opens-viz., the invasion of "that fierce and impetuous nation," the Chaldeans, who "marched across the breadths of the earth, to seize upon dwelling-places not their own," whose aspect was cruel and fatal as the simoom and who "swept up captives like the sand," debated within himself what could be the meaning and purpose of this portentous "work" of God. And the conclusion to which he came was the simple conclusion of faith: Terrible and fatal as our doom seems, he argues "We shall not die;" for "for judgment hast Thou ordained it, O Lord, and Thou, O Rock, hast determined it for correction."1 this conclusion is still more simply and tenderly put in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where we are exhorted neither to despise the chastening of the Lord, nor to

1 Habakkuk i. 12.

2

2 Hebrews xii. 5-11.

And

faint under it, since chastening is a mark of sonship: "for what son is he whom his father chasteneth not?" and because, though "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." "Furthermore," argues the sacred Evangelist, expressly stating the law of all Divine chastisements, "we once had the fathers of our flesh to correct us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather submit ourselves to the Father of spirits, and live. For they, verily, for a few days chastened us after their own liking; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness." Here, then, through this avenue, we get a glimpse into God's attitude toward the sins of men, of the purpose and function of the punishments with which He visits those sins. They are intended for correction, for discipline, for our profit; they are designed to quicken life in us, to produce in us the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and even to make us partakers of the Divine holiness. But will the unchangeable God change his attitude toward sinful men, when, despite his discipline, they have gone down into the pit? Can He? If we have once seen what his purpose is in chastening and punishing them for their sins, must not that be his eternal, his unalterable, purpose? What right have we to assume