erse, then, lays down the condition upon which the whole
passage rests; and to bring forward the text as a proof of
unconditional election, is simply to ignore the context. As far as
this portion of the Bible is concerned, there is nothing to perplex
the most simple. Become a lover of God, and the destiny sketched by
the apostle awaits you. We become lovers of God by believing in His
love to us. "We love Him," says John, "because He first loved us" (1
John iv. 19).

THE UNBORN CHILDREN.--Romans ix. 11, is appealed to. It reads thus:
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good
or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand,
not of works, but of Him who calleth." This verse is parenthetical,
lying between the tenth and twelfth verses. They read thus, verse
10: "And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one,
even by our father Isaac;" verse 12: "It was said unto her, the
elder shall serve the younger." It is the eleventh verse which is
taken as proving Calvinistic election. It is supposed to refer to
the spiritual and eternal condition of the respective parties. But
how stands the case? The original statement is found in Genesis xxv.
22, 23: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall
be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger
than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger." Now,
if we take the passage in the Calvinistic sense, that it refers to
salvation, what will follow? This, namely, that all the descendants
of Jacob would be saved, and all the descendants of Esau utterly
lost. If this were so, then why should Paul have been so troubled
about the spiritual state of his countrymen, as he says he was, in
the preamble of this very chapter? The hypothesis, makes the apostle
to stultify himself as a logician.

The Calvinistic interpretation will not stand looking at, there
being, in fact, no reference to salvation in the passage. The
apostle quotes the text, the purport of which is that in a certain
respect the people of Esau would be inferior to the people of Jacob.
The Jews held that, being Abraham's seed, they were safe for
eternity. The apostle's argument, then, is this: The people of Esau
were as truly descended from Abraham as you, my countrymen, are, and
yet this descent did not entitle them to be the Messianic people;
and if mere descent did not entitle to this, how much less would it
entitle to heave