"Then you say there are more seeds than are required?"

"How could I, when I do not know what they are required for? How can I tell that it is not necessary for the life of the tree that it should produce them all, and necessary too for the ground to receive so much life-rent from the tree!"

"But you must admit that some things are lost!"

"Yes, surely!" answered Donal. "Why else should he come and look till he find?"

No such answer had the theologian expected; she was not immediate with her rejoinder.

"But some of them are lost after all!" she said.

"Doubtless; there are sheep that will keep running away. But he goes after them again."

"He will not do that for ever!"

"He will."

"I do not believe it."

"Then you do not believe that G.o.d is infinite!"

"I do."

"How can you? Is he not the Lord G.o.d merciful and gracious?"

"I am glad you know that."

"But if his mercy and his graciousness are not infinite, then he is not infinite!"

"There are other attributes in which he is infinite."

"But he is not infinite in all his attributes? He is partly infinite, and partly finite!--infinite in knowledge and power, but in love, in forgiveness, in all those things which are the most beautiful, the most divine, the most Christ-like, he is finite, measurable, bounded, small!"

"I care nothing for such finite reasoning. I take the word of inspiration, and go by that!"

"Let me hear then," said Donal, with an uplifting of his heart in prayer; for it seemed no light thing for Arctura which of them should show the better reason.

Now it had so fallen that the ladies were talking about the doctrine called Adoption when first they saw Donal; whence this doctrine was the first to occur to the champion of orthodoxy as a weapon wherewith to foil the enemy.

"The most precious doctrine, if one may say so, in the whole Bible, is that of Adoption. G.o.d by the mouth of his apostle Paul tells us that G.o.d adopts some for his children, and leaves the rest. If because of this you say he is not infinite in mercy, when the Bible says he is, you are guilty of blasphemy."

In a tone calm to solemnity, Donal answered--

"G.o.d's mercy is infinite; and the doctrine of Adoption is one of the falsest of false doctrines. In bitter lack of the spirit whereby we cry Abba, Father, the so-called Church invented it; and it remains, a hideous mask wherewith false and ignorant teachers scare G.o.d's children from their Father's arms."

"I hate sentiment--most of all in religion!" said Miss Carmichael with contempt.

"You shall have none," returned Donal. "Tell me what is meant by Adoption."

"The taking of children," answered Miss Carmichael, already spying a rock ahead, "and treating them as your own."

"Whose children?" asked Donal.

"Anyone's."

"Whose," insisted Donal, "are the children whom G.o.d adopts?"

She was on the rock, and a little staggered. But she pulled up courage and said--

"The children of Satan."

"Then how are they to be blamed for doing the deeds of their father?"

"You know very well what I mean! Satan did not make them. G.o.d made them, but they sinned and fell."

"Then did G.o.d repudiate them?"

"Yes."

"And they became the children of another?"

"Yes, of Satan."

"Then G.o.d disowns his children, and when they are the children of another, adopts them? Miss Carmichael, it is too foolish! Would that be like a father? Because his children do not please him, he repudiates them altogether; and then he wants them again--not as his own, but as the children of a stranger, whom he will adopt! The original relationship is no longer of any force--has no weight even with their very own father! What ground could such a parent have to complain of his children?"

"You dare not say the wicked are the children of G.o.d the same as the good."

"That be far from me! Those who do the will of G.o.d are infinitely more his children than those who do not; they are born of the innermost heart of G.o.d; they are then of the nature of Jesus Christ, whose glory is obedience. But if they were not in the first place, and in the most profound fact, the children of G.o.d, they could never become his children in that higher, that highest sense, by any fiction of adoption. Do you think if the devil could create, his children could ever become the children of G.o.d? But you and I, and every pharisee, publican, and sinner in the world, are equally the children of G.o.d to begin with. That is the root of all the misery and all the hope.

Because we are his children, we must become his children in heart and soul, or be for ever wretched. If we ceased to be his, if the relation between us were destroyed, which is impossible, no redemption would be possible, there would be nothing left to redeem."

"You may talk as you see fit, Mr. Grant, but while Paul teaches the doctrine, I will hold it; he may perhaps know a little better than you."

"Paul teaches no such doctrine. He teaches just what I have been saying. The word translated adoption, he uses for the raising of one who is a son to the true position of a son."

"The presumption in you to say what the apostle did or did not mean!"

"Why, Miss Carmichael, do you think the gospel comes to us as a set of fools? Is there any way of truly or worthily receiving a message without understanding it? A message is sent for the very sake of being in some measure at least understood. Without that it would be no message at all. I am bound by the will and express command of the master to understand the things he says to me. He commands me to see their rect.i.tude, because they being true, I ought to be able to see them true. In the hope of seeing as he would have me see, I read my Greek Testament every day. But it is not necessary to know Greek to see what Paul means by the so-translated adoption. You have only to consider his words with intent to find out his meaning, and without intent to find in them the teaching of this or that doctor of divinity.

In the epistle to the Galatians, whose child does he speak of as adopted? It is the father's own child, his heir, who differs nothing from a slave until he enters upon his true relation to his father--the full status of a son. So also, in another pa.s.sage, by the same word he means the redemption of the body--its pa.s.sing into the higher condition of outward things, into a condition in itself, and a home around it, fit for the sons and daughters of G.o.d--that we be no more like strangers, but like what we are, the children of the house. To use any word of Paul's to make human being feel as if he were not by birth, making, origin, or whatever word of closer import can be found, the child of G.o.d, or as if anything he had done or could do could annul that relationship, is of the devil, the father of evil, not either of Paul or of Christ.--Why, my lady," continued Donal, turning to Arctura, "all the evil lies in this--that he is our father and we are not his children. To fulfil the poorest necessities of our being, we must be his children in brain and heart, in body and soul and spirit, in obedience and hope and gladness and love--his out and out, beyond all that tongue can say, mind think, or heart desire. Then only is our creation finished--then only are we what we were made to be. This is that for the sake of which we are troubled on all sides."

He ceased. Miss Carmichael was intellectually cowed, but her heart was nowise touched. She had never had that longing after closest relation with G.o.d which sends us feeling after the father. But now, taking courage under the overshadowing wing of the divine, Arctura spoke.

"I do hope what you say is true, Mr. Grant!" she said with a longing sigh.

"Oh yes, hope! we all hope! But it is the word we have to do with!"

said Miss Carmichael.

"I have given you the truth of this word!" said Donal.