sense of predetermining or predestinating, the sentence ceases to have meaning,

as, for example, if we read: `Whom He did foreordain He also did predestinate'.

We therefore understand the passage before us to declare that God, Who is

not under the limitations of time and space as we are, knows all things, past,

present and future; knows them perfectly and completely, and can, therefore, act

with complete certainty, where, to us, all would appear in a contingent light.

The whole testimony of the Scriptures is to the effect that God has a

purpose before Him according to which He works, and, in accord with that purpose

of peopling heaven and earth with the redeemed, He foreknew everyone who would

respond to the call of grace, and accordingly marked them off beforehand for the

various spheres of glory that His purpose demanded.

lf we believe that God fixed unchangeably, from all eternity, whosoever

should, in time, believe, then, however much we may hedge and cover the fact,

there is but one logical conclusion, a conclusion that, in days gone by, has

driven many to the edge of despair.  That conclusion is, that He Who absolutely

and unalterably fixed the number who should believe, as surely fixed unalterably

the number of those who should not believe, a conclusion so monstrous that it

has only to be expressed to be rejected.

`How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? and how

shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard?' (Rom. 10:14).

Perhaps a simple illustration may help us in appreciating the relation of God's

foreknowledge with the purposes of election.  One of the world's master chess

players, the type that can take on several opponents at once and beat them all,

if he stood for a moment and glanced at the chess board of two very average

players could say `In two moves you will be checkmated', and he would in all

probability be right.  His foreknowledge however would in no wise compel these

chess players to make any particular move.  This master chess player had such a

thorough knowledge of all the possible moves that he could foreknow, as we have

suggested.  God knows all possible combinations of heredity, of environment, of

temperament, of time, place and circumstance, `all things are naked and open' in

His eyes.  The illustration may be crude, and may bristle with weak points, but

it points the distinction that must be made between foreknowing a thing, and

predestinating a thing, and also may suggest how it can be that God can

infallibly know what a free agent will choose to do, without in any sense

influencing the act.

We come back to Ephesians 1:4 `according as He hath chosen us in Him

before the foundation of the world' with a solemn sense of the grace thus made

known, and bow in worship and in wonder at the love that could so plan and so

give for the salvation of those who, by this very Divine foreknowledge, were

foreseen to be utterly unworthy.

The unique blessings of the Church of the One Body are `according' to an

elective purpose.  Now, it is by no means true to say that `election' or

`predestination' is a peculiarity of the dispensation of the Mystery; the very

distribution of these terms sufficiently disproves such a statement, and no one