p thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and
gross sensual sin.

'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been
chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained
by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they
are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was
hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were
regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of
regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was
ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and
it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences.

'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest.
When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from
God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the
beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and
supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again."
A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his
human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."'

This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very
valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we
have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow
regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain
to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who {87} exhibit,
sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will.

(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false
doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which
it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of
these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid
of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down
upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a
process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present
feelings.

What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there
is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through
all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and
has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His
Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for
our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of