J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage‐ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.” (_c_) It represents God as arbitrary.—Answer: It represents God, not as arbitrary, but as exercising the free choice of a wise and sovereign will, in ways and for reasons which are inscrutable to us. To deny the possibility of such a choice is to deny God’s personality. To deny that God has reasons for his choice is to deny his wisdom. The doctrine of election finds these reasons, not in men, but in God. When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God’s choice seems revealed: _1 Tim. 1:16_—“_howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life_”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner: _verse 15_—“_Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief._” Hovey remarks that “the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.” But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God’s dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God’s _sovereignty_ is the sovereignty of _God_—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.