n here, but a largeness
and munificence of mercy boundless as space, free and open as the expanse
of the firmament. We hope, therefore, the gospel, the real gospel, _is as
unlike the views of some of its interpreters, as creation, in all its
boundless extent and beauty, is unlike the paltry scheme of some wretched
scholastic in the middle ages_. The middle age of science and civilization
is now terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, _and this,
perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the
old spell_, even the spell of human authority, and by which a certain
cramp or confinement has been laid on the genius of Christianity. We
cannot doubt that the time of its complete emancipation is coming, when it
shall break loose from the imprisonment in which it is held; but meanwhile
there is, as it were, a stricture upon it, not yet wholly removed, _and in
virtue of which the largeness and liberality of Heaven's own purposes have
been made to descend in partial and scanty droppings through the strainers
of an artificial theology, instead of falling, as they ought, in a
universal shower upon the world_."(217)

Is it possible, that this is the language of a man who believes that
Heaven's purposes of mercy descend, not upon all men, but only upon the
elect? It is even so. Boundless and beautiful as the goodness of God is in
itself; yet, through the strainers of his theology, is it made to descend
in partial and scanty droppings merely, and not in one universal shower.
It is good-will, not to _men_, but to the _elect_. Such is the "chilling
limitation," and such the frightful "stricture," on the genius of
Christianity, from which, in the fervour of his imagination, the great
heart of Chalmers burst into a higher and a more genial element of light
and love.

Alas! how sad and how sudden the descent, when in the very next paragraph
he says: "The names and number of the saved may have been in the view,
_nay, even in the design and destination of God from all eternity_; and
still the distinction is carried into effect, not by means of a gospel
addressed partially and exclusively to them, but by means of a gospel
addressed generally to all. _A partial gospel, in fact, could not have
achieved the conversion of the elect_:" that is to say, though it was the
design and destination of God from all eternity to save only a small
portion of those whom he might have saved; yet he made the offer of
salvatio