of eternity and God. The Bible
neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it.

Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine
predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through
all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and
especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially
selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends
in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of
co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens
him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow
or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also
foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into
the number {68} of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned
their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified
or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[22]. The
steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the
Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to
the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the
predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the
Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of
Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And
the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect,
and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a
right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they
are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[23].' Wherever St. Paul
recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world,
he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in
the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the
eternal will shall at last {69} carry it on to perfection. 'There
shall never be one lost good.'

It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is
St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St.
Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of
opposition to the idea of divine design.

iii.

[Sidenote: _The elect_]

This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul
calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea