sented aspurelvpa-ssive: the details of the doctrine of ctmatrgru were left, no doubt, to later ages speculatively to work out, but its assumption underlies the entire OT representation of the Divine modes of working. That anything— good or evil--- occurs in God's universe finds its account, according to the OT conception, in His positive ordering and active concurrence ; while the moral quality of the deed, considered in itself, is rooted in the moral character of the subordinate ogeiit, acting in the circumstances and under the motives operative in each instance. It is certainly going beyond the OT warrant to speak of Uie 'all-productivity of God,' as if He were the onl^v cthcient cause in nature and the sphere of the tree spirit alike ; it is the very delirium of uiisconception to say that in the OT God and Satan are iusufficienth' discriminated, and dccdsappropriate to the latter are assigned to the former. Nevertheless, it remains true that even the evil acts of the creature are so far carried back to God that they too are allirmed to be included in His all-embracing decree, and to be brought about, bounded and utilized in His providential government. It is He that hardens the heart of the sinner that persists in his sin (Ex 4'-i 7^ lOl- 27 144 ]48_ Dt ■i'O, Jos U'-f, Is 8910 6317) ; it is from Him that the evil spirits proceed that trouble sinners (1 S 1014, j,- flli, i K 22, Job 1) ; it is of Him that the evil impulses that rise in sinners hearts take this or that specific form (2 8 l(i» 24', 1 K 121-0. The philosophy that lies behind such representations, however, is not the pantheism which looks upon God as the immediate cause of all that comes to pass ; much less the pandainionism which admits no distinction between good and evil ; there is not even involved a conception of Ood enUaii'ded in an un- developed ethical discrimination. It is the philosophy that is expressed in Is 47' 'I am the Lord, and there is none else; beside me there is no God. ... I am the Loud, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness; 1 make peace and create evil; I am the Lord that doelh all these things' ; it is the philosophv that is expressed in I'r \6* 'The l-oiio hath made everything for its own end, ,yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.' Because, over against all dualislio con- ceptions, there is but one God, and He is indeed God ; and because, over against all cosmotheistic conceptions, this God is a I'KRso's who acts purposefully ; there is nothing that is, and nothing that comes to pass, that He has not first decreed and then brought to pass by His creation or providence. Thus all things find their unity iii His eternal plan ; and not their unity merely, hut their justification as well ; even the evil, though retaining its quality as evil and hateful to the holy God, and certain to be dealt" with as hateful, yet docs not occur apart from His provision or against His will, but appears in the world which He has made only as the instrumcnl by means of which He works the higher good.
This sublime philosophv of the decree is immanent in every page of the OT. Its metaphysics never come to explicit dis- cussion, to be sure ; but its elements are in a practical way postulated consistently throughout. The ultimate end in view in tlie Divine plan is ever represented as found in God alone: all that He has made He has made for Himself, to set forth His praise: the heavens tliemselves with all their splendid furniture exist hut to illustrate His glory ; the carlli and all that is in it, and all that happens in it, to declare His majesty ; the whole course of history is but the theatre of His selfinani- festation, and the events of every individual life indicjitc His nature and perfections. Men may be unable to understand tlie place which the incidents, as lliey unroll themsehes before their eyes, take in the developing plot of the great drama : thev niay, nay, must, therefore stand astonished and con- founded before this or that which befalls llieiii or befalls the world. Hence arise to them problems— the |iroblem of the iiettv, the prolilem of the inexplicable, the problem of suffering, the problem of sin (c.y. Ec 11»). But, in the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each eicnt falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His eternal plan; nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without Hia ordering, or without its peculiar fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall lie the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His pniisc. This is the OT philosophy of the universe— a world-view which attains concrete unity in an absolute Divine teleology, in the compactness of an eternal decree, or purpose, or plan, of which all that comes to pass is the development in time.
3. Soteriolofficnl Predcstinntion in 07".— Sppcial or Soleriuliiyical I'reili^stinittion liiiila a iitaiii.'il place in tlie UT system as but a piutictilar in- stance of the inoie general tact, anil iim.V 1"' looked upon as only the •jeneial t»T doctrine of preilestin.'ition applied to the specific case of the salvalion of sinners. But as the OT is a dis- tinctively religious book, or, more jirecisely, a dis- tinctively soteiiolo^ii'ul liook, tlint is to stiy, a record of the Km^'ous dealing's and purposes <)( Cod with sinners, snteriolot.'ical medestination naturally takes a more promineiil place in it thiin the general doctrine itself, of \vliich it is a par- ticular application. Indeed, (Jod's saving work is thrown out into such proiuinciicc, the OT is so specially a record of the establishment id" the kin"ilom of Ood in the world, that wo easily get