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slaves, but with patience, with long-suffering, with love, with self-devotion.

Whosoever thus sees that the fall of man was certain, will not try to excuse sin, for he will understand that sin is choosing and doing what is his own misery and destruction. Whether there be room for blame or not, he will want to be saved from doing this; and if he really does want to be saved, and if he learns to see GOD as his Saviour as well as Father, he will blame himself sincerely for slighting, dishonouring, disobeying that good GOD; he will not possibly dream of winning his God's love by his own goodness, for he will know and feel that goodness is what he wants to get. He will see that having in his ignorance sinned; and then, in the habit of sin, sinned against knowledge, he could but have sunk for ever, and ever, and ever, if GOD were not what He is gracious, loving, unchanging; never provoked to treat his offspring as beasts, by placing them under his own authoritative guidance, in such a way as to deprive them of choice and freedom; never provoked to give up teaching them, pleading with them, and even, with pain to his own heart, chastising them, so long as they continue in error. In short, he who will follow up this subject from its simple beginning to its exalted and wonderful end, will see and feel how good God is; let us not say, although He made man so that his fall was sure, but because He made man so free, and left him so free, that his fall was certain, as certain as his original ignorance.

If this were all, then God would be indeed as bad as some paint Him—worse than any ever painted Satan. But this is not all; if GOD, in order to enjoy the blessedness of having an offspring to reign with Him, as

well as a creation to obey his decrees, gave existence to intelligent, spiritual beings, free-yet ignorant, and therefore certain to destroy themselves-He did so with the purpose of saving them from destruction, and in the determination to plead with them, to devote Himself for them, to show them that He is grieved for them, to prove to them that his end is not gained so long as they persevere in error and in self-destruction. GOD in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, shows this, and they who see it are Christians.

This rule of God, not to interfere so as to reduce men to the condition of beasts urged by instinct, does not at all imply that God never overcomes our will by mere power; but if He does, the result is his, not ours. He has not forced us to will, but to act without our will, and, so far, we are neither virtuous nor wicked in what is done by Him through our mere instrumentality.

In his beneficence God may sometimes thus act, to prevent dreadful evils, and to bring about the fulfilment of prophecy.

This last, however, it would seem, God does more frequently by temporary non-interference, by withholding for a season his pleading, his drawing love. For though it is a real choice by which man rejects the good and selects the evil, or the contrary, yet that choice plainly cannot make objects for itself, but man can only choose what GOD is pleased to offer to him, and when God offers it; so, if GOD, for a season, withholds any renewed act of grace, the man who has chosen the wrong course will go on in it, and to his own hurt fulfil his own evil purpose, and learn a lesson which required all this. This will be equally the case with a nation. And any one could predict with certainty the condition of a man

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or a people who, in a downward course, are left to themselves that they would sink lower and deeper, as long as they are so left.

When God does teach and plead by his renewed counsel, and by the renewed manifestation of his love, it is not to prevent destruction to him who sins, but to prevent him from going on sinning-not merely to save man from being destroyed, but to save him who is destroyed.

CERTAINTY AND UNCERTAINTY.

UNCERTAINTY as to results or consequences tends to prevent a certainty of motives. The more reason we see to be certain of the results, the more we are influenced by the motives to seek or to avoid those results.

This shows itself in the little effect, in society, of the motives to go on in the way to heaven, or to hold back from the way to hell.

The ordinary theology which represents God as being arbitrary, or acting upon his own will, without being influenced by events or circumstances, and as being inscrutable, or acting so as to have his rules of action beyond all investigation and understanding, leads to the introduction of ideas into our religion which deceive us; and while most men suppose such ideas of God render our expectations sure with regard to heaven and hell, they really have quite the opposite tendency. God is represented as meeting a difficulty, in the of our salvation, by a scheme which, it is generally affirmed and admitted, would never have entered into man's contemplation, being quite out of the ordinary course, and a mystery beyond comprehension.

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The necessity for this scheme arises, as is affirmed, from the impossibility that a just God can freely forgive.

And it is explained that Christ's saving us from our sins means saving us from the punishment of our sins. As if the punishment was "sin.

However, this being asserted, then it is taught that God punished Jesus, though innocent, in the place or instead of the guilty.

And God is represented as having thus provided a means whereby, on full satisfaction being received by Him for the sins of all, He may freely forgive the sins of those who believe.

Without attempting to compare the ideas of receiving full satisfaction, and then being just in forgiving, we will only consider how infinitely beyond the reason and the imagination of man this scheme is.

According to it man is in a condition, through sin, in which, as far as he could see or conceive, he was hopelessly lost.

But God is said to reveal this scheme of salvation,and, beyond all hope or possibility of expectation, a good many sinners are to be saved; but so that we must not suppose that all shall be saved. Many may be firmly persuaded that they are among those to be saved, judging by their own estimate of their own faith or of their own holiness; but some of these we may expect to see mistaken and disappointed. Who can then be certain that he may not end by being so?

If this scheme were true, the utmost certainty of heaven, of ultimate happiness, that any one could have, would then be this: "If I am not mistaken in my estimate of my faith or of my holiness, then I have safe ground of hope."

This is not certainty, but very absolute uncertainty. Again, as to hell:

When (as it is asserted) men were lost, so that (as is affirmed) God's word secured their endless damnation, and man's wisdom could conceive no possible escape,

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