“Why some sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow, while others persist is one of those secrets which are not revealed as yet to the children of men.”

“But as the eye of omniscient love glanced down the ages, it must have lighted with peculiar pleasure on the eager, devoted soul of Paul. God foreknew and predestined him. The divine purpose, descrying his capacity for the best, selected him for it, and it for him. And there is a gleam of holy rapture on his face when, reviewing the process of those eternal movements of love from his Roman prison, he writes, ‘Blessed by the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ; even as he chose US in Him before the foundation of the world’ (Eph. i. 3, 4, R.V.).”—from the book