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THE REV. H. J. R. MARSTON, M.A., ON 



an antipathy as in hearts animated by the spirit and doctrines 

 of the Gospel. 



But it is not only the origin and history of this idea in the 

 evolution of Israel which liberated it from defiling admixtures. 

 The idea itself has proved its own purity and force by two 

 notable eflects which it has produced in the Christian conscious- 

 ness. It was on this idea that St. Augustine, amid the world- 

 debacle that followed the fall of Rome, erected the system of the 

 City of God. For many generations Christian thinkers nursed 

 the hope of the Church on that model. The mediaeval system 

 had, indeed, many grievous faults, and inflicted on mankind 

 many grievous evils. Yet it sustained, through ages of bar- 

 barism and ignorance, a scheme of things which in due time 

 gave birth to a better state. This mediaeval system rested on 

 the doctrine of God as sovereign in grace and government, and 

 from that fountain flowed all that was true and clean in the 

 life of the Church for centuries. 



The Reformed Church, when she was menaced by the 

 reactionary sophistries and immoral casuistries of the Jesuits, 

 was saved from dissolution by the genius of Calvin, who gave to 

 it a cohesion and a logical compactness that proved irresistible. 

 The teaching of Calvin, as all men know, was based on the 

 Sovereignty of God. There must be inestimable preciousness 

 in a doctrine which enabled St. Augustine to save Christian 

 society from the deluge, and which enabled Calvin to save for 

 modern democracy the principles of personal liberty. This 

 great doctrine created the nobler parts of the world-embracing 

 Church of the Middle Ages ; and from the same doctrine was 

 derived the spirit and the character which produced the United 

 States of America. 



It is reasonable, then, to expect from, a truth that has been 

 so immensely beneficent, in politics and societ}^, consolation 

 and refreshment in the philosophy of the human heart and 

 mind. In the mjdst of vast disorders to-day the world is in 

 quest of comfort and interior repose. People ask two questions 

 — What does this all mean ? What is this vast upheaval and 

 dislocation for ? To what is all this vast cost, endurance, self- 

 sacrifice, energy, invention, directed ? Now, it is probable 

 that no one can answer this question so clearly or so completely 

 as to satisfy all minds. Yet to all minds there may come, I 

 think, a certain measure of real repose from the reflection that 

 God knows all. It may or may not be true that some day He 



