ernal and unconditional. Does the above passage
prove this? We think it proves the reverse. There was a rejection
and a choosing, but each was based on state or personal condition.
The man was rejected because he had not on the wedding garment; the
others were chosen because they had it on. Suppose that there was no
robe for the man, would he or should he have been speechless? Might
he not have risen up in the midst of the assembly, and said, "Sire,
I received the invitation in the highway. I was pressed to come to
the feast. When I came there was no robe for me, and even if there
had been one, there was no one to help me to put it on; and by a
fatal accident in childhood I lost an arm, and was unable to do it
myself. Yet I received the invitation, and that is the reason why I
am here." Would not such a speech have been perfectly satisfactory?
And where the justice of condemning the man to be cast, in these
circumstance, into outer darkness? But the punishment meted out to
the man, showed that there was a robe for him, and that he might
have put it on. The choice, therefore, of sitting at the marriage
feast was conditional, and not, as Calvinists contend, unconditional.

The choice, moreover, was after the calling, and is _yet_ to take
place, and as a consequence the passage does not prove that election
is eternal. No doubt, whatever God does in time He purposed to do in
eternity, but we should distinguish between a purpose to choose and
the choice itself.

There is nothing, then, in this passage to perplex any one. God, the
infinite Father and heavenly King, has provided a feast of love for
all men, and therefore for you, O reader, whosoever you are. Christ
has wrought out a robe of righteousness for all, and therefore for
you. The Holy Spirit prays you to be clothed with it--that is, to
depend on Christ and Christ only, and not upon your doings or upon
your feelings. When you cease to depend on self and to rest entirely
on Jesus, there springs up in the heart an aspiration to be Christ
-like, and to be wholly His. By being clothed with Christ's
righteousness you will have, by God's grace, a title to sit down at
the heavenly feast, and a moral meetness for heavenly society.

THE ELECT FOREKNOWN.--In Romans viii. 29, 30, it is written: "For
whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to
the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, th