a different disposition among them, in sympathy with the breadth of Christianity, would be compatible with their fulness, that is, their general conversion to Christianity. Their general conversion could take place therefore only in connection with the removal of that which made them a hindrance to the conversion of the Gentiles. And in the second place, that which made their loss the enriching of the Gentiles would make their fulness much more so. Their influence, and the inherited familiarity with religious ideas and aptness for religious things that gave them influence, made their loss or gain no indifferent matter. As long as they remained narrow, it was well for the church that they should remain out of it, since in it they would be sure to stamp it with their own spirit. But if they should lose this narrowness, and with it their great aversion to Christianity, then the general conversion to Christianity that would accompany it would bring to the church a great accession of well-directed spiritual force. This same spiritual influence that made it a gain to the church and to the world for them to be out of it, as they were, would, with the change that would bring them generally into the church, become a great advantage to it.

This, then, is the course of the apostle's thought so far in the discussion of this part of the question. First, that God's people are such because God saw and foresaw in them a pre-eminent spiritual quality. Second, that therefore God never rejects them as a people, but graciously, and without any merit on their part, chooses out some for salvation. Third, that this general apostasy now is intended to restrict the influence of Judaism within the church, and so leave the door open for the Gentiles, and ultimately to bring them in, after Christianity has received the stamp of Catholicity. Fourth, that that which makes their influence now dangerous in the church will make it then an inestimable blessing. The general proposition to which all this tends is that the Jews are still God's people under a temporary eclipse. The proof of this is found in two propositions. First, in this, that the holiness of the first fruits involves that of the lump ; and, second, in this, that the holiness of the root results in that of the branches. Both of these involve the common principle of heredity, one an heredity of privilege, and the other of nature. Children inherit from their parents in God's view something of the sacredness attaching to their parents, and also the holiness of nature belonging to them. And moreover it is probable from what the apostle has said, that the more important of these, and the cause of the other, is the inheritance of spiritual quality or tendency. This is the reverse

of the doctrine of heredity, underlying that of the fall of man. Just as the apostle shows in ch. 5 that evil is transmitted from father to son, making the first sin universal in its consequences, so here he shows that holiness is alike transmissible, so that the holiness of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob resulted in the holiness of the nation. And yet this is a holiness of nature, not of character; of tendency, not of fixed quality. It leaves individual character to develop itself freely, giving rise to different characters and destinies, and yet insuring a holy seed continually. The choice of Abraham's seed is therefore provisional, and the final choice of individuals depends on the development of the spiritual quality transmitted to them.

Hence, in spite of the holiness of the root, and of the branches as a result, some of the branches may be broken off, and, in spite of the evil of the Gentile root, some of its branches may turn out well. Heredity tends to the production of character, but does not determine it. But it is the way in which Paul states this fact of the connection of the Gentiles with the people of God that gives this part of the discussion its special significance. They are represented as grafted into the holy stock of the original people of God, and becoming partakers of the root and fatness of the olive tree. This is a modification of the general New Testament view that all men alike, without any distinction, derive spiritual sustenance from God or from Christ. But it is a development of Christ's statement that salvation is from the Jews. And it is a view of religious history the analysis of which shows a striking conformity with the facts. Individualism, and the growth of the individual by immediate connection with God, is true, but it is only a part of the truth. The race is also an entity, and race continuity and growth are as much truths as that the individual abides through all changes, and grows by what it acquires. Israel, by virtue of this law, has acquired a spiritual growth, and accumulated a stock of spiritual truths and virtues and influences, into the possession and benefit of which the other nations are now entering. Christ himself, though his perfect spiritual quality, is due to an incarnation, by which, after all these natural means had failed, there was injected into our sinful humanity a divine and healing principle; though he was born into, not out, of the race, yet followed this law so far that he came into the line of this spiritual development. He did not make a separate and individual revelation, but culminated and perfected that revelation, which had in turn produced, and been produced through, a spiritual race. And though this accumulated spiritual force had been misdirected and perverted in the time of

Jesus, yet the leaders and instructors of the church had to be taken from the race in which it inhered, though, as a whole, it furnished instead its rejectors and persecutors. From this, then, it appears that the Jews were to continue to be, by virtue of this inherited spiritual quality, the people of God, and that other nations were to become members of that people only by partaking of the spiritual influences and knowledge that had been stored up for the world in them. Christianity itself is in this view only the development and final form of Judaism. Its Scriptures are rightly incorporated with the Jewish Scriptures, and are themselves probably all written by Jews; its apostles are the continuation of the splendid line of Jewish prophets, and its Christ is the Messiah of the Jews. The Jews, therefore, are the spiritual progenitors of the Christian church, the holy stock on which the redeemed of the Gentiles are grafted.

Therefore, Paul says, the Gentiles cannot boast over the Jews. There may be now a displacement of the Jews in great part, in order to prevent their narrowness from excluding the Gentiles. But the spiritual force and light, of which they become partakers, is Jewish, and not Gentile. Moreover, the principle of faith, which makes the present difference between them, is inconsistent with boasting, as it glorifies God and not man. And the reversal of their respective present positions is much more likely under similar conditions than the reversal of their original positions. This statement is based, of course, on the fact that the Jews' position among the people of God is a natural one, belonging to them on account of inherited traits, and that faith in them will therefore lead to the manifestation of spiritual aptitudes already in possession. While the Gentiles, in whom the inherited dispositions are rather unspiritual and immoral even, have to overcome these by faith. This doctrine of heredity of spiritual, as of unspiritual, dispositions, making men germinal, but not actual, members of God's people, so that the development of actual unspiritual qualities in them is to fall away from their original, natural place, making the apostle's doctrine of heredity complete, is of very great importance in the vindication of God's ways.

In accordance with this inherited quality and disposition of the Jews, and with the fact of God's gracious action everywhere, so that even their falling away accomplishes the gracious purpose of God toward the Gentiles, Paul looks forward to the time when all Israel will be saved. When the full number of the Gentiles has been gathcred, when Christianity has become a universal religion, then, at last, the emulation of the Jews will be aroused, and the whole people

will be redeemed. This he confirms by a quotation from Isa. lix. 20, 21, which, however, is not conformed to either the Septuagint or the original Hebrew in anything except merely the statement that the deliverer is coming. In the original, he is represented as coming to or for Zion, and to or for those that turn from iniquity in Jacob. This common inexactness of the New Testament writers, in quoting from the New Testament, would seem to indicate that they did not depend on reproducing even the sense of the particular passage quoted, but simply on recalling the general spirit or drift of the Old Testament, which they clothed in such familiar Scripture language as came to them.

The summing up of this part of the discussion is that on the basis of the Gospel, which is the present standard of judgment and distinction among men, the Jews are enemies of God, because they do not exercise toward it that faith which is the divine requirement under it. But this enmity is also on account of the Gentiles, who, because of it, find the Gospel open to them. But on the ground of election, in which Paul has shown that the final choice of individuals rests on individual faith, but also that there may be choice of a nation or a family as a provisional matter, a general or probable selection, based on the hereditary transmission of spiritual dispositions leading to faith, — the Jews are beloved on account of the faith of their fathers. This actual faith in them has produced germinal and possible faith in their descendants, and so God has never been left without an actual people among this nation, who are all his in posse if not in esse.

The reason that is given for this statement, that, according to election, the Jews are beloved, is that the gifts and the calling of God are unrepented. Having bestowed gifts on a people, and called them to Himself, God does not repent and recall them. As we have seen, He continues the gifts, transmitting them from father to son by the law of heredity; and so, the people that God once calls, remain His. Paul, evidently, makes a distinction here between the call of individuals and that of a nation. He sees in one the proof of sporadic and incidental traits that tend to run out and disappear; and in the other, indications of more essential and deeply seated qualities that remain as permanent national traits. Of course they are subject to the mutations that inhere in moral actions and states as such; but, relatively, they are permanent. One nation has the gift and calling of intellectual greatness, another of superiority in art, another of moral pre-eminence; and these are more enduring than the same things in individuals. And Israel is seen by the apostle to have the permanent national trait of

religiousness that makes it, in spite of partial defections, the beloved people of God. This he proves by rehearsing again the course of God's providential dealing with both Jews and Gentiles, in which the latter are shown to have been disobedient, but to have had the door of mercy finally opened to them through the disobedience of the Jews; and, on the other hand, the Jews, whose disobedience has procured this mercy for the Gentiles, are themselves ultimately to be restored to God's mercy, through the mercy shown to the Gentiles. God's purpose, that is to say, in the present rejection of the Jews, is not that rejection itself, but mercy to the Gentiles, and, ultimately by means of that, mercy to the Jews. The latter's defection and rejection are thus not final nor vindictive, but temporary in their effects, and gracious in their purpose. And this Paul shows to be characteristic of all God's dealing with sin. By His own law of moral continuance and progress by means of natural consequence and heredity, He shuts up sinners to their sin. But this legal and natural effect of sin He supplements by His own gracious action, working under the same law; and so the present consequence of sin in the race always looks forward to a final redemption. God shut up all unto disobedience, in order that He may have mercy on all. And the same laws of moral action, influence, growth, and transmission, which made the universal prevalence of sin necessary, are those which render a final, universal redemption possible.

And so, finally, before this contemplation,—not of God's absolute and unaccountable judgments, but of a wisdom that grows continually in depth and brightness, as we contemplate it, the apostle exclaims: "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" And, in the same connection, he means, by the unsearchableness of God's judgments, not that they are based on principles unknown or undiscoverable by man, for his whole discussion has been a searching out of the principles and methods of God's dealing with man, but that they are full of a boundless wisdom and knowledge that outreaches all the pursuit and discovery of man. Moreover, the reason given shows another idea contained in the language. God's ways are so based on absolute wisdom and knowledge that man cannot foreknow or determine them. Otherwise, he might know not only the ways, but also the mind of God, and might share His counsels.

But the apostle does show the impossibility of establishing any original claim on God. Everything is from Him and through Him and for Him; all being is from Him and in Him; and all the action of moral beings, while it is free, is yet so preceded and shaped by the divine action,