no one ventures to say Nay. It is another illustration of this sort of antichristian socialism.

This, then, is to be recognized as one of the peculiar moral perils of our age, and of our land, for the reason that we have dethroned the king, and in every department of life have professed to enthrone the people. We learn from so many instances, and by so many proofs, that the people may be a worse tyrant than the king. The king was far away; he would have touched us, and cramped our manhood, only at two or three points; the people—we are of the people; the pressure comes from every side; and if we yield to it, it may appear soon that no true unconstrained individual manhood will be left to us. Look once more at that mob at a lynching, and remember that it is one of the characteristic developments of this country of popular rule, and you see this particular kind of antichrist full

grown.

Now, against the antichrist we must set the Christ -the Christ whose habit it was to leave the ninety and nine and seek the one till He had found him. Never has there been a time when human society has needed more than it needs now this patient inquisition of the Good Shepherd, the chooser of the one sheep.

Call back the old faith in God's choice-a faith which made men strong and brave against the old

tyranny and see if it may not have power to emancipate us from these new tyrannies. Calvin himself, teacher of the doctrine of election, was the champion of the individual.1 Our Christ is a lover of men; not of classes, or of masses, but of men. He is interested in men one by one; and unless they judge themselves unworthy of His choice, He can make them one by one interesting.

One elect man can often save the day. One man whom Christ chooses outweighs the ninety and nine. One such man at a lynching will sometimes exorcise that gang of cowardly maniacs, and make men of them all. In the councils of labor or of capital, one elect man, or two or three of them, will sometimes order the confusion, and save the day for truth and honesty. In college, one Christian lad; in society, one Christian woman, repudiating any and all of its unholy dictates; anywhere, one whom Christ has chosen may be enough to save the day.

This doctrine of God's choice is full of hope, therefore; for, after all, the ninety and nine are made of units, each capable of individual election. The entire mob tyranny might be disintegrated, if

1 "Calvin, under a militant form of doctrine, lifted the individual above pope, and prelate, and priest, and presbyter; above Catholic Church and General Synod; above indulgences, remissions, and absolutions from fellow mortals, and brought him into the immediate dependence on God."-Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i, p. 180.

one were chosen to make the start. The Christ who found the one sheep, may find the others one by one. That is the nature of Christianity, to find men one by one. So it makes its choice of mennot the ninety and nine, but the one.

CHAPTER V

A CALL FOR ALL

THE previous chapters have given such instances of God's call as prove it to be particular and personal. The elect person is one chosen from two, or one chosen from a hundred; the choice is of the one. But in that case we are apt to argue that the other person-or the ninety and nine others—must be left unchosen. So the doctrine of reprobation has been a common corollary by the human reason to the revealed doctrine of election. To the mind the logic of that corollary may seem unquestionable, and yet the Christian heart has always questioned it, and seems ready now to repudiate it. That God has specially chosen some, must not be taken to prove that He had no care for the others. Why should He not be specially choosing them also, one by one, each to some appointed calling? "Talents differ," as Emerson's squirrel says to the mountain; "all is well and wisely put. If I cannot carry forests on my back, neither can you crack a nut." Reprobation is not true to the total impression of Scripture, and even the great creeds have

shrunk from any clear formulation of it, though some of them affirm it. For there runs through the whole Scripture a tone of universality as clear as that other tone of particularism. The harmony of these two tones constitutes the music of our Christian faith. "God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” Therefore, to do justice to the scriptural treatment of our theme, I must now supplement those earlier particularistic chapters by one which shall ring the changes on the word "all." 1

So large a word as this may properly claim a double text, and I will take the question of the young ruler in Matthew xix, 20, "What lack I yet?" and our Lord's invitation in Matthew xi, 28, "All ye that labor and are heavy laden."

There are many kinds of people in the world, but they are always tending to range themselves in two groups. In politics you discover an almost infinite variety of opinion, yet in every great election you expect to find just two chief parties. For the industrial interests it seems almost inevitable that men should be drawn into one or the other of the two great hosts of capital and labor. If you were speaking of matters of fashion, or of general opin

1" They (Calvinism and Arminianism) together give origin to the blended strain from which issues the perfect music which utters the perfect truth."-Dr. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, p. 161.