e cannot merit, or by an effort of his own obtain), to live in sin
while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miserable when he
leaves it; to represent him as born unable to keep the commandments,
yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for breaking them, is
alike repugnant to reason and to conscience, and turns existence
into a hideous nightmare. To deny the freedom of the will is to make
morality impossible: to tell men that they cannot help themselves,
is to fling them into recklessness and despair. To what purpose the
effort to be virtuous, when it is an effort which is foredoomed to
fail; when those that are saved are saved by no effort of their own
and confess themselves the worst of sinners, even when rescued from
the penalties of sin; and those that are lost are lost by an
everlasting sentence decreed against them before they were born? How
are we to call the Ruler who laid us under this iron code by the
name of wise, and just, or merciful, when we ascribe principles of
action to Him which, as a human father, we should call preposterous
and monstrous?" Error, however, like disease, is not easily
eradicated; but as men get better acquainted with God, those dark
and heathenish conceptions regarding him entertained by Calvinists,
such as the foredooming of children and men to endless misery, will
give place to nobler thoughts of the Author of our being.

"I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

In 1879 the United Presbyterian Church adopted what is known as the
"Declaratory Act," which is a clear departure from the rigid
Calvinism of the Confession of Faith. In this declaration God's love
is said to be world-wide, and the propitiation of Christ to be for
the "sins of the whole world." They hold the Confession dogmas in
harmony with the Declaratory Act, but it is an attempt to put the
new cloth on the old garment, or the new wine into the old bottles.
It is impossible that God can love the whole world, and yet foredoom
millions to be lost. The two views are destructive of each other.
This church, one of the most intelligent in the country, cannot
stand where it now is. It is bound to go forward.

PART I.--PREDESTINATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE WORD PREDESTINATION, AND THE DOCTRINE AS HELD BY CALVINISTS.

THE word "predestinate" signifies, according to the _Imperial
Dictionary_, "to predetermine or fo