ion
between us were destroyed, which is impossible, no redemption would be
possible, there would be nothing left to redeem."

"You may talk as you see fit, Mr. Grant, but while Paul teaches the
doctrine, I will hold it; he may perhaps know a little better than you."

"Paul teaches no such doctrine. He teaches just what I have been
saying. The word translated adoption, he uses for the raising of one
who is a son to the true position of a son."

"The presumption in you to say what the apostle did or did not mean!"

"Why, Miss Carmichael, do you think the gospel comes to us as a set of
fools? Is there any way of truly or worthily receiving a message
without understanding it? A message is sent for the very sake of being
in some measure at least understood. Without that it would be no
message at all. I am bound by the will and express command of the
master to understand the things he says to me. He commands me to see
their rectitude, because they being true, I ought to be able to see
them true. In the hope of seeing as he would have me see, I read my
Greek Testament every day. But it is not necessary to know Greek to see
what Paul means by the so-translated adoption. You have only to
consider his words with intent to find out his meaning, and without
intent to find in them the teaching of this or that doctor of divinity.
In the epistle to the Galatians, whose child does he speak of as
adopted? It is the father's own child, his heir, who differs nothing
from a slave until he enters upon his true relation to his father--the
full status of a son. So also, in another passage, by the same word he
means the redemption of the body--its passing into the higher condition
of outward things, into a condition in itself, and a home around it,
fit for the sons and daughters of God--that we be no more like
strangers, but like what we are, the children of the house. To use any
word of Paul's to make human being feel as if he were not by birth,
making, origin, or whatever word of closer import can be found, the
child of God, or as if anything he had done or could do could annul
that relationship, is of the devil, the father of evil, not either of
Paul or of Christ.--Why, my lady," continued Donal, turning to Arctura,
"all the evil lies in this--that he is our father and we are not his
children. To fulfil the poorest necessities of our being, we must be
his children in brain and heart, in body and soul and spirit, in
obedience and hope an