he owes it to this Divine choice alone that he ig a member of the class of the chosen ones, that he is able to fuUil the conditions oi salvation, that he can hope to attain the character on which iiluiie God can look with complacency, that he can look forward to an eternity of bliss as his own posses- sion. It is the very nerve of the Biblical doctrine that each individual of that enormous multitude that constitutes the great host of the people of God, and that is illustrating tlie character of Christ in the new life now lived in the strength of the Son of God, has from all eternity been the particular object of the Divine regard, and is only now fultilling the high destiny designed for him from the foundation of the world.
The Biblical writers are as far as possible from obscuring the doctrine of election because of any seemingly unpleasant corollaries that flow trom it. On the contrary, they expressly draw the corollaries which have often been so designated, and make them a part of their explicit teaching. Their doctrine of election, they are free to tell us, for example, does certainly involve a corre- sponding doctrine of preterition. The very term adopted in NT to express it — eK\^yofiai, which, as Meyer justly saj's (Eph I''), 'aiicaijs has, and must of logical necessity have, a reference to others to whom the chosen would, without the tK\(ryi], still belong ' — embodies a declaration of the fact tliat in their election others are passed by and left without the gift of salvation ; the whole i)re- sentation of the doctrine is such as either to imply or openly to assert, on its every emergence, the removal of the elect by the pure grace of God, not merely from a state of condemnation, but out of the company of the condemned — a company on whom the grace of God has no saving ettect, and who are therefore left without hope in their sins ; and the positive just reprobation of the impenitent for tiieir sins is repeatedly explicitly taught in sharp con- trast with the gratuitous salvation of the elei^t despite their sins. But, on the other haml, it is ever taught that, as the body out of w liich believers are chosen by God's unsearchable grace is the mass of justly condemned sinners, so the destruction to which those that are passed by are left is the righteous recompense of their guilt. Thus the discrimination between men in tiie matter of eternal destiny is distinctly set forth as taking place in the interests of mercy and tor the sake of salvation: from the fate which justly hangs over all, God is represented as in His inlinite compassion rescuing those chosen to this ei.d in His inscrutable counsels of mercy to the praise of the glory of His grace; while those that are left in their sins perish most deservedly, as the justice of (jod demands. And as tlie broader lines of God's gracious dealings with the world lying in its iniquity are more and more fully drawn for us, we are enabled ultimately to i)er- ceive that the Father of spirits has not distributed His elective grace with niggard hand, but from the beginning has had in view the restoration to Him- self of the whole world; and through whatever slow approaches (as men count slowness) He has made thereto — tirst in the segregation of the Jews for the keeping of the service of God alive in the midst of an evil world, and then in their rejection in order that the fulness of tlie Gentiles might be gathered in, and linally through them Israel in turn may all be saved — has ever been conducting the world in His loving wisdom and His wise love to its destined goal of salvation, — now and again, indeed, shutting up this or that element of it unto disobedience, but never merely in order that it might fall, but that in the end He might have mercy upon all. Thus the Biblical writers bid us raise our ej-es, not only from the justly condemned
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lost, that we may with deeper feeling contemplate the marvels of the Divine love in the saving of sinners no better than they and with no greater claims on the Divine mercy ; but from the rela- tively insignificant body of the lost, as but the prunings gathered beneath tlie branches of the olive-tree planted by the Lord's own hand, to fix them on the thrifty stock itself and the crown of luxuriant leafajre and ever more riilily ripining fruit, as under tlie loving pruning and grafting of the great Husbandman it grows and llourislies and puts forth its bouglis until it shall sliade the whole earth. This, according to tlie Biblical writers, is the end of election ; and this is nothing other than the salvation of the world. Thougli in the process of the ages the goal is not attained without prun- ings and tires of burning, — though all tlie wild olive twigs are not throughout the centuries grafted in, — yet the goal of a saved world shall at the end be gloriously realized. Meanwhile, the hope of the world, the hope of the Church, and the hope of the individual alike, is cast solely on the mercy of a freely electing God, in whose bands are all tilings, and not least the care of the advance of His saving grace in the world. And it is undeniable that •whenever, as the years have passed bj', the currents of religious feeling have run deep, and the higher ascents of religious thinking have been scaled, it has ever been on the free might of Divine grace that Christians have been found to cast their hoi)es for the salvation alike of the world, the Church, and the individual ; and whenever they have thus turned in trust to the pure grace of God, they have spontaneously given expression to their faith in terms of the DiWne election. See also Election, Reprobate, Will.