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Gift of the
Rev. Heber- H. Beadle

Printed by
ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT,
PHILADELPHIA.

"If a man employs his reason, not in ascertain
ing what God has revealed in Scripture, but in
conjecturing what might be, or ought to be, the
divine dispensations, he is employing his reason
wrongly, and will err accordingly."
(Essay on the Love of Truth, by Abp. Richard
Whately.) "The chief impediments in the way of a right
understanding of this epistle are not found in the
sacred text. They block the path while yet we
approach. There are certain popular explana
tions of its meaning, which have not only attained
to notoriety, but are thoughtlessly accepted, of
vast numbers of persons, as correct. By these,
or by some one of them, the mind may become
pre-occupied until it rests undoubtingly in them as
true renderings of the apostolic thought."
(Preface to "An Exposition of the Epistle of
St. Paul to the Romans," by Morgan Dix S. T. D.)

PREFATORY NOTE.
These sermons were preached in the ordinary
course of parochial duty on successive Sunday
mornings, beginning with February 2d, 1890. It
has been deemed expedient by some of those who
heard them that they should be printed. In ac
ceding to this request, it is thought best to retain
the exact form in which they were delivered, sim
ply adding a few footnotes, rather than to recast
them into the form of an essay, a task for which
numerous and exacting duties leave little time.
There is reason to believe that some who listened
to them have been helped and comforted by the
meaning of God's revelation which they set forth.
If they shall be, in their wider circulation, a means
of producing the same result for others, the ob
ject of their publication will be gained. For my
own part, I can never be sufficiently grateful to
the kind Providence which years ago led me to
the pages of Whately and Dix. J. A. H.
St. Paul's Rectory,
Chestnut Hill, Phila.,
Easter-tide, 1890.

BIBLE STUDY I.
In John v. 39, is a saying of our Lord which
may be taken either as an exhortation or as the
statement of a fact.
What is called the authorized (or King James's)
version of the English Bible puts it in the first
way: —
"Search the Scriptures."
The " revised " version of the English Bible
puts it in the second way: —
'.•¦" Ye searcli the Scriptures " : —
and both versions agree in what immediately fol
lows — viz : " for in them ye think ye have eternal
life, and they are they which testify of me."
Of course, you will remember that when our
Lord used these words, his reference could only
be to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, for
the simple reason that not a line of the New Tes
tament was yet written.
Whether we take his words as an exhortation
or as a statement of fact, they serve the present
purpose of introducing a subject about which I
wish to offer some suggestions : and that subject
is " How best to study the Bible " — and this, for
(7)

8
us, of course includes the New Testament as well
as the Old.
I am led to do this in the way I propose to fol
low at this time by reason of the general interest
in and discussion of the questions first How is
the Bible to be understood ?, and second Ought a
confession of Christian faith to conform to a right
understanding of the Bible, or should it remain
conformed to the way in which it was understood
some centuries ago even though that way is con
trary to the right understanding of the Bible ?
For some weeks past the daily papers have
given detailed accounts of a discussion which has
been going on with reference to these questions
in the representative bodies of a communion of
Christians different from our own. A very wide
spread interest, not unattended with heat on one
side or the other, has been aroused : and people
outside as well as inside that communion have
been set to thinking about the points involved.
If it were simply a matter of interfering in
family jars in another family, delicacy might
require outsiders simply to look on and let the
family in question fight it out on their own lines
without taking a hand in the commotion. But
the case is not thus. The questions at issue
are involved in a general system which has both
adherents and opponents in various communions,

our own included. They are larger questions
than those which are simply connected with the
revision of the Westminster " confession* of
faith": in them are involved some of our own
" articles of religion," which, for one, I should
gladly see revised, and on the authority of one of
the articles itself, which says (VI) in its declara
tion concerning Holy Scripture, "Whatsoever is
not read therein nor may be proved thereby is
not to be required of any man that it should be
believed as an article of the faith, or be thought
requisite or necessary to salvation."
Fortunately for us, there is a difference be
tween our "articles of religion" and our "con
fession of faith." The " articles of religion " are
simply a declaration — chiefly of historical interest
now — of the consensus of certain theologians,
made rather late in the history of Christianity,
and made very much in some cases in the interest
of a compromise, concerning certain doctrines or
practices relating to the Christian faith, and made
by theologians who claimed, as they certainly had,
no infallibility. One of their articles distinctly
states that various churches (meaning thereby
various ecclesiastical bodies) have " erred, not
only in their living and manner of ceremonies,
but also in matters oi faith " (XIX.) ; and with this
frank admission of errors in ecclesiastical bodies

IO
which antedated their own, it would have been
the sheerest impudence to claim infallibility for
themselves in what legally speaking amount to
no more than obiter dicta concerning " the faith."
On the other hand, our " confession of faith "
is simply a brief statement of those fundamental
verities without which Christianity would not be
Christianity. This "confession of faith," as
distinguished from articles concerning the faith
or practice, is found in what is called "the Apos
tles' Creed," an adhesion to which gives, so far
as the faith is concerned, admission, with us, to
Holy Baptism, to Confirmation, to the Holy Com
munion : — in other words to the fullest member
ship in the Church, with all its privileges ; as any
one can see by referring to the offices for bap
tism, for confirmation, and for the celebration of
the Holy Communion.
Even the expansion of the statement of these
fundamental verities which is known as " the
Nicene Creed " is in no sense a creed or confesr
sion of faith made up as the consensus of opinion
among those who formulated it and then en
larged it. It simply was a consensus of testi
mony as to fact ; namely, the fact that its state
ments embodied the fundamental verities which
had all over the Christian Church been held from
the time of the first Whitsun-day of the Chris-

1 1
tian Church. And yet, even this enlarged form
is not required as a statement of their belief
from those who seek baptism, and what baptism
introduces them to.
The question put is this, " Dost thou believe
all the articles of the Christian faith as contained
in the Apostles' Creed?" "Wilt thou be bap
tized in this faith ? "
I think you can see from this the difference be
tween our "confession of faith" and our "arti
cles of religion." The Creed cannot be revised
without revising Christianity out of existence :
the " articles of religion " can be revised by the
same authority which made them, — and some of
them might be revised with benefit to truth. But,
happily for us, their relative importance as com
pared with the Creed is such a very small thing
and such a very sectarian thing that it is not
likely to produce a convulsion, one way or the
other. They may be appealed to in theological
controversy on one side or the other by those
who adhere to the communion which has formu
lated them. Outside of that, they have not a
feather's weight. In very truth, the creeds of the
English and American Episcopal Churches are
notes of the genuine catholicity of those com
munions : the " Thirty-nine Articles " are simply
notes of that sectism which somehow has crept

12

into all ecclesiastical organizations from the time
of the Judaizers who persecuted St. Paul, to
these modern days when the number of sects is
legion. I have dwelt on this point at some length be
cause it does not' seem to be generally remem
bered, if understood : and because such forget
fulness or misunderstanding sometimes operates
as a bar to the seeking of lay-membership in our
branch of the Church on the ground — as one
sometimes hears— that the " Episcopal Church"
is such a complicated body in its faith. No
Church is more simple -or primitive in its faith.
The three points of
i. Giving up what is wrong
2. Believing the Christian faith as contained in
the Apostles' Creed, and
3. Striving to keep God's commandments,
are the only points for consideration to one seek
ing lay-membership in it. All other things or
opinions not in conflict, with these three are left
to the conscience, the reasoning powers, and the
conclusions as to fact, of one seeking or holding
that membership.
Of course, those opinions as to dogma as well
as practice should be based upon a knowledge of
the spiritual truth stated for us in Holy Script
ure, which from first to last, it must be remem-

bered, is in all its parts the product of a previ
ously existing Church and not the producer of a
Church not yet in existence. Mistake on this
point is a fundamental mistake fatal to the right
knowledge of Scripture. The very Scriptures of
the Old Testament to which our Lord referred
when he either told men to search them or alluded
to the fact that they did search them were pro
duced in and through the Jewish Church. The
, writings of the prophets did not produce the
Jewish Church, but the Jewish Church was the
existing body in which were produced and to
which were addressed- the writings and other
teachings of the prophets.
In like manner the Christian Church existed
and was spreading through the world years be
fore a line of the New Testament was written.
Christ constituted his Church of living men and
poured upon them his Spirit ; the writings of the
New Testament are the records of that constitu
tion and of the growth — up to a certain time —
of the living organism.
The very first answer to the question " How
shall I study the Bible " is, " Remember this fact,"
and " remember that the Bible grew along with
the Church."
The books of the Old Testament were written
by those who both thought and wrote in Hebrew ;

14
the books of the New Testament were written by
those who thought in Hebrew (in its Aramaic
form) but who wrote in Greek as being the lan
guage in which they could reach the greatest
number of people. It is evident on the surface,
therefore, that the study of the Bible can be best
and most thoroughly done by those who under
stand the original languages of the Bible ; who
are familiar with their idioms ; who know the his
tory and other circumstances of the time in which
each separate book was written.
It is also evident that comparatively few are
able to study the Bible in this way. A larger
number are able to get much help from books
written by those who are able to study the Bible
in the original tongues and who have that general
historical knowledge which best elucidates their
meaning ; and by comparing one commentary or
explanation with another it is possible for them to
weigh evidence as to the most probable meaning
of disputed points.
But by far the largest number of English-
speaking people are able to study the Bible both
only in a translation and without the aid of schol
arly commentaries. Such books are costly and
involve more time in study than most people can
afford to give.
What I have now to say in answer to the ques-

i5
tion "How to Study the Bible?" is with reference
to this largest class and with reference to the
English translations of the Bible in common use ;
and especially the translation which is most fa
miliar to them and which we know as the "author
ized " or " King James's " version, the melody of
whose periods in that grand English which is
equalled in no other has found a deep lodgment
in the hearts of the English-speaking race and
gives a tone to all its religious thought.
This English translation has two things which
may be roughly distinguished — at least in the or
dinary editions which people use — as, first, Form,
and second, Substance : and it is true that the
substance can in many cases only be apprehended
by disregarding the form, paradoxical as that may
seem. What I mean is this : —
Suppose some one who knew nothing of the
contents of the Bible : — i. e., what the Bible is
about, should find lying on a table a number of
books, among them an ordinary edition of the
English Bible, — the rest being various volumes of
history, or poetry, or novels, &c.
Suppose he did not know what any of them
was, — so far as the particular subject matter of
each is concerned. If he opened each one,
he would be at once struck with the different

i6
appearance of the pages of the Bible from the ap
pearance of the pages of the other books. In
the others the subject-matter would seem to be
arranged with regard to a certain continuity of
thought in pages or paragraphs, or groupings
which make up the larger subdivisions — generally
extending over many or at least several pages,
and which are marked as chapters — or capita —
heads of thought or of description which make up
the substance of the book.
The pages of the Bible would present a marked
contrast to this form of arrangement. The chap
ters would be seen to be very much shorter, and
a closer inspection would reveal the fact that they
are not, in many cases, at all connected with any
continuity of the thought of the subject matter.
More than this, each of these arbitrarily con
structed chapters would be seen to be split up
into little separate sections consisting of only a
few lines each, and all numbered ; and a closer
inspection would show that the break in form
marked by the end of each verse was regulated
by anything rather than a break in thought. Bible
readers are so used to this, that it scarcely im
presses them as it would impress one who saw a
Bible for the first time, and who would wonder
what curious freak of editorship had caused all
this breaking up into little bits.

i7
If this novice had the time and the interest to
look further into the different volumes he would
see that in every other than the Bible, where a
quotation is given it is printed as a quotation,
where the substance is poetry it is printed as
poetry. Turning to the Bible, he would find
nothing of this in it : — only a complete uniformity
of appearance -which makes prose and poetry,
quotation and original matter, run on all jum
bled together in the little numbered bits known
as verses.
If, furthermore, he turned to some of the pages
of the New Testament — notably those which make
up St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, — and looked
a little at the subject matter, he would be con
scious that the writer is conducting an argument,
the different sides of which are maintained by dif
ferent persons : — but he would look in vain for
some indication, visible to the eye, to show which
of the arguers is represented as stating his case,
and it would add to the reader's difficulty in fol
lowing the argument, — a difficulty which would be
increased by the obscurity deepened by the divis
ion into chapters and verses made without much
or any regard to the sense. Furthermore still, if
he turned to some of the books of the Old Testa
ment, notably some of the prophetic writings, he
would note (if that particular copy of the Bible

1 8
were printed as many are) a little table of the
contents of each chapter prefixed to it, and if he
read both the "heading" of the chapter and the
chapter itself he would also note in some cases
that the heading does not correspond with the
substance of the chapter.
Still further : — he would note a very liberal use
of words printed in italics, which in every other
book are used to show that the words so printed
are emphatic : but if he applied this otherwise
universal rule to the reading of the Bible, either
to himself or aloud, he would secure some singu
lar results, and he would have to be told (to un
derstand the matter aright) that the words so
printed in the Bible are so printed merely to
show that they are not in the original at all, but
are simply interpolated by the translators. When
properly understood, this form of printing will
do, perhaps, as well as any other, to indicate that
fact. But it should be understood. Altogether,
the person we have alluded to might be pardoned
for wondering why a volume, claimed by those
who use it to be the most important volume in
the world, should be published in a popular form
so calculated to obscure the lucidity of its mean
ing. Of course it could all be readily explained
to him. The friend on whose table he found the
books could say "The very importance of the

19
Bible is the reason of some of these things which
have excited your wonder. But from the begin
ning it was not so. When the Reformation, and
the art of printing combined, multiplied copies of
the Bible and diffused them widely, owing to the
different sizes and paging of the various editions,
it was necessary to have some uniform standard
of reference by which any passage could readily
be found by the largely increased number of per
sons who used them." It is not necessary just
now to consume time in tracing the various divis
ions of the sacred volume for convenience in
reference. It is sufficient to state that "The first
English'' New " Testament divided into chapters
and verses was that published in Geneva, in A. D.
1558. The first English Bible divided into verses
was also published in Geneva in 1560," (Home's
Introd. Vol. II, page 30, foot). Convenience in
reference was the sole object in view.
In truth it was clumsily done, and it has a ten
dency to obscure the meaning in various ways,
both by breaking up continuity of thought, by de
stroying (so far as it can) the collocations of
thought, and — to a certain extent — by preventing
the ready notation of quotations, and in the popu
lar editions by obscuring the distinction between
prose and poetry, although that is perfectly com
patible with the arrangement into verses. As

20

to the headings of the chapters, that is no portion
of the Bible itself, but only the oftentimes mis
leading work of an e*ditor (Miles Smith, in 1611)
who found it a convenient way of interpolating
into the volume his own doctrinal or theological
notions or those of the " school " to which he be
longed. These headings are entitled to no weight
whatever. They are properly no part of the
Bible. The above statements may explain what I
meant by saying that the substance of the Bible
can in many cases be apprehended only by dis
regarding the ordinary form in which the Bible
appears. The form is simply a matter oi editing,
and the form with which we are most familiar is
a specimen of the worst editing which has been
given to any book.
The next answer, then, to the question " How
best to study the Bible ? " is — for those who can
read only the English translation of it — " Use, if
you can, what is called a paragraph Bible, where
the chapters and verses are sufficiently noted for all
purposes of reference, and yet where the printing
is done in such a way as to preserve the continu
ity of thought where it should be preserved and
to separate it where it ought to be separated.
Some of the Bibles printed in this way have the
further advantage of printing the poetical por-

tions as poetry and of indicating quotations in
the usual way. This is notably the case with the
" revised version ; " and it will be a great help to
the due understanding of the Scriptures to study
them with the aid of this version, which with all
its minor faults — of style, &c. — will be found a
much truer rendering of the original than the old
version is. This is notably the case in the New
Testament. The great practical advantage of using a Bible
properly edited is twofold. Such use will go far
ther than anything else to amend the faulty prac
tice of what is called "reading a chapter" (which
sometimes ends in the midst of a subject), and of
basing one's views upon what are called "proof
texts." This stopping at the end of a "chapter"
amounts to getting an imperfect view of the
subject when the subject goes on beyond the
chapter. Who would think, if he were reading
a history, e. g., of stopping each day's reading at
the foot of a page simply because it was the foot
of a page ? Or of reading in the same way an
argument that has a beginning, a middle, and an
end? Would he get a clear idea of the argu
ment in this way ? Would any one read a letter
from a friend in this way ? — if he could help it,
that is. And yet that is the way in which many

22

persons read some of the most important letters
and arguments which have ever been written —
the Epistles in the New Testament, — and to the
great hindrance of grasping their meaning.
And as to "proof texts," as they are called, the
ordinary use of them is mainly pernicious ; and
the ordinary form in which the Bible is printed is
one main cause of that ordinary use. That or
dinary use is mainly pernicious for this reason,
that it takes a few words separated from their
context and as if they stood by themselves — the
verse form in which they are printed aiding the
habit — and builds upon them a system of doc
trine which is negatived by the whole context in
which they stand. The process is analogous to
that of trying to make a pyramid stand on its
apex instead of its base ; it often treats a mere
illustration as if it were an argument, and fre
quently ends in missing the whole point at issue.
Surely that is not the best way of studying the
Bible. I am very firmly convinced that this way of
studying the Bible and using "proof texts" is at
the very roots of such misunderstanding of the
Bible as is involved in the controversies to which
I alluded in the early part of this discourse. How
this is so, I shall hope to point out at a future
time. Meanwhile, I shall hope that what I have

already said may be of practical service to some
who may not be able to have access to many com
mentaries, or who may not have time ^br such
elaborate study. They are very simple things,
wholly on the surface, and yet the angle at which
the surface of a wave may be, has a good deal to
do with the final direction of a shot which rico
chets from it.

BIBLE STUDY II.
"And we know that all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did pre
destinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover,
whom he did predestinate, ^hem he also called ; and whom he
called, them he also justified ; and whom he justified, them
he also glorified." — Rom. viii. 28-30.
[Owing to the conventional time alloted to a sermon, I
can now only present an introduction to the statement of the
true meaning of these words.]
If the Bible be searched from- end to end there
will not, I think, be found an equal number of
words which, taken apart from their context, can
be more naturally and cogently appealed to, to
support what is theologically known as the Au
gustinian, or Calvinistic, doctrine of election and,
by indisputable inference, of reprobation. And
yet, taken with their context, and as a part of the
whole argument in which they stand, there are no
words which can be less relied on to sustain it.
Suppose A. B. has expressed his view of the
military genius of, say, Napoleon Bonaparte in a
treatise which deals with Napoleon's campaigns.
Suppose C. D., in reviewing this treatise, should
(25)

26
declare that A. B. had stated that Napoleon was
devoid of military genius and that all his military
successes were the result of mere chance, and in
proof of this were to quote from A. B.'s treatise
these words — " Napoleon was devoid of military
genius and all his military successes were the re
sult of mere chance" — would not C. D.'s position
be established ?
But suppose, in turning from C. D.'s review to
A. B.'s treatise, we should find that what he said
was really this : — "Whoever, after following the
accounts of these brilliant movements, should de
clare that Napoleon was devoid of military genius
and all his military successes were the result of
mere chance, would simply prove himself by
such statements to be absolutely ignorant of the
first principles of the art of war."
Upon such comparison of the treatise itself
with C. D.'s treatment of it, what would be our
conclusion ? Simply and only this : that C. D.
had fortified his criticism of A. B.'s view of Na
poleon by quoting his actual words, but by quot
ing them apart from their context in such a way
as to make them mean precisely the reverse of
what they were written to mean.
And yet this is actually the way in which the
supporters of the Calvinistic doctrine of election,
predestination, and reprobation, have dealt with

27
the writings of St. Paul and the authors of all the
rest of the Bible either in the New or the Old
Testament : — whether those supporters be re
sponsible for the Westminster Confession of Faith
or for the seventeenth of our own "Articles of
Religion " (which deals with this subject) : the
only difference between them being that the sev
enteenth article, in its final statement dodges the
issue and nullifies its preceding statements.
This somewhat strong statement is susceptible
of irrefragable proof. At present I can only out
line it. If you wish to see a full authority for
what I have said, I counsel you to read Essay III.
(on election) in a work by Archbishop Whately,
with this title — "Essays, second series, on some
of the difficulties in the writings of the Apostle
Paul, and in other parts of the New Testa
ment" : — the reading of which, I frankly confess,
many years ago saved me from either insanity or
infidelity — or perhaps both.
Let us now recur, in this connection to the
question "How best to study the Bible," which
was the subject last Sunday. You may remem
ber that I spoke of the misleading influence of
the division of the Bible into chapters and verses,
and also of the fact that the writers of the Old
Testament both thought and wrote in Hebrew,
while the writers of the New Testament thought

'28
in Hebrew but wrote in Greek: and that the
Bible was the product of — that it was produced
in and through — the existing Church of each dis
pensation, and grew and was developed along
with the growth and development of the Church
of each dispensation. These may seem mere
truisms to many, and yet they lie at the very
foundation of a right understanding of the >
whole Bible and especially of the New Testament.
One other point is involved in these facts : but it
is a point so important that it must be distinctly
stated, in order to avoid "an error not uncom
mon with those who unthinkingly study the Bible
as one book, without taking .pains to discriminate
the several parts of the great scheme of Provi
dence it relates to." (Whately, ubi. sup. page 64.)
I will state the point in the very clear language
of Archbishop Whately (pages 64, 65.) "The two
dispensations coi'respond in almost every point,
but coincide in very few. Like the flower and the
fruit of any plant, the one is a preparation for
the other ; and each of its parts bears some rela
tion to the other, though they have but a very
faint resemblance ; the parts which are the most
prominent and striking in each, respectively, be
ing least so in the other ; so that if any one
were to give a representation in which the parts
of the blossom and of the perfect fruit were

29
confusedly combined and intermingled, it would
be an unnatural anomaly, very unlike either the
one or the other. The example of the Apostle's
teaching furnishes * * * a safeguard against
this error ; he all along represents the law as
connected with the gospel, as the shadow with
the substance ; as ' our naihayoyoc, to bring us
unto Christ ; ' * and the condition of the Israelites
as analogous to that of Christians, but in many
points dissimilar."
Now all of the writers of the New Testament
were thoroughly saturated with the habits and
methods of Jewish thought and feeling : — St.
Paul pre-eminently so : — "A Hebrew of the He
brews " in this way as in others. In his writings
to the Christian Churches or to individual Chris
tians he is constantly turning to the Old Testa
ment for historical facts, for illustrations, for
comparisons, for theological doctrines. The Old
Testament was to him a very mine of precious
* The rendering " The law was our schoolmaster to bring us
unto Christ" gives a wrong meaning to St. Paul's statement.
The iratdayoryog was a body-servant, a tutor in the sense of a pro
tector, to take a child to and from school, so that he might be
guarded from the perils of the street. This meaning far more ac
curately represents the relation of the law to Christ, who was and
is the Teacher. The iraidayayog might, indeed, impart instruction of
some kind. An intelligent and faithful slave would be very likely
to do so. But it would be merely incidental, and not at all the
main province of his office.

3°
things which he used for the spiritual wealth of
his Christian converts. The New Testament —
and especially his part of it — is. full of the Old.
It is impossible to understand the New apart
from the Old, just as it is impossible to under
stand the analogies of the structure of the devel
oped fruit without understanding the structure of
the blossom out of which it is developed. He
never went into a Jewish synagogue to preach
Christ without appealing to the one thing which
furnished a common ground upon which he and
his Jewish hearers could both stand— the Old
Testament Scriptures and the race history which
they recorded — to the race theology which they
conserved. And his letter to Christian Churches
which were composed of both Jewish and Gentile
converts, on their very face presuppose an ac
quaintance with those Scriptures on the part of
Gentile as well as Jew. Of course, when he was
arguing with an audience of unmixed heathens —
such as he encountered on Mars' Hill at Athens
or, previously, before the city gates at Lystra — -"
he did not so appeal : — for they knew nothing of
those Scriptures. But even to so thoroughly a
Gentile Church as that at Corinth, he did not
scruple to write "I would not that ye should be
ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the
cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were

3i
all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea" &c.
We must bear all this in mind if we are to un
derstand his statements and especially his argu
ments as they would naturally understand them
to whom they were addressed. We must not
read into them the theology of Augustine, or of
Calvin, or of Luther, or of the framers of that
body of compromises known as the Thirty-nine
Articles — who seem to have thought of none of
these things.
Now if there was one thought more ingrained
than another, in the Jewish mind ; if there was
one belief more than another imbedded in the
Jewish soul ; if there was one fact more than an
other borne witness to in the Jewish Scriptures ;
it was, that Israel was the elect of God. Take that
out of thought, belief, or fact, and you take every
thing out. You have nothing left, absolutely
nothing, except some philosophical disquisitions,
some proverbial sayings, some pastoral poetry,
which might come as well from anywhere else as
from Palestine. But the religion is all gone, the
theology is all gone, the history is all gone.
But what was this election ?
I. In the first place it was arbitrary, so far as
God's will was concerned. *That is, it was so

32
simply because God willed that it should be so.
No other reason was ever given for it, and that
reason was always given. "I chose you," God is
represented as saying : N " I will reject you " God
is represented as declaring : although the first
was unconditional, and the second conditioned
upon certain specified relations of cause and
effect. You find it everywhere, in lawgiver,
psalmist, prophet. But,
II. This choice, or election, embraced the whole
race, not simply certain individuals of that race.
They were "the chosen people!' Every one was
included who belonged to the race. But it did
not follow that this election involved the individ-
tial salvation of every one. That is incontestably
witnessed to. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for
instance, with all who sided with them, were,
every one of them, of the elect according to the
universal understanding of the term ; and yet
they "went down alive into the pit." The men
who fell by the sword of the Levites at Mount
Sinai in the midst of their licentious orgies, were,
every one of them, of the elect. But that did
not. save them. And why ? Simply because, in
the third place,
III. The election of Israel was simply an elec
tion to covenant privileges, upon the use of which
depended for weal or woe the outcome to each

33
individual of the elect. This is the key of the
position. What were those covenant privileges ?
i. In the first place they consisted in having
given to them a clearer knowledge of God's will
than other people had. St. Paul himself puts it
thus : " What advantage then hath the Jew? or
what profit is there of circumcision?" That is
his question put into the mouth of the one with
whom he is arguing. The answer he gives to it
is this : — " Much, every way ; chiefly that unto
them were committed the oracles of God."
2. In the second place this privilege was de
signed to insure their education in spiritual
things, — a slow process, which seemed at times a
hopeless process because of their frequent lapses
from their own religion into the vicious and de
moralizing religions of the peoples with whom
they came in contact. But in spite of it all, the
process was one of continuous if not of uniform
growth. 3. In the third place these privileges were not
the privileges of great national power or mate
rial prosperity. As among the other races of the
world, they were insignificant in power, in extent
of territory, in national prestige. For a long
time they were shut in,- — completely isolated from
other races though in constant contact with them.
Their whole ecclesiastical svstem was intended to

34
promote this very isolation as a part of their spir
itual education — up to a certain point ; and then
the process seemed suddenly reversed : and they
were scattered among other peoples, — their na
tionality apparently destroyed, their central place
of worship desolated. The same process with
every other race has resulted in amalgamation, in
absorption, into other races. Not so with them.
Their individuality was never destroyed. Baby
lonian, Assyrian, — kindred powers vast beyond
measure, — subjected to the same process when
their time came, vanished like the morning mist
from the face of the earth. Not so with elect
Israel. Their spirituality was purified and inten
sified by their dispersion, and they then for the
first time began to make their spiritual power felt
as a leavening force in the world, never endan
gered or weakened by contact with other races
and other faiths, but, on the contrary impressing
them and elevating the higher thought among
them by their own higher tone. And this hap
pened because of the
4. Fourth feature of their election to spiritual
privileges, namely, that they held them not so
much for their own special advantage, but as in
trust for others. Their election and all the train
ing of it, the national isolation and the national
dispersion, both alike were for the purpose of the

35
world's being made the better through them.
They were elected to be trustees for the salva
tion of the world. They were to be no mere
ecclesiastical or theological pets, pampered by
their privileges, having a fee simple in them to
the permanent exclusion of all others, although
they got to think — probably the mass of them all
along thought — that such was the case. The
higher souls among them from time to time saw
more clearly the meaning of the providential
leading of their race through their spiritual priv
ileges, that they were really a sacred trusteeship
for others, and that when " the fulness of the
times" should come those privileges would be
extended without limit.
The thought came very early — long before the
time of Abraham — but was very obscurely ex
pressed in the saying " God shall enlarge Japheth
and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem."
The next stage was in the God-given con
sciousness of Abraham, a man of the race of
Shem — when he was elected to leave his home
and become "a stranger and a pilgrim" — that
"in him " alone of the race of Shem "and in his
seed " should " all the nations of the earth be
blessed " or " bless themselves." The next stage
was in the selection of Jacob and the rejection of
Esau the first born, surely for no moral goodness

36
on Jacob's part, to be the progenitor in the line
of Shem of the chosen seed. And so it went on :
the knowledge of and the pride in the possession
of the election became thoroughly established for
the mass in a spiritual egoism, exclusive, con
temptuous of others ; and in the height of all this
the clear spiritual insight, God-directed, of the
later prophets grasped the idea and proclaimed
the truth that the name of Jahveh would be upon
Gentile as well as Jew, that the Gentiles would be
partakers in Israel's spiritual privileges. The
mass of the people did not see it and would not
see it ; and when a Jew of later times re-echoed
the teaching of the prophets and claimed that
God's message to him was " Depart, and I will
send thee far hence to the Gentiles," those who
heard him, frenzied with rage, united like mad
men in the yell "away with such a fellow from
the earth, for it is not fit that he should live ! "
5. And there was a fifth feature ofthe election.
It was that of " the remnant." The great mass
of the people, from time to time might fall away
from grace — every one of them being of the
elect — and by a non-appreciation of their elect
privileges become as though they had them not,
lose them utterly. But "the remnant" would
cling to them and would re-assert them in all
their fulness, and hand down the trusteeship

37
to posterity in spite of persecution, of oblo
quy, of temporary defeat, and, as " the suffering
servant" of Jahveh so grandly portrayed by the
Second Isaiah, be the vicarious redeemer of
the race and its covenant blessings, until the
true "seed" should come to whom the promise
was made : — as a Hebrew of the Hebrews de
clared in expounding the meaning of it all.
Galat. iii. 16, seq. He quotes the fundamental
belief of the race, — "To Abraham and his seed
were the promises made." And then continues
" He saith not ' and to seeds ' as of many : but
as of one, 'and to thy seed,' which is Christ.
And this I say, that the covenant, that was con
firmed before of God in Christ, the law, which
was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot
disannul, that it should make the promise of
none effect. For if the inheritance be of the
law, it is no more of promise : but God gave
it to Abraham by promise!' He then imagines
some one asking — "Wherefore then serveth the
law? ", and he replies "It was added because of
transgressions, till the seed should come to
whom the promise was made ; and it was or
dained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one : but
God is one " : — that is, this intermediate dispensa
tion of the law given through Moses was simply

33
an episode in the process of spiritual education, a
process which in its continuity was the carrying
out of the one purpose of one unchanging God
through the varying dispensations of faith through
Abraham, of the ceremonial law through Moses,
of the renewed dispensation of faith through the
Christ, the promised seed.
Here we must stop for the present. I have
striven to show what " election " meant and was
understood to mean with reference to the few,
according to the Scriptures of the Jew; We must
understand that or we cannot understand what it
means in the Scriptures of the Christian.
It involved, to sum up,—
I. An arbitrary choice, so far as God's will was
concerned, of one race rather than other.
II. This choice or election embraced the whole
race then chosen, not simply certain individuals of
that race.
III. The election of the race of Israel was sim
ply an election to covenant privileges, upon the use
of which depended for weal or woe the outcome
to each individual of the elect race.
These privileges consisted in
i . A clearer declaration to them than to others
of God's will.
2. In the design of insuring their education in
spiritual things.

39
3. In a varying course of discipline to insure
this education.
4. In the holding of these covenant privileges
as a trusteeship for the benefit of others.
5. In the presence of a "remnant," in every
catastrophe of a breach of this trust by the mass,
who should hand the trust unimpaired to pos
terity. That the features of the "election" declared in
the New Testament are precisely analogous to
these, I hope to show at a future time.

BIBLE STUDY III.
"And we know that all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did pre
destinate to be confofmed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover,
whom he did predestinate, them he also called ; and whom
he called, them he also justified ; and whom he justified, them
he also glorified." — Rom. viii. 28-30.
Two formulae of theology have been construct
ed, avowedly resting on this and similar passages
in the New Testament ; — this passage being per
haps the strongest and most explicit of all of
them, and therefore chosen as a typical one.
The first formula is, in substance, as follows : —
" By the decree of God, for the manifestation
of his glory, some men and angels are predesti
nated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained
to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus
predestinated and foreordained, are particularly
and unchangeably designed" (designati); "and
their number is so certain and definite that it can
not be either increased or diminished." (West
minster Confession, cap. IIL, 3, 4.)
In this formula everything is clear, unevasive,
and (as even Calvin himself admitted) horrible.
But is it true ? (41)

42
Before discussing it, let us, however, note the
other formula referred to, which, while up to a
certain point it coincides in meaning though not
in set terms with the above, yet when that certain
point is reached concludes with this statement : —
" Furthermore, we must receive God's promises
in such wise, as they be generally {generaliter)
set forth to us in Holy Scripture ; and, .in our
doings, that Will of God is to be followed which
we have expressly declared unto us in the Word
of God." (Article XVII, of "Articles of Re
ligion " of the Anglican Church.)
The whole point of this evasion and nullifica
tion of the previous portion of the article, and its
statements concerning individuals, lies in the word
generally. The articles were originally written in
Latin ; and the Latin word translated generally is
generaliter, which does not mean principally, or
for the most part, but "according to classes," or
" with reference to classes."
The outcome of this compromise between those
of differing views who framed the article in ques
tion may be illustrated thus, in a homely way —
to expand Whately's suggestion. Two persons
have a dispute about a calf. One insists that the
animal must be penned up in an enclosure and
that a fence must be put up all around it to keep
him from getting out. - The other insists that

43
the calf shall run at large. They finally com
promise by building the fence but leaving the
gate open. !
For my own part I prefer that way of dealing
with the subject which is exhibited in the perfect
ly clear-cut but horrible dicta of the Westminster
Confession. We know, without any explanation,
precisely what they mean. But from the bottom
of my heart I pity any one who really believes
such things of him whom Jesus the Christ pro
claimed to men as the Father in heaven, and to
whom he gave the prayer addressed to that
Father. And I know very well that any human
father who would deal with his children in that
way — with all which it involves — would be out
lawed from human society, and a price would be
set upon his head.
But is this view of God a true one ? That is
the question.
Now, when we ask whether a statement of this
sort is true — I mean a statement dealing with such
matters — we must be careful to note that the
question is in reality a double one : or, more ac
curately, two questions are involved in it : —
i. Is the' statement true simply as a metaphysi
cal Conclusion? : — and
2. Is the statement true as a matter of revela
tion in the Bible ?

44
These two questions are entirely distinct. Let
us consider them separately.
i . Is the statement true as a metaphysical con
clusion ?
Some may say, and have said, "yes." /do
not, and some others do not, think it is. But that
is a mere matter of opinion founded upon a cer
tain course of reasoning on the one side or the
other, and a reasoning concerning abstract ques
tions. Ever since men have thought about such
things, they have "reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute ;
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
As a metaphysical question, they know little if
any more than when they began to reason : and
quite naturally, for the subject matter is beyond
their ken. The conclusion, on the one side or the
other, is merely a human judgment on the sub
ject, and entitled to only such weight as such
judgments have : and, in this connection, we may
dismiss the metaphysical question as a matter of
unprofitable discussion.
But when we come to the
2. Is the Calvinistic statement concerning indi
vidual predestination true as a matter of revelation
in the Bible ? the case is different.

45
To those who admit the authority of the Bible,
and appeal to it as the authority for their conclu
sions, what the Bible really does teach concern
ing this general subject is final. We may not
understand it, but we may not appeal from it.
Let us examine it, or rather continue what was
begun last Sunday as an examination of it, as a
matter of revelation. In view of the limited time
at our disposal this morning, I can only indicate
heads of thought and suggestions of fact ; leaving
to your own careful study of the sacred records
in the light which I shall try to cast upon them,
the verification of my statements ; and I ask you
not to believe those statements unless you shall
find them to be true.
You may remember that last Sunday, in speak
ing of the text, which was the. same as the one
for to-day, I said : — " If the Bible be searched from
end to end there will not, I think, be found an
equal number of words which, taken apart from
their context, can be more naturally and cogently
appealed to, to support what is theologically
known as the Augustinian, or Calvinistic, doctrine
of election, and, by indisputable inference, of
reprobation. And yet, taken with their context,
and as part of the whole argument in which they
stand, there are no words which can less be relied
on to sustain it."

46
You may also remember that in proceeding to
maintain this assertion, I reminded you of the
fact that the writers of the New Testament
thought in Hebrew while they wrote in Greek,
and that every one of them was a Jew, and satu
rated with the ideas of the Old Testament, ' to
which an appeal is made at every turn ; in short,
that it is impossible to understand the New Tes
tament without first understanding the Old : and
that if one of the New Testament writers was
more than the others saturated with the habit of
Old Testament thought, that one was -St. Paul.
I then proceeded to point out what " election "
meant and was understood to mean with refer
ence to the few, according to the Scriptures of
the Jew : and that it involved
I. An arbitrary choice, so far as God's will was
concerned, of one race rather than others.
II. This choice or election embraced the whole
race thus chosen, not simply certain individuals of
that race.
III. The election of the race of Israel was sim
ply an election to covenant privileges, upon the use.
of which depended, for weal or woe, the outcome
to each individual of the elect race.
These privileges consisted in
i. A clearer declaration to them than to others
of God's will.

47
2. In the design of insuring their education in
spiritual things.
3. In a varying course of discipline to insure
this education.
4. In the holding of these covenant privileges
as a trusteeship for the benefit of others.
5. In the presence of a "remnant," in every
catastrophe of a breach of this trust by the mass,
who should hand this trust unimpaired to pos
terity. Now it is natural to believe that when the writ
ers of the New Testament dealt with the subject
of "election," they, being what they were, would
use the word in the sense in which they had been
trained to use it, and not in any other sense, un
less they made it known to those to whom they
wrote that they were using it in another sense :
and simply because those to whom they wrote
were, as I showed last Sunday, presupposed to
have a knowledge of the Old Testament and the
way in which the word "election" was understood
there. In other words, it is natural to suppose
that they did not suddenly and violently change
their whole habit of thought on the subject. And
what we are fairly entitled to suppose was thus
natural, we find as a matter of fact was actually
the case. And in our present investigation of
the subject, we may fairly rest content with what

48
St. Paul says about it, as he says more about it
than all the rest of them put together. If we
can fairly and clearly establish what he meant, we
shall have no difficulty in understanding on the
same lines what the others said about it.
But before looking at what he said, we must
clearly understand how he came lo say it; for
there is a marked difference in the subject matter
of his epistles, in the circumstances which called
them forth, in the persons, and their needs, to
whom they were addressed. This lies on the
very surface ; just as it lies on the surface of let
ters you yourselves write. You have a child at
school away from home, perhaps, with his or her
own temptations, faults, trials, and peculiarities
of temperament, dangers from this, that, or the
other, class of associations. Your letters to that
child naturally deal with these things, and you
give advice, warning, encouragement, &c, such
as your more developed experience and your
affection for your child demand. A good report
comes home : — you praise. A bad report comes
home : — you blame. A letter comes expressing
•sorrow for the fault : — you forgive. The vaca
tion draws near ; — your letters refer to the home
coming, and plans for the holidays.
You have some property at a distance. You
write to your agent there, and give him detailed

49
statements regarding the management of that
property ; letters which perhaps may contain al
lusions to your directions to other agents in other
places ; — and in one of them you may ask the
agent to bring with him, when he comes to \qpk
over vouchers with you, certain valuable deeds
which you have left with him, and possibly an
overcoat which you had left behind when you
last went to confer with him.* And these letters
would be very different, in substance and style
from those you wrote to your child.
Or, again, there may be some point of law,
some question of priority of title to the property
you claim but which some one disputes, or, if not
priority of title, then the actual validity of your
own title or other grounds as against the counter-
claimant. Your letters on that subject would be
likely to abound in argument for the validity of
the title you claim — and the letters on this head
would be entirely different from those you wrote
merely giving directions as to certain details
where there was no dispute.
Now, as a matter of fact, the various letters of
St. Paul which we have in the New Testament
differ from one another in precisely these and
* 2 Timothy iv. 13. " The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus,
when thou comest bring with thee, and the books, but especially
the parchments."

5°
similar features. To ignore these differences is
to misread his letters — utterly, absolutely, fatally.
There is one important historical fact in this con
nection which is apt in our time to be overlooked,
but it is a vital fact : and the question involved in
it is a vital question. It was settled so long ago
that it has no such practical interest for us now
as it had for the early Church ; but it was not
settled without a bitter struggle on both sides.
It is somewhat the fashion to speak and write
of the unity, the harmony of the Church in apos
tolic days. We read, for instance, in Acts ix. 31,
"Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea
and Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified ; and
walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the com
fort of the Holy Spirit, were multiplied : " and we
love to dream of that as the condition of things
throughout the apostolic age, and to think that
if we could only get back to the temper of the
Church in that age, all our divisions would be
healed : forgetting that this description applied
to only a brief period and a limited locality.
The fact is that the apostolic Church was
shaken to its very foundations by a " burning
question " that would not be extinguished and
that threatened for a time the annihilation of the
placid condition of things above described : — a
question which was started at Antioch in Syria,

5i
which was appealed to Jerusalem and was passed
upon definitely by the apostles gathered there,
but which even their decision could not set to
rest. It spread, it raged, not only in Palestine
and parts adjacent, but in the Church in Colossse,
in Galatia, in Ephesus, even in Rome. Its origin
and progress can be definitely traced. We read
(and the passage is most significant) in Acts xi.
26, that "the disciples were called Christians first
in Antioch." It was possibly given as a nickname
by outsiders, but it marked what we call "a new
departure." It meant that those who were so
called had been hitherto regarded as merely a
new Jewish sect, with whom the rest of the world
had not much to do. But at Antioch there was a
preponderance, apparently, of the Gentile element
in the Church, who did not conform to the peculi
arities of the Mosaic ritual as the Jewish disciples
did ; and the non-conformity was so marked that
it drew public attention to the fact, and made a
new name necessary to describe the fact, and so
the new name Christian, a title of reproach, prob
ably, came into being. News of the anomaly (for
such it then was) soon came to Jerusalem, and
certain Jewish disciples came to Antioch "and
taught the brethren saying Except ye be circum
cised after the manner of Moses ye cannot be
saved." The leaders of the Church at Antioch,

52
notably Paul and Barnabas, who had lately re
turned from their first missionary circuit among
the Gentiles as well as the Jews of Asia Minor, at
once took issue with them, "had no small dissen
sion and disputation with them," and the burning
question was launched upon the Church, "Shall
the uncircumcised Gentile as well as the circum
cised Jew be admitted to the privileges of the
Christian covenant on terms of perfect equality,
or must the Gentile first become by adoption a
Jew, before he can be a Christian ?"
It was carried by Paul and Barnabas to the
College of Apostles at Jerusalem — all of them
Jews, be it remembered. There was at first
some doubt : but upon hearing from Paul and
Barnabas the full account of their missionary
work among the Gentiles, and the indisputable
evidence of the grace of Christ, through faith in
him only and without any conformity to the Mo
saic ritual,— a grace bestowed by the Holy Spirit
upon believing Jew and believing Gentile without
distinction — there seemed nothing more 'to be
said in opposition. The Apostle James — (jfames,
be it noted, not Peter, was the presiding bishop —
Peter's supremacy was a claim undreamed of in
those days) — declared the question settled, by
the authority of the Holy Spirit and the declara
tions of the Hebrew prophets themselves who

53
predicted that a time was coming when Gentile
and Jew should be gathered into one fold under
one Shepherd ; and that this was not an inno
vation. " Known unto God are all his works
from the beginning of the world," he said :
" Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not
them which from among the Gentiles are turned
unto God : but that we write unto them that they
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from forni
cation, and from things strangled, and from
blood. For Moses of old time hath in every
city them that preach him, being read in the
synagogues every Sabbath day."
So the letter was written, conveying the unan
imous decision of the Apostolic College. In
these days, I suppose it might be called a sylla
bus, or a papal allocution, or a papal bull : — but
observe, it was James, not Peter, who issued it in
the name of what now might be called the Col
lege of Cardinals sitting as assessors.
It would 'seem as if this apostolic decision
should set the question at rest. But it did not,
although it had been definitely agreed that while
Peter should continue his ministrations to the
Jewish branch of the Church, Paul should be
equally free to be, what he now definitely became,
".the Apostle to the Gentiles." Wherever he
went, he proclaimed the free and untrammeled

54
gospel of Christ ; — that if a man, no matter who
he was, so believed in Christ as to become a new
creature in him, he was saved through that faith
in Christ alone and not through any adherence
to Mosaism : — in short, that the Gentiles had now,
in conformity with the unchanging purpose of
God, since the " fulness of the times " had come,
been admitted to the number of the elect to cove
nant privileges on the same terms as the Jew : —
that this election, which had before been confined,
for purposes already shown, to the Jew, was now
extended to all the world ; that henceforth there
was to be, so far as those privileges went,
" neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian,
bond nor free ; but Christ all and in all." This
gospel he proclaimed, wherever he went, first to
the Jew as having the privileges of the prior elec
tion, and then to the Gentile as having the privi
leges of the full election.
It was just this, distinctively this, that brought
upon the apostle to the Gentiles all his troubles
and persecutions in his missionary labours.
Wherever he went, the Judaizing Christians
(enough of them at least to be a hindrance to
him) dogged his steps, denouncing him as an
apostate Jew, and bitterly opposing his teaching,
insisted that to be thorough Christians the Gen
tiles must embrace Judaism. After he had estab-

55
lished a church anywhere, and went to other
places for the same purpose, they came in his
absence and strove to unsettle the minds of his
converts, and to raise everywhere the burning
question which had been decided against them
and in Paul's favour by the Apostolic College at
Jerusalem. Hearing of these disturbances — more
rife in some of his churches than in others, — he
wrote letters to establish, or re-establish, in his
converts the faith which he had taught them ; in
which letters he restated and re-argued the point
at issue, to prove again and again the truth that
the election to covenant privileges was now ex
tended to all the world, and that faith in Christ,
and faith in Christ only, was the means by which
they became available. This is the point, the
whole point, and nothing but the point in all
his arguments concerning election. If we read
them in this light we read them aright. If we
read them otherwise, we miss the whole point ;
and introduce into them a question of metaphys
ics as to individuals which he never raised, which
he never touched upon.
I can best prove the truth of these assertions
by giving at a future time a brief analysis of
those of his epistles which make this a prominent
feature of their contents. All that I have said
hitherto has been by way of introduction to this.

56
The introduction has been a long one ; but with
out it, the fact I wish to show might not be so
clearly comprehended. I shall be happy to be
lieve that what I have already said may have the
effect of making any feel that the horrible Calvin-
istic view of this matter of election has no basis
in revelation, whatever basis it may have in meta
physics : but with the latter, I have not much
concern. " Let the dead bury their dead."

BIBLE STUDY IV.
"And we know that all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did pre
destinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover,
whom he did predestinate, them he also called ; and whom
he called, them he also justified ; and whom he justified,
them he also glorified." — Rom. viii. 28-30.
We saw last Sunday that it is a most natural
thing that the subject matter of such letters as
we write to each other should vary according to
the kind of persons to whom they are written, to
their circumstances, and to the object we have in
view when writing them, and no one — no sane
person, that is — undertakes to read and under
stand such letters without taking all these things
into consideration. I stated that this same nat
ural rule holds good in reading and trying to un
derstand the letters, and notably those from St.
Paul, which we have in the New Testament.
Let us examine some of them, and begin with
the one which out of its proper chronological or
der stands first in the canon ; one of the two
longest, and the most elaborately constructed one
of the whole collection. (57)

58
The first question is, Who composed .die church
to whom that epistle was written ? The general
title of it is " The epistle of Paul the apostle to
'the Romans."
But who were these " Romans " ? Of course,
people at Rome. But what sort of people ?
In the first place, we learn from the opening of
the letter, that' he had never been among them
personally, (i. 13.), at the time when the letter
was written.
We gather from the close of the " Acts of the
Apostles," that when he did reach Rome, he was
met, on his arrival, by "the brethren." This was
a current name for "Christians" among them
selves. We also find that after he had rested
from his journey, he called the chief of the Jews
together, following his habitual custom of deliver
ing his message first to them. The context
shows clearly that these were Jews who had not
embraced Christianity, and Paul tried to give them
reasons for embracing it, appealing, as his cus
tom was, to their own Scriptures. " Some believed
the things that were spoken, and some believed
not." Then Paul, as was also his custom when
his brother Jews refused to believe, made this
declaration :- — " Be it known therefore unto you
that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gen
tiles, and that they will hear it."

59
It is tolerably evident from all this, that these
"Jews" were not among the number of those
who are called "the brethren" who met Paul on
his arrival, and who had previously known of his
coming. Not they therefore, but "the brethren"
were the ones to whom the letter had been pre
viously written.
If we turn to the epistle itself, both at its open
ing and its close, we shall see that the Christian
Church at Rome, called by the "chief of the
Jews" above mentioned "this new sect, every
where spoken against," had been probably
founded by some Christian Jews, (among them
Aquila and Priscilla,) and that there was a con
siderable Gentile element in the Church there.
There had apparently been, (as we learn from
chapter xiv.) a discussion of what I last Sunday
called a "burning question," viz : — whether Gen
tiles must not embrace Jewish customs before they
could be admitted to the full covenant privileges
of the Christian Church : and the letter (as we
learn from itself) had been written with the main
view of confirming the Gentile converts in the be
lief that without this conformity to Judaism they
had these full Christian privileges, and also with
the view at the same time of correcting the mis
apprehensions of the Jewish Christians at Rome
on this subject.

6o
In chapter i. 13 — we read " Now I would not
have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I
purposed to come unto you (but was hindered
hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among
you also, even as among other Gentiles."
2. What was the motive in writino- the letter?
In chapter xv. 15 — seq., we have the Apostle's
own statement of his motive in writing the letter —
"Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more
boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in
mind, because of the grace that is given to me of
God, that I should be the minister of Christ unto
the Gentiles, that the offering up of the Gentiles
might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy
Spirit. I have therefore whereof I may glory
through Jesus Christ in those things which per
tain unto God."
3. Now, the third question is, How did St. Paul
carry out this motive, of confirming the Gentiles
in the faith that they, as Gentile Christians, with
out conformity to Judaism, were entitled to a full
participation in covenant privileges, and also of
correcting the misapprehensions of the Jewish
Christians at Rome on this head ?
For an answer, 1 submit a very brief and gen
eral analysis ofthe contents of the epistle itself —
which must be read in the light of this clearly ex
pressed motive, and also as being, from the close

6i
of the proem, to the end of the eleventh chapter,
what it really is, one of the most elaborate argu
ments that has ever been written. We cannot, in
any fairness, hack it into pieces, and consider each
bit separately without noting its being a link in a
chain of argument. The " top- (k) not come down"
process will crush all the sense out of it.*
And I must ask you to remember that the
analysis, under the circumstances of the case,
must be very general : — simply pointing out the
heads of the different parts of an argument every
sentence of which will bear close study : a study
I hope you will make for yourselves, and make
the more readily and truly because of these hints
at the general drift.
After the proem, the apostle states his general
* Lest any should not understand this allusion, it may be stated
that a certain minister had a dislike to the elaborate way in which
the women of his congregation put up their back hair. He re
solved to do battle with this form of ungodliness in his pulpit, and,
taking for his text (that he might have Scriptural authority for his
position) the words "top-knot come down," he delivered a
scathing sermon which made the ears of those who heard it to
tingle. Some skeptic, however, ventured to express his doubts
as to whether the injunction of the text was really a part of Holy
Scripture. He was assured by the preacher that it was, and for a
verification was referred to St. Matthew xxiv. 17, where the skeptic
read as follows : — " Let him that is on the house lop not come
down to take anything out of his house " ! The story may not be
true ; but there has been, unfortunately, such a mass of trash
preached by those who "wrest the Scriptures," that it can stand
as a fair sample of the process, and without any exaggeration.

62
proposition : viz : — that the Gospel of Christ " is
the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the
Gentile." He then goes on to show how both Gentile
and Jew need that gospel and the salvation which
it offers and confers if it be accepted. The Gen
tile world, outside of the covenant privileges
which had been granted to the Jew, left to find
its own way, had sunk deeper and deeper into sin
and vice. The Jew, with all his covenant privi
leges, had done little better.
Some one is then supposed asking, " What ad
vantage then hath the Jew, and what profit is
there in circumcision ? " The apostle answers
" Much every way ; chiefly because that unto
them were committed the oracles of God : " but
then goes on to show how poor a use they had
made of those privileges, so that "both Jew and
Gentile are all under sin ; " both those who had
the law and those who had it not.
It must be remembered that the term "law"
as used by St. Paul in this special connection does
not mean the moral law which he does refer to in
another part of his argument — the observance of
which he strenuously and always insisted upon —
but, just here, that whole system of ceremonial
law and tradition which marked the Jews off from

63
all other peoples' and in which they gloried, as-if
the simple possession of it sufficed for personal
salvation. What then shall be taken in the place
of this to secure the salvation which their use of
it did not secure ? His answer is, salvation by
grace through faith in Christ : and he concludes
that a man is justified— i. e., made and kept right
eous — by the operation of this faith without the
deeds of the (ceremonial) law. As a confirmation
of this view, he then goes on to show how it was
hy faith, and before even he was circumcised, that
Abraham was then "justified." And again- he
concludes from this example, that being " justified
hy faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ." He then goes on to show
that the atonement of Christ takes away the sin
of the world, and that the resurrection of Christ
is the source of new spiritual life to man as such;
and proceeds to show the work of the Holy
Spirit unto righteousness : and concludes that
there is "therefore now no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after
the flesh but after the Spirit!' m spite of the fact
of the sufferings of this present life, where " the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now." His thought is that this
blessedness, this adoption into these covenant
privileges, belongs, through Christ, to man as

64
man, irrespective of any restrictions which had
gone before. The call to it, the blessedness of
it, the justification of it, the future glorification,
begun in the peace of the present, is now open
to all through Christ. And then he answers the
unspoken question, " But is not all this an inno
vation, an afterthought?" "Is not, by all prece
dent, the blessedness of all this confined to the
election of old, tlie. chosen people ? "
"No," he in effect answers, "this is no mere
afterthought. This is part of the unchangeable
purpose of God. The call, the election to these
privileges, of the Gentiles, has all been foreknown
and provided for. For (as he shows elsewhere)
this call of the Gentiles is part of God's purpose and
therefore of his foreknowledge : and we know that
all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose. , For whom he did foreknow, he did
also predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the first born among
many brethren, (z. e., as the whole of the preceding
part of the epistle has shown, not the Jews only,
but also the Gentiles) — Moreover, this is not a
call to, a predestination to, only partial privileges,
but whom he did predestinate, them he also call
ed : and whom he called, them he also justified —
(i. e., as he has already shown, by faith in Christ) ;

65
and whom he justified, them he also glorified, —
as fully as the race of Israel — to whom pertaineth
the adoption — (the prior adoption, that is), and the
glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
law, and the service of God, and the promises ;
whose are the fathers, and of whom as concern
ing the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God
blessed for ever."
Now, at this point, I must interrupt the argu
ment of St. Paul to ask you to remember what
St. James said, on this subject of the foreknowl
edge of God, when the question was brought (as
stated last Sunday) to the College of Apostles at
Jerusalem whether the Gentiles might be admit
ted, without their observing the provisions of the
Mosaic covenant, into the Christian Church on
terms of entire equality with the Jews who con
tinued, as a matter of birthright, to observe those
provisions. That they should be so admitted was,
in effect, claimed by their opponents, to be an in
novation, an afterthought, which it would be dan
gerous to sanction. " Not so," said the Apostle
James. " Known unto God are all his works
from the beginning of the world." This is part
of his plan. " And to this agree the words of
the prophets : as it is written, After this I will re
turn and will build again the tabernacle of David,
which is fallen down : and 1 will build again the

66
ruins thereof, and I will set it up ; that the residue
of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gen
tiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord,
who doeth all these things." St. James and St.
Paul are thus seen to be in absolute accord, and
use almost the same terms in dealing with this
question. * * *
Let us now resume the argument of St. Paul,
in the Epistle to the Romans. He makes an
historical retrospect of God and the Church in
history — the Jewish Church, be it remembered.
He shows how they_ abused and neglected their
covenant privileges, except the " remnant " which
handed down the trust to posterity : and shows
that the judgments of God on the chosen race
were " 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. As he saith also in Hosea, I will call
them my people which were not my people ; and
her beloved which was not beloved. And it shall
come to pass that in the place where it was said
unto them 'ye are not mypeople;' there shall
they be called the children of the living God."
He concludes, — "What shall we say then ? — That
the Gentiles, which followed not after righteous
ness have attained unto righteousness, even the
righteousness which is hy faith."

67
He then goes on to show how and why Israel
(who had the law) had not attained unto this
righteousness, and how they had stumbled in the
way of covenant privileges : but he claims that this
stumbling is not a permanent fall ; and his grand
peroration is in these words : " For I would not,
brethren " (he is addressing the Gentile element
in the Roman Church) — " that ye should be igno
rant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in
your own conceits ; that blindness in part is hap
pened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles
be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved : as
it is written, There shall come out of Sion the De
liverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from
Jacob ; for this is my covenant unto them, when
I shall take away their sins. As concerning the
gospel, they are enemies for your sakes ; but as
touching the election, they are beloved for the
fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God
are without repentance. For as ye" (Gentiles)
" in times past have not believed God, yet have
now obtained mercy through their unbelief; even
so have these also now not believed, that through
your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For
God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he
might have mercy upon all. O, the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and

68
his way, past finding out ! For who hath known
the mind of the Lord ? Or who hath been his
counsellor ? Or who hath first given to him, and
it shall be recompensed unto him again ? For of
him, and through him, and to him, are all things :
to whom be glory forever. Amen."
This ends the argument for the election of the
Gentiles to covenant privileges : and the second
division of the epistle begins at the twelfth chap
ter ; an exhortation to use these privileges aright ;
in effect, as another apostle wrote, to "make
their calling and election sure ; " for he writes "I
beseech you therefore, brethren " — i. e., in view of
your admission to these gracious privileges by
the election of God and through baptism into
Christ — "by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable service. And
be not conformed to this world, but be ye trans
formed by the renewing of your mind, that ye
may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and
perfect will of God." The rest of the epistle is
taken up with showing them how to do this.
It is absolutely clear, then, from the whole
course of the argument in the first eleven chap
ters of the Epistle to the Romans, that the pas
sage which forms the text refers not to any elec
tion, or predestination, or foreknowledge, of any

69
individuals as such to indefectible salvation, (and
by necessary inference to the absolute and irre
trievable damnation of others), but that it does
refer to the call, the election of the Gentile world
to a participation in the full covenant privileges
which before had been confined to the race of
Israel. That was the "burning question" of
the times; that was the main issue before the
Church at that time ; that was the point of the
whole argument in the first eleven chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans. The destiny of indi
viduals was not the point at issue, and is not
touched upon in the argument.
But I may not leave this epistle without a ref
erence to a passage which (on the proof-text
method of interpretation) does seem to refer
to individuals, and to give not only a colour to,
but an absolute establishment of, the Calvinistic
position. It is found in the ninth chapter. To
save time, I will not state both positions, but will
simply outline the true meaning of it as a part of
the argument. You can read the passage for
yourselves. The whole point of it is a discussion
of the selection, the election, the call, the pre
destination, the foreordaining — call it what you
will — of one class of persons rather than another
class to covenant privileges. The apostle has
nothing to say about this but that it was God's

JO
will that it should be so. He begins by remind
ing- his readers that this selection was made even
between different branches of the stock of Abra
ham himself. Not Ishmael and his descendants,
but Isaac, and his descendants were selected as
recipients of the covenant grace of the old dis
pensation of Isaac s branch. Not Esau (although
he was the elder) and his descendants, but Jacob,
the younger, the " supplanter," and his descend
ants were elected, — as is expressed in the strong
Oriental hyperbole " Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated." And he shows that this was part
of a divine plan before the birth of Jacob and
Esau. Well, then, he asks ; — is there unrighteousness
in this selection of one race rather than another
to be the inheritor of these covenant blessings ?
By no means, is his answer : it is not so much a
matter of leaving one race out — for reasons
known to Divine Wisdom — as it is a matter of su
perlative mercy to the race selected. Man might
have chosen the other way — in favour of the elder
brother instead of the younger ; but " it is not of
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of
God that sheweth mercy."
Then he recurs to two illustrations : — one from
Scripture history, the other from the common in
dustrial life of the day.

7i
-v The first is to illustrate the fact — illustrated all
through biblical history — that men are used in
divine Providence to carry out his plans very
much as (to use a modem way of putting it) a
skillful player uses the pieces on a chess-board to
win the game. They are pawns in the game of
man's life, unconscious of the plan of the game,
but the instruments by which it is won. That
was the case with Pharaoh, whose own self-will
first hardened his own heart (as we learn from
the Old Testament account itself — the same ma
terial that Paul drew from) — and then was let
alone to reap the fruits of his self-will and hardness
of heart : — a result, according to Hebrew meth
ods of thought and teleology, described as God's
hardening his heart, so that God's power was
more grandly displayed because of Pharaoh's op
position than it would have been without his
opposition in the freeing of Israel from Egyptian
bondage in the fulness of his mercy. And the
apostle's conclusion is — by way simply of show
ing God's overruling providence in establishing
(in spite of Pharaoh's opposition) Israel and not
Esau - in the possession of the covenant privi
leges, — " Therefore hath he mercy upon whom
he will, and whom he will he hardeneth." Let
me press upon your attention, by reiteration,
the fact that the matter referred to in all this is

72
not any one's election to personal salvation or rep
robation to personal damnation, but simply the
maintaining the election of Israel to be the chosen
people of that period of history.
But is this thing • right ? Had God a right to
make this selection of Israel ? Had he a right to
leave Esau out, as he also left Ishmael out when
he chose Isaac to be the possessor of the cove
nant ? Would it not have been more righteous
to have chosen both and all of them equally for
this purpose ? Ishmael, Esau, left to themselves,
could not be expected to attain the spiritual stand
ard of the elect Isaac and the elect Jacob, and as
a matter of fact fell far below the chosen seed in
this respect. And here the1 apostle breaks in
with an exposition of the folly of any man's un
dertaking to usurp God's place in ordering the
course of his Providence. Just as foolish would
it be for the clay in the potter's hands to dictate
into what sort of a vessel it should be made. The
potter uses his own will and his own discretion in
such matters. He makes one vessel for one use,
another vessel for another use. But St. Paul does
not say that the potter makes any vessel simply
for the pleasure of destroying it after it is made.
It may prove itself fit for destruction, after it is
made. That is another thing. If we may mod
ernize the form of his thought it would be some
what thus : — the potter may mould a graceful

73
vessel for use as an ornament, he may make also
a common skillet for cooking purposes. Each
has its use.
And just so it was God's will that one race and
not another. should be chosen for a time to be the
exclusive possessors of certain covenant blessings.
That is the apostle's illustration from history ;
and he passes on at once to apply his illustration
to the enlargement of the scope of covenant priv
ileges — so that, even as the Hebrew prophets
themselves had predicted, when God's time came,
they should be available to all men. Nothing
else can fairly be made out of even this passage
if it be read as part of the argument. If each
verse be taken separately, and treated as though
there were no context, I freely admit that the Cal-
vinistic doctrine would be made out as a part of
revelation ; and that is the only way, and it is a
very false way, in which its truth can be main
tained as being revealed, — at any rate in the
epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans. Noth
ing was farther from the apostle's thought, noth
ing could be a more complete and wicked per
version of what he wrote and intended those to
whom he wrote to understand by his words both
of argument and of illustration.
There are, however, other epistles of St. Paul in
which his declarations in the Epistle to the Romans
are corroborated. With a future consideration

74
of those others, I shall conclude this portion of
the answer to the question How best to study
the Bible.
'Meantime, I ask you to read for yourselves the
Epistle to the Romans at one time continuously
from the beginning to the end of the eleventh
chapter, where the argument is finished. If you
find what I have said, to be borne out by the con
tents of the epistle, accept my exposition as true :
if not so borne out, reject it.
In your study of the details of each of the gen
eral divisions of the argument as I have above
sketched them, you will undoubtedly meet with
things hard to understand without help. I know
of no volume in which you can find so much help
as you will get in "An Exposition of the Epistle
to the Romans" by Dr. Morgan Dix. The vol
ume is small in bulk, but filled with clear thought
and great wisdom.* If you have been tainted
and made wretched by a Calvinistic interpreta
tion, in this volume you- will find help to joy and
peace in believing a better because a truer expo
sition of the apostle's thought.
* Since this was written, I have learned that Dr. Dix's " Ex
position" is out of print. It is to be hoped that it may soon be
reprinted. It is too valuable a book to be lost to general circula
tion among those who wish to know what the apostle actually did
mean in this most argumentative treatise ; for such it is, although
in form a letter.

BIBLE STUDY V.
" Now to him that is able to stablish you according to my
gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence
through times eternal, but now is manifested, and, through
the Scriptures of the prophets according to the command
ment of the Eternal God, is made known unto all the nations
unto obedience of faith; — to the only wise God, through
Jesus Christ, be glory forever. Amen." — Rom. xvi. 25-27
(R. V.).
Last Sunday we went briefly through the argu
ment which St. Paul maintains in his letter to the
Romans from the beginning of it to what (as we
have it divided in our editions of the Bible) is the
end of the eleventh chapter.
The remainder of the letter is principally taken
up with directions for practical goodness which
should "reasonably" or "logically" follow the
admission to those covenant privileges which had
in times past been confined to the race of Israel,
but to which the election of all nations had been
proclaimed through the work of Christ Jesus the
Lord. At the very end of the letter, the apostle re
verts, in his ascription of glory to God, to
the point of his whole preceding argument and
(75)

76
of the practical directions which he has given
after establishing the conclusion which that argu
ment was framed to elucidate : namely, the elec
tion of the Gentiles to a participation in the cove
nant privileges of Abraham, — covenant privileges
which rested upon faith and not a conformity to
the ceremonial law given, for a temporary pur
pose of education, through Moses.
He reverts to this unchangeable, unchanged,
but hitherto concealed, purpose or decree of God,
as being a mystery. Now it is to be carefully
remembered that "mystery" in the language of
the New Testament simply means " something
concealed " — whether it is hard or easy to under
stand. And the apostle writes of this mystery as
now standing clearly evident by the removal of
the veil which had hitherto concealed it. That is
the meaning of the word "revelation," — a draw
ing back of a veil or curtain behind which some
thing had been hidden.
These words standing at the end of the Epis
tle to the Romans will serve as a bridge over
which we may pass to some of the other letters of
the same apostle where the same thought is am
plified, and amplified upon the same lines as and
upon no other lines than those along which his
argument progressed in the Epistle to the Ro
mans.

77
You may remember what I said about different
sorts or classes of letters. Let me quote some
words of Archdeacon Farrar (St. Paul ii. 410 seq.)
about the letters of St. Paul — that is of course, his
letters which are extant. He may have written
many more, which are lost : but those which re
main " fall naturally into four connected groups
'separated from each other alike by chronological
intervals and by internal characteristics.' * * *
These groups may be respectively characterized
as the Eschatological Epistles (1. 2. Thess.) ; the
Epistles of the Anti-Judaic Controversy (1. 2.
Cor. ; Galat. Rom.) ; the Letters against incipient
Gnosticism (Col. Ephes.) ; and the Pastoral Epis
tles (1.2. Tim. ; Tit.) The Epistles to the Philip-
plans and to Philemon stand in most respects
separate from the group to which they belong"
according to their chronological arrangement as
epistles of the first imprisonment of St. Paul at
Rome. With reference to the question which now oc
cupies us (election), we need not dwell upon the
two letters to the Corinthians ; because, although
they belong to the group of the anti-Judaic con
troversy, they "are largely occupied with the per
sonal question of Paul's apostolate," (Farrar ii.
411.) And, on the other hand, we shall find in
some of the anti-Gnostic epistles what connects

7»
them very closely with the argument in Romans
and Galatians. To this latter epistle we now turn
to let it speak for itself by a general analysis of
its contents. It belongs to the same group as the
Epistle to the Romans, and its turn of thought is
very similar, except that it is shorter and shows
evidences of more heat : and no wonder. The
Epistle to the Romans was a calm dispassionate
argument addressed to persons whom the writer
had never seen, but who (he seems to have
known) were discussing a question upon which
he desires to give them full and clear light, that
their discussions and questionings might result in
a firm conviction of the logical necessity of the
conclusion to which he would lead them.
With the Galatians, the case was very different.
The Church among them seems to have been
composed chiefly if not entirely of Gentiles ; the
apostle himself had founded it : he had carefully
and lovingly instructed its members in that gos
pel of Christ to the Gentiles which had been
specifically entrusted to him. After this, and
during his absence from them, some Judaizing
teachers had come among them, had troubled
their consciences, had subverted the simplicity of
the faith which Paul had taught them, had actu
ally turned them aside to "another gospel" as he
called it : had, in short, nullified his teaching and
perverted his converts.

79
It was a period of the apostle's life which has
well been called " the storm and press " period.
He was naturally a hot-tempered man (as we
learn from several recorded cases), and the situa
tion was such here that his righteous anger burst
out in blazing thoughts and words : —
"Though we or an angel from heaven should
preach any gospel other than that which we
preached unto you, let him be cursed. As we
have said before, so say I now again, If any man
preacheth unto you any other gospel than that
which ye received, let him be cursed " —
This was a pretty warm opening for a letter.
He then declares that the gospel he had preached
to them was not a human invention : " For" he
writes, "neither did I receive it from man nor was
I taught it but through revelation of Jesus Christ."
He then reminds them how zealous he had
been in defence of Judaism when he was first
brought into contact with Christianity : but how,
when it was the good pleasure of God to set him
apart for his real lifework and to reveal his Son
in him that he might preach him among the Gen
tiles, he had "not conferred with flesh and blood,"
had not gone " up to Jerusalem to them that were
apostles before " him ; but, on the contrary had
gone into Arabia, where we have some reason to
suppose he remained in a studious retirement for

8o
about three years, becoming established in that
view of the gospel which he ever afterwards
maintained. He then recounts his subsequent experiences
and labours, and the various visits he had made
to Jerusalem to confer as an equal with, not to be
instructed as a disciple by, the apostles who were
there : and among these visits he alludes to the
one upon which I dwelt in a previous sermon,
and during which he says "James, Cephas, and
John, who were reputed to be pillars gave to me
and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that
we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
the circumcision."
He next tells the Galatians how, afterwards,
when Peter came to Antioch, he, Paul, had " re
sisted him to the face because he (Peter) stood
condemned " for his vacillation and dissimulation
in this question between Jew and Gentile. Evi
dently, St. Paul knew nothing of a later doctrine
of St. Peter's overlordship of the apostles and
the whole church, or of his infallibility in ques
tions of faith and morals.
The point he makes is, you will remember, that
he preached the gospel which he did preach — of
full and free salvation to the Gentiles through
faith in Christ — as a matter of divine revela
tion, not of human instruction. He then pro-

8i
ceeds to argue, and on the same lines as he fol
lows in the Epistle to the Romans, that it has all
along been God's will, his foreordination, that
when the promised seed of Abraham should
come, all nations and not the Jews only, should
be blessed in and through that seed by a partici
pation in the saving faith of Abraham. His
method of reasoning, in some of the illustrations
during the course of the argument, is perhaps to
our way of interpreting Scripture somewhat ob
scure and mystical ; but it was the method of the
school in which he had been brought up, and in
which the very Judaizers whom he condemned
were proficient. He simply takes weapons from
their own armoury to turn against them. But, be
this as it may, the point he wishes to establish is
perfectly evident.
The letter is intensely personal throughout, and
the ending of it intensifies this characteristic of
it. Usually, by reason of some ophthalmic or
other infirmity, his letters were written by an
amanuensis at his dictation ; and he simply wrote
a few words at the end to certify the letter as his.
But he could not trust this letter to an amanuen
sis. This is the conclusion of it, and you will see
how he sums up and restates the whole previous
substance of it : —
" See with how large letters I have written unto

82
you with mine own hand. As many as desire to
make a fair show in the flesh, they compel you to
be circumcised ; only that they may not be perse
cuted for the cross of Christ. For not even they
who receive circumcision do themselves keep the
law ; but they desire to have you circumcised,
that they may glory in your flesh. But far be it
from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, through whom the world hath been
crucified unto me and I unto the world. For
neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircum-
cision, but a new creature. And as many as
shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them,
and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From
henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear
branded upon my body the marks of Jesus. The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your
spirit, brethren. Amen."
Now, as I did in connection with the Epistle to
the Romans, I ask you to read the Epistle to the
Galatians for yourselves, continuously at one
time, from beginning to end, and judge for your
selves whether! have made a fair and true sum
mary of its contents. I have quoted from — as
I have used in' making the analysis — the reviaed
version of the English translation. You will find,
in some minor points, the meaning of some ex-

83
pressions more clearly brought out by this ver
sion ; and furthermore, the form of its editing
will relieve you from the distraction of the verse-
arrangement. The object in thus reading the Epistle to the
Galatians is this : You will not find the words
"election" "predestination" &c, as you find
them in the Romans : but you will find the line
of argument, the points made, the quotations
from the Old Testament, precisely similar to
those in the more elaborate* stately, and more
fully argued-out Epistle to the Romans. The two
letters belong to the same period of the apos
tle's life, and show the thought which dominated
his activities at that time. Any expressions, any
technical terms, used in the more elaborate Epis
tle, must be interpreted in harmony with the
whole Sustained line of thought, arid not in dis
cord from it, which is found in both. If I may
make such a comparison, the letter to the Gala
tians is like the lawyer's brief; the letter to the
Romans is his fully developed argument when he
comes to plead in court. Brief and argument
must be in harmony with one another. In this
case they are. In neither is there the faintest
trace that the apostle was wishing to propound,
or had the slightest reference to, the Calvinistic
dogma of individual predestination, election, or

84
reprobation. He may have had his views upon
the abstract question, but he has not declared
them in either of these epistles, at any rate. " It
is not so nominated in the bond."
Some one may say however that there is "a
bond" in which this dogma is "nominated," and
point to an epistle of St. Paul's for the proof.
The passage is this ; — and it is found in one of
the letters which, as I have stated, deals largely
with questions as to the validity of St. Paul's
apostolate. In 2d Cor. iv. 3 — the apostle writes,
according to the King James's Version, thus : —
" But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them which
are lost: in whom the god of this world hath
blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is
the image of God, should shine unto them."
I freely admit that in this form of the presen
tation of what St. Paul wrote, he taught Calvin
ism. But for all that, he did not teach it, This
form is a mistranslation of what he wrote. The
revised version relieves the statement to a certain
extent of its alleged Calvinism, but not entirely :
for the revised version puts it thus : " But and if
our gospel is veiled it is veiled in them that are
perishing, in whom the god of this world hath
blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is

85
the image of God, should not dawn." The alter
nate reading in the margin of the revised version
is "that they should not see the light of the gospel
of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."
Now in both these renderings, the expressions
"jest the glorious gospel of Christ should shine
unto them," or " that the light of the gospel of
the glory of Christ should not dawn," or the mar
ginal form, " that they should not see the light of
the gospel of the glory of Christ," all tend to
produce the impression in the mind of one who
reads merely the English translation that it is
God's purpose that they should not see and there
fore that they can not see &c. But the structure
of the Greek sentence which Paul himself wrote,
while it may be strained to mean this so as to
make it fit in with the preconceptions of ascertain
theological system, yet as a matter of fact very
much more fairly and accurately has- another
meaning : and the whole passage properly reads
thus : " But and if our gospel is hid (or veiled), it
is hid (or veiled) in them that are perishing, so
that they do not see the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the image of God." It is
the result, not the purpose, which the apostle is
writing about.
The difference between the two forms of state
ment, you will observe, is this. He does not say

86
"they are lost!' but "they are perishing ; " and
the reason of it is that "the god of this world
hath blinded them," in and through their " unbe
lief," so that as a result they do " not see Christ
as the image of God " and turn to him for salva
tion. He does not put this forth as God's pur
pose ; he simply mentions it as a fact. The
.thought is absolutely different in the two forms of
statement. A comparison with another passage of the
New Testament will perhaps make this more
clear. In Acts ii. 47, we read, in the King James's
.translation, "And the Lord added to the church
daily such as should be saved," implying that there
were others who could not be saved and so were
not "added to the church." The Calvinism of
these translators got the better of their knowl
edge of Greek construction, and they arbitrarily
and lawlessly "impinged" (to use a word now
current in the municipality of Philadelphia) the
Calvinism into the passage. The revised ver
sion translates accurately thus: " And the Lord
added to them day by day those that were, being
saved" — a more cumbrous form of English, but
an accurate translation. The meaning of the two
statements is as absolutely different as it is in the
passage in 2d Corinthians. The Greek, in both
places, has not a trace of the Calvinistic dogma

87
of the arbitrary election of individuals on the
one hand, or of their arbitrary and helpless rep
robation on the other. And I venture the state
ment that this will be found to be the case in all
the other detached statements which it is claimed
teach the Calvinistic doctrine as a matter of
Scripture revelation.
There is not time this morning to examine the
connected teaching of the Epistles to the Ephe
sians and to the Colossians. It will be done on a
future occasion.
Meantime let us heed the warning as to the
inevitable relation between cause and effect which
is so clearly set before us in the passage of 2d
Corinthians which 1 have just quoted.
If we allow " the god of this world " with its
materialism, its agnosticism, its love of evil, to
blind our eyes to the blessedness and the saving
power of the gospel message, that relationship
between cause and effect will assert itself for us.
As long as we submit to the blinding process we
" are perishing." As long as we yield to the
somnolence of carelessness and unconcern, we
" are perishing.
"Wherefore he saith 'Awake, thou that sleep-
est, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give
thee life! " Responsibility is never exacted apart
from ability to do that for which the person is
held responsible.

BIBLE STUDY VI.
" Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was
this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearch
able riches of Christ ; and to make all men see what is the
dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been
hid in God who created all things : to the intent that now
unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places,
might be made known through the Church the manifold
wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord : in whom we have bold
ness and access in confidence through our faith in him." —
Ephesians iii. 8-12.
Last Sunday the text was the closing sentence
of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans ; and I stated
that the expression " the revelation of the mystery
which hath been kept in silence through times
eternal, but now is manifested" is a bridge over
which we may pass to some of the apostle's
other letters. You can scarcely fail to recognize
the practical identity of it with the expression in
this. extract from the letter to the Ephesians which
forms the text to-day.
Both the Epistles to the Ephesians and that to
the Colossians belong to a different group of
epistles, both chronologically and as regards the
subject matter, from the group to which belong
the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans.
(89)

go
I should like very much to set before you the
full statement of their main object in the words
of a great English teacher ; but such a full extract
would consume too much of the time at our dis
posal this morning, and I can only summarize by
saying that they were directed against the in
cipient gnosticism which had begun to creep
into the Christian Church, and refer you, for full
details, to the forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fifty-
second chapters of Archdeacon Farrar's " Life
and Work of St. Paul," quoting here only a short
passage which indicates the different "style and
turn of thought in its main line as running
through Colossians and Ephesians.
" The former is specific, concrete and polemi
cal ; the latter is abstract, didactic, general. The
same words and phrases predominate in both ;
but the resemblances are far more marked and
numerous in the practical exhortations than in
the doctrinal statements. In the Epistle to the
Colossians he is primarily occupied with the refu
tation of an error ; in that to the Ephesians he is
absorbed in the rapturous development of an ex
alted truth. The main theme of the Colossians
is the person of Christ ; that of the Ephesians is
the life of Christ manifested in the living energy
of his Church. In the former, Christ is the
"Plenitude," the synthesis and totality of every

9i
attribute of God ; in the latter, the ideal Church,
as the body of Christ, is the "Plenitude," the re
cipient of the fulness of him who filleth all things
with all. Christ's person is most. prominent in the
Colossians ; Christ's body, the Church of Christ,
in the Ephesians." ("St. Paul," ii. page 439.)
But with this main line of doctrinal thought
thus varied in each of these epistles, in both is
found that other thought, the election of the Gen
tiles to covenant privileges : — a thought so in
grained in Paul's spiritual consciousness that it
must needs find expression in connection with
whatever doctrinal teaching he is engaged in.
We have seen how he argued it out in the
epistles already considered : he now deals with
it as a matter fully proven : he assumes it as the
very core of the true gospel, and refers to it (as
he does at the close of the letter to the Romans)
as the mystery hitherto concealed through the
ages but now clearly made manifest. Let us see
how he dwells upon it — and first, in the Epistle
to the Ephesians. Remember — they were Gen
tiles, mainly, to whom he was writing.
The epistle, after the customary greeting, be
gins thus : (i. 3 seq.)
" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ :

92
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and without
blemish before him in love : * having foreordained
us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ
unto himself, according to the good pleasure of
his will to the praise of the glory of. his grace,
which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved :
in whom we have our redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to
the riches of his grace, which he made to abound
toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having
made known unto us the mystery of his will ac*
cording to his good pleasure which he purposed
in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the
times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things
in the heavens and the things upon the earth : — ¦
in him, 1 say, in whom we also were made an
heritage, having been foreordained according to
the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the purpose of his will." Surely, you recognize
in this the assumption of the truth he had before
established by the argument which forms the
whole of the Epistle to the Romans as far as the
end of the eleventh chapter.
But there is more of it. In the second chap
ter . (Ephesians) he recurs emphatically to the
* It must be remembered that it is the ideal Church which the
apostle has in his mind and is describing.

93
statement of this truth : — (ii. 1 1 seq!) "Wherefore
remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the
flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which
is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands ;
that ye were at that time separate from Christ,
alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers from the covenants of the promise,
having no hope and without God in the world.
But now, in Christ Jesus, ye that once were far off
are made nigh in the blood of Christ. For he is
our peace, who made both one " (i. e. both Jew
and Gentile to be one spiritual body of election
to the privileges of the gospel,) " and broke down
the -middle wall of partition " (z. e. the separation
between the Jew admitted to covenant privileges
and the Gentile not then admitted,) "having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, the law of com
mandments in ordinances ; that he might create
in himself, of the twain, one new man, so making
peace ; and might reconcile them both in one body
unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby ; and he came-and preached peace
to you that were far off, and peace to them that
were nigh : for through him we both have our ac
cess in one spirit unto the Father."
Precisely the position he had been arguing to
establish in the Epistles to the Romans and to the
Galatians : — and the statement, reiterated, runs

94
through to the end of the third chapter of the
Epistle to the Ephesians.
Then follows, as in the Epistle to the Romans,
the same exhortation to holy living which follows
his argument there : —
" I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech
you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye
were called."
Now when we come to the Epistle to the Co
lossians we find the same thought similarly stated.
He is writing to Gentiles as before.
(Colos. i. 21 seq.) "And you, being in time
past alienated and enemies in your mind in your
evil works, yet now hath he reconciled in' the
body of his flesh through death, to present you
holy — without blemish and unreprovable before
him ; if so be that ye continue in the faith
grounded and settled, and not moved away from
the hope of the gospel which ye heard, and which
was preached in all creation under heaven ;
whereof I Paul was made a minister."
"If so be that ye continue in the faith,
grounded and settled ! "
Where is the Calvinism there?
" If me no ifs " in effect says that grim system
of Molochism which spares not even the little
children ; concerning whom the Lord Jesus said
that "of such is the kingdom of heaven."

95
" Elect infants " says the Westminster Confes
sion of faith, — " Elect infants dying in infancy are
regenerated and saved by Christ through the
Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how he
pleaseth." (Cap. x. iii.) Elect infants is a phrase
which implies non-elect, that is (according to this
system) reprobated and damned infants. And to
this agree the words of John Calvin himself, as
follows : —
" You deny," he says, " that it is lawful for God
to damn any mortal except for actual transgres
sion. Nevertheless numberless infants are re
moved from life. Put forth now " he continues,
" virulence against God who precipitates harmless
newborn children, torn from their mother's
breasts, into eternal death ! "
But let us hurry away from this horrid sacrifice
to Moloch, and get back into the Christian teach
ing of St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians. He
continues (i. 24) " Now I rejoice in my sufferings
for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is
lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for
his body's sake, which is the Church ; whereof I
was made a minister, according to the dispensa
tion of God which was given me to youward, to
fulfil the word of God, even the mystery which
hath been hid from all ages and generations;
but now hath it been manifested to his saints, to
whom God was pleased to make known what is

96
the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory ;
whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and
teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may
present every man perfect in Christ ; whereunto
I labour also, striving according to his working,
which worketh in me mightily."
Then he goes on to warn them against the
gnosticism which was threatening the Church,
and concludes as he does in all his doctrinal epis
tles with exhortations to practical holiness.
Have I established the point I set out to estab
lish ? Is it necessary to go further into St. Paul's
epistles to prove that the " election " which he
taught is an election of the Gentiles to privileges
of the covenant and not an election of individuals
to eternal life or a reprobation to eternal damna
tion by an arbitrary decree of God ?
We may find an explosion of wrath in one of
his epistles, which in its general drift seems to be
dealing with other subjects, that shows how this
"burning question" of the right of the Gentiles
to the full privileges of the gospel of Christ — of
their election — had been branded into the depths
of his soul : how it was the central thought round
which all his teachings circled : and how when
anything came up to oppose it, he blazed out in
righteous indignation against the opposition.
He had apparently finished his letter to the

97
Philippians with the calm words " Finally, my
brethren, farewell in the Lord. To write the
same things to you to me indeed is not irksome,
but for you it is safe."
But something at this point seems to have hap
pened which set him on fire. Possibly some news
may have just come to him, in his imprisonment,
of a new onslaught of the Judaizers upon the
Philippian Church, subverting the breadth and
fulness of the gospel which he had taught them.
His mood instantly changes ; and when he re
sumes his dictation to his amanuensis, it is with
these fierce words : — " Beware of the dogs, be
ware of the wicked workers, beware of the party
ofthe Circumcision." And then, for a short time
he goes on with the emphatic declaration of his
gospel as opposed to the false teaching of the
Judaizers who denied the election of the Gentiles,
which he had been arguing for and insisting upon
all along in his former letters.*
I have taken the epistles which have formed
and do form the very stronghold of the Calvinis-
* The passage (Philip, iii. 2) is no mere general exhortation to
beware in general of dogs, and bad men. He has some particular
dogs in view, as is shown by the definite article in the Greek : —
fi/UTrcTE rovg Kwag, ^Aeitere ravg nanovg epyarag, ^?.£Trere ttjv Kararopifv.
The outburst may be literally translated thus : — " Look at the
dogs ! look at the evil workers ! look at the concision ! ' ' When
the idea is "to beware of," the more usual construction of the
Greek is fikenuv goto tivoq, not, as here, flleireiv riva.

98
tic doctrine of election and reprobation : I have
brought to your attention the very strongest state
ments of those epistles which are claimed as as
serting the Calvinistic doctrine as a matter of
revelation. I have carefully avoided the discus
sion of the metaphysical side of the question ; —
and I hope I have shown you that when the whole
train of thought and argument is allowed to
speak for itself, there cannot fairly be found even
a trace of Calvinism in it. It deals with a totally
different proposition. And yet St. Paul did teach
something concerning the fate of individuals.
What he taught was this : — That those who were
elected to covenant privileges, both Jews and
Gentiles, were responsible for their use of those
privileges; and that upon their use of them de
pended the result for themselves individually.
He brought the matter home to himself. If any
man who ever lived might be considered as one
of the elect according to the Calvinistic under
standing of the term, that man was Paul the
Apostle. And yet he writes plainly thus: —
(i Cor. ix. seq.) " Know ye not that they which
run in a race, run all, but one receiveth the prize.
Even so run, that ye may attain.* And every
* His meaning here is, evidently, to put forth the same energy
as if only one of those who did it could be saved. Surely his illus
tration cannot be tortured into meaning that only one out of all
the members of the Corinthian Church could and would be saved.

99
one that striveth in the games is temperate in all
things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible
crown ; but we, an incorruptible. I therefore so
run, not as uncertainly ; So fight I, not as one
that beateth the air ; but I buffet my body and
bring it into bondage ; lest by any means, after
that I have preached to others, I myself should
be rejected :"— a thought which is exactly repro
duced by St. Peter in his Second Epistle (i. 10.)
when he pleads with those to whom he is writing
to "give the more diligence to make your calling
and election sure."
If the outcome were already set'tled by the ar
bitrary and irreversible decree of God, this plea
would be the most cruel and unholy mockery
ever sounded in the ears of perishing men. No,
brethren : the Calvinistic doctrine of election. and
reprobation is not taught by St. Paul ; nor is it
taught anywhere in the Bible. It is not a matter
of revelation.
So far from its being taught by St. Paul, he
opened the door of mercy and hope wider than it
had ever been opened before except by the Lord
Jesus himself. All his arguments, all his plead
ings, all his energies were directed against those
who would narrow and cramp the fulness and the
freeness of the offer of salvation to all men
through Jesus Christ the Saviour. God, to him,
was no Moloch : he was the Father of our Lord

IOO
Jesus Christ whose hidden providences through
the ages had been preparing the riches of mercy
for all men. He was the same Father whom
Paul's Lord and ours set before men in the
parable of the prodigal son. If men will go
away from 'the Father and spend their spiritual
substance in riotous living, they will and must
come to starvation and to the husks which are
the fit food only for swine. The suffering, the
loss, the pain, the shame, are merciful provisions
to make them come to themselves and to say
"I will arise and go to my Father and will say
unto him ' Father I have sinned, and am no more
worthy to be called thy son':" And then, when
they are "yet a great way off," coming back,
hungry and dirty and ragged and footsore and
full of shame, the Father will see them and will
run to meet them, and hold out loving hands and
a loving heart to welcome them home; and cleanse
them. If they stay with the pigs they must die,
in dirt and starvation. But it is their will, and not
the Father s will.
And, unlike the elder brother in the parable,
the elder brother Christ, the first born of the
creation, is with them to draw them to the Father,
and to plead with them and for them, for justifi
cation and sanctification and redemption. This
is Paul's view of it (Eph. iii. 14 seq.) : —
" For this cause I bow my knees unto the

IOI
Father, from whom every Fatherhood in heaven
and on earth is named, that he would grant you,
according to the riches of his glory, that ye may
be strengthened with power through his spirit in
the inward man ; that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith : to the end that ye, being
rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to
apprehend with all the saints*what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that
ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abun
dantly above all that we ask or think, according to
the power that worketh in us, unto him be the
glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all
generations for ever and ever. Amen."
Could he write thus, could he think thus, if he
had been depicting in his letters that Moloch whom
Calvinism impinges into the throne of God?
Again I say "It is not so nominated in the
bond."

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