impulses become steady principles. What we have to remember is what Paul at least never forgets, that this is not clay, but a very different stuff, with which God deals, and that this is the last place into which to introduce arbitrary and absolute action. The apostle's argument is not simply that God has absolute and unquestionable power, since all things are at His disposal, to use His pleasure about them, but that His wisdom and holiness and love are such as to make questioning of Him presumptuous. The spiritual qualities that make Him the skilful and wise fashioner of our spiritual beings are put by Paul into his application of the right of the potter to mould the clay. And this is only to say that God is self-limited: He cannot act contrary to His own attributes.

But in the second part of his answer, Paul reaches really the climax of his thought. The question is, why, since God Himself fashions men and accomplishes in them His own purposes, does He blame men if they turn out badly? The answer is a consideration of the means by which God produces His effects. Supposing, Paul says, that God, wishing to exhibit His wrath and to make known His power, bore in much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, what then? The answer is simply that God employs such means in hardening men's hearts as leave the responsibility entirely with them. If they are rendered hard and unrepentant by God's patience and long-suffering, that is their own fault. For God's action is such as to produce repentance and love, if it is not thwarted by man. And the apostle sees that if God wishes to show His wrath against sin, this is the only way open to Him. For if He acts at all in such a way as to produce hardness, creatively or absolutely, or through man's following instead of fighting Him, then He cannot be angry with man. He can only blame Himself. That is to say, this is Paul's answer to the objection, that God leaves Himself no room to judge men if His action upon them is absolute; viz., that His action is not absolute, but dependent on man's response to it, His action in the case of men whom He hardens, being adapted in itself to produce exactly the opposite result.

So far, the thought seems plain. But what is the relation to this of the clause that follows? If we make the participial clause in v. 22 concessive, as Meyer and others do, then we have to supply mentally an unexpressed purpose of the patience denoted by the verb, with which to connect this additional purpose. For instance, Meyer says that the object of God's bearing with the vessels of wrath. is to exhibit his long-suffering, which he finds implied in the phrase

"in much long-suffering." Moreover, the conjunction at the beginning of v. 23, in this case, has to be translated also, a meaning that it has, but with which its place is more naturally somewhere else than at the beginning of the clause. Or, if we say with others, Fritzsche included, that this clause denotes the purpose of the participial clause, "fitted unto destruction," the connection of thought becomes exceedingly difficult, as also the grammatical connection of a noun with a preposition and a clause introduced by a telic conjunction, as co-ordinate designations of purpose. Still another device, adopted by Tholuck, Godet, and others, is to make this clause a part of a new sentence, the principal verb of which is the "called" belonging to the relative clause of v. 24. But they fail to explain the peculiar turn or twist of the apostle's thought by which a principal becomes a relative clause. On the other hand, if we make the participial clause in v. 22 causal, as most commentators do, instead of concessive, then there does not seem to be any grammatical difficulty, and very little logical difficulty in making v. 23 co-ordinate with that as a designation of God's purpose in his patience. According to this, God had a twofold purpose in his forbearance. One was to make a place for His wrath against sin, the other was to open the way for His mercy toward those who were led to repentance. But how shall we get rid of the serious difficulty that the object of the verb "bore" is not the general class men, but the particular class vessels of wrath? If the meaning is that God by His forbearance leads some men to repentance and so to glory, and others to hardness and so to wrath, the exact expression of it would be, if God wishing to show His wrath, and make known his power upon vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, bore with men; and that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy fitted for glory, what then? In the first place, it is to be noted in reply, that the expression is inexact as it stands, however it may be explained. In order to express the contrast that seems to be demanded by the contrasted expressions "vessels of wrath" and "vessels of mercy," they should both be made the objects of corresponding verbs, and occupy corresponding places in the two parts of the statement. We are prepared for something less than exactness of contrast by the different positions in the sentence, one in the principal, and the other in a subordinate, clause. In the second place, it is the starting-point in the apostle's view of man that all men are originally vessels of wrath, a condition from which some of them are brought by the grace of God to become vessels of mercy. If all men were looked on by the apostle as having

a good or indifferent start in moral condition, from which they passed into states of morality or immorality, this would demand the exact contrast spoken of. But inasmuch as Paul looks on himself and all men as originally evil, so that all men who are saved now stand in contrast not only with men now lost, but also with a previous lost condition in themselves, the expression can stand as it is, since all that we want is a class including all men after the principal verb. is certainly in favor of this interpretation, that it corresponds exactly with the actual history of God's dealing with the Jews, which is the special case under consideration, and with the case of Pharaoh, which he has left, to be sure, but only just left.

It

This resolves God's spiritual action into unity. It is not one action here and another there, opposite means to accomplish opposite results, but one uniform, gracious action, that leaves the responsibility of opposite results with men.

Another thing to be noticed here is the use of the apparently neutral word, "bore," to denote this gracious action. With the ordinary conception of God, this would be absolutely colorless and unsatisfactory. But with the idea of the purely spiritual, luminous, holy Being presented to us in the New Testament, whose nature is light and love, all that we need to be told is that God bears with men, and we are able to fill it out immediately with the thought of this unintermitted beating of the divine light and love against the closed and darkened chambers of the human spirit. The normal divine activity is gracious and moving and illuminating, and "bearing" means no merely neutral or negative thing, but the uninterrupted course of this activity.

God's people, then, is a spiritual people. What the apostle has shown negatively is that membership in that people is not determined by birth, nor by righteous works, nor by the will and endeavor of man; it is neither inherited nor merited. Positively he has indicated that this membership is based on God's discriminating love; that the qualities calling forth this love are not self-originated, but divinely produced in men ; that it is a matter dependent, not on God's justice, but on his mercy; that God has a right thus to fashion the spirits of men, not absolutely and creatively, but by spiritual processes arising from His divine skill and resources; and finally, that God's action in creating both good and evil character is a gracious action, making the different results dependent on the secondary action of man.

And so he says that this is the people whom God calls, not Jews alone, nor Gentiles as such, but those whom he prepares for glory.

The Jews have been for the most part the only people that He has had. But inasmuch as it is a spiritual and not a hereditary matter, inasmuch as the Jews were chosen not as Jews, but as embodying certain spiritual conditions belonging to the people of God, it may at any time cease to be Jews, and come to be some other people, whom God chooses as His own. The moment that it is understood that God's people are a spiritual people, that moment it becomes impossible to confine the privilege to any nation. This possibility of change of condition in any people, so that those who are not beloved may become the people of God, Paul confirms by a quotation from Hosea ii. 23. It is applied by him to the case of the Gentiles, but as originally used by the prophet himself it had a significance of its own, quite as pertinent and important for Paul's argument. For it represents Israel herself as lapsed from God's favor, and no longer His people. This condition of things they have brought about themselves by their sins and unfaithfulness. But God exhorts them, "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity!" and promises them, "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely" (ch. 14). Just as their sins have led to a change in their relation to God, so that the people of God has become Lo ammi, and the objects of His mercy are called Lo ruhamah, so their return to God will cause them to be called Ammi again, and their repentance will restore to them the name Ruhamah.

Then Paul quotes from Isaiah a statement to the effect that of Israel only a remnant would be saved, a very small remainder, the sinful majority being destroyed by the righteous sharp judgments of God, in order that by this purging Jerusalem might once more become a city of righteousness. The Jews' own Scriptures contain statements which show that God is under no positive obligation to continue the whole Jewish people in His favor, nor to exclude the Gentiles from His love. And now the apostle comes to that for which all that he has said has been preparing the way. That which constitutes men the people of God is a state of acknowledged and accepted righteousness. And the strange paradox is that Gentiles who were not in pursuit of that attained it, while the Jews, who were striving to come up to a law of righteousness, did not attain to it. Striving to be the righteous people of God, keeping all the minutiae of a law; how well that represents the condition of Saul himself: and yet not righteous; how he had proved that out of his own experience. And on the other hand here were the morally indifferent Gentiles becoming at a leap, as it were, the acknowledged people of God. It

is because, as he has already shown, this righteousness is not the attainment of man, but the gift of God. And on the part of man therefore it is not the result of endeavor or works, but of faith. Here then is the proper antithesis of the statements that it is not from works, not of him that wills, nor of him that runs. For here we have these same negative statements, but instead of the antithetical statements that it is from Him that calls, and from the pitying God, we have the faith of man given as the antithesis. And the connection between the two is plain. For the righteousness that proceeds from faith is not a product of independent human endeavor, but of divine inspiration, and faith itself, as we shall see later, is regarded by the apostle as awakened and drawn out of us by the truth and the touch of God. God is the source, and faith is the human medium, of this righteousness. And so the apostle's whole view is that God's choice of men depends first, on His own mercy and grace, and secondly, on the faith of men awakened by that grace, and bringing to us the divine fruits of righteousness. But a man who simply receives the law as an objective command, and endeavors independently to build up a righteousness having its sources in himself, without divine inspirations and trust, fails to attain the righteousness of God. The Jews, having their own works, and not faith in God, as the foundation and characteristic of their righteousness, stumbled over the stone of stumbling. Jesus being come to deliver them and all men from sin, and not to glorify and exalt their righteousness over a sinful world, was rejected by them. This is confirmed by a curiously jointed quotation from Is. viii. 14 and xxviii. 16.

The tenth chapter is occupied with a development of this thought, that it is the righteousness of faith, and not of works, that commends men to God. Paul characterizes it as the righteousness of God. And by this he means not that which God calls righteousness, nor a righteousness acceptable to Him, but a righteousness of which God is the author, as contrasted with the man's own righteousness, built up by himself. The whole drift of the argument is to prove this idea of a dependent and inspired righteousness. In opposition to this is the principle of legal righteousness, that life comes from a performance of its commands. But the righteousness of faith does not leave man to bring down a Saviour from heaven, nor to raise him from the dead, but it provides him with a word to be believed. Just as the God of the Jews did not require men to find a law and then to obey it, but brought His law to them, and required of them only obedience, so now he does not leave them to procure for themselves an object of