hand of His power can have the en.ire | influences of shower and of sunshine guidance and government thereof. This from the heaven above. And it is equally consideration obtains great additional so for the attainment of any good in huforce on seeing, as we do experimentally man life-in pressing forward to which, every day, how how closely interwoven man never thinks of acting upon that excauses the most minute are with conse-tended contemplation, which reaches from quences the most momentous, in the his-the first decree of God in eternity, to the tory of human affairs. It is quite famil-final destination in which that decree has iar to us, that the word or thought or feel- its accomplishment. He comes in as it ing of a moment might germinate a big were at an intermediate part of the series; and a busy story-that on what appeared and enters at once into close and busy enthe accidental meeting of two individuals gagement with those terms of it, which in a street, such events and arrangements succeed to each other at the place that he might turn as shall give a wholly new di- occupies. In labouring for example afrection to the futurity of both-that in ter an earthly fortune, he never thinks this way, on the very humblest of inci- of mounting upwards to the purpose dents the very greatest passages of histo- of the divine mind regarding it; and ry have been suspended; and could all scarcely ever of reaching his anticipathe movements of a nation's policy be tions forward, either to the sum which traced to their mysterious springs in the shall be realised at death, or which, after character or circumstances of the actors the accumulation and perhaps the reverconcerned in them, that, what in itself ses of future years, shall fall into the looked an unimportant casualty, drew hands of his children's children. There the fortune of many nations, and the suc-is a darkness which hangs over the discessive evolutions of many centuries in its train. In a world, so linked and constituted as ours is, if the destination of God do not reach to its things of greatest minuteness, then are its things of greatest magnitude beyond the reach of His ascendency. If He ordain not the fail and the flight of every sparrow, then it is not He who ordains the rise and fall of empires. If He reign not supreme in every little chamber where the passions and the purposes of men are formed, then is He divested of all power and of all presidency in the larger transactions of our world. If He have not the command over every latent spring in the mechanism of human society, then must that mechanism drift uncontrollably away from Him. And thus, it is argued, that, if all things do not fall out with fixed and determinate certainty upon earth, He who has been styled its governor occupies in heaven but the semblance of a throne. His are the mock ensigns of authority; and if man be not a necessary agent, God is a degraded Sovereign.

tant past, which he makes no attempt to penetrate. There is a darkness which hangs over the distant future, that he as little attempts to penetrate. Instead of acting the part of a speculatist with the things which lie remotely away from him, he acts with all intensity and practical earnestness on the things which are at hand. They are the likelihoods of the present adventure-they are the means which he possesses, and the arrangements which are held out to him, for his next speculation-they are the openings of trade and of correspondence which lie immediately before him—they are the calculations which he makes upon existing appearances, of the returns that might arise from his existing operations-These are what set his utmost desire and his utmost diligence agoing, and just under the excitement of a hope after the proceeds which he longs and which he labours to realise. His ambition, his keen and unsated appetite, his legitimate aim for the provision and then his interminable arpirations after the splendour of a rising family, the Our third consideration is, that, let this ardent spirit of rivalry with competitors necessity be as rigid and adamantine as on the same gainful walk of merchandise it may, it leaves all the motives and all with himself, and the powerful charm the influences of human activity precisely which the fortune and the magnificence where it found them. Although God is that lie in golden perspective before him the primary, the overruling cause of every have over his sanguine imagination—these one event, whether in the world of mind may be the instruments in the hand of or of matter, this does not supersede the God for ensuring some precise destination proximate and the instrumental causes that may have been in the view of the which come immediately before it. Al- divine mind from the infinity that is bethough He worketh all in all, yet if it behind us; and yet with man who never by means that He worketh, the application of these means is still indispensable. It is so for the consummation of a good harvest, which never comes round without labour on our earth below, and the genial

once looks backward to that infinity, these may be the very stimuli which operate on his heart, and make him the busy earnest and aspiring creature that he is. And just, my brethren, as with the business of

working for your interest in time, so it is with the business of working for your interest in eternity. I have no wish to theorise you into the doctrine of predestination; but rather to convince you of predestination, article though it be of my own and our church's creed, that it has no more to do with the present and the practical business of your Christianity, than it has to do with the present and the practical business of your counting-houses. It is in the religious as it is in the trading world. You fetch not your inducements from the hidden things that lie shrouded to mortal eye in the eternity which is past, neither do you fetch them from the things that be alike hidden to us in the yet untravelled depths of the eternity which is to come; but you walk in he light which is immediately around you. With the decree that is written in the book of heaven, with its corresponding fulfilment to be manifested on the closing day of this world's history, these are the secret things which belong unto God, and these you have positively nothing to do with. But there are revealed things which belong unto yourselves and unto your children, and with these you have to do. Repent or you shall perish-with that you have to do. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved-with that also you have to do. Cease to do evil and learn to do well-these are matters in hand and with these you have to do. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near-this carries in it the urgency of a very pressing and present application, and with this you have to do-God has His designs, and He employs the very passions and the very interests which we are now addressing for the accomplishment of them. Yet man's part is not to speculate on these designs, but to be moved by this passion, even the fear of the coming wrath; and to proceed upon this high interest, even the good of his coming immortality. We are now standing together at one link of that extended chain which reaches from God's first decree to your final destinaion; and the fastening of that link is by Him who alone gives earnestness to the voice of the preacher, who alone gives susceptibility to the heart of the hearers -Yet the one is at his post when, ignorant as he is both of decrees and of destinies, he, arrested by the worth of your imperishable souls, beckons you to that plain and palpable way whereon they shall be saved; and you are at yours, when, alike ignorant of matters that are indeed too high for us, you catch the impression of a kindred feeling from his ips, and simply and practically betake yourselves to that way. It is thus that

the high predestinations of Heaven affect not the proceedings or the business of practical Christianity upon earth; and that while God, on the one hand, preordains all the children of His election unto life-man, on the other, presses forward unto life by putting to the utmost strenuousness of their laborious and busy play all the activities of his nature.

Our next consideration and the last we can propound with any degree of confidence-feeling, as we do, that we are now approaching that limit which separates the known from the unknown-is, that, as the doctrine of necessity thus understood seems to affect not our most familiar motives to human activity; so neither does it seem to affect the familiar estimate which we are in the habit of forming every day, with regard to the moral character whether it be a character of vice or of virtue in human actions. There is a species of force that does exonerate and excuse a man from all moral responsibility-the force of external violence, and by which he is compelled against his will to do that which in the matter of it is wrong; as to inflict, for example, some dire and dreadful perpetration with his hand, which in his heart, and with all the feelings and principles of his spontaneous nature, he utterly recoils from. The case is altogether different, when, instead of the deed being against the will, the will goes along with the deed; and when, instead or being driven thereto by a strength that is without him which he finds to be resistlesss, he is prompted thereto by the strength of an inclination within him which also turns out to be resistless. The first necessity does away all the moral characteristics; but the second necessity, it will be found, so far from doing away, serves to fix and to enhance them the more. The man into whose hand you have forced the instrument of death, and compelled against all his strong and struggling antipathies to plunge it unto the bosom of a friend, you would never regard as the object of any condemnation. The man, on the other, who has done the same act, but done it wilfully, either to execute his revenge or to satiate his thirst for blood, you never fail to execrate as a monster; and if told of one who had doubly a greater strength within him of murderous disposition than another, so that you incurred twice a greater danger by meeting him in a lone place, you would hold him to be doubly the more fiendish and execrable of the two. And it is the same with all the other vicious ropensi ties. The stronger they are the more hateful, nay the more criminal and worthy both of reprehension and of punish ment do you regard the owner of them.

LECTURE LXXIII

ROMANS ix, 11, 13-24.

"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth."-"As it is written Jacob have I loved but Esau have 1 hated.

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. For the Scripture saith unto Pharoah, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles?"

WITHIN the circle of the preceding re- he walk his earthly rounds with as great marks there lies enough for the guidance security as if all were at rest-so, amid of man's conduct in time, though not the lofty and comprehensive movements enough for scanning the counsels of God of the great spiritual economy, man has in eternity. The high doctrines of pre-a definite and prescribed path, in which it destination leaves all the scope which is simply his business to move forward; they ever had, to the active and moral and, let the past decrees or the coming principles of our nature; and just as not- destinies which begin and which end the withstanding that great planetary move-mighty cycle of Heaven's administration ment of our world, in the tremendous be what they may, it is our part if we but velocity of which man it might be fancied knew the place which belongs to us—it is would be hurried off its platform, yet can our part to work, and to watch, and to

for each and for every of our species, there is an open mediatorial gate to that mercy-seat where God waiteth to be gracious. Again it may be asked to explain this wondrous diversity of influence among men, and why it is that some do reject and others do receive these tidings of sal

strive, and to pray, and to go through the who is within the reach of his voice. It whole walk and warfare of practical is when, in the discharge of his ample and Christianity, just as before. unexcepted commission to all who are This should be enough for one who is sitting and listening around him, he insimply bent on the attainment of his sal-vites each, and forbids none, to cast their vation, though not enough to satisfy the confidence on the great propitiation; and proud the restless spirit of soaring adven- then it is impossible they can perish. It turous and speculative man-who, not is when on the strength of this precious content with knowing all that belongs declaration, that whosoever cometh shall unto himself, would lift up the enquiries in no wise be cast out, he both sends the of his mind to matters that are greatly invitation abroad among the multitude, too high for it; and seize, as if within the and brings it specifically home and with lawful domain of his intellect, on all that all the power of his tender and most belongs unto God. It is precisely at this earnest solicitations to the heart of each point, we think, that the real difficulties individual. With him there is no distincof the question begin; and they are just tion between the elect and the reprobate, such difficulties as it is our wisdom, not for he knocks at every door; and while it to brave, but to retire from. This is the is most true, that some do welcome, and very point at which the apostle repels the others do most obstinately and impregnaquestion which he is either not willing, bly withstand him, yet his business is to or more likely not able even with all address a free gospel unto all, and to lift his apostolical endowments, to resolve-in the hearing of all the assurance-that, Thou wilt say then Why doth he yet find fault, for who hath resisted his will?' You will observe that in these words, there is an arraignment of God, and a call or a challenge for His vindication. The part which belongs to man, when plied as he is most urgently and most affectionately by the offers of the gospel, is abun-vation? Our answer roundly and absodantly clear. But in point of fact some lutely is that we do not know. But this do accept these offers, while others turn we know, that the way to lessen the numaway from them; and when this difference ber of those who shall reject, and to add between the one and the other is traced to to the number of those who shall receive, he power and predestination of God, this is just to ply these tidings as heretofore in brings the high policy of the Eternal into the hearing of all and for the behoof of view, and the reasons of that policy are all. It is most true that God has the power not so clear. Were the question never Were the question never over human hearts, to turn them whitherstirred as to the part which God has in soever he will; and if demanded why the matter, there might be nought to em- then do not all the hearts of men receive barrass or disturb us-for all is simple that touch from the hands of His omnipoand shining as the light of day, about the tence which might turn them unto the part which man has in the matter. Could way of life, our reply is still that we canwe only prevail on him to bestow all his not say. But this we are empowered to intensity on the things which properly say, that there is not a hard-hearted sinbelong unto himself, and which himself ner amongst you, who is not within the has personally to do with, all would be scope of the invitation, Come ye also and plain and practical; and the great work be saved; and to your prayers for the of salvation would go on most prosper-clean heart and the right spirit, a softenously. But we will be meddling with the things which belong unto God; and thus it is that a theology floundering beyond her depths, and compassed about with difficulties through which she cannot make her way, gives forth her hard sentences and her cabalistic sayings-when she might be otherwise and far better employed, in lifting the direct and the urgent and withal the clearly intelligible calls of the gospel. It is when in the act of plying these calls that the minister of the New Testament stands upon his vantageground. It is when charged with the overtures of forgiveness to guilty men, he, in the name of a beseeching God, presses the acceptance of them upon every creature

ing and a sanctifying influence will be made to descend upon you. For aught we know our world might have never fallen, or after having fallen, a voice may have gone forth again from Heaven, armed with a force and an efficacy of grace, to recall every individual of its departed generations; and if again the question be reiterated, why is it not so with the world we occupy, again it is our answer that we cannot tell: But this we can truly tell, that not an individual is here present, who has not the word and the warrant from Heaven's high throne, to believe in Christ that he might be saved. That thing may be conceived, whereof we have the woful evidence that it has not been realised

even a sinless universe, whose every sun more especially that passage which forms lighted up the habitations of unspotted a most remarkable counterpart to the one holiness, and whose every planet was last quoted, and where the long-suffering, proof against the inroads of every ruth-instead of being related as it is by Peter to less destroyer; and if called upon to vin- the salvation of sinners, seems as if reladicate either the entry or the continuance ted by Paul to their destruction-" What of moral evil, we sink under the burden if God, willing to show his wrath and to of the deep and the hopeless mystery, make his power known, endured with and feel it to be impracticable; but of much long suffering the vessels of wrath this we can assure you, even a plain and fitted to destruction; and that he might a practicable way of escape for ourselves, make known the riches of his glory on both from the tyranny of evil and from the vessels of mercy which he had afore the terrors of that vengeance which is prepared unto glory, even us whom he due to it. And O if we but stopped at the hath called not of the Jews only but also place, where apostles stood silent and of the Gentiles." solemnized and did reverently stop before us-if, forbearing a scrutiny into the counsels of Heaven, we simply betook ourseives to that bidden walk upon earth, which will at length conduct us both to the light and love of its unclouded habita- | tions-if, waiting and working at our allotted task here below, we would but suspend that judgment, which we can neither pluck from the mazes of the eternity that is past, nor from the yet unexplored distances of the eternity before us —in a word, if, instead of speculating we were humble enough to submit, and, instead of dogmatising were teachable enough and obedient enough to do-This were the way for arriving at the resolution of all difficulties; and we should at length, when the mystery of God was finished, emerge into that region of purest transparency where we shall know even as we are known.

Peter says of Paul in one of his epistles," and account that the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation,-even as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given unto him, has written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction."

We doubt not that in the reference which the one apostle makes to the writings of the other, he in the first instance had in his eye that passage in the second chapter of the Romans, where Paul says, Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds." But we have as little doubt, that he, in the second instance, had in his eye some of those very things which now engage our attention in this ninth chapter of the Romans; and

We shall go over a few of the verses of this chapter, and lay aside that in them which is hard to be understood from that which is otherwise. It will be uniformly found that all that is difficult, attaches to those prior steps which belong to the part wherewith God had to do, before that man's part fell to be performed-leaving as clear and as comprehensible as before, both the part which man has to do, and also those posterior steps of the divine administration which follow on the part

which we shall have taken in the world.

Or, in other words, if there be not enough of revelation to appease the restless curiosity of man that would pry into the concerns of God, there is enough to enlighten his conscience and to guide his hopes in every thing which relates to his own proper and personal concerns.

In the eleventh verse then, we cannot refuse the statement that God had before the birth of Jacob and Esau an anterior purpose respecting their destinations; and that the actual and historical difference which afterwards took place between the two, was the effect of that purpose. Of this election on the part of God I can give no account-I submit to be informed of the fact, but I am utterly in the dark as to the reason of it. I have to remark, however, that, although this purpose according to election is not of works but of Him that calleth-although the purpose of the divine mind was the primary, the originating cause of the favour shown to Israel, yet it followeth not, that works on the part of those whom He does favour are not indispensable. You would say of a stream of water that issued first from a fountain-head, and then was collected into a reservoir or second fountain whence it flowed anew, you would say that though it came through the lower fountain, it came from or of the higher. And so of this high predestination on the part of God. All that regards either our history in time, or our final condition in eternity, might originate there; and yet it may be true, that we cannot pass onward to glory in heaven without passing through a course