SUNDAY, July 3.  In the forenoon I attend a Methodist quarterly meeting, at which they hold what they call a love feast; that is, they take bread and water; and after preaching they take what they call the Lord’s Supper.  They seem to be very sincere in what they do; but to my mind they are not consistent in calling a morsel of bread and a sip of wine, taken at the middle of the day, the Lord’s Supper.  I am sure we have no right to depart from God’s order in anything appertaining to his church and worship.

In the afternoon I preach a funeral and baptize John Riley.  Dine at Jacob Yager’s on top of the Alleghany mountain, and stay all night at Adam Hevner’s.  Brother Kline got home Thursday, July 7.

SUNDAY, July 10.  Baptize Samuel Bowman and wife.  Brother and Sister Bowman give proof of being a good tree by the fruit they bear.

Samuel Bowman lived and died on Linville Creek, not far from Brother Kline’s place.  He raised a highly respectable family, very intelligent, and some of his children became members of the church of the Brethren.

SATURDAY, July 30.  Meeting at Liberty, in Page County, Virginia.  I speak on FOREORDINATION and ELECTION.  Much has been said and written on these subjects.  It is to be feared, however, that instead of light being thrown upon them in the way they have been treated, darkness, rather, has been added to darkness.  No subjects wrongly viewed can look darker; and none rightly viewed can look clearer.  The word FOREORDAIN means to ordain beforehand:  and the word ELECT means to choose.  Some that I have met with, in speaking on these subjects, particularly as they are given in the epistolary writings of the New Testament, remind me of fish in a net; they flounder about in the net, while every effort they make fastens them only the more tightly in its meshes.  They read:  “Whom God foreknew, he also FOREORDAINED to be conformed to the image of his Son, ... and whom he foreordained, them he also called:  and whom he called, them he also justified:  and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”  Rom. 8:29, 30.  Likewise the text before us:  “ELECT ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit.” 1 Peter 1:2.

These passages, with others of a somewhat similar import, do not teach the foreordination and election of individuals independent of character and fitness.  A lack of perception of this comprehensive truth accounts for the general misunderstanding of these and like passages in the apostolic writings.  The doctrine of election, as it is called, opens out into a very large field for thought and investigation.  It takes in the whole way of salvation from beginning to end.