great thought--and the
Christianity of this day sorely wants the strength that might be given
it by the exhibition of that steel medicine--it wants another, 'the
good pleasure of His will.' And that word, 'good pleasure,' does not
express, as I think, in Paul's usage of it, the simple notion of
sovereignty, but always the notion of a benevolent sovereignty. It is
'the good pleasure'--as it is put in another place by the same
Apostle--'of His goodness.' And that thought, let in upon the solemnity
and severity of the other one, is all that it needs in order to make the
man who grasps it not only a hero in conflict, and a patient martyr in
endurance, but a child in his Father's house, rejoicing in the love of
his Father everywhere and always.

Paul would have us believe that if we will take the work of Jesus Christ
in the facts of His life, and its results upon humanity, as our
horn-book and lesson, we shall draw from that some conceptions of the
great thing that underlies it, 'the good pleasure of His will.' We stand
in front of this complex universe, and some of us say: 'Law'; and some
of us say: 'A Lawgiver behind the law; a Person at the heart of all
things'; but unless we can say: 'And in the heart of the Person a will,
which is the expression of a steadfast, omnipotent love,' then the world
seems to me to be a place of unsolvable riddles and a torture-house.
There goes the great steam-roller along the road. Everybody can see that
it crushes down, and makes its own path. Who drives it? The steam in the
boiler, or is there a hand on the lever? And what drives the hand?
Christianity answers, and answers with unfaltering lip, rising clear
above contradictions apparent and difficulties real, 'The good pleasure
of His will,' and there men can rest.

Then there is another step. Another form in which this 'according to'
appears in this letter is, if we adopt the rendering, which I am
disposed to do in the present case, of the Authorised Version rather
than of the Revised, 'according to His good pleasure ... which He hath
purposed in Himself.' The Revised Version says, 'Which He hath purposed
in Him,' and that is a perfectly possible rendering. But to me the old
one is not only more eloquent, but more in accordance with the
connection. So I venture to accept it without further ado--'His good
pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.'

That brings us into the presence of that same great thought, which in
another aspect i