CHAPTER II

GOD'S ETERNAL DECREE

Mark xii, 2: "And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard."1

SOME months ago an editorial in a leading newspaper of this city contained the following statement: "The first duty of a Presbyterian clergyman who has professed what he does not believe is to vindicate his own sincerity. In our opinion, the common people are less likely to be troubled on their own account than on account of a spiritual leader who is outwardly faithful to a creed which they have reason to think he has inwardly rejected."

The writer had already laid it down as a matter of common knowledge that a great many Presbyterian ministers share the view of one in a neighboring presbytery who had just been affirming that "there is no such God as the God of the Westminster Confession."

Has this journalist, who so lightly charges his neighbors with hypocrisy, taken pains to inform

1 Preached in the Brick Church, New York City, December 18, 1904.

himself what the Westminster Confession really teaches concerning God? I will quote some of its characteristic utterances: "There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

That may not be a perfect definition of the divine nature, but, for my part, I should not like to undertake the task of writing a better.

I admit that the next chapter of the Confession, which treats of God's Eternal Decree, says some things not easy to reconcile with this earlier definition. It has been confessed by innumerable loyal Presbyterians that our fathers tried to settle too many things about these high mysteries,1 "reasoning," to quote Milton's words-and I have always suspected that when the poet wrote these words the memory of certain weary discussions in the Westminster Assembly was floating through his mind

1 For instance, in the distinction between common grace and special or saving grace, a distinction concerning which our theological disputants have had so much to say, while the Scripture maintains an impressive silence.

"reasoning of fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, finding no end in wandering mazes lost." 1

We have never professed to believe the Confession perfect. Such a belief is forbidden the Presbyterian minister by the very terms of his reception of the Confession; for before receiving it he is made to say that the Scripture is the only infallible rule.

But whatever you think of that Third Chapter as originally compiled, it must now be read in the light of the Declaratory Statement formally adopted in the Revision of 1902 and 1903, and which now forms part of our doctrinal standard. Listen to this: "The doctrine of God's Eternal Decree is held in harmony with the doctrine of His love to all mankind, His gift of His Son to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and His readiness to bestow His saving grace on all who seek it; that God desires not the death of any sinner; that His decree hinders no

man from accepting (His gracious offer); that no man is condemned except on the ground of his sin."

That is the present Confession of our Church, and I am willing to take my stand before the world, and call God to witness that I have no apologies to offer for it, and employ no mental reservation in subscribing to it.

1 Paradise Lost, ii, line 560.

But even to go back to the original language of the Westminster fathers concerning this mystery of God's decree for of course it is on this doctrine of decrees that we Presbyterians have been most commonly accused of misrepresenting the divine nature-let me read you their first article on that subject: "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

I have admitted that, in my opinion, our fathers tried to peer too far into this unsearchable mystery, but if you must attempt to say anything on the subject, I think it would be hard to better that statement. The men who wrote that article were not fatalists; Christian believers never are. Mahometans may be, I suppose, a sort of fatalists, but not the most hopeless sort, for they believe in God. The hopeless fatalism is atheism. The charge so often made against our Confession of Faith, that it marks some men out for blessedness and others for ruin by a rigid fate, and without regard to what they may choose to do, is a false charge. The school of teaching against which that charge could be justly preferred is that of materi

alistic science and philosophy. It is a simple matter of fact that belief in a personal and sovereign God is the one thing that has established man's belief in the freedom of the human will. So our Confession says: "Nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures (by the divine decree), nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

So much, then, for this Third Chapter of the Confession. For myself, I like the language of the Bible itself better than any later creed, and prefer as a general thing to take my faith from it at firsthand; but when a charge has been published that a great many of us are hypocrites because we do not rise in our places and denounce and repudiate this venerable symbol, any Presbyterian minister may fairly ask leave to answer the charge.

But now will you come out into a larger region. Turn your thoughts back from the Westminster Confession to the scriptural doctrine which those men were trying to confess. For it is a shallow blunder to suppose that the Westminster divines invented the doctrine of God's decree. They were simply doing their best to make what they could of a mystery which they found—and which we shall find unless we close our eyes-in the Bible itself. Paul says that God chose Jacob over Esau before the children were born, and before they could do