But there is something that should touch our sympathies and bring our tears from fountains far deeper than those opened by such stories as the one I just related. And that is the condition which so many are in with respect to the things of salvation. Like the poor woman I told you about, they are deaf to all that is told them about a better life, and dead to all that God and man are willing to do for them. It is sometimes said of the sick that as long as there is life there is hope. So let it be with us in behalf of such. If the lost sister could have been made sensible of the great benefit it might have been to her to go back and live in a civilized and religious way, at last she might have consented to go. So let us hope that many, who are still in the bondage of sin and the darkness of this world, may see the truth that will set them free and give them light to repent and live.
Saturday, July 2. Cross the Cheat mountain to John Riley's in Pocahontas County, Virginia.
Sunday, July 3. In the forenoon I attend a Methodist quarterly meeting, at which they hold what they call a love feast; that is, they take bread and water; and after preaching they take what they call the Lord's Supper. They seem to be very sincere in what they do; but to my mind they are not consistent in calling a morsel of bread and a sip of wine, taken at the middle of the day, the Lord's Supper. I am sure we have no right to depart from God's order in anything appertaining to his church and worship.
In the afternoon I preach a funeral and baptize John Riley. Dine at Jacob Yager's on top of the Alleghany mountain, and stay all night at Adam Hevner's. Brother Kline got home Thursday, July 7.
Sunday, July 10. Baptize Samuel Bowman and wife. Brother and Sister Bowman give proof of being a good tree by the fruit they bear.
Samuel Bowman lived and died on Linville Creek, not far from Brother Kline's place. He raised a highly respectable family, very intelligent, and some of his children became members of the church of the Brethren.
Saturday, July 30. Meeting at Liberty, in Page County, Virginia. I speak on foreordination and election. Much has been said and written on these subjects. It is to be feared, however, that instead of light being thrown upon them in the way they have been treated, darkness, rather, has been added to darkness. No subjects wrongly viewed can look darker; and none rightly viewed can look clearer. The word foreordain means to ordain beforehand: and the word elect means to choose. Some that I have met with, in speaking on these subjects, particularly as they are given in the epistolary writings of the New Testament, remind me of fish in a net; they flounder about in the net, while every effort they make fastens them only the more tightly in its meshes. They read: "Whom God foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, ... and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Rom. 8:29, 30. Likewise the text before us: "Elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit." 1 Peter 1:2.
These passages, with others of a somewhat similar import, do not teach the foreordination and election of individuals independent of character and fitness. A lack of perception of this comprehensive truth accounts for the general misunderstanding of these and like passages in the apostolic writings. The doctrine of election, as it is called, opens out into a very large field for thought and investigation. It takes in the whole way of salvation from beginning to end.
"God is love," and the universe, with all its display of wonders and apparent opposition of forces and their ends, was created and is upheld by the eternal hand, for no other purpose than to make his love be seen and felt by his intelligent creation. Any other view challenges the divine love and reflects discredit upon the divine wisdom. All that we know of God is revealed in the truth he has given to save man from sin and its consequences. His love, wisdom and power are all revealed in his great scheme to build up a heaven of eternal glory and bliss for all who desire or are willing to share in its blessedness. But God does not work out of order. He works in accord with the love and wisdom which are his essence, and both infinite and eternal with him. Before the heavens were made, or ever the foundations of the earth were laid, it was the divine purpose to create intelligent beings to be eternally happy. When God created the heavens and the earth he made man in his own image and likeness. Man was happy. But he fell. And God foresaw that man would fall; and to remedy the loss and restore man to the divine image again, Christ was, as a Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world. In the Divine estimation Christ was slain before the foundation of the world; but to us, visibly, not until four thousand years afterward. In the divine foreknowledge the church was established before the world was made, and God foreordained who should compose it, basing this foreordination, not on one in preference to another on any personal ground, but on the ground of fitness as to quality. Foreordination and election have nothing to do with man other than as pertains to quality and fitness. The penitent, believing, loving and obeying, humble, self-denying soul is foreordained to be one of God's elect, now, henceforth and forever.
I now repeat the text: "Elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit." What I have said harmonizes with this, because the qualified fitness of the elect is through sanctification of the Spirit. Our Lord prays for all in these words: "Father, sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." It is through the truth that men are sanctified, and the sanctified the world over and through all time are God's elect, according to his foreknowledge or foreordination, because no others can be. The all-in-all of this great subject resolves itself into the simple fact that men do not come into covenant union with God unto salvation because God elected and foreordained it to be so in their special behalf as individuals, unconditionally chosen beforehand, whilst others no worse than they are left to go to destruction; but they are elected according to God's foreordination because they have come into covenant union with him unto salvation; and have, therefore, the fitness to be worthy of being so chosen or elected. Their election and foreordination are not the cause but the result of the fitness. It is foreordained that "of such is the kingdom of heaven," because it cannot consist of any other kind.