THE KESERVED RIGHTS OF GOD. 



75 



to justify God, since I have come to learn how deeply I need to 

 be justified myself." 



St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, having surveyed the 

 course of history and the order of Creation, instead of attempting 

 to justify the enigmas of the world, leads us to contemplate 

 the wonders of Kedemption, and to hope for the manifestation 

 of the sons of God, when the Creation shall be liberated from the 

 bondage of corruption, and brought into the liberty of the 

 glory of the redeem^ed. 



It appears from these two samples of Biblical thought that the 

 purpose of the Holy Spirit, alike in the Old and the New 

 Testaments, is rather to point out the way in which God justifies 

 man than to show how man may justify the ways of God. 



I aim in this lecture to demonstrate that there are certain 

 rights in God, in virtue of which He withholds from the ken of 

 His intelligent creatures some things which we have a desire to 

 know ; that it is possible that those things may never be wholly 

 known to us ; and that, in thus withholding this knowledge. He 

 acts conformably to His character. Hence we may rest in that 

 character without feeling any sense of injury, and in a certain 

 measure of what may be called ignorance. 



It is quite compatible with Christian confidence in the faith- 

 fulness of God to assert that there may be matters w^hich do 

 not come under the consoling assurance, " What I do, thou 

 knowest not now ; but thou shalt know hereafter.'' While the 

 Christian clings, with a tenacity which nothing can move, to 

 St. Paul's declaration, " Now I know in part, but then shall I 

 know even as also lam known "; yet even that future, and that 

 purer knowledge, may be a growing knowledge and may never 

 exhaust all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are 

 hidden in Christ. 



I shall endeavour, then, to show that there are two rights 

 reserved to Himself by God. The first of these is the right 

 vested in His Omniscience, of limiting the powers, opportunities, 

 and attainments of His creatures in regard to many portions of 

 His dealings with them. The second is the right vested in His 

 Creatorship, of disposing of His creation at will — that is, of 

 course, according to His will, conditioned by His perfections, and 

 not arbitrarily. 



This double right in God flows from His Sovereignty. When 

 the New Testament speaks of God as "the blessed (blissful) 

 and only Potentate," as " the King of kings and Lord of lords," 



