gain. His course seems plain and clear. It becomes him to stand up
before the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and
nature of the one true God. He must be explicit to the utmost of his
powers. Then he may await his expulsion. It may be doubted whether it is
sufficient for him to go away silently, making false excuses or none at
all for his retreat. He has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of
his conforming years.

10. THE UNIVERSALISM OF GOD

Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God?

This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it
reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious
interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the
Calvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past
and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists,
in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God. Arminians seem
merely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his
own free act left men free to accept or reject salvation. To the realist
type of mind--here as always I use "realist" in its proper sense as
the opposite of nominalist--to the old-fashioned, over-exact and
over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague
and unsatisfying. Just as it distresses the more downright kind of
intelligence with a feeling of disloyalty to admit that God is not
Almighty, so it troubles the same sort of intelligence to hear that
there is no clear line to be drawn between the saved and the lost.
Realists like an exclusive flavour in their faith. Moreover, it is a
natural weakness of humanity to be forced into extreme positions by
argument. It is probable, as I have already suggested, that the absolute
attributes of God were forced upon Christianity under the stresses
of propaganda, and it is probable that the theory of a super-human
obstinancy beyond salvation arose out of the irritations natural to
theological debate. It is but a step from the realisation that there are
people absolutely unable or absolutely unwilling to see God as we see
him, to the conviction that they are therefore shut off from God by an
invincible soul blindness.

It is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned.

Beyond the little world of our sympathies and comprehension there are
those who seem inaccessible to God by any means within our experience.
They ar