foreordained, so also must it be the case with sin, for it also comes to pass. I open the page of history, and find it bloated with tears and blood. It is full of robberies, massacres, and murders. As specimens, look at the Murder of John Brown by Claverhouse; the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the sack of Magdeburg, when the Croats amused themselves with throwing children into the flames, and Pappenheim's Walloons with stabbing infants at their mothers' breasts. Who ordained these and a thousand such horrid deeds? The Confession says that God ordained them, for He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. Tilly, the queen-mother, the infamous Catherine de Medici, Charles IX., the bloody "Clavers" were mere puppets. The Confession goes past all these, and says that God fixed them to take place. This is nothing else, in effect, than to place an almighty devil on the throne of the universe. This is strong language, but it is time, and more than time, that sickly dilettanteism should be left behind, and this gross libel on the Creator should be utterly rejected. He foreordains all His own deeds, but not the deeds of men. (5.) We object to the doctrine of universal foreordination, in the _fifth_ place, because it makes the day of judgment a farce. The books are opened, and men are about to receive acquittal or condemnation. This is perfectly right if men were free when on earth, but not so if all their deeds were foreordained by God. One of the most interesting sights in Strasbourg is the clock of the cathedral when it strikes twelve. Then the figures move. A man and a boy strike the bell, the apostles come out, and Christ blesses them. It is a wonderful piece of mechanism. But the figures are simply automatic. They move as they are moved. To try them in a court of justice (should anything go wrong), would be simply ridiculous--a farce. And if every one of our deeds is fixed, what better are men than mere automata? To try them, to judge them, and to award praise and blame for what was done, would be to burlesque justice. The judgment day, therefore, and foreordination of all things cannot stand in the same category. If we hold by the one we must give up the other. God foreknows all things, but foreordains only what He himself brings to pass. Man will be judged, condemned, or rewarded, according as he has acted in life; which judgment implies his freedom or the non-foreordination of his acts.