finally folded with his sheep. This would assert the error that the lines of the true church are accurately drawn on earth, as they will be between the right hand and left of the Judge. It is not, again, that a sincerely good man, a child of God, may not slide away from duty, from the consciousness of present communion and acceptance with God. Nor are we to argue this often raised point whether, if a Christian should die in unforgiven sin, he would be lost. Our position is Our position is that such a supposition is not admissible; that regeneration is an imperishable act, an irrevocable change; that a soul renewed by the Holy Spirit will remain in that kingdom of God to which it is thus introduced. Or negatively, the truth affirmed denies, that it has ever occurred, or will occur, that a sinner, born again in the image of Christ, has lost or shall lose that image, so as to perish in ungodliness.

Nor does our argument require us to show that Christians are perfect; that they are not counselled and warned to avoid ruin; that their complete redemption is not conditioned by their endurance unto the end. The very question is - do they thus endure, by virtue of the provisions of the love of God ordained for this specific purpose?

The affirmative is maintained. On what ground, then, is the certainty based that all true believers in God will continue in grace forever? We must deal a moment longer in negatives.

This certainty does not stand in the power of any Christian to preserve himself from apostasy. He can no more do this than he could originally bring himself out of moral death into the new life.

Nor is his safety dependent on the absence of spiritual and Satanic assaults, tempting him to disobedience. Contrary to this, his perseverance is one long victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Nor can this assurance lie in the nature itself of regeneration. There seems to be no absolute impossibility for holiness, in any finite being, to abdicate its throne to its antagonist; for a renewed heart to rebel even unto perdition against God. Holy principle and life are the same essentially in all their subjects. And sinless angels have fallen. So did Adam apostatize from his primal perfection. This fearful step downward has

more than once been taken. This, then, cannot be a righteous man's defence that the elements themselves of a holy character preclude its loss. Such a revolution backwards has been: and where obedience rests in a covenant of legal deservings, where righteousness is of works, that direful change may be again, for aught we know, as among yet unsinning angels, or the unfallen of other worlds, if such there be. The great and the sure foundation, upon which our doctrine reposes is - the promise of God to this distinct fact, as embodied in the covenant of grace and redemption.

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This is the point where the Calvinistic and the Armenian interpretations of Scripture divide the watershed which throws the theological streams east and west. The rejection of the perseverance of the regenerate, in holiness, is only a corollary from the denial of the personal election of believers to salvation. This explains the otherwise singular zeal of some good people in contending apparently against the probabilities of their own final well-being. It is impossible to separate these doctrines. They stand or fall together. One philosophy maintains them; another discards them. But it is not merely or mainly a philosophical difference. It is a biblical issue. Hence, we do not lay stress, in this debate, upon general reasonings concerning the attributes and government of God. Satisfactory as these views are to those who receive the truth here affirmed, we prefer, with an eye to others, to give our space largely to the simple, positive, conclusive testimony of Revelation.

The fifty-third chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah lays down the plan of Christ's mediation between God and man, with this distinct pledge:

"And Jehovah was pleased to crush him, he put him to grief: when his soul shall make an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah in his hand shall prosper. From the labor of his soul (or life) he shall see, he shall be satisfied; by his knowledge (the knowledge of him) shall my servant as a righteous one give righteousness to many, and their iniquities he will bear. Therefore will I divide to him among the many, and with the strong shall he divide the spoil, in lieu of this that he bared unto death his soul, and with the transgressors was numbered,

and he himself bare the sin of many, and for the transgressors he shall make intercession." *

So in David it is promised to the Messiah; "a seed shall serve him." Ps. xxii. 30. This arrangement guaranteed that Christ should be victorious over moral rebellion, in the person of man, to a certain extent, through the knowledge of him by sinners; "and this is determined by the whole connection to mean practical, experimental knowledge, involving faith, and a selfappropriation of the Messiah's righteousness": † that, while he offered life to all freely who had "gone astray ", (ver. 6,) this offer should not hopelessly and indiscriminately be rejected by all that divine compassion, forbearing to execute speedy justice on the rebellious, and divine influences moving their souls, should effect the surrender of some of Adam's race to God: that thus Christ should possess a spiritual offspring of sons and daughters over whom to reign as king in Zion forever. This is the doctrine of Election: not that Christ died for only a part of mankind the one "all" in the sixth verse of this Messianic chapter measures the other: not that the offer of redemption is made to a part only not that the Holy Spirit is sent to strive with here and there a sinner: but this God has covenanted to see to it that all shall not finally persist in refusing provided grace. How many and who these shall be is fixed by his selecting decree. And with this new-born seed - the travail of his life and death- Christ shall be satisfied.

In accordance with this, Christians are commonly spoken of in the evangelical Scriptures as 'given to Christ by the Father'; as chosen of God'; the 'elect'. So in Revelation; they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful'; xvii. 14. So in Peter: a chosen generation'; 1, ii. 9. " And Paul: 'According as He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world' — of course, then, if ever, since God is immutable 'that we should be holy . . . having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will'; Eph. i. 4, 5. Now, we repeat, the eternal covenant, in view of our Lord's redemptive mission, was that the salvation, purchased amply and freely

* J. A. Alexander's Translation.

† Same, on Isaiah liii.

for all, should be accepted by some of a lost race: that when all joined alike in a rejection of Christ, when all should resist the Spirit, still, so far as consistent with God's wisdom, the boundary-lines of which territory are known only to him, that Spirit should influence guilty rejecters of grace to an actual repentance as God's foreordination should appoint; that thus Christ's crown should not be without its jewels; that thus he should possess a people of renewed hearts to the praise of his suffering love and living power, and for the enlargement of his righteous kingdom.

The doctrine therefore which we defend denies that a soul chosen of God in Christ from before the birth of time, to become holy, may after all fall from that holiness and remain an impenitent rebel forever. For if one, then all so given to Christ, may perish. Then Christ, after all his pains and expiation, may have no seed, no posterity. That is, in direct contradiction of his own declaration, some power may arise, and, by the position adversely held, frequently does arise, which wrests from the fellowship of Jesus those whom the Father has given him under the provisions of his redemption. Let him, the "Faithful and True Witness," be heard in rebutting evidence: "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." What part of this number shall never perish? "By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved"; that is, he shall not perish. The fair, unforced, unanswerable testimony of Christ is this; if a human soul is admitted into his kingdom of salvation, is numbered among his real friends, that soul shall never be lost:" neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." Then they shall remain in his hand, his protecting, saving, care. "My Father who gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.” John x. Therefore, until some power arises mightier than the united energies of Jehovah and his Almighty Son, the saints will not be carried captive into perdition.

"Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death

unto life." John v. 24. Here, under a formal and solemn asseveration, and in a purely didactic style, Christ teaches the truth, that belief in his commission, rightly exercised, is inseparable from the enjoyment of spiritual and endless life—a restored harmony with God and holiness. Will he lose it, and thus go back to the dominion of moral death? No: he hath everlasting life, dating from the hour of the second birth. He "shall not come into condemnation " because he "is passed once and forever out of it. Consequently, he shall not fall from grace, for this would remand him again into condemnation, which Christ declares shall never be. Cf. Romans viii. 1.

In his conversation with the Samaritan woman, the same thought is thus expressed: "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." John iv. 14. Thirst is here the emblem of unregeneracy, corresponding to condemnation in the foregoing. It shall never thus return. So, under another form: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever." John vi. 51. The promise is without limitation or qualification to every one who has eaten of that bread of life.

Now, to say to all this evidence of our Lord in person that it only means that a man shall not perish of spiritual hunger or thirst so long as he eats the heavenly bread and drinks the living water, that he shall not be under condemnation so long as he believes, is alike to beg the exact point in debate, and to misconstrue the record. Will he ever cease to believe is the inquiry. Christ could hardly have talked so inconsequentially as the other side would have him—as thus: 'He that believeth on me hath everlasting life, and he shall have everlasting life so long as he has everlasting life, that is, so long as he believes on me.' He that drinketh of this water shall never thirst, and he shall never thirst so long as he never thirsts, that is, so long as he drinks of this water.' 'He that eateth of this bread shall live forever, and he shall live forever so long as he lives forever, that is, so long as he eateth of this bread.' This is to go a great way round to say what, when said, would hardly repay the trouble in the amount of informa tion gained.