The most recent and perhaps the most instructive instances of this tendency are provided by two divines of the Church of Scotland of our own day, Dr. William Hastie, late Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow and Dr. William P. Paterson, now holding the Chair of Divinity, the Chair of Chalmers and Flint, in the University of Edinburgh. In his admir- able Croall lectures on “Тһе Theology of the Re- formed Churches in its Fundamental Principles,” Dr. Hastie announces that “the word of the eternal hope seems to me the latest message of the Reformed Theology;" * and Dr. Paterson takes up the hint and enlarges on it in the excellent chapter on “Тһе Testimony of the Reformed Churches" included in his Baird Lecture on “The Rule of Faith.” Dr. Paterson considers that Calvinism contains in itself elements “which are mutually repulsive," in its * doctrine of everlasting punishment" on the one hand, and its “doctrine of election and irresistible grace" on the other. Relief might no doubt be had, “when thought rebels against making God responsible" for the everlasting punishment of some “Бу a doctrine of reprobation," by taking refuge in an Arminian or semi-Arminian type of thought.” This relief would be purchased, however, at the too dear cost of abandon- ment of concinity of thought, and of falling away from faithfulness to the evangelical principle, which is the core of Christianity. There remains, then, according to Dr. Paterson, no other way but to discard the doctrine of everlasting punishment, and to “resolve
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reprobation into a temporary lack of privilege and of spiritual attainment." And he somewhat com- placently remarks that “it is a curious circumstance that, while Calvinism has become unpopular chiefly because of its identification with a grim and re- morseless doctrine of eternal punishment, it is the only system which contains principles—in its doctrines of election and irresistible grace—that could make credible a theory of universal restoration.”
What Dr. Paterson says in these last words is true enough: but it is true only because, when rightly con- sidered, Calvinism, with its doctrines of election and irresistible grace, is the only system which can make credible the salvation of any sinner: since in these doctrines alone are embodied in its purity the evan- gelical principles that salvation is from God alone and from him only in the immediate working of his grace. Whether this grace in God’s unspeakable mercy is granted to some men only or is poured out on all men alike, is a different question to be determined on its own grounds. And this question is certainly not to be facilely resolved by the simple assumption that God’s mercy must be poured out on all alike, since otherwise not all men can be saved. The funda- mental presupposition of such an assumption is no other than that God owes all men salvation, that is to say, that sin is not really sin and is to be envisaged rather as misfortune than as ill-desert. /
That it is this low view of sin which is really deter- minative of the whole direction of Dr. Paterson’s
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thought at this point becomes immediately apparent upon attending to the terms of his argument. “It has been customary to say,” he reasons, “that as there would have been no injustice in the punishment of all guilty beings, there can be none in the punish- ment of some guilty beings out of the number. Those who are saved are saved because of the mercy of God, while those who are lost perish because of their sins. This is as true as to say that those sick persons who are saved by the skill and devotion of a physician owe their lives to him, and that those that die perish of their diseases; but in that case the physician does not escape censure if it can be shown that it was in his power to have treated and saved those who died. It is therefore impossible to say that the doctrine of the divine love is not affected, since on Calvinistic prin- ciple it is in the power of God to deal with all in the same way in which he has dealt with the rest. For ex hypothesi it is in the power of God, in virtue of the principle of irresistible grace, to save even the worst, and if nevertheless there is a part of the human race which is consigned to everlasting punishment, it seems to be only explicable on the assumption that the divine love is not perfect, because it is not an all-embracing and untiring love."
Is it, then, inconceivable that the divine hand might be held back from saving all by something other than lack of power? The whole matter of the ill-desert of sin and the justice of God responding in hot indignation to this ill-desert, is left out of Dr.
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