osition, self-respect, reputation and honor; even the dark shadows of a
felon's cell and the night of a drunkard's grave may appear in the
saddening visions of that fond father's soul; yet, convinced by
experience of the impossibility of bringing about that son's reform, he
foresees the dread developments of the future, and he finds but sorrow
and anguish in his knowledge. Can it be said that the father's
foreknowledge is a cause of the son's sinful life? The son, perchance,
has reached his maturity; he is the master of his own destiny; a free
agent unto himself. The father is powerless to control by force or to
direct by arbitrary command; and, while he would gladly make any effort
or sacrifice to save his son from the fate impending, he fears for what
seems to be an awful certainty. But surely that thoughtful, prayerful,
loving parent does not, because of his knowledge, contribute to the
son's waywardness. To reason otherwise would be to say that a neglectful
father, who takes not the trouble to study the nature and character of
his son, who shuts his eyes to sinful tendencies, and rests in careless
indifference as to the probable future, will by his very heartlessness
be benefitting his child, because his lack of forethought cannot operate
as a contributory cause to dereliction.

"Our Heavenly Father has a full knowledge of the nature and disposition
of each of His children, a knowledge gained by long observation and
experience in the past eternity of our primeval childhood; a knowledge
compared with which that gained by earthly parents through mortal
experience with their children is infinitesimally small. By reason of
that surpassing knowledge, God reads the future of child and children,
of men individually and of men collectively as communities and nations;
He knows what each will do under given conditions, and sees the end from
the beginning. His foreknowledge is based on intelligence and reason. He
foresees the future as a state which naturally and surely will be; not
as one which must be because He has arbitrarily willed that it shall
be."--From the author's _Great Apostasy_, pp. 19, 20.

2. Man Free to Choose for Himself.--"The Father of souls has endowed His
children with the divine birthright of free agency; He does not and will
not control them by arbitrary force; He impels no man toward sin; He
compels none to righteousness. Unto man has been given freedom to act
for himself; and, associated with this inde