Dr. PAYNE, one of the subtlest and most accomplished of modern Calvinists, argues strongly against the notion that the decree of election involves the decree of reprobation. He says "I may determine to relieve one out of twenty destitute families in my neighbourhood, without positively determining not to relieve the others; and if any one should ask me why others are not relieved, it would be sufficient to reply that the giving of actual relief can only spring from a determination to relieve, which in reference to them does not exist. I may determine to take a book from the shelf, without a positive determination not to take the others. There may, indeed, be such a determination, but it is not necessarily implied in the determination to take, and that is all that I am obliged to prove--the other books may not even be thought of" (p. 40). Dr. Payne was a very subtle dialectician, but we fear he has here imposed upon himself in these illustrations. It is very true that when I determine to select book "A" from my library, that book "B" may not have been before my mind, and that I did not knowingly determine to reject it. But it may have been, and if it was, then the selection of "A" only, carried with it the rejection of "B." A father sees his two children perishing in the waters. He jumps into a boat, and reaches the scene of disaster. The children are sinking from sheer exhaustion. He takes one into the boat, and returns to shore. He could easily have saved the other, but did not, and he tells the people this on landing, and that he must be simply judged by his act of saving the rescued child, and that he is not to be held as passing a decree of reprobation against the other. This, we submit, is Dr. Payne's case. And will it bear looking at? I don't think it. Dr. Payne adds, "This reasoning applies yet with greater force to the great Eternal. There must exist in the mind of God a determination to do what He actually does, because His actions are the result of His volitions or determinations. But where God does not act, where He does nothing, He determines nothing. It is childish to suppose that because when He acts, there must be a determination to act, when he does not act, there must be a determination not to act, since a determination is necessary to a state of action, but it surely is not necessary to a state of rest. When Jehovah created the present universe, is it necessary to suppose that there existed in His mind a positive determination not to create any of the other possible universes which were present to His views? Surely not." But we should say, Surely yes. If twenty plans are presented to me, and I select one only, does not this imply the rejection of the others? To the Divine mind there must have been present the conception of many different kinds of worlds than the one we are in; but of the possibles He chose the present system as, all things considered, the best. Had there been a better