To limited human knowledge the course of the world has ever been, must ever be, full of darkness and perplexities. Men gaze upon it as they do upon the wrong side of a piece of tapestry as it is woven. To such observers the pattern is always obscure, many a time quite unintelligible. For full knowledge we have to wait to the end. Then the web will be reversed, God's designs and their working comprehended; we shall know even as we are known, and, with hearts and voices tuned to praise, shall cry, "He hath done all things well." Of such a revelation the poet (Shelley, _Adonais_, Stanza lii.) sings, a revelation of the all-seeing, unchanging Jehovah and of the glorious enlightenment that shall be in His presence:--
"The one remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments."
In this wise would St. Peter have us think of the grace of election. It has its beginning from our Father; its fulfilment will also be with Him. The measure and the manner of its bestowal are according to His foreknowledge, according to the same foreknowledge which provided in Christ an atonement for sin, which appointed Him to die, and that not for some sinners only, but for the sins of the whole world.
But in the call according to God's foreknowledge the believer is not perfected. He must live worthily of his calling. And as his election at the first is of God, so the power to hold it fast is a Divine gift. He who would rejoice over God's election must feel and constantly foster within himself _the sanctification of the Spirit_. To be made holy is his great need. This demands a life of progress, of renewal, a daily endeavour to restore the image which was lost at the Fall. "Be ye holy, for I am holy," is a fundamental precept of both Old and New Testaments; and it is a continual admonition, speaking unto Christians that they go forward. Under the Law the lesson was enforced by external symbols. Holy ground, holy days, holy offices, kept men alive to the need of preparation, of purification, before they could be fit to draw near unto God or for God to draw near unto them.
For us there is opened a more excellent way: the inward, spiritual cleansing of the heart. Christ has gone away where He was before, and sends down to His servants the Holy Ghost, who bestows power that the election of the Father may be made sure. Hence we can understand those frequent exhortations in the epistles, "Walk in the Spirit"; "Live in the Spirit"; "Quench not the Spirit." The Christian life is a struggle. The flesh is ever striving for the mastery. This enemy the believer must do to death. And as aforetime, so now, sanctification begins with purification. Christ sanctifies His Church, those whom He has called to Him out of the world; and the manner is by cleansing them through the washing of water with the word. Here we gladly think of that sacrament which He ordained for admission into the Church as the beginning of this Divine operation, as the wonted entrance of the Holy Ghost for His work of purifying. But that work must be continued. He is called "holy" because He makes men holy by His abode with them. And Christ has described for us how this is brought to pass. "He shall take of Mine," says our Lord, "and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine" (John xvi. 14, 15). Every good gift, which the Father who calls men hath, the Spirit is sent to impart. The words speak of the gradual manner of its bestowal; all things may be given, but they are given little by little, as men can or are fit to receive them. He shall take a portion of what is Mine, is the literal meaning of the Evangelist's phrase (John xvi. 15). The plural phrase πάντα ὅσα ἔχει ὁ πατηρ marks the boundless supply, the singular ἐκ τῦu ἐμοῦ λήμπσεται the Spirit's choice of such a portion therefrom as best suits the receiver's needs and powers. In this wise men may become gradually conformed to the image of Christ, grow more and more like Him day by day. More and more will they drink in of the whole truth, and more and more will they be sanctified.