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“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”—Romans 8:29.
Guided
by the latter clause of the preceding
verse, we were led to advert to the
settled purpose and plan of God as it
related to the conversion of His people.
The passage under present consideration
carries forward the same argument
another step, and shows that the
doctrine thus clearly enunciated is not
a crude and speculative dogma of the
schools, which some suppose, but is a
truth of distinct revelation, divine in
its origin, experimental in its nature,
and sanctifying and comforting in its
effects. Let us, then, divesting our
minds of all prejudice, address
ourselves to its consideration, in
prayerful reliance upon the teaching of
the Spirit, and with the earnest
simplicity of children desiring to come
to a knowledge of the truth, and to
stand complete in all the will of God.
“Whom he did foreknow.” In this
place the word “foreknow” assumes a
particular and explicit meaning. In its
wider and more general application it
must be regarded as referring not simply
to the divine prescience, but more
especially to the divine prearrangement.
For God to foreknow is, in the strict
meaning of the phrase, for God to
foreordain. There are no guesses,
conjectures, or contingencies with God
as to the future. Not only does He know
all, but He has fixed, appointed, and
ordered “all things after the counsel
of his own will.” In this view there
exists not a creature, and there
transpires not an event, which was not
as real and palpable to the divine mind
from eternity as it is at the present
moment. Indeed, it would seem that there
were no future with God. An eternal
Being, there can be nothing prospective
in His looking on all things. There must
be an eternity of perception, and
constitution, and presence; and the
mightiest feature of His
character—that which conveys to a
finite mind the most vivid conception of
His grandeur and greatness—is the
simultaneousness of all succession,
variety, and events to His eye. “He is
of one mind; and who can turn him?”
But the word “foreknow,” as it
occurs in the text, adds to this yet
another, a more definite, and, to the
saints, a more precious signification.
The foreknowledge here spoken of, it
will be observed, is limited to a
particular class of persons who are said
to be “conformed to the image of
God’s Son.” Now this cannot, with
truth, be predicated of all creatures.
The term, therefore, assumes a
particular and impressive signification.
It includes the everlasting love of God
to, and His most free choice of, His
people, to be His special and peculiar
treasure. We find some examples of
this—“God hath not cast away his
people which he foreknew” (Rom. 11:2).
Here the word is expressive of the two
ideas of love and choice. Again, “Who
verily was foreordained (Greek,
foreknown) before the foundation of the
world” (1 Pet. 1:20). “Him, being
delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).
Clearly, then, we are justified in
interpreting the phrase as expressive of
God’s special choice of, and His
intelligent love to, His church—His
own peculiar people. It is a
foreknowledge of choice, of love, of
eternal grace and faithfulness.
“He also did predestinate.” This
word admits of but one natural
signification. Predestination, in its
lowest sense, is understood to mean the
exclusive agency of God in producing
every event. But it includes more than
this: it takes in God’s
pre-determinate appointment and
fore-arrangement of a thing beforehand,
according to His divine and supreme
will. The Greek is so rendered—“For
to do whatsoever thy hand and thy
counsel determined before to be done”
(Acts 4:28). Again, “Having
predestinated us unto the adoption of
children by Jesus Christ to himself,
according to the good pleasure of his
will” (Eph. 1:5). It is here affirmed
of God, that the same prearrangement and
predetermination that men in general are
agreed to ascribe to Him in the
government of matter, extends equally,
and with yet stronger force, to the
concerns of His moral administration. It
would seem impossible to form any
correct idea of God, disassociated from
the idea of predestination. As a divine
wrote, “The sole basis of
predestination is the practical belief
that God is eternal and infinite in and
over all. And the sole aim of its
assertion should be, as the sole
legitimate effect of that assertion is,
to settle down the wavering and rebel
soul from the vague, skeptical, and
superstitious inapplicabilities of
chance as to this world’s history,
unto the living, overwhelming, and
humbling practicality of conviction,
that, just because God sees all things,
provides all things, and has power over
all things, therefore man must act as if
he believed this to be true. The first
and the last conviction of every honest
inquirer must be, that God is, and is
Lord over all—and the whole of
Scripture bears testimony to the fact of
His infinitude.”
And yet how marvelously difficult it is
to win the mind to a full, unwavering
acquiescence in a truth which, in a
different application, is received with
unquestioning readiness! And what is
there in the application of this law of
the divine government to the world of
matter, which is not equally reasonable
and fit in its application to the world
of mind? If it is necessary and proper
in the material, why should it not be
equally, or more so, in the spiritual
empire? If God is allowed the full
exercise of a sovereignty in the one,
why should He be excluded from an
unlimited sovereignty in the other?
Surely it were even more worthy of Him
that He should prearrange, predetermine,
and supremely rule in the concerns of a
world over which His more dignified and
glorious empire extends, than that in
the inferior world of matter He should
fix a constellation in the heavens,
guide the gyrations of a bird in the
air, direct the falling of an autumn
leaf in the pathless desert, or convey
the seed, borne upon the wind, to the
spot where it should fall. Surely if no
fortuitous ordering is admitted in the
one case, on infinitely stronger grounds
it should be excluded from the other.
Upon no other basis could divine
foreknowledge and providence take their
stand than upon this. Disconnected from
the will and purpose of God there could
be nothing certain as to the future, and
consequently there could be nothing
certainly foreknown. And were not
providence to regulate and control
persons, things, and events—every
dispensation, in fact—by the same
preconstructed plan, it would follow
that God would be exposed to a thousand
unforeseen contingencies, or else that
He acts ignorantly or contrary to His
will.
But it is not so much our province to
establish the truth of this doctrine,
and explain its reasonableness and the
harmony of its relations, as to trace
its sanctifying tendency and effect.
Predestination must be a divine verity,
since it stands essentially connected
with our conformity to the divine image.
“Predestinated
to be conformed to the image of his
Son.” Addressing ourselves to this
deeply interesting and important branch
of our subject, let us first contemplate
the believer’s model.
“The image of his Son.” No standard
short of this will meet the case. How
conspicuous appears the wisdom and how
glorious the goodness of God in
this—that in making us holy, the model
or standard of that holiness should be
Deity itself! God would make us holy,
and in doing so He would make us like
Himself.
But with what pen—dipped though it
were in heaven’s brightest hues—can
we portray the image of Jesus? The
perfection of our Lord was the
perfection of holiness. His Deity,
essential holiness—His humanity
without sin, the impersonation of
holiness, all that He was, said, and
did, was as flashes of holiness
emanating from the fountain of essential
purity, and kindling their dazzling and
undying radiance around each step He
trod. How lowly, too, His character! How
holy the thoughts He breathed, how pure
the words He spake, how humble the
spirit He exemplified, how tender and
sympathizing the outgoings of His
compassion and love to man. He is “the
chief among ten thousand, the altogether
lovely.”
Such is the believer’s model. To this
he is predestinated to be conformed. And
is not this predestination in its
highest form? Would it seem possible for
God to have preordained us to a greater
blessing, to have chosen us to a higher
distinction? In choosing us in Christ
before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy, He has advanced us to
the loftiest degree of honor and
happiness to which a creature can be
promoted—assimilation to His own moral
image. And this forms the highest
ambition of the believer. To transcribe
those beauteous lineaments which, in
such perfect harmony and beautiful
expression, blended and shone in the
life of Jesus, is the great study of all
His true disciples. But in what does
this conformity consist?
The first feature is, a conformity of
nature. And this is reciprocal. The Son
of God, by an act of divine power,
became human; the saints of God, by an
act of sovereign grace, partake “of
the divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:4 says.
This harmony of nature forms the basis
of all conformity. Thus grafted into
Christ, we grow up into Him in all holy
resemblance. The meekness, the holiness,
the patience, the self-denial, the zeal,
the love, traceable in us—though faint
and imperfect—are transfers of
Christ’s beauteous and faultless
lineaments to our renewed soul. Thus the
mind that was in Him is in some measure
in us. And in our moral conflict,
battling as we do with sin, Satan, and
the world, we come to know a little of
fellowship with His sufferings and
conformity to His death.
We are here supplied with a test of
Christian character. It is an anxious
question with many professors of Christ,
“How may I arrive at a correct
conclusion that I am among the
predestinated of God —that I am
included in His purpose of grace and
love—that I have a saving interest in
the Lord’s salvation?” The passage
under consideration supplies the
answer—conformity to the image of
God’s Son. Nothing short of this can
justify the belief that we are saved. No
evidence less strong can authenticate
the fact of our predestination. The
determination of God to save men is not
so fixed as to save no matter what their
character may be. Christ’s work is a
salvation from sin, not in sin.
“According as he hath chosen us in him
before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy” (Eph. 1:4). In
other words, that we should be conformed
to the divine image. That we should be
like Christ in His divine nature, in the
purity of His human nature, in the
humility He exemplified, in the
self-denial He practiced, and in the
heavenly life He lived. In a word, in
all that this expressive sentence
comprehends—“conformed to the image
of his Son.”
As we grow day by day more holy, more
spiritually minded, more closely
resembling Jesus, we are placing the
truth of our predestination to eternal
life in a clearer, stronger light, and
consequently the fact of our salvation
beyond a misgiving and a doubt. In view
of this precious truth, what spiritual
heart will not breathe the prayer, “O
Lord! I cannot be satisfied merely to
profess and call myself Thine. I want
more of the power of vital religion in
my soul. I pant for Thine image. My
deepest grief springs from the discovery
of the little real resemblance which I
bear to a model so peerless, so
divine—that I exemplify so little of
Thy patience in suffering; Thy meekness
in opposition; Thy forgiving spirit in
injury; Thy gentleness in reproving; Thy
firmness in temptation; Thy singleness
of eye in all that I do. Oh, transfer
Thyself wholly to me. What were this
world, yea, what were heaven itself,
without Thee? A universe of creatures,
the fondest, the holiest, could not be
Thy substitute to my yearning, longing
soul, O Lord! Come, and occupy Thine own
place in my heart. Awaken it to Thy
love. Sweep Thou its chords with Thy
gentle hand, and it shall breathe sweet
music to Thy dear name.
I love Thee, Savior, for my soul
craves joy!
I want Thee, without hope I cannot
live!
I look for Thee; my nature pants to
give
Its every power a rapture and employ;
And there are things which I would
fain destroy
Within my bosom; things that make me
grieve;
Sin, and her child, Distrust, that
often weave
About my spirit darkness and annoy:
And none but Thou canst these dissolve
in light;
And so I long for Thee, as those who
stay
In the deep waters long for dawning
day!
Nor would I only have my being bright,
But peaceful, too; so ask Thee if I
might
My head on Thy dear bosom lean alway.
—Townshend
“That he might be the firstborn among
many brethren.” The Son of God
sustains to us the relation of the Elder
Brother. He is emphatically the
“Firstborn.” In another place we
read, “Forasmuch then as the children
are partakers of flesh and blood, he
also likewise took part of the same.”
He is the “Brother born for
adversity.” Our relation to Him as our
Brother is evidenced by our conformity
to Him as our model. We have no valid
claim to relationship which springs not
from a resemblance to His image. The
features may be indistinctly visible,
yet one line of holiness, one true
lineament, drawn upon the heart by the
Holy Ghost, proves our fraternal
relationship to Him, the
“Firstborn.”
And how large the brotherhood—“many
brethren!” What the relative
proportion of the church is to the
world—how many will be saved—is a
question speculative and profitless. But
this we know, the number will be vast,
countless. The one family of God is
composed of “many brethren.” They
are not all of the same judgment in all
matters, but they are all of the same
spirit. The unity of the family of God
is not ecclesiastical, nor geographical;
it is spiritual and essential. It is the
“unity of the Spirit.” Begotten of
one Father, in the nature of the Elder
Brother, and through the regenerating
grace of the one Spirit, all the saints
of God constitute one church, one
family, one brotherhood—essentially
and indivisibly one. Nor is this
relationship difficult to recognize.
Consider an illustration: Two brethren
in the Lord of widely different sections
of the church, and of much dissonance of
sentiment on some points of truth, meet
and converse together. With the Word of
God in hand, each is surprised that the
other does not read it as he reads it
and interpret it as he interprets it.
But they drop the points of difference
and take up the points of agreement.
They speak of Christ—the Christ who
loves them both, and whom they both
love. They talk of the one Master whom
they serve; of their common labors,
infirmities, trials, temptations,
discouragements, failures, and
successes. They talk of the heaven where
they are journeying; of their Father’s
house, in which they will dwell together
forever. They kneel in prayer; they cast
themselves before the cross; the oil of
gladness anoints them; their hearts are
broken, their spirits are humbled, their
souls are blended; they rise and feel
more deeply and more strongly than ever
that they both belong to the same
family, are both of the “many
brethren,” of whom the Son of God is
the “Firstborn,” the Elder Brother.
Oh, blessed unity! What perfect harmony
of creed, what strict conformity of
ritual, what sameness of denominational
relation, is for a moment to be compared
with this? Have you, my reader, this
evidence that you belong to the “many
brethren?”
It is our purpose to conclude by briefly
showing how encouraging the doctrine of
predestination is to the soul in sincere
and earnest seeking of Christ, and by
tracing some of the peculiar blessings
which flow from it to the saints of God.
There is a class of individuals,
unhappily a large one, over whose
spiritual feelings the doctrine of
divine predestination would seem to have
cast a deep and settled gloom. We refer
to those who are apt to regard this
truth with deep antipathy, if not with
absolute horror, as constituting, in
their view, one of the most formidable
and insurmountable obstacles to their
salvation. But the validity of this
objection we by no means admit. There
can be nothing in the Bible adverse to
the salvation of a sinner. The doctrine
of predestination is a revealed doctrine
of the Bible; therefore, predestination
cannot be opposed to the salvation of
the sinner. So far from this being true,
we don’t hesitate most strongly and
emphatically to affirm that we know of
no doctrine of God’s Word more replete
with encouragement to the awakened,
sin-burdened, Christ-seeking soul than
this.
What stronger evidence can we have of
our election of God than the Spirit’s
work in the heart? Are you really in
earnest for the salvation of your soul?
Do you feel the plague of sin? Are you
sensible of the condemnation of the law?
Do you come under the denomination of
the “weary and heavy laden?” If so,
then the fact that you are a subject of
divine drawings—that you have a felt
conviction of your sinfulness—and that
you are seeking for a place of refuge,
affords the strongest ground for
believing that you are one of those whom
God has predestinated to eternal life.
The very work thus begun is the
Spirit’s first outline of the divine
image upon your soul—that very image
to which the saints are predestinated to
be conformed.
But while we thus vindicate this
doctrine as being inimical to the
salvation of the anxious soul, we must,
with all distinctness and earnestness
declare that in this stage of your
Christian course, you have primarily and
mainly to do with another and a
different doctrine. We refer to the
doctrine of the atonement. If you could
look into the book of the divine
decrees, and read your name inscribed
upon its pages, it would not impart the
joy and peace which one believing view
of Christ crucified will convey. It is
not essential to your salvation that you
believe in election; but it is essential
to your salvation that you believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ. In your case, as
an individual debating the momentous
question, “how a sinner may be
justified before God,” your first
business is with Christ, and Christ
exclusively. You are to feel that you
are a lost sinner, not that you are an
elect saint. The doctrine which meets
the present phase of your spiritual
condition is not the doctrine of
predestination, but the doctrine of an
atoning Savior. The truth to which you
are to give the first consideration, and
the most simple and unquestioning
credence is, that “Christ died for the
ungodly,” that He came into the world
to save sinners, that He came to call,
not the righteous, but sinners to
repentance, that in all respects, in the
great business of our salvation, He
stands before us in the relation of a
Savior, while we stand before Him in the
character of a sinner.
The mental conflict into which you have
been brought touching this doctrine, is
but a subtle and dexterous stroke of the
enemy to divert your thoughts from
Christ. Your soul is at this moment in
what may be termed a transitional state.
A crisis in your history has been
reached. How momentous the result! Shall
we portray your present feelings? You
are sensible of your sinfulness, are
oppressed by its guilt, and are in dread
of its condemnation. You have no peace
of mind, no joy of heart, no hope of
heaven. Life with you has lost its
charm, society its attractions, and
pleasure its sweetness. A sombre hue
paints every object, and insipidity
marks every engagement. Whence this
marvellous revolution, this essential
and wondrous change? We answer, it is
the Spirit of God moving upon your soul.
And what truth, do you think, meets the
case? Predestination? Election? Oh, no!
These are hidden links in the great
chain of your salvation, upon which in
your present state, you are not called
to lay your hand in grasping that chain.
But there are other and intermediate
links, visible, near, and within your
reach. Take hold of them, and you are
saved: “This is a faithful saying, and
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.” “God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.”
“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son
cleanseth us from all sin.” “Come
unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.” “Him that cometh unto me I
will in no wise cast out.”
“Whosoever will, let him take of the
water of life freely.” “Being
justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus.” “Ho, every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”
“In whom we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of his grace.”
“By grace are ye saved, through faith;
and that not of yourselves: it is the
gift of God.” “Wherefore he is able
also to save them to the uttermost that
come unto God by him.” “Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved.”
Grasp, in simple faith, each or any one
of these golden links, and from that
moment for you there is no condemnation.
But what is the real difficulty? It is
not predestination. Travel into the
inmost recesses of your heart and
ascertain. May there not be some defect
in your actual conviction of sin? Were
you thoroughly convinced of your lost
and ruined condition as a sinner, would
you cavil and demur at any one revealed
doctrine of Scripture? Would this, of
all doctrines, prove a real stumbling
block in your way? Would the question of
election give you a moment’s serious
thought? Would it interpose a true and
valid objection to your coming to Christ
to be saved by Him? Suppose, to
illustrate the idea, you were roused
from sleep in the dead hour of night by
the approach of flames kindling fiercely
around you. One avenue of escape
presented itself. Would you pause for an
instant upon its threshold to debate the
question of your predestinated safety?
Would you not at once decide the
question in your favor, by an instant
retreat from the devouring element,
through the only door that proffered you
deliverance? Most assuredly. To a matter
so momentous as your salvation apply the
same reasoning. Were it not folly, yea,
insanity itself, to hesitate for a
moment to consider whether you are
predestinated to escape the wrath to
come, when, if you do not escape, that
wrath will assuredly overwhelm you? One
refuge alone presents itself. One avenue
only invites your escape. Let no other
doctrine but faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ occupy your thoughts at this
juncture of your religious course.
Diverging from this path, you will be
plunged into a sea of perplexities, you
know not how inextricable, which may
land you, you know not where. For they
who have
Reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will,
and fate,
Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge
absolute,
Have found no end in wandering mazes
lost.
O let one object fix your eye and one
theme fill your mind—Christ and His
salvation. Absorbed in the contemplation
and study of these two points, you may
safely defer all further inquiry to
another and a more advanced stage of
your Christian course. Remember that the
fact of your predestination, the
certainty of your election, can only be
inferred from your conversion. We must
hold you firmly to this truth. It is the
subtle and fatal reasoning of Satan, a
species of atheistical fatalism, to
argue, “If I am elected I shall be
saved whether I am regenerated or
not.” The path to eternal woe is paved
with arguments like this. Men have
cajoled their souls with such vain
excuses until they have found themselves
beyond the region of hope!
But we must rise to the fountain by
pursuing the stream. Conversion and not
predestination, is the end of the chain
we are to grasp. We must ascend from
ourselves to God, and not descend from
God to ourselves, in settling this great
question. We must judge of God’s
objective purpose of love concerning us,
by His subjective work of grace within
us. One of the martyr Reformers has
wisely remarked, “We need not go about
to trouble ourselves with curious
questions of the predestination of God;
but let us rather endeavor ourselves
that we may be in Christ. For, when we
are in Him, then are we well: and then
we may be sure that we are ordained to
everlasting life. When you find these
three things in your hearts, repentance,
faith, and a desire to leave sin, then
you may be sure your names are written
in the book, and you may be sure also,
that you are elected and predestinated
to eternal life.” Again he observes,
“If thou art desiring to know whether
thou art chosen to everlasting life,
thou mayest not begin with God, for God
is too high, thou canst not comprehend
Him. Begin with Christ, and learn to
know Christ, and wherefore He came;
namely, that He came to save sinners,
and made Himself subject to the law, and
a fulfiller of the law, to deliver us
from the wrath and danger thereof. If
thou knowest Christ, then thou mayest
know further of thy election.” And
illustrating his idea by his own
personal experience, he says, “If I
believe in Christ alone for salvation, I
am certainly interested in Christ; and
interested in Christ I could not be, if
I were not chosen and elected of God.”
In conclusion, we earnestly entreat you
to lay aside all fruitless speculations,
and to give yourself to prayer. Let
reason bow to faith, and faith shut you
up to Christ, and Christ be all in all
to you. Once more we solemnly affirm
that, conversion, and not
predestination, is the doctrine with
which, in your present state of inquiry,
you have to do. Beware that you come not
short of true conversion—a changed
heart, and a renewed mind, so that you
become “a new creature in Christ
Jesus.” And if as a poor lost sinner
you repair to the Savior, all vile,
guilty, unworthy, and weak as you are,
He will receive you, and shelter you
within the bosom that bled on the cross,
to provide an atonement and an asylum
for the very chief of sinners.
Intermeddle not, therefore, with a state
which you can only ascertain to be yours
by the Spirit’s work upon your heart.
“Your election will be known by your
interest in Christ; and your interest in
Christ by the sanctification of the
Spirit. Here is a chain of salvation;
the beginning of it is from the Father;
the dispensation of it through the Son;
the application of it by the Spirit. In
looking after the comfort of election,
you must look inward to the work of the
Spirit in your heart; then outward to
the work of Christ on the cross; then
upward to the heart of the Father in
heaven.” Oh, let your prayer be “God
be merciful to me a sinner,” until
that prayer is answered in the assurance
of full pardon sealed upon your
conscience by the Holy Ghost. Thus
knocking at mercy’s door, the heart of
God will fly open, and admit you to all
the hidden treasures of its love.
We can but group some of the great
blessings which flow from this truth to
the saints of God. The doctrine of
predestination is well calculated to
confirm and strengthen the true believer
in the fact and certainty of his
salvation through Christ. Feeling, as he
does, the plague of his own heart,
experiencing the preciousness of the
Savior, looking up through the cross to
God as his Father, exulting in a hope
that maketh not ashamed, and remembering
that God the Eternal Spirit only renews
those who are chosen by God the Father,
and are redeemed by God the Son, this
doctrine is found to be most comforting
and confirming to his faith. The
faintest lineaments of resemblance to
God, and the feeblest breathing of the
Spirit of adoption he discovers in his
soul, is to him an indisputable evidence
of his predestination to divine sonship
and holiness.
Another blessing accruing from the
doctrine is the sweet and holy
submission into which it brings the mind
under all afflictive dispensations. Each
step of his pilgrimage, and each
incident of his history, the believer
sees appointed in the everlasting
covenant of grace. He recognizes the
discipline of the covenant to be as much
a part of the original plan as any
positive mercy that it contains. That
all the hairs of his head are numbered;
that affliction cometh not out of the
earth, and therefore is not the result
of accident or chance, but is in harmony
with God’s purposes of love; and, thus
ordained and permitted, must work
together for good.
Not the least blessing resulting from
this truth (2 Thess. 2:13) is its
tendency to promote personal godliness.
The believer feels that God hath
“chosen us to salvation through
sanctification and belief of the
truth;” that He hath “chosen us that
we should be holy and without blame
before him in love” (Eph. 1:4); that
we are “his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works, which God
hath before ordained that we should walk
in them” (Eph. 2:10). Thus the
believer desires to “give all
diligence to make his calling and
election sure,” or undoubted, by
walking in all the ordinances and
commandments of the Lord blameless, and
standing complete in all the will of
God.
And what doctrine is more emptying,
humbling, and therefore sanctifying,
than this? It lays the axe at the root
of all human boasting. In the light of
this truth, the most holy believer sees
that there is no difference between him
and the vilest sinner that crawls the
earth, but what the mere grace of God
has made. Such are some of the many
blessings flowing to the Christian from
this truth. The radiance which it
reflects upon the entire history of the
child of God, and the calm repose which
it diffuses over the mind in all the
perplexing, painful, and mysterious
events of that history, can only be
understood by those whose hearts have
fully received the doctrine of
predestination. Whatever betides
him—inexplicable in its character,
enshrouded in the deepest gloom, as may
be the circumstance—the believer in
this truth can “stand still,” and,
calmly surveying the scene, exclaim:
“This also cometh forth from the Lord
of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel,
and excellent in working. He who worketh
all things after the counsel of His own
will hath done it, and I am satisfied
that it is well done.”
In conclusion, saints of God, have close
relations and intimate dealings with
your Elder Brother. Repose in Him your
confidence, yield to Him your
affections, consecrate to Him your
service. He regards you with ineffable
delight. With all your interests He is
identified, and with all your sorrows He
sympathizes. He may, like Joseph, at
times speak roughly to His brethren, in
the trying dispensations of His
providence; yet, like Joseph, He veils
beneath that apparent harshness a
brother’s deep and yearning love. Seek
a closer resemblance to His image, to
which, ever remember, you are
predestinated to be conformed. In order
to this, study His beauty, His precepts,
His example, that with “open face,
beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, you may be changed into the same
image, from glory to glory, even as by
the Spirit of the Lord.”
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