of the world’s salvation through numerous generations involves, of course, the loss of many souls in the course of the long process through which the world advances to its salvation. And therefore the Biblical doctrine of the salvation of the world is not “universalism” in the common sense of that term. It does not mean that all men without exception are saved. Many men are inevitably lost, throughout the whole course of the advance of the world to its complete salvation, just as the salvation of the individual by process means that much service is lost to Christ through all these lean years of incomplete salvation. But as in the one case, so in the other, the end is attained at last: there is a completely saved man and there is a com- pletely saved world. This may possibly be expressed by saying that the Scriptures teach an eschatological universalism not an each-and-every universalism. When the Scriptures say that Christ came to save the world, that he does save the world, and that the world shall be saved by him, they do not mean that there is no human being whom he did not come to save, whom he does not save, who is not saved by him. They mean that he came to save and does save the human race; and that the human race is being led by God into a racial salvation: that in the age- long development of the race of men, it will attain at last to a complete salvation, and our eyes will be greeted with the glorious spectacle of a saved world. Thus the human race attains the goal for which it was created, and sin does not snatch it out of God’s [181]
THE PLAN OF SALVATION
hands: the primal purpose of God with it is fulfilled; and through Christ the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny.
Now, it cannot be imagined that the development of the race to this, its destined end, is a matter of chance; or is committed to the uncertainties of its own de- termination. Were that so, no salvation would or could lie before it as its assured goal. The goal to which the race is advancing is set by God: it is sal- vation. And every stage in the advance to this goal is of course, determined by God. The progress of the race is, in other words, a God-determined progress, to a God-determined end. That being true, every detail in every moment of the life of the race is God- determined; and is a stage in its God-determined advance to its God-determined end. Christ has been made in very truth Head over all things for his Church: and all that befalls his Church, everything his Church is at every moment of its existence, every “fortune,” as we absurdly call it, through which his Church passes, is appointed by him. The rate of the Church's progress to its goal of perfection, the nature of its progress, the particular individuals who are brought into it through every stage of its progress: all this is in his divine hands. The Lord adds to the Church daily such as are being saved. And it is through the divine government of these things, which is in short the leading onwards of the race to salvation, that the great goal is at last attained. To say this is, of
[ 132 ]
CALVINISM
course, already to say election and reprobation. There is no antinomy, therefore, in saying that Christ died for his people and that Christ died for the world. His people may be few to-day: the world will be His people to-morrow. But it must be punc- tually observed that unless it is Christ who, not opens the way of salvation to all, but actually saves his people, there is no ground to believe that there will ever be a saved world. The salvation of the world is absolutely dependent (as is the salvation of the individual soul) on its salvation being the sole work of the Lord Christ himself, in his irresistible might. It is only the Calvinist that has warrant to believe in the salvation whether of the individual or of the world. Both alike rest utterly on the sovereign grace of God.* All other ground, is shifting sand.
[ 133 ]
~. 3 d 4 ۷ LI — h ) IL EL —- iS a
L ШЕ 0115 а УЗ өмір поа E
ик. ee ITI SIN инт 41 9 gil же СТІ 1 24 9 24 IN F 2” i ы f
Pn d П been 1" Дай
TRE di A i 77 % ۴ X Map. = =. 7 2 a Е. " کج A کچ ж en E Ri hs
, m RETR te Ye Ee eee aa S
NOTES
"Cf. A. A. Hodge: “Outlines of Theology,” ? 1878. p. 96: “There are in fact, as we might have anticipated, but two complete self-consistent systems of Christian theology possible"—Augustinianism and Pelagianism.
* Geref. Dog.’ iii. pp. 425, 426.
*Preface to Book IV of his work on Jeremiah. Cf. Milman, “Latin Christianity" i. p. 106, note 2; De Pressensée Trois Prem. Siècles. ii. p. 375; Hefele, "Councils", E. T. ii. p. 446, note 3; cf. Warfield, “Two Studies in the History of Doctrine," 1897, pp. 4, 5.