Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/121

 lions of creatures doomed to eternal torture before they were born, and mocked with protestations of his love. Since God is love, and justice is the foundation of his throne, such cannot be his chara&er.

Arminianism says: Yes, God is love; and in bringing humanity into the world he meant them no harm only good. But Satan succeeded in tempting the first pair, and thus sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And ever since, God has been doing all he can to deliver man from his enemy, even to the giving of his Son. And though now, six thousand years after, the gospel has reached only a very small proportion of mankind, yet we do hope and trust that within six thousand years more, through the energy and liberality of the church, God will so far have remedied the evil introduced by Satan that all then living may at least know of his love, and have an opportunity to believe and be saved.

While this view presents God as a being full of loving and benevolent designs for his creatures, it implies that he lacks ability and foreknowledge adequate to the accomplishment of his benevolent designs : that he is deficient in wisdom and power. From this view it would appear that while God was engaged in arranging and devising for the good of his newly- created children, Satan slipped in and by one master-stroke upset all God's plans to such an extent that, even by ex- hausting all his power, God must spend twelve thousand years to re-instate righteousness, even to such a degree that the remainder of the race who still live will have an oppor- tunity to choose good as readily as evil. But the one hun- dred and forty-two billions of the past six thousand years, and as many more of the next, are, according to this view, lost to all eternity, in spite of God's love for them, because Satan interfered with his plans. Thus Satan would get thou- sands into eternal torment to one that God saves to glory*

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