(Ser. 128).

Consider the _last commission_ of Christ. Before our Lord left the
world He said to His apostles, "Go ye into all the world, and preach
the Gospel to every creature." Good news was thus to be proclaimed
to every human being. If the commission meant anything it meant
this, that God was honestly and earnestly desirous of saving every
one. And this is in beautiful harmony with the exhortation in
Isaiah: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth"
(Isa. xlv. 22). It is also in keeping with the words of Jesus
recorded by John: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life" (John iii. 16); and with what the
apostle Peter says, that "God is not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9); and with
what the apostle Paul says, that God "will have all men to be saved"
(1 Tim. ii. 4). But whilst the commission to preach the good news is
in harmony with these express statements, it is out of joint and
incongruous with the Calvinistic doctrine of election, that God
wishes only a few of the human family saved.

Consider the HOLY SPIRIT'S INVITATION. In Revelation xxii. 17, it is
written: "And the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that
heareth say, come. And let him that is athirst come, and whosoever
will let him take the water of life freely." Whilst we are so
constituted that we cannot believe a proposition the terms of which
we do not understand, and whilst there is much that is inscrutable
in the Spirit's work, yet the passage just quoted clearly means, if
it means anything, that the Holy Spirit invites all to come and
drink of the life-giving water. We cannot doubt His sincerity. When
all are invited to drink, it is implied that there is water for all,
and that it is free to all, and that they have power to drink. We
may not ask one to drink at an empty fountain without being guilty
of the sheerest mockery; and neither may we ask the wounded and
disabled man, who cannot walk a step, to come and drink, without
being guilty of the same. This invitation of the Spirit, then, is
inconsistent with the Calvinistic notion that His converting grace
is limited. Says the late Dr. John Guthrie, "Was it antecedently to
be supposed that a Divine Father who loves all, and so loved as to
give His own and only-begotten for our ransom, and that the Divine
Son, who as