its power of fruitfulness to everlasting life. We must go back from the dead skeleton as it is preserved in the museum of theology to the living plant as it blossoms in the field of the Bible. We must go back of Jonathan Edwards, and back of John Calvin, and back of Augustine, to St. Paul, and see how, under his hand, all the mysterious facts of election as they are unfolded in human history, break into flower at last in the splendid faith that "God hath shut up all unto disobedience that He might have mercy upon all." 1 We must go still farther back, to Christ, and learn from Him that election is simply the way in which God uses His chosen ones to bless the world, the divine process by which the good seed is sown and scattered far and wide and the heavenly harvest multiplied a thousand-fold. "I elected you," He says to His disciples and to us, "I elected you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide."2

Christ's doctrine of election is a living, fragrant, fruitful doctrine. It is the most beautiful thing in Christianity. It is the very core and substance of the gospel, translated

Christ's doctrine of election to

Christ as the elect servant.

from the heart of God into the life of man. It is the divine law of service in spiritual things. It is the supreme truth in the revelation of an all-glorious love; the truth that God chooses men not to be saved alone, but to be saved by saving others, and that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is he who is most truly the servant of all.1

Is not this true of Christ Himself? He is the great example of what it means to be elect. He is the beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. And He says "Behold, I am in the midst of you as he that serveth."2 Service was the joy and crown of His life. Service was the refreshment and the strength of His soul, the angel's food, the "meat to eat" of which His disciples did not know.

Was not this the lesson that He was always teaching them by practice and by precept, that they must be like Him if they would belong to Him, that they must share His service if they would share His election! "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose," He said to Saul, "to make thee a servant (ὑπηρέτην, α rower in the ship), and a witness both of those things which thou hast seen and of the things

in the which I will appear unto thee."1 The | vision of Christ is the call to service. And if Paul had not been obedient to the heavenly vision could Saul have made his calling and election sure? But he answered it with a noble faith. "It pleased God to reveal His son in me in order that I might preach him among the nations." 2 Henceforward, wherever he might be, among his friends in Cilicia, in the dungeon at Philippi, on the doomed vessel drifting across the storm-tossed Adriatic, in the loneliness of his Roman prison, this was the one object of his life, to be a faithful servant of Christ, and therefore, as Christ was, a faithful servant of mankind.3

How can we interpret Christ's parables, with- Parables of out this truth? The parables of the Pounds privilege and the Talents are both pictures of election to service. They both exhibit the sovereignty of God in distributing His gifts; they both turn upon the idea of man's accountability for receiving and using them; and they both declare that the reward will be proportioned to fidelity in serving. The nature and meaning of this is explained by Christ in His great description of the judgment, which immediately follows the parable of the Talents in St. Matthew's

Gospel.1 Many of those who have known Him will be rejected at last because they have not served their fellow-men. Many of those who have not known Him will be accepted because they have ministered lovingly, though igno

rantly, to the wants and sorrows of the world.

Service, the Service is the key-note of the heavenly king

key-note of the kingdom.

dom, and he who will not strike that note shall have no part in the music. The King in the parable of the Wedding Feast2 chose and called his servants, not to sit down at ease in the palace, but to go out into the highways and bid every one that they met, to come to the marriage. And if one of those servants had refused or betrayed his mission, if he had neglected his Master's business, and sat down on the steps of the palace or walked pleasantly in the garden until the supper was ready, do you suppose that he would have found a place or a welcome at the feast? His soul would have stood naked and ashamed without the weddinggarment of love. For this is the nature of God's kingdom, that a selfish religion absolutely unfits a man from entering or enjoying it. Its gate is so strangely strait that a man cannot pass through it if he desires and tries to come alone; but if he will bring others with

him, it is wide enough and to spare.

Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.

How wonderfully all this comes out in the The prayer great intercessory prayer of Christ at the last supper.1 That prayer is the last and highest utterance of the love wherewith Christ, having loved His own which were in the world, loved them unto the end. He prays for His chosen ones: "I pray for them: I pray not for the world but for those whom Thou hast given Me." "Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one even as We are. For their sakes I consecrate Myself, that they themselves also may be consecrated in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they may all be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me." How the prayer rises, like some celestial music, through all the interwoven notes of different fellowships, the fellowship of the Father with the Son, the fellowship