n saved. There was a perfect
remedy for their need; they had power to take it, and refused. The
lost might have been saved; or, in other words, every man in hell
might have been in heaven.

The late Lord Kinloch in his _Circle of Christian Doctrine_, has
several judicious remarks on this subject. In his chapter on
predestination he says:--"The choice of free agents cannot have been
predestinated in any proper sense of the word, that is, cannot have
been fixed beforehand so as to fall out in one way, and no other,
irrespectively of his own will. To say that it has been so, involves
a contradiction in terms, for it is to say that a man chooses and
does not choose at one and the same moment. The choice may be
foreseen, must indeed in every case be foreseen by God, otherwise
the government of the universe could not be conducted. But to
foresee and foreordain are essentially different things" (p. 121).
He says again, "What God appoints; He, to whom the whole of futurity
lies open at a glance, necessarily appoints beforehand. Hence arises
the axiomatic distinction which I find the key to the subject. All
that God is himself to do He not merely foresees but foreordains.
All that He does not do himself, but leaves man to do by the very
act of creating him a free agent, the choice, namely, between one
course and another, is foreseen but not predestined" (p. 124). The
ideas of Lord Kinloch are sound, and we deem them irrefutable.

CHAPTER V.

PROOF TEXTS FOR CALVINISTIC PREDESTINATION EXAMINED.

THE Scriptures are supposed to teach the doctrine that God hath
foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. It were impossible within the
compass of this short treatise to consider at large all the passages
that have been imported into this controversy. We shall, however,
consider a few which seem to favour the dogma.

THE SONS OF ELI.--In 1 Sam. ii. 25, it is written regarding the sons
of Eli, "Notwithstanding they hearkened not to the voice of their
father, _because_ the Lord would slay them." The whole stress of the
argument from this passage lies in the word "_because_." They were
not able to hearken to their father, because God had determined to
slay them. There are two objections to this view, the first critical
and the second moral. The Hebrew particle translated because is
--_ki_. It is again and again translated by the word "that," and there
is no reason in the world why it should not have been so translated
in this passa