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LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
"II
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THE
EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS
II.
FIRST EDITION
R eþrinted
R eþrinted
lIIarch, 1900
JVovember, 1901
. February) 1904
7./
66.,O
\J.1.,.
St. Paul's
Eþz"stle to the Romans
A Practical EXþOS1:tioJ
By CHARLES GORE, D.D.
:J
LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER
CHAPLAIN TO HIS MAJESTY THB KING
VOL. II
(CHAPTERS IX-XVI)
NEW IMPRESSION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
19<>4
93307
u . iU
t. 51. \1AP.Y'S ' LU
Ci
A Series of Sz"JJlþle ExþoszïiollS
of
Portlolls of tile New Testa1Jlellt
BY THE SA!\IE AUTHOR.
Crown 8vo, green cloth, 3s. 6d. each.
. I
THE SERl\fON ON THE
IOUNT.
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
THE EPISTLE TO THE ROi\IANS. In Two Vols.
- \
",-,
I '.
PREFACE
--++-
THERE would be no need for a preface to
this second volume were it not that a very
kindly and careful review of the first volume in
The Guardz.an of May 24 last, requires a word
of notice. The reviewer warns me off ' the dia-
logue system of exegesis.' Now no doubt this
principle, like every other, may be abused.
· The J e\vish objector' may, as the reviewer
complains, be allowed to · run riot.' Still I can-
not doubt that the Jewish objector is a reality
of an illuminative kind in the argument of such
passages as Romans iii. 1-8, or the great passage
(ix-xi), to which the first part of this volume is
devoted. Of the other points of detail noticed
by the reviewer-which a volume of this kind is
not the place to discuss-many are confessedly
doubtful, and some unimportant. On most of
VI
Preface
them I am still disposed to retain my former
opinion, but I would, in accordance with my
critic's wishes, alter 'the actual life' (vol. i.
p. 203) into 'the principle of life,' and (p. 213)
instead of saying that the principle of living
by dying 'belongs only to a fallen world' say
that 'it belongs, as St. Paul views 'It, though
prohahly not Ùt t"ts ullÙnate law, to a fallen world.'
I agree that in its deepest sense the principle
appears to be an ultimate law of all created life
of which the conditions are known to us.
c. G.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY,
Coltversion of St. Paul, 1900.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
--++-
THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.
PAGB
14-29
2
The theodicy 01' justification of God for His
dealt"ngs UJith the Jews .
The present rejection of Israelites no
breach of a divine promise
God's liberty in showing mercy and judge-
ment always retained and asserted
Lack of faith the reason of Israel's rejection
God's judgement on Israel neither uni-
versal nor final
1
DIVISION IV
CHAPTER
IX. 1-13
1
14
3 0 - X . 21
3
XI. 1-12
4
3 1
44
59
13-3 6
5 God's present purpose for the Jews
through the Gentiles: and so for all
humanity 68
DIVISION V Practical exhortation. 95
XII. 1-2
1 Self-surrender in response to God . 97
3- 21
2 The community spirit 10 3
XIII. 1-7
3 The Christians and the imperial power n6
8-10 g4 The summary debt . 12 7
11-14
5 The approach of the day . 133
XIV. 1- 2 3 g6 Mutual toleration 137
XV. 1-13 g 7 Unselfish forbearance and inclusiveness 159
viii Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
DIVISION VI Conclusion 17 0
..
xv. 14-33 i r St. Paul's excuse for writing, and his hope
of coming 17 1
XVI. I-
i
A commendation 18 9
3- 16
3 Personal greetings . 19 1
17- 20 g 4 Final warning . 19 8
21- 2 3
5 Salutations from companions . . 200
25- 2 7
6 Final doxology. 201
APPENDED NOTES:-
A. The meanings of the word ' faith'
B. The use of the word C conscience ·
C. Recent reactions from the teaching about hell .
D. Difficulties about the doctrine of the atonement.
E. Evolution and the Christian doctrine of the Fall
F. Baptism by immersion and by affusion
G. A prayer of Jeremy Taylor
H. The origin of the maxim ' In necessariis unitas, &c!
I. St. Augustine's teaching that 'The Church is the
body of Christ offered in the eucharist' . 240
2 0 5
. 207
210
. 21 5
. 21 9
. 237
23 8
239
THE
EPISTLE TO THE R011ANS
II
DIVISION IV. CHAPTERS IX-XI.
The theodicy or justification of God for Hz.s
dealÙzgs wz"!h the Jews. .
ST. PAUL has concluded his great exposition
of the meaning of 'the gospel': that in it is
the disclosure of a divine righteousness into
\vhich all mankind- J e\vs and Gentiles on the
same level of need and sin-are to be freely
admitted by simply believing in Jesus. The
believer in Jesus first welcomes the absolute
and unmerited forgiveness of his sins, which his
redeemer has won for him, and thus acquitted
passes into the spiritual strength and joy and
fellowship of the ne\v life, the life of the
redeemed humanity, lived in Jesus Christ, the
second Adam or head of our "race. The contem-
II.
B
2 The Eþls/le to the R01JlaJlS
plation of the present moral freedom, and the
glorious future prospect, of this catholic body-
the elect of God in Jesus Christ-has in the
eighth chapter filled the apostle's language with
the glow of an enthusiasm almost unparalleled
in all the com pass of his epistles. And he is
intending to pass on to interpret to the repre-
sentatives of this church of Christ at Rome
some of the moral obligations \vhich follow
most clearly from the consideration of what
their faith really means. This ethical division
of the epistle begins with chapter xii. The
interval (ix-xi) is occupied with a discussion
which is an episode, in the sense that the epistle
Inight be read \vithout it and no feeling of
a broken unity \vould force itself upon us.
N one the less the discussion not only confronts
and silences an obvious objection to St. Paul's
teaching, but also brings out ideas about the
meaning of the divine election, and the responsi-
bility involved in it, which are vital and neces-
sary for the true understanding of the 'free
grace of God.' For these chapters serve really
to safeguard the all-important sense of our
human responsibility under the rich and un-
merited conditions of divine privilege in which
we find ourselves.
St. Paul J s t tlzeodzcy ,
3
St. Paul's argument so far has involved an
obvious conclusion. God's elect are no longer
the J e\vs in particular. On the contrary, the
Jews in bulk have lost their position and become
apostates in rejecting the Christ. This result
in the first place cuts St. Paul to the heart, for
his religious patriotism \vas peculiarly intense.
But in the second place it furnishes an objec-
tion in the mouth of the J e\v against S1. Paul's
\vhole message. For if God had really rejected
His chosen people, He had broken His \vord in
so do-ing. God had pledged Himself to Israel:
the Old Testament scriptures \vere full of
passages \vhich might be quoted to this effect.
Thus-
, 11y mercy \vill I not utterly take from David
, Nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.
, l\ly covenant \vill I not break,
'Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
'Once have I s\vorn by my holiness;
, I \vill not lie unto David;
'His seed shall endure for ever,
'And his throne as the sun before me.
, It shall be established for ever as the moon,
, And as the faithful witness in the sky 1.'
But according to St. Paul's teaching, had not
God · broken His covenant'? What had be-
1 Ps. lxxxix. 33-7.
B2
4 The Epistle to tile ROl1zans
come of the 'faithful witness' ? To this
objection, then, 5t. Paul sets himself to reply.
The chapters we are now to consider may be
best represented as an animated defence of his
teaching directed toward a Jew \vho pleads this
objection. 51. Paul, no doubt, had heard too
much of it since he began to preach the gospel,
and had felt it too deeply in his o\vn mind in the
earlier days, when the word of Jesus was as a
goad against which he \vas kicking, for it to be
possible for him to pass it by. And his defence
-his 'theodicy' or justification of God-is in
brief this: God never committed Himself or
tied Himself to Israel physically understood.
He always kept hanging over their heads
declarations of His own freedom in choosing
His instruments, and warnings of possible
rejection, such" as ought to have prevented their
resting satisfied \vith merely having' Abraham to
their father' (ix). And if the question be asked:
Why has Israel been rejected? The answer
is: That so far as actual Israel has fallen out of
the elect body, it is because they refused to
exhibit the correspondence of faith (x); but also
Israel, as such, has not been rejected; for, as of
old, so now there is a faithful remnant. Nor
again is the partial alienation of Israel which
St. Paul's I tlzeodzcy ,
5
has occurred final. God is simply waiting for
their recovery of faith, to restore them to their
ancient and inalienable position of election.
Meanwhile He uses their temporary alienation
as the opportunity of the Gentiles, who in their
turn can only retain their ne\vly \von position
by maintaining the correspondence of faith \vith
the purposes of God, and \vho also wait for their
fulfilment and the perfecting of their joy upon
the recovery of Israel as a body. Thus through
all stages of election and rejection-by both
methods of mercy and of judgement-God, in
His inscrutable wisdom, works steadily for the
opportunity of showing His mercy upon all
men.
\Vhen \ve have a brief analysis of the argu-
ment of these chapters under our eyes, we may
well rub them in astonishment, and look again,
and ask \vhy, in the reaction against Calvin-
ism t, we had come (to put it frankly) to dislike
these chapters so much. We know that as
a fact these chapters have been taken as a
stronghold of the Calvinistic position by both its
1 By this phrase is commonly meant the doctrine that God
created some men absolutely and irresistibly predestined to eternal
life and joy, and created the rest of mankind absolutely and hope-
lessly abandoned to eternal misery.
6 TIle Epistle to the R0111ans
friends and foes. They have come to constitute
in modern literature a sort of reproach upon
Christianity 1, just on the ground on which
the best Christian conscience of our time is
most sensitive. Many of us \vould have to
admit that we have shrunk from these chapters
as \ve have heard them read, and probably
avoided them in our o\vn reading. We have
shrunk from the sound of the words-'the chil-
dren being not yet born, neither having done
anything good or bad, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, not of works
but of him that calleth' -' Jacob have I loved, and
Esau have I hated '-' Whom he will he har-
deneth '-' Hath not the potter power over the
clay.' Yet these texts, with their arbitrary, unfair
and narro\v sound, appear as steps in an argument
which has for its conclusion the most universal
conception possible of the purpose of the divine
love. 'God shut up all unto disobedience, that
he might have mercy upon all.' The conclusion
of the argument is so unmistakable, and so plain
against any Calvinistic attribution to God of
1 Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and ProtestanNsm (Smith, Elder,
r870), p. 99, admits that St. Paul 'falls into Calvinism,' but
patronizingly excuses him on the ground that this Calvinism is
with him secondary, or even less than secondary.
St. Paul's l tlleodÙ;y'
7
a narrow and arbitrary favouritism, that there
must have been some great mistake in our
understanding of its main point and drift. It is
worth while then to indicate at starting where
the error has lain.
I. It has been in part owing to our mistaken
habit of taking isolated' texts' out of their con-
nexion, as if they were detached aphorisms. Now
51. John, in his meditative method, does very
generally round off a fundamental Christian
truth into an aphorism which really admits of
being detached and quoted apart from its context.
And no doubt there are in St. Paul detachable
texts. But on the whole St. Paul, least of
all men, admits of being judged by detached
fragments. His thought is always in process.
It looks before and after. He is seriously
,vronged by the mere fact of his epistles being
divided into separate verses, and sometimes
arbitrary chapters, as in the Authorized Version.
Thus in the case of these three chapters, the
common mistake as to the meaning of particular
phrases could hardly have arisen if the argument
had been kept in mind as a whole, and especially
its conclusion as to the universal purpose of
divine love-' to have mercy upon all.'
2. For, among other things, the true meaning
8 Tile Eþlstle to tile R0111allS
of ' election' in these chapters \vould then have
been apparent. St. Paul has been popularly mis-
.
understood to be referring to God's I election' of
some individual men to salvation in heaven, and
His abandonment of the rest to hell. Whereas
the argument as a \vhole and its conclusion make
it quite certain that what he is speaking of is the
election of men in nations or churches (only sub-
ordinately of individuals) 1 to a position of special
spiritual privilege and responsibility in this
\vorld, such as the J e\vs had formerly occupied,
and the Christians \vere occupying now-an
election to be the people of God, and bear His
name in the face of the \vorld-the sort of
election which carries \vith it a great joy and
a special opportunity, but not by any means
a certainty of final personal acceptableness to
1 Of course the election of the nation or the church is felt,
especially in the New Testament, or whenever in the Old Testa-
ment individuality is fully realized, to involve the election of each
of the persons composing the Ilation or the church. But still
their election is a challenge to their faith, and no guarantee of
ultimate salvation. 51. Paul is left praying and suffering' for the
elect's sake that they also may obtain the salvation. . . with eternal
glory' (2 Tim. ii. 10). The elect have to ' make their calling and
election sure' (2 Peter i. 10). It should, however, be noticed
that election may be, and in the Gospels is, used to describe the
final selection of those who are proved worthy of the ' marriage
supper of the Lamb.' (Matt. xxii. 14.)
St. Paul's 'tlzeodzcy'
9
God, apart from moral faithfulness. Apart from
such faithfulness the 'children of the kingdoln
shall be cast into the outer darkness,' and the
highest shall be put lowest, ,vhile the lowest
are raised highest.
3. Another cause of misunderstanding has
been forgetfulness of the point of view of the
opponent with whom St. Paul is arguing. In
modern times assertions of divine absoluteness,
like St. Paul's, have been made by teachers who
\vere refusing to recognize any such freedom of
the will in the individual human being-any such
power to control his own personal destiny-as
seems to our common sense to be involved in
moral responsibility in any real sense. St. Paul
has therefore been supposed, like these more
recent teachers, to be asserting divine absolute-
ness, or the unrestricted freedom of divine
choice, as against human freedom, or in such
a ,vay as to destroy the idea of moral responsi-
bility. But in fact St. Paul is vindicating moral
responsibility. His opponent is the J e,v, who
holds that God had so tied His hands and lost
His liberty in choosing Israel once for all for
His elect people, that every child of Abraham
can at all times claim the privileges of his
election for no other reason than because of his
10 Tlze Epistle to the R0111allS
genealogy. Such a doctrine of election does
indeed destroy all real moral responsibility in the
subject of it, and all freedom of moral choice in
God. S1. Paul, on the other hand, asserts that
God remains free and absolute to elect and to
reject, irrespective of all questions of race, \vhere
He will and as He will. The absolute reason
of God's selections, the reason why certain races
and individuals are chosen for special privileges
and as special instruments of the divine purpose,
lies in a region into which we cannot penetrate.
But because God has shown us His moral
character and requirement, we can know how,
and how only, ,ve may hope to retain any
position which God has given us; it is by
exhibiting moral correspondence with His pur-
pose-that is faith-or malleability under His
hand.
This is a doctrine then which lays upon I the
elect,' at any particular moment, the moral re-
sponsibility of correspondence with a divine
purpose. In a word, S1. Paul asserts divine
sovereignty in such a sense as vindicates instead
of destroying moral responsibility, while his
opponent is claiming for Israel a sort of freedom
from being interfered with, which would really
destroy their moral responsibility altogether.
St. Paul's 'theodz.cy' II
Thus, as has already been pointed out \ nothing
can \vell be more important than to keep clearly
in mind, here as elsewhere, with who11'/, 51. Paul
. .
IS arguIng.
4. It is worth while remarking, before we
apply ourselves to 51. Paul's argument in detail,
that it is essentially 'apologetic': it is a justi
fication of God in view of certain felt difficulties:
and it is an argument ad homil1enz, that is an
argument with certain people on their own as-
sumptions, the sort of argument \vhich takes the
form of saying, 'you at least have no right on
your own principles to urge such and such diffi-
culties.' N ow we are bound to recognize ho\v
very important at all periods this ad hontz.netn
appeal is: how very important it is to get men
to see what their own principles really involve.
A great part of the evil of the world comes
through people not thinking out what they
really mean and believe. But on the other hand,
this sort of argument, which proceeds upon
a certain set of assumptions, has often a merely
temporary force, and carries \vith it an accom-
panying danger. When the state of mind contem-
plated becomes a matter of history, the argument
based on its assumption has lost its power. In
1 Vol. i. pp. JI4 f.
12 TIle Epistle to tlze ROI1ZaJlS
vie\v of a quite different set of assumptions it
may become even misleading. For example,
Bishop Butler arg
ed for the truths of natural
and revealed religion, on the analogy of the
facts of nature and on the assumption of a divine
author of nature, thus-If, as you admit, God
made nature, and yet nature is sho\vn to contain
such and such facts or processes, ho\v can you
argue against the divine authorship of natural
religion and revelation on the ground that it
attributes to God similar facts and processes?
This \vas a very effective argument so long as
men did treat the doctrine of God having created
the world as a matter of course. But when
'agnosticism' arose-\vhen men ceased to dis-
cover in nature any decisive argument for God
or against God, and professed only an inability
to draw any conclusion at all, Butler's argu-
ment had lost its force, and the difficulties in
nature and religion to which he called attention
could even be used against ascribing a divine
authorship to either. Apologetic arguments are
ahvays liable to this peril. Thus St. Paul's
arguments, based on an unhesitating belief that
the Old Testament contained really the words
of God, that what they asserted about God was
certainly true, and that God was certainly just
St. Paul's t tlzeodicy ,
J3
and the standard of justice, may have an effect
very contrary to his intention when they are
applied to people who feel no such certainties.
51. Paul may seem to be making the difficulties
of believing in the Bible only more obvious, by
calling attention to its 'harsh and unedifying'
elements.
But this unfortunate result of most I apologies)
is, at least in the case of St. Paul and Bishop
Butler, only superficial. If the apologetic argu-
ment is really deep, it retains, if not exactly its
original value, yet a value not the less real.
Butler's indications of the profound analogy
which holds bet\veen the doctrines of religion
and the facts of nature, can never be out of
place or lose force: Still less can men ever
cease to learn the deepest lessons from his
temper of n1Ïnd and method. And that it is so
\vith S1. Paul's apology-that it contains the
profound est and most abiding lessons about the
responsibility and danger of all elect bodies and
individuals-will appear plainly enough in \vhat
follo\vs, now that we are in a position to approach
his argument in detail.
14 T Ize Epistle to tile ROl1zans
..
DIVISION IV.
1. CHAPTER IX. 1-13.
The þresent Y'Jl!Clioll of Israelites 110 breach of
a dz.vine þrOI1Z'lSe.
ST. PAUL has finished his glowing description
of the position and prospects of the elect people
of God. And then, by contrast, the misery
of the outcast people once called elect-his
own people-\vrings his heart \vith pain. The
very idea that in his new enthusiasm for the
catholic church he can be supposed to be for-
getting those who are of his o\vn flesh and
blood, stirs him to a profound protest. He
solemnly asseverates that the pain which Israel's
rejection causes him is acute and continuous.
He has caught himself at the point of praying
to be himself an outcast from Christ, if so be he
could bring the people of his own kindred and
blood into the Church. For \vho indeed could
seem to have so good a title to be there? They
are the Israelites-that is God's own people:
the eye of God was so specially upon this race
No dz.vine þro1nlse broken 15
that He redeemed it and made it His own son 1:
to them was vouchsafed the shining of His con-
tinual presence in the tabernacle 2: to them, in
the persons of the patriarchs and of Moses, God
gave special covenants, that is to say, pledged
His word to them in an unmistakable manner
and repeatedly that He should be their God and
they should be His people: thus in pursuance
of a divine purpose they were brought under
the education of the divinely given law and
ritual worship: and all this with direct and re-
peated promises of a more glorious position in
the future to be brought about by the divine
king, the Christ who was to be. To them
finally belongs all the sanctity which can attach to
a people from having numbered among its mem-
bers the holy ones of God: for of this race were
the patriarchs, the friends of God; and of this
race, so far as human birth is concerned, came in
fact the Christ \vho, born a J e\v, is sovereign of
the universe and ever blessed God. Surely then,
St. Paul implies, that this race, now that the
Christ they were expecting is at last come, now
that the goal of all God's dealings with them is
at last reached, should have fallen outside the
circle of His people and be no longer sharers in
I Exod. iv. 22; Hos. xi. I.
2 Exod. xvi. 10.
16 TIle Epistle to tlze R01na1lS
the sonship or the election, would seem a result
too monstrous to contemplate. The contrast
between what they were and were intended for,
and what in present appearance they are, is
indeed appalling.
Yet the natural conclusion for the Jew to dra,v,
\vhich at this point flashes into 51. Paul's mind,
the conclusion that God has proved unfaithful,
is not the true one. No: God's ,vord, God's
promise, has not broken do,vn. For, if the facts
are looked at, it appears quite plainly that the
Israel of God ,vas never simply the Israel of
physical descent, nor the children of Abraham
silnply his physical seed. Plainly not. For Isaac
and Ishmael were equally Abraham's seed, phy-
sically considered, but for the purpose of God
the promise is given only to the family of the
younger son, Isaac (Gen. xxi. 12), ,vho moreover
\vas born, not in the mere natural order, but
under circumstances of special divine promise
and intervention (Gen. xviii. 10). And if in this
case it be said that the younger son Isaac
,vas the only son of Sarah, the ,vife and free
,voman, and therefore had a natural prerogative
oyer Ishmael, yet the same inscrutable principle
of selection is apparent in the next generation,
in a case where there is no possible inequality
No dzvÙte þro1nzse broken 17
of natural claim-in the case of the two sons
born simultaneously to Isaac of the same mother.
Prior to their birth, and prior therefore to any
possible merit or demerit on their own part
-so that God's absolute freedom of choice
should appear quite conspicuously-the younger
Jacob was deliberately preferred over the elder
Esau (Gen. xxv. 23). And in fact this race of
Esau, this Edom-though they \vere Israelites
after the flesh-appear in history as something
much worse than merely secondary to the true
Israel; for God speaks by Malachi and de...
clares that, whereas Israel is His beloved son,
Esau, that is Edom, He has' hated' (Mal. i. 3).
No Israelite therefore who reads his scriptures
(51. Paul ,vould conclude) ought to have failed to
perceive an inscrutable element in God's choice
of his chosen people. He ought not to have
felt in his own case, any more than in that of the
first children of Abraham or Isaac, that he could
be sure of membership in the people of God
merely because of his physical descent.
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing
v:itness with me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great
sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could
wish 1 that I myself were anathema from Christ for my
II.
I Or 'pray' (marg.) literally' I was praying.'
C
18 The Epzstle to the R01nans
brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who
are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and
the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service
of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of
\vhom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all,
God blessed for ever. Amen. But it ,:s not as though the
word of God hath come to nought. For they are not all
Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are
Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall
thy seed be called. That is, it is not the children of the
flesh that are children of God; but the children of the
promise are reckoned for a seed. F or this is a word of
promise, According to this season will I come, and Sarah
shall have a son. And not only so; but Rebecca also
having conceived by one, even by our father Isaac-for the
children being not yet born, neither having done anything
good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election
might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was
said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. Even
as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
I. St. Paul's earnest asseveration is very notice-
able in form. It shows so much of his instinctive
inward 1ife. He lives 'in Christ,' who is light
as ,veIl as life \ and to spe
k the truth is the
very atmosphere of this new life 2. As it comes
natural to many people to say I upon my word
as a gentleman,' it comes natural to St. Paul to
say, · speaking as in Christ, who is the light.'
And his natural conscience-that is the faculty
of passing judgement on one's own actions,
1 cr. Eph. v. 8-14. 2 Cf. Col. iii. 9.
No dz"vz.ne prom'ise brokelZ 19
which in St. Paul's case bears witness to the
truth of what he says by passing no censure on
him-that too does not act of itself merely, but
in the Spirit of the new life, the Holy Spirit of
Christ, which inspires and ratifies the moral
judgement, otherwise so liable to be degraded
or perverted or silenced: his conscience bears
witness with his word in the Holy Ghost. Here,
then, is the whole secret of Christian truthful-
ness. The Christian is truthful because he lives
and speaks in God, in Christ, in the Spirit.
As to St. Paul's half-expressed prayer (' I was
praying,' he says, i. e. ' I caught myself praying '),
it resembles that of Moses for his rebellious
people 1. 'And now, 0 Lord, if thou wilt for-
give their sin-; and if not, blot me, I pray
thee, out of thy book which thou hast writ-
ten.' But St. Paul's instinctive desire is not
apparently like that of Moses, to perish with his
people rather than be saved without them; but
to offer himself for rejection with a view to their
salvation. The prayer is, as St. Paul implies,
an impossible prayer, but it expresses, as hardly
anything else could, the intensity of his feeling.
And such intensity of feeling was natural to the
deep religious patriotism of a Jew.
] Exod. xxxii. 32.
C2
20 The Eþzstle to the R0111allS
We may illustrate St. Paul's feeling by com-
paring a fine expression of a more commonplace
sorrow over the ruin of Israel from a period
after the destruction of Jerusalem 1. ' Now
therefore I will speak; touching man in
general, thou knowest best; but touching thy
people will I speak, for \vhose sake I am sorry;
and for thine inheritance, for whose cause
I mourn; and for Israel, for ,vhom I am heavy;
and for the seed of Jacob, for whose sake I am
troubled.' 'Thou seest that our sanctuary is
laid waste, our altar broken do\vn, our temple
destroyed; our psaltery is brought low, our
song is put to silence, our rejoicing is at an end;
the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of
our covenant is spoiled, our holy things are
defiled, and the name that is called upon us is
profaned; our freemen are despitefully treated,
our priests are burnt, our Levites are gone into
captivity, our virgins are defiled, and our ,vives
ravished; our righteous men carried a,vay, our
little ones betrayed, our young men are brought
into bondage, and our strong men are become
weak; and, what is more than all, the seal of
Sion-for she hath now lost the seal of her
1 2 Esdr. viii. 15-16, X. 21-23. The latter passage is not spoken
to God, but by one Jew to another.
No divz1ze þro11zise broken 21
honour, and is delivered into the hands of them
that hate us.'
2. As \ve read St. Paul's enumeration of the
glories of Israel, it is of course obvious for us to
pursue the line of thought taught us elsewhere
by St. Paul, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews;
and to recognize ho\v each element of the
'glory,' which belonged once to the Jewish
· ministration of condemnation,' belongs in
deeper and fuller measure to the Christian' mini-
stration of the Spirit 1.' Ours is the vocation of
the chosen people; ours is the sonship to God;
and the perpetual presence; and the security of
divine covenant; ours is the divine la\v, and with
it, what is much better, the Spirit for its accom-
plishment; ours is the corporate worship in
spirit and in truth, the Church's eucharist; for
us, too, are promises which the realization of
those of the first covenant has made 'more
sure'; ours finally is the communion of the
saints from Abraham onward into the body of
Christ. And in proportion therefore to the
greatness of our privileges, even as compared
with those of the older covenant, is the great-
ness of our responsibility; , For I would not,
brethren, have you ignorant 2,' St. Paul would
I 2 Cor. iii. 8.
2 See I Cor. x. 1-13.
22 The Eplstle to the Romans
say; he would not have us fail to profit by the
warnings of old days. And another voice
warns us 'Of how much sorer punishment
shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden
under foot the Son of God, and hath counted
the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was
sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done
despite unto the Spirit of grace 1.'
3. There has been amongst critics, since
Erasmus, much controversy over the clause,
, who is over all, God blessed for ever.' There is
no doubt that it is translated most naturally, and
most agreeably to the balance and movement of
the sentence, if we attribute it to Christ, as
above. But many critics, including some who
were orthodox, have stumbled at the idea of
S1. Paul speaking of Christ straight out as ' over
all, God blessed for ever.' Generally no doubt
C God' is used by St. Paul as a proper name of
the Father. But Christ is continually recog-
nized as possessing strictly divine attributes,
and exercising strictly divine functions; and
in all S1. Paul's epistles, beginning with his.
earliest to the Thessalonians, He is God's Son,
His own or proper Son 2. His blood, as shed
for our ransoming, is God's own blood, or
1 Heb. x. 29.
I Thess. i. 10; Rom. viii. 3.
No dzvine þronzise broken 23
(possibly) the blood of one who is 'His own t 1.
He subsisted eternally in the form, or essential
attributes, of God, and in possession of equality
with Him; and He possesses now, as glorified
in humanity, the divine name of universal
sovereignty, the object of universal worship 2.
Therefore He is in the strictest sense divine;
and whatever or, I should say, whoever is
essentially divine and proper to the being of
God, can rightly be called God. For, indeed,
there is nothing in the strict sense divine but
God Himself. It was then merely a question of
time when Christians would become sufficiently
familiar with the new revelation of the threefold
name to apply the word God to the Son and
the Spirit as naturally as to the Father. And
there is nothing really to surprise us in St. Paul
here applying it to Christ 3: nothing certainly
to warrant us in doing violence to the sentence,
in order to obviate the conclusion that he did
so, by putting a full stop after 'flesh,' and then
supposing an abrupt exclamation 'He \vho is
over all is God blessed for ever 4 ! '
1 Acts xx. 28. 2 Phil. ii. 6- I I.
S Without the article which makes it a proper name of the
Father.
C R. V. margin'. It does further violence to the Greek to
translate as R. V. margin 1, 'He who is God over an is (be)
2-1- Tize Epzstle to tlze R01Jzalls
Let it be recognized, then, that 51. Paul here
plainly speaks of Christ as ' over all,' i. e. in His
glorified manhood, and also as ' God blessed for
ever' - that is, as the one proper and eternal
object of human praise; and that he speaks of
Him again elsewhere \ as · our great God and
Saviour.' It was only because He ,vas essen-
tiallyand eternally · God' that He could, in our
manhood and as the re,vard of His human
obedience, be exalted to divine sovereignty and
be ' over all.'
4. In the rest of the section 51. Paul is
arguing \vith a Jew, who makes the claim that
because of the divine covenant God is bound to
the Israelites, and to all Israelites for ever.
, We have Abraham to our father,' and that is
enough 2. The higher prophetic spirit of the
Old Testament had already realized that God's
election of Israel was a challenge to her to
prove herself worthy of an undeserved privi-
lege 3, and that, though a faithful remnant would
blessed for ever.' I have nothing to add on the matter to S. and
H. in loc., especially p. 236.
1 Tit. ii. 13. This is probably the right rendering.
2 St. Matt. iii. 9.
3 Great stress was laid by the prophets on the absence of any
original merit or power in Israel, which caused the divine election;
see Ezek. xvi, Deut. xxvi. 5.
No dzvlize prol1zise broken 25
never fail, yet unfaithfulness in the bulk of the
nation would bring destruction upon them and
loss of God's favour 1. The prophetic spirit had
realized also that God's servant Israel was not
· called' for his own selfish honour's sake, but was
entrusted with a divine ministry to fulfil for all
the nations of the earth 2. It is to this higher
sense of what Israel's position meant, and the
perils it involved, that John the Baptist and our
Lord I-limself had sought to recall the J e\vs.
They must not' think to say within themselves,
They had Abraham for their Father; for God
was able of the stones to raise up children unto
Abraham.' For' many should come from the
east and the west, and sit down with Abraham,
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God,
and the sons of the kingdom should be cast into
1 See especially Amos ix. 7-10: · Are ye not as the children of
the Ethiopians unto me, 0 children of Israel 1 saith the Lord.
Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the
Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir' Behold, the
eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will
destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not
utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For, 10, I will
command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations,
like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall
upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall, die by the
sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.'
Gen. xii. 3; Isa. lxvi. 18; Zech. viii. 23, &c.
26 Tile Eptstle to the Romans
the outer darkness 1.' But it is evident that this
higher meaning of the doctrine of election had
been forgotten by contemporary Judaism, and
they would not be recalled to it. They refused
to contemplate the spiritual risk of missing their
vocation, or the universal purpose for which it
was given. They chose to think that Israel,
i. e. the actual Israelites in bulk, 1tlust remain
God's elect; that the Christ, when He came,
must come to exalt their race and nation: that
they were bound to inherit the blessings of the
world to come: that the divine government of
the world existed for their sakes 2.
St. Paul, then, is here intending to vindicate
the real meaning of election, in the sense in
\vhich it is bound up with the ethical character
of God and carries with it a deepened feeling of
responsibility in those who are the subjects of it.
1 Matt. viii. I I, HI.
t In Weber's Jüdisc!le Theologt"e (Leipzig, 1897, formerly called
System der Altsynagog. PalästÙt. Theol. or Die Lehre des Talmud),
pp. 51 ff, there are striking illustrations from the Talmud of this
fixed tendency of thought among the Jews. Thus' there exists
no clearer proof of the Talmudic conviction of the absolutely holy
character of Israel than that in all the places of Scripture in which
Israel is reproved and has evil attributed to it, the expression,
" the haters of Israel," is substituted for Israel: ' We read: Isaiah
was punished, because he called Israel a people of unclean lips,'
&c. Cf. S. and H., p. 249, and my Ephesians, p. 261.
No divine promise broken 27
But his argument is directed, first of all, to one
point only-to bringing the eyes of the Jews
straight up to their own scriptures, and forcing
them to see that they do not justify the idea
of election purely by race. I t is not all of a
certain seed, but only part of it, that is chosen.
There is nothing to hinder a great part of the
race again becoming as Ishmael or as Edom by
the side of Israel. Ultimately, no doubt, there
are two points to be proved. First, that God's
method of choosing an elect body to be His
people in the world is inscrutable, so that we
cannot produce or determine His election by
any calculation, or by any real or supposed
merits, of ours; secondly, that though we can-
not create our vocation, we can retain it by
moral correspondence or faith, and by that only.
But at present it is only the first point that is
insisted upon-the absolute, inscrutable element
in the divine choice. And that, we should
notice, is a fact not merely of scriptural evidence
but of common experience. Men are born to
higher and lower positions of privilege and
opportunity. They are born Jacobs or Esaus,
In respect of moral, intellectual, religious, or
physical endowment-with ten talents, or five, or
two, or one; and God does not often give us so
28 The Eþtstle to tile Ronzalls
much as a glimpse of the reason \vhy. All He
does make clear to us is that the determination
.
of human vocations, higher or lower, is in \viser
hands than ours.
It is of course evident, as has already been
said, that \vhat St. Paul is speaking about is the
election of men, and specially races or nations of
men, to a position of sþ'iritual privilege Ùl, this
world. We kno\v no\v, better than the Jews of
the Old Covenant could know it, that behind
all the apparent injustices. and inequalities of
this world lies the rectifying equity of God.
St. Peter had come to believe that the divine
ll1ercy had rectified in the \vorld beyond death
the apparently rough and heavy handed judge-
n1ent upon the rejected mass of mankind in the
time of the Flood. That physical catastrophe
at least \vas an instrument of mercy in dis-
guise 1. St. Paul believed the same about all
God's rej ections, as well as elections, in this
world. They served one universal purpose:
· That he might have mercy upon all 2.' But
1 I Pet. iv. 6. 'The gospel was preached to ' these 'dead men
that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,' i. e. by
perishing in the flood, C but live according to God in the spirit,'
i. e. through our Lord's preaching in Hades. There is, I think,
so far, no ambiguity about this passage.
:01 Not, however, without regard to man's will to respond to the
divine offer, see later, p. 82 tf.
No dz.vine þrol1ZtSe broken 29
all the same here and now in this world God
does work by means of enormous inequalities.
There are Jacobs whom He plainly loves,
upon \vhom He showers all His richest blessings,
and Esaus \vhom, to judge from present
evidence, \ve should say He hates-whom He
sets to live in hardest and most cramping
surroundings. And no man can determine
which lot he shall enjoy. That lies in the
inscrutable selectiveness of God.
That there is no question at all about the
eternal \velfare of the individual Esau's soul-
that the question is simply of the comparative
status of Israel and Edom in this world-
appears plainly in the passage of Malachi,
\vhich 51. Paul quotes. And we lTIUst notice
how unexpected an application 51. Paul gives
to this passage in a direction most unfamiliar
to Jewish thought. For Edam was to the Jew
the very type of all that was most hateful. He
anticipated for the Edomites God's \vorst ven-
geance, as for Israel God's best blessings. But
5t. Paul forces him to think-Why should he
assume that he will be better off than Edom?
Edam ,vas once physically on Israel's level, or
his superior in claim, when their first fathers
,vere but just born infants. But God chose one
30 The Eþzs/le to the ROl1ZGllS
and not the other. He may exercise the like
unscrutable selectiveness upon the seed of
Israel to-day. And Edom did not remain in
a merely secondary position. He sank to be
a by\vord for all that is most hateful to God.
Be warned, 51. Paul would say, it may be that
· with change of name the tale is told of thee 1.'
I Mal. i. 2, 3. ' Was not Esau Jacob's brother 1 saith the Lord:
yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a
desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.
Whereas Edom saith, We are beaten down, but we will return"
&c. This passage (I) plainly refers to Esau as meaning Edom,
the people; (2) describes not the original lot of Esau, which was
secondary indeed, but highly blessed (Gen. xxvii. 39, 40); but the
ultimate lot of Esau when he had misused his original endowment
in violence and cruelty.
God's Zz.herty to cl'loose and reject 3 1
DIVISION IV.
2. CHAPTER IX. 14- 2 9.
God's liberty t'n showing mercy and judge1nent
always retained and asserted.
BUT the obvious reply of the Jewish objector
to S1. Paul's assertion of the absolute and
apparently arbitrary freedom of God's election
is that it is unfair. It convicts God of un-
righteousness. To this objection (ver. 14), which
St. Paul deprecates with horror, he replies not
by any large consideration of divine justice, but
still by keeping the Jew to his own scriptures.
The God revealed in scripture must be to the
objector still the just God. He cannot call God
unjust if His method as it now appears is that
to which He called attention long ago. Look
back, then, at the past records. Did God dis-
close Himself as bound to show mercy on Moses
the Israelite, or to harden and judicially con-
demn Pharaoh the Egyptian? No, He declares
to Moses His unrestricted freedom to exhibit His
32 Tile Eþlstle to tile R0111ans
compassion on whom He will (Exod. xxxiii. 19).
Men cannot by any choice or efforts of their
own produce an exhibition of divine favour such
as ,vas sho,vn to Moses the leader of Israel: the
absolute initiative must come from God, and in
taking that initiative He declares Himself abso-
lutely free. In the same way God implicitly
asserts His sovereign freedom when He brings
Pharaoh out upon the stage of history as an
example of the way in \vhich He hardens men's
hearts \vith a hardening ,vhich is the prelude to
overthro,v, that men all over the ,vorld may see
and tremble at the divine power. It is not
because Pharaoh is an Egyptian that he is
hardened. He is hardened, as Moses has com-
passion sho\vn him, simply because it is the will
of God so to do in his case.
But the objector comes forward again (ver. 19):
, If this is the arbitrary method of God-if we
are simply po,verless puppets in the hands of an
absolute and arbitrary will, to be saved or be
destroyed--at any rate He has no reason to
complain of us. If all the power is His, so is
the responsibility.' Now St. Paul has it in his
hand to sho\v that there remains to man a very
real power to retain his position, and conse-
quently a very real responsibility and room for
God' s tz.berty to clzoose a1zd reject 33
being blamed or praised: for if \ve cannot create
our vocation, we can and we are required to
correspond with it in a reverent and docile faith;
and it was exactly here that the Jews had failed,
in spite of all their prophets had taught them.
But he keeps back this answer a\vhile, because
he finds the attitude of such an objector to\vard
God in itself so reprehensible. Such an one has
not given consideration to \vhat the relation of
man to God really is-the creature to the creator.
His critical, complaining attitude is nothing better
than foolish.
Thus he takes his antagonist back upon the
old prophetic metaphor of the potter and his
clay, \vith \vhich Isaiah and Jeremiah had re-
buked the arrogance and impatience of men
long ago: · Shall the thing framed say of him
that framed it, He hath no understanding; and
shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, \\That
makest thou 1 ?' He follo\vs, however, most
closely upon the later writer of the Book of
Wisdom: · For a potter, kneading soft earth,
laborious] y mouldeth each several vessel for
our service: nay, out of the same clay doth
he fashion both the vessels that minister to
clean uses, and those of a contrary sort. All in
1 Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, lxiv. 8; J ere xviii. 6; Ecclus. xxxiii. 13.
II.
D
34 TIle Eþzs/le 10 tIle ROI1ZGllS
like manner; but what shall be the use of each
vessel of either sort, the craftsman himself is
the judge 1.' The thought \vas often in 51. Paul's
mind of the inequality of lots in the world and
the Church. There are more and less honourable
limbs in the body politic: there are vessels for
honourable and vessels for dishonourable pur-
poses in the great social economy 2. So it is
with the races of men. They are all of one
blood-of the one lump. But some have high
and others low vocations, and the right to
deterluine of \vhat sort the lot shall be in each
case lies absolutely \vith the Divine Potter. It
is childish to dispute His title. And not only
so : \vhen the potter, whom Jeremiah was ordered
to obserye, found a vessel he was making marred
under his hand, · he made it again another vessel,
as seemed good to the potter to make it 3.'
Accordingly, when the chosen material (i. e. the
Jews) \vould not mould to the high purpose for
which the Potter \vas fashioning it, who shall
complain if He diverted it to lo\ver uses or
threw it away to destruction, and produced out
1 xv. 7.
i I Cor. xii. 22-5; 2 Tim. ii. 20.
S J er. xviii. 4. The passage continues with a strong assertion
of God's freedom to govern the destinies of nations on moral
principles.
GOli's IZDerty to choose and 1
eJ.ect 35
of His stores other vessels which He had already
prepared and destined for glorious functions (that
is to say, the Gentile Christians)? But the case
is even stronger than this. Who indeed shall
complain if, when the vessels originally destined
for the higher uses prove fit for nothing but
destruction, the Divine Potter-though ,villing,
now as in the case of Pharaoh, to let His wrath
fall and to manifest His power-yet sho\vs almost
unlimited forbearance \vith them (as in fact God
did with the J e\vs); and ,vhen at last He does
let His ,vrath fall, only does so in order to
manifest anew the resourcefulness of His mercy I
upon a new and larger Israel, gathered not from
among the J e\vs only, but from among all nations,
to be the object of His compassionate regard?
Indeed, the prophet Hose
(ii. 23, i. 10) fore-
saw this choice of a yet unrecognized people
to be God's people. Isaiah again (x. 22) antici-
pated no more than a remnant surviving of all
the multitudes of Israel, because of the sharpness
and conclusiveness of the divine judgement upon
them. And (i. 9) it is only to the compassion of
God that he attributes their exelnption by means
1 When Moses asked to sc:e God's glory (Exod. xxxiii. 18),
what was revealed to him was His goodness and free mercy, and
wbat St. Paul here means by God's glory is His mercy especially.
D 2
36 The Eþlstle to the R011zans
of the faithful remnant from entire annihilation,
like that of the Cities of the Plain.
.
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I \vill
have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I "rill have com-
passion on whom I have compassion. So then it is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
that hath mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh,
For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might
shew in thee my power, and that my name might be
published abroad in all the earth. So then he hath mercy
on 'whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he still find fault?
For who withstandeth his \vill? Nay but, 0 man, who art
thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing fornled
say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus?
Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the
same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and
another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew
his \vrath, and to make his power known, endured with
much longsuffe
ing vessels of wrath fitted unto destruc-
tion: and that he might make known the riches of his
glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared
unto glory, even us, whom he also called, not from the
Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? As he saith also
in Hosea,
I will call that my people, which \vas not my people;
And her beloved, ,vhich was not beloved.
And it shall be, that in the place where it was said
unto them, Ye are not my people,
There shall they be called sons of the living God.
And Isaiah crieth concerning Israel, If the number of
the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the
God's lzoerty to choose and reject 37
renlnant that shall be saved: for the Lord will execute
his word upon the earth, finishing it and cutting it short.
And, as Isaiah hath said before,
Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,
We had become as Sodom, and had been made like
unto Gonlorrah.
What has been already said will have been
enough to guard against the main sources of
mistake in reading this section. St. Paul might
have much to say about God's righteousness i'n
general, and large ways of vindicating it. But
here he holds fast to the single aspect of right-
eousness according to \vhich it means that God
has been true to the original principles of His
covenant. The God who chose Abraham and
Moses is the God who is now, and rightly on
His own declared principles of government, re-
jecting the greater part of the people of Abraham
and Moses. This-faithfulness to His own
declared principles-is what St. Paul here means
by His righteousness. And as it was God's
declared principle to retain His own liberty to
show mercy on men according to His free will,
inside or outside the chosen people, so on the
other hand He retained His liberty to exhibit His
judgement of hardening according to His will,
inside or outside the chosen people. He who
brought Pharaoh the Egyptian upon the stage
38 Tile Eþistle to the ROl1zans
of history \ as an example of hardening judge-
ment, is within His right in doing the same no\v
with (the mass of) the people of His choice.
The liberty asserted for God is wholly consistent
\vith His being found, in fact, to have ( hardened'
those only who have deserved hardening by
their own wilfulness. It was for such a moral
cause that God hardened the hearts of the J e\vs,
that 'seeing they might not see, and hearing
they might not hear 2.' . We can feel no doubt
that some similar moral cause underlay the
hardening of Pharaoh. But this is not 51. Paul's
present point. All his argument is directed to
asserting God's liberty to sho\v mercy or harden,
irrespectively of considerations of race, \vhen
and \vhere He in His sovereign moral will
chooses.
We should notice that 51. Paul's method is
here, as else\yhere, what is called ideal or
abstract, in the sense that he makes abstraction
1 In the original the words run, 'For this cause have I made
thee to stand,' i. e. probably, , I have preserved thy life under the
plague of boils, and other plagues, in order to make thee an ex-
ample of a more conspicuous judgement.' But St. Paul, departing
from the Greek Bible, uses a word 'raised thee up,' which in
Pharaoh"s case, or in that of Cyrus, means to bring upon the
stage of history. Isa. xli. 2; cf. J ere 1. [xxvii in the Greek J 4 1 ;
Hab. i. 6.
See Matt. xiii. 14, 15; Mark iv. 12; John xii. 4 0 .
God's fz.bel'"ty to choose and re;Aect 39
of a particular point of view; and, apparently
indifferent to being misunderstood, substantiates
his argument upon the particular aspect which
he has taken apart from the whole matter in
hand, till it is done with, and then other points
can be taken in their turn. And he does not, as
a modern \\'Titer would do, painfully correlate
the various aspects of the subject 1.
By means of the famous simile of the potter
St. Paul asserts two principles about God:
(r) that God is free, and condescends to give
no account to His creatures, in absolutely deter-
mining the high or low vocations of men. To
one man or nation He gives five talents, to
another two, to another one. He makes vessels
to honourable and vessels to (co111paratively)
dishonourable uses. He makes m
n Jews or
Assyrians, Englishmen or Hottentots, at His
absolute discretion. (2) That God is absolutely
free, when the human material ,vhich He is
moulding for His purposes proves intractable,
to repudiate and reject what has, by its refusal
to mould, become a 'vessel of wrath' fit 'to be
taken and destroyed.' And it is only by a
voluntary limitation of this freedom that He
exhibits long toleration with the intractable and
1 cr. vol. i. p. 75.
40 The Eþzstle to the R011zans
obstinate, and is longsuffering with them even
\vhen His wrath is ready and waiting to show
itself. These are the t\VO distinct points in the
simile of the potter. We must distinguish care.
fully bet\veen the' vessels destined for dishonour'
-the 'less honourable limbs' of humanity-and
the 'vessels of \vrath,' or 'vessels fitted for
destruction,' i. e. those which have proved them-
selves unfit for the vocation to which they were
destined and have to be rejected. We note that
St. Paul does not say that God fitted vessels for
destruction, but that He bore long with those
which had so beeo11le fitted. St. Paul never gives
us any real justification-if we look at his lan-
guage carefully-for the idea of any predestina-
tion to ,-(feetion, as distinct from predestination
to higher or lo\ver purposes. And the New
Testament is full of assurances that a pre-
destination to a low vocation in this \vorld may
be a predestination to high glory in eternity, if
the humble calling is faithfully followed.
It ought not to be denied, however, that in all
this passage St. Paul's feet, as he moves along
his argument, are dogged by the metaphysicaJ
difficulty of finding room for human free-\vill
inside the universal scope of the divine action
and the prescience of the divine wisdom. This
God's tz.berty to clzoose and reject 4 1
is a perennial difficulty. But St. Paul does not
touch it. He does not even touch the question
of whether God does actually (in our sense)
foreknow the final destiny of every individual,
and how he will act on each occasion 1; he does
not touch the question ho\v or how far human
\vilfulness can be allowed to disturb the divine
order. In the Pharisaic schools. he \vould cer-
tainly have been brought up, as Josephus tells
us, both to 'attribute everything to fate and
God,' and also to recognize that it 'lay with
men for the most part to do right or wrong':
to believe that' everything was foreseen,' and
also that' free-,vill was given'; or, as Josephus
else\vhere puts it (as if it made no difference), to
believe 'that some things, but not all, are the
work of fate, and other things are in men's o\vn
power and need not happen 2.' That is to say,
he would have been educated to believe both
in predestination and in freedom, \vithout any
1 On the meaning of divine foreknowledge in St. Paul see
vol. i. p. 317.
:. See Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 9; xviii. I, 3; Bell. Jud. ii. 8, 14.
cr. Schürer, Jewish PeoPle (English trans.), Div. ii. vol. ü. PP.14 if. ;
J ames and Ryle, Ps. of Solomon, p. 96. The Essenes, Josephus
says, believed in fate, and not in free-will; the Sadducees in free-
will and not in fate; but the Pharisees in both. No doubt
Josephus is importing Greek philosophical views into his account
of Jewish parties, but substantially his account is probably true.
42 The Eþts/le to tIle R0112ans
special attempt to reconcile the t\vo. We can
tell for certain that this inherited belief was
further moralizea in St. Paul's case by his
enlarged view of the divine purpose as working
through high and low estates alike, for the final
good of all men; and by his deepened percep-
tion of the correspondence with God's purpose,
\vhich, in the exercise of our freedom, is required
of us. But, so far as we kno\v, S1. Paul left the
strictly metaphysical question exactly where he
found it-as an imperfectly reconciled antithesis.
And there perhaps \ve men shall always have to
leave it, or at least till we come to know even as
\ve are known.
In the quotations from the Old Testament,
\yith \vhich the section concludes, we notice
that S1. Paul varies the original application o(
the passages from Hosea. In the prophet they
refer to the recovery of dejected and dishonoured
Israel, while the apostle applies them to the
exaltation of the Gentiles from their lo\v estate.
As is often the case, while other passages in the
prophets \vere there to prove exactly \vhat he
\vanted 1, St. Paul takes the words which come
1 e. g. Isa. xix. 24; Ezek. xvi. 55. (The exaltation into the
fellowship of the chosen people of Egypt, Assyria, Sodom J and
Samaria. )
God's liberty to choose and 1'"e).eet 43
into his mind with a considerable latitude of
application, and without any critical argument.
Thus, if he makes some\vhat free with the
particular texts, it is in order to vindicate the
real teaching of the Old Testament. He has,
if not exact criticism, what is much better,
profound spiritual insight.
The passages quoted from Isaiah are charac-
teristic and central. This great prophet first
clearly perceived that most striking law of
human history-that progress comes, not mostly
through the majority of a nation, but through
the faithful remnant. It is the few best through
\vhom alone God can freely work. It is the
best who in the long run determine the moral
level of the nation, and either keep the mass of
men around them from corruption, or, if that is
impossible, provide a fresh point of departure
and hope in a society now inevitably, as a whole,
hastening to decay and judgement. 'As a-
terebinth, and as an oak, \vhose stock remaineth,
\vhen they are felled; so the. holy seed is the
stock thereof!.'
1 Isa. vi. 13.
44 TIle Epzs/le to tlze Romans
..
DIVISION IV.
3. CHAPTER IX. 30-X. 21.
Lack of fazïh the reason of Israel's reJectz.on.
WHAT is to be our conclusion then? That
Gentiles, men beyond the pale of God's
covenant, who made no pretension of pursu-
ing righteousness, all at once laid hold on
righteousness and made it their own, simply
by accepting in faith the divine offer which
came their way; while Israel, the chosen
people, devoted to pursuing a law of righteous-
ness, never caught up with that of which it was
in pursuit. The result seems strange enough.
But the reason of it is apparent. IsraelI had
been put under a divine election, which required
of them the open ear, the responsive ,viII, of
faith. But instead of cultivating this temper
of faith, they fastened upon the specified obser-
1 I have endeavoured sometimes in this analysis to expand
'what St. Paul means by 'pursuing righteousness,' by , works' and
by 'faith,' in accordance with the meaning already assigned to
these words j see vol. i. pp. 7-24.
Israel rejected jor laclz of jazï/z 4S
vances of the Mosaic law, and blindly adhered
to them, as if God had nothing deeper or greater
to teach them, and they had nothing deeper or
greater to receive. Thus, when the Christ
came, with His completer light and claims, they
\vould not have Him. They wanted nothing
further, nothing more than they were accus-
tomed to. And thus Isaiah's prophecy was
fulfilled, that the Christ, the tried foundation
stone, the destined security of all who should
believe in Him, would turn out to be a stone at
which the chosen people should stumble, and
a rock on which it should meet disaster 1 (ix.
3 0 -33).
And here is the pathos of the situation. Here
is what puts passion into St. Paul's desire and
his prayer for Israel's entrance into the great
deliverance. It is that they have such a real
zeal for God, though without any spiritual
insight to guide it. A real zeal for God! of
that St. Paul's own experience qualified him to
testify. But in what sense \vithout insight? In
the sense that with Jesus of Nazareth there
appeared a divine righteousness, which God
was communicating to men 2; but the Jews, pre-
1 Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16. cr. Matt. xi. 6.
I See above, vol. i. p. 17.
46 TIle Eþzstle to tlte R011lGUS
occupied \\"'ith maint
ining a standard of right-
eousness \vhich they had taken for their own-
which had become identified, that is to say, with
their o\vn self-satisfaction and pride of priyilege
and independence of interference-failed to per-
ceive the diyine purpose, and, in fact, refused
to submit themselves to it. For that principle
of la\v \vhich the J e\vs had come to regard as
God's final \yord, He really intended only as
a temporary discipline to be brought to an end
by the coming of the Christ, and by the dis-
closure of the real righteousness which, in
Christ, God should offer and man should simply
accept in faith. Law and faith are in sharp
and intelligible contrast. Under the la\v of
works a man, as Moses says \ stands to pre-
serve his life (or save his soul) according as he
performs the specified requirements (as if man
were an independent being \vho could thus
stand over against God on his merits). But faith,
attributing nothing to itself, simply accepts
the o
er of God, the divine message of com-
passion brought near to it. Moses of old told
the Israelites 2 that the commandlnent \vas not
1 Levit. xviii. 5.
2 Deut. xxx. 11-14. I have italicized the words substantially
reproduced by St. Paul, but I have quoted the whole passage
because its whole meaning is in his mind.
Israel rejected for lack of faz.tlz 47
too hard for them, neither was it far off. It was
110t Ùl, hea'l'en, that th
y should say, who shall go
up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and
make us to hear it, that we may do it? Neither
was it beyond the sea, that they should say, who
shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us,
and make us to hear it that we may do it? But
the zuord 'lJ..'as very nigh unto tlze1n, in their 1nouth
and z.n their heart, that they might do it. These
\vords really describe the character of the
Christian message of faith, of which the apostles
are the heralds. Truly there is no need for the
believer in Jesus to seek some one to scale
heaven to reach a remote God, for Christ is
come down. Or to descend into the abyss to
seek a Christ dead and lost, for Christ is
risen. The great deliverance is offered to us
on very easy terms. A man has only openly to
confess that the human Jesus is really the
divine Lord, and heartily to believe that God
raised Him from the dead. Let him heartily
accept that message, and the fellowship in the
divine righteousness is his. Let him publicly
confess that creed, and the great salvation is
open to him. It is the old teaching of Isaiah 1_
if a man but believe (in the Christ) there is no
1 Isa. xxviii. 16.
48 The Eþts/le to tlze R01J2anS
fear of his being put to shame. And here J e\vs
and Greeks are all on the same level of need
and opportunity. .There is over all the same
Lord Christ, with the same inexhaustible good
will towards all who simply call on Him.
Again the old scripture testifies that it is every
one \vho calls on the name of the Lord who
shall be saved 1. The conditions then are very
simple. To call on the Lord, \ve may say, men
must believe
n Him. To have the opportunity
of believing on Him, they must have heard
about Him. To hear about Him, they need one
to speak in His name. And how can men
speak in the name of God except as His
apostles, as men commissioned and sent from
Him? And these terms we know well enough
have all been fulfilled. The commissioned
heralds of the good tidings of God have gone
forth, so that all men may hear and believe and
call out to God. Truly Isaiah's vision of the _
\velcome preacher of good tidings 2 is realized
to-day (x. I-IS).
N o\v we have clear before us the simplicity of
the gospel, the message to faith. And \ve have
before us the plain fact that the Israelitish
people, preoccupied with their o\vn temporary
1 Joel ii. 32.
:I Isa. Iii. 7.
Israel rejected for lack of jåith 49
and misunderstood standard of the law, have
not generally accepted it. But this is no more
than Isaiah led us to expect. 'Lord,' he cries,
'who gave credence to our message 1 ?' (Faith,
you see, according to the prophet, requires just
a listening to a divine message; and this
message has come to men by the preaching
about Christ.) And can it be pleaded that the
Jews have not had the opportunity of hearing
the message? No, truly, as the Psalmist says,
the voice of God's messengers has gone over
all the earth, and their words to the end of the
inhabited world 2. Or can it be said that Israel
did not know that a preaching to the Celltzies
was to be looked for? No, a succession of
warnings had reached them. Thus Moses
foretold that it should be a nation which (reli-
giously speaking) was no nation, a people
without understanding, that God would use to
provoke His people to jealousy, and stimulate
their emulation 3. Again, Isaiah uses startling
words, and declares that God has been dis-
covered by those who never sought Him, and
revealed to those who never asked for Him 4_
that is the Gentiles. But the words of Isaiah
I Isa. liii. I. 2 Ps. xix. 4.
, Deut. xxxii. 21. t lsa. lxv. I, 2.
II. E
LIBRARY S1 MARY'S COLLEGE
50 Tile Eþlstle to tile ROl1zans
that follo\v describe truly the relation of God and
Israel. God has tenderly and persistently been
offering His love to them, but they have proved
themselves only rebellious and full of contradic-
tion (x. 16-21).
This, then, is the plain summary. Israel is
rejected because, after every offer, and with
every opportunity, they have refused God's
leading, refused to be docile, refused to believe,
refused to 0 bey.
\Vhat shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which
followed not after righteousness, attained to righteous-
ness, even the righteousness which is of faith: but Israel,
following after a law of righteousness, did not arrive at
IIlat law. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by
faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the
stone of stumbling; even as it is written,
Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock
of offence:
And he that believeth on him shall not be put to
shame.
Brethren, my heart's desire and my supplication to
God is for them, that they may be saved. For I bear
them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not
according to knowledge. For being ignorant of God's
righteousness, and seeking to establish their o\vn. they
did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to
everyone that believeth. For Moses writeth that the
man that doeth the righteousness which is of the law
sh
ll live thereby. But the righteousness which is of
Israel rejected for lack of fazï/z 51
faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend
into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, \Vho
shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up
from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh
thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of
faith, which we preach: because if thou shalt confess
with thy mouth Jesus as Lorq, and shalt believe in thy
heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved: for \vith the heart man believeth unto righteous-
ness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salva-
tion. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on
him shall not be put to shame. For there is no distinction
between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of
all, and is rich unto all that call upon him: for, Whoso-
ever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not
believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they
have not heard? and how shall they hear without a
preacher? and ho\v shall they preach, except they be
sent? even as it is written, Ho\v beautiful are the feet of
them that bring glad tidings of good things!
But they did not all hearken to the glad tidings. For
Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So
belief cOineth of hearing, and hearing by the word of
Christ. But I say, Did they not hear ? Yea, verily,
Their sound went out into all the earth,
And their words unto the ends of the world.
But I say, Did Israel not know? First Moses saith,
I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no
nation,
With a nation void of understanding will I anger you.
And Isaiah is very bold, and saith,
I was found of them that sought me not;
I became manifest unto them that asked not of me.
E2
52 The Epistle /0 tIle ROI1'lanS
But as to Israel he saith, All the day long did I spread
out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.
In this passage St. Paul gives us the other
side of the question of the rejection of the
Israelites. God had retained an absolute free-
dom, not to be questioned by men, to reject
\vhom He willed. That \vas the first point.
But can we see whom our God \vills to reject,
or \vhy in particular He rejected (though not
finally, as will appear) the chosen people? It
is because they failed in faith. And faith is
precisely that which is necessary to maintain
correspondence with God-it is the faculty of
fellowship \vith Him. They failed because the
false principle of justification by works had
obscured in their minds the need and meaning
of faith. The false principle meant, as we
have already seen, the maintaining an accepted
standard of conduct and divine service,
especially in outward matters, and for the rest
claiming to be left alone. The accepted stan-
dard was that which distinguished Israel fronl
the rest of the world, and what they had be-
come accustomed to. It \vas a righteousness of
'their o\vn.' They prided themselves on it.
Their public opinion required its observance.
It had come to usurp the place of any direct
.
Israel reJ'ected for lack of faztlz 53
relationship to the voice of God. They had no
idea that God Fould have anything more or
deeper to require of them. They had lost
personal touch with Him. Therefore seeking
to establish this, their own righteousness, they
failed to submit themselves to the (now ne\vly
revealed) righteousness of God in Christ. This
unprogressiveness of the Jewish ideal, this sub-
stitution of the accepted standard under the
law for the word of God, on the part of the
Pharisees, the religious representatives of Israel,
is precisely what the pages of the Gospel
record. Therefore the 'corner stone of sure
foundation' for the divine building became to
them the stone on \vhich they stumbled and fell.
And yet that the la\v was a temporary expedient,
and not the whole counsel of God, \vas the
deepest witness of the Old Testament; and
in being false to the further revelation of the
will of God in Christ, they were false to their
o\vn deepest principles. All this ground we
have gone over already, and need not traverse
again 1.
So also we have already become familiar
with the simplicity of the message of God in
Christ, and the simplicity of the faith \vhich,
I See vol. i. pp. 7 If., 165 f., 250 ff.
S4 TIle Epistle to the Ron2ans
rooted in the consciousness of sin and need,
and equally possible for all men who can
share this consciousness, is required to wel-
come God's offer, and so be brought by
Christ into living union with Him. All this
St. Paul has already elaborated, and is here only
resuming and recapitulating by the way. But
one or two points in the recapitulation require
notice.
I. St. Paul takes the basis of his statement
of the principle of grace and faith out of the
heart of the books of Moses-the idea of the
'word very nigh thee,' of the simple message
claiming only to be simply accepted, and of the
'very present help' of a gracious God needing
only to be welcomed. The fact is that St. Paul
usually idealizes when he treats of 'the law of
Moses'; as, for example, when he here says
that' Moses writeth that the man that doeth the
righteousness . . . shall tz.ve thereby,' as if that
was all that Moses said. The principle of law, as
Saul the Pharisee had learned to understand it, is
the dominant principle in the five Book
of the
Law, but not the only one. 'Grace, already exist-
ing in the Jewish theocracy, was the fruitful germ
deposited under the surface, which was one day
to burst forth and become the peculiar character
Israel re;'ected for lack of faz
h 55
of the new covenant 1.' The God of the ne\v
covenant is the God also of the old, and was
there already intimating His truer and deeper
character. To this 51. Paul bears witness by
resting his statement of the principle of the new
covenant upon the \vords of the old.
2. In this passage we have the germ of what
we call the creed. The lordship of Jesus, in
the sense which implies His proper divinity, and
His resurrection and triumph over death-was
already matter of public confession in the
Christian church: to make profession that
, Jesus is Lord' qualified for' the salvation' 2:
and in this lay hid all that is essential to the
Christian creed. Already then in the earliest
church subjective faith involved a certain objec-
tive and public creed 3 which came very soon to
be called 'the faith.' In this passage also, as in
xiv. 9 and in 51. Peter's epistle, we recognize, as
an element in the common tradition, the belief
in the Descent into Hades (the abyss).
3. 51. Pau] incidentally shows us his instinc-
1 Godet in loco .
t Cf. I Cor. xii. 3. The lordship of Jesus, we see in this passage,
means that He can have applied to Him the sayings of the Old
Testament about the Lord Jehovah; and can be 'called upon' as
such in prayer (J oe1 Ïi. 32).
3 cr. I Cor. xv. 1-3.
56 TIle Epistle to the Romans
tive feeling that to be a trustworthy ambassador
for God one needs 'apostolate.' 'How shall
they preach except they be sent?' And this
apostolate, as he uses it, means not only an
in,vard sense of mission, but an external sending
by Christ Himself; and in pursuance of the
same principle, when once the Church has been
established, it would mean a sending by those
authorized to send in His name. This is the
root principle of the Christian 'stewardship.'
As the subapostolic Clement expresses it, ' Christ
(,vas sent) from God, and the apostles from
Christ. Each came in due order from the win
of God. Therefore, having received the words
of command, and having been fully convinced
by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and been assured in the message of God with
conviction of the Holy Ghost, they came forth,
preaching the gospel that the kingdom of God
was to come. Therefore as they preached in
country and towns they established their first-
fruits, when they had put them to the proo
to
be bishops (i. e. presbyters), and deacons of those
who were to come to the faith.' And afterwards,
in view of disputes over the presbyteral office,
which divine inspiration enabled them to antici-
pate, they made provision for a due succession
Israel re;'ected for lack of fazllz 57
in the 'episcopate' on the death of those first
appointed 1.
4. St. Paul's singularly free, but deeply in-
spired, manner of applying texts from the Old
Testament is especially illustrated in this
passage.
Thus the passages quoted from Isaiah about
the Stone, which St. Paul applies to Christ,
refer originally to Jehovah simply in one case
(Isa. viii. 14), and probably to His will and cove-
nant as the foundation of Israel's polity in the
other (I sa. xxviii. 16). Jewish tradition had
possibly already referred them to the Christ 2 ;
and certainly our Lord's use of Ps. cxviii. 22-
'The stone which the builders rejected '-as
applying to His own rejection, made the refer-
ence more obvious. It is indeed in deepest
accordance with the spirit of Isaiah: and
St. Peter (1 Peter ii. 6), we notice, follows
St. Paul in the use of them. Another passage
(Iii. 7) about' the feet of those who preach good
tidings' is transferred, \vith added meaning, from
the heralds of the redemption from Babylon,
to the heralds of the greater redemption. And
the opening of chapter lxv, which originally
refers altogether to apostate Israel, is divided,
1 Clem. ad Cor. 42, 41.
2 See S. and H. in loco
58 TIle EPistle to tIle R0111allS
and applied in part to the Gentiles, in part to
the Jews. (Other passages in the prophets,
\ve should observe, \vould justify the former
application.) Again, a passage from Ps. xix is
transferred very beautifully from the witness of
the heavens to the witness of the Gospel; as if
51. Paul \vould say-grace is become as univer-
sal as nature. The language of a passage from
Deuteronomy, as we have seen, is taken from
the la,v to express the spirit of the gospel.
The calling upon Jehovah in Joel becomes in
51. Paul's quotation the calling upon Christ.
All this free citation, uncritical according to our
ideas and methods, yet rests upon a profoundly
right apprehension of the meaning of the Old
Testament as a whole. The appeal to the Old
Testament, even if not to the particular passage,
is justified by the strictest criticism.
But 110t all reJ'ected, 1lor finally 59
DIVISION IV.
4. CHAPTER XI. 1-12.
God's judge111ent on Israel nezïher unz'versal
nor final.
BUT if Israel has thus by her own fault fallen
from her high estate, are we then to suppose
that God has simply rejected His own chosen
people? Such a thought cannot be entertained.
How could it have been in the mind of such
an Israelite as St. Paul, one who came of
Abraham's genuine seed, and of the tribe which
held so fast by Judah? No: the people on whom
from eternity God's eye rested, to mark them
out for Himself and for His purposes, assuredly
cannot, as a people, have been cast away 1. What
has happened now is only what is recorded long
ago in the history of Elijah. Then, as now, a
general unfaithfulness in the bulk of the nation
concealed the existence of a faithful remnant.
Yet God had, as He assured the prophet,
1 Three times--I Sam. xii. 22, Ps. xciv. 14, xcv. 3 (in the Greek)
-the promise occurs' The Lord will not cast away His people:
60 The Epzs/le to tIle R01Jzalls
reserved for Himself such a remnant, and of
very considerable numbers. And now also such
a remnant of true Israelites exists in accordance
\vith the selective action of grace-that is to say,
God's gratuitous and unmerited good will. Yes:
let there be no mistake about it; their position
is due to nothing else than the original and
continuous action of God's grace; and grace
means God's absolutely gratuitous and unmerited
good will (which may therefore come upon Gen-
tiles equally with Jews). It excludes the idea of
these remnants owing their position to previous
merits, or of its being in any way God's response
to an antecedent claim 1.
This then is what we have to recognize.
What Israel in bulk sought for (by way of its
supposed merit), that it did not get, but a select
remnant got it; and upon the rest there fell that
judicial hardening-that reversal of their true
relation to God-\vhich Moses and Isaiah already
discerned in the chosen people 2: an abiding
1 The vocation and election which made Israel the chosen
people were absolutely of God. What distinguished the faithful
remnant from the bulk of the nation was simply that they had not
altogether failed in faith, so that the unchanging election was not
in their cases practically suspended, but God 'reserved them for
Himself.'
, St. Paul refers chiefly to Isa. xxix. Io-the description of a
besotted people whose prophets are eyes that cannot see, and
But 1Z0t all rejected, nor finally 61
stupor, and deafness, and blindness, with regard
to God's purpose and will for them. David too,
as God's righteous servant, demands, as a divine
requital upon his bitter and cruel enemies, that
their very abundance should betray them into
captivity and prove their stumblingblock; that
their spiritual vision should be lost and their
backs bent downward to the ground. Which is
just what has happened to Israel through their
rejection of the Son of David.
The bulk of the people then has stumbled.
But \ve must not exaggerate what has happened.
As it is not all of them who have stumbled, so
also it is not for ever. Their stumbling is not
equivalent to a final fall. Already we can per-
ceive how it may be reversed. The refusal of
the Jews to recognize the Christ has been the
occasion for a turning to the Gentiles. Thus
the salvation of the Christ has come to them.
And this has happened in the divine providence
in order that, as Moses anticipated, they may
in their turn provoke the Jews to jealousy-to
a jealous determination not to lose their old
their seers ears that cannot hear; so that the word of God has
become as a sealed book; cf. also Isa. vi. 9. But there is a similar
passage in Deut. xxix. 4, which partly moulds his language, and
supplies the words' unto this day.'
62 Tlze Epistle to tile R0111allS
privileges. Thus if even the transgression of
Israel has proved the occasion for enriching
the world as a \vhole, if even the deficiency of
Israel (leaving vacant space, as it were, in the
Church) has proved the occasion for enriching
the Gentiles, how much more enrichment is to be
expected when the chosen people are recover
d
in their full number?
I say then, Did God cast off his people? God forbid.
F or I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the
tribe of Benjamin. God did not cast off his people which
he foreknew. Or wot ye not what the scripture saith of
Elijah I? how he pleadeth with God against Israel, Lord,
they have killed thy prophets, they have digged down
thine altars: and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have left
for myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the
knee to Baal. Even so then at this present time also
there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
But if it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise
grace is no more grace. What then? That which Israel
seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the ejection ob-
tained it, and the rest were hardened: according as it is
\vritten, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they
should not see, and ears that they should not hear, unto
this very day. And David saith,
Let their table be made a snare, and a trap,
And a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them:
1 Rather, as margin, in Elijah, Le. the passage of Scripture
about Elijah.
But not all rejected, nor finally 63
Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see,
And bow thou down their back alway.
I say then, Did they stumble that they might fall? God
forbid: but by their fall salvation ,,"s come unto the Gen-
tiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if their fall
is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the
Gentiles; how much more their fulness ?
I. We learn a little more exactly about
St. Paul's doctrine of election in this chapter.
God's final purpose for good is, as we shall
see at the end of the chapter-and in what
sense we shall have to consider-upon all men
whatsoever. But this universal purpose is
worked out through special' elect' instruments.
Thus God recognized 1 Israel beforehand, i. e. in
His eternal counsels, as the people to bear
His name in the world. This was the selection
of Israel, and was an act of which the initiative
was wholly on God's side. It was a pure act
of the divine favour. This' selection of grace'
was upon Israel as a whole, but at later stages
of the history, frequently enough, owing to the
disobedience and apostasy of the majority, it is
found to rest in an effective sense only upon
a 'remnant' whom God has reserved for Him-
self, because they have not utterly refused to
1 This-to recognize or mark out beforehand-is the meaning
of divine' foreknowing' in St. Paul. See vol. i. pp. 317 f.
64 The Epistle to the Romans
correspond to the original and continuous call
of the divine grace. For the rest their privileges
become the occasion of their fall: their light
becomes their darkness. For judgement always
and inevitably waits upon any form of misused
privilege. Thus, when the Christ came, only an
elect remnant of the nation welcomed Him. The
rest fell under judgement. But God overrules
even this apostasy. He takes the opportunity
of the absence of those who should have been
at the marriage supper of the king's son, to
fill the great vacancy from the Gentile world.
They are brought within the scope of the
selecting call. But God's original vocation is
still irrevocably upon apostate Israel. The
new Gentile converts are to stimulate them to
recover their lost privileges. Their wilfulness
and obstinacy is to give place to humility and
faith; and Jew and Gentile all together are
to constitute the elect catholic church.
This is very simple and cheerful teaching.
I t leaves for us to consider later the question
whether God's original and special vocation
resting upon the J e\vs is finally to constraÙt
them all to conversion, and whether in the same
way His ultimate purpose of salvation for all
men is to take place infallibly in all cases. This
But not all re;'ected, nor finally 65
question .is still to be considered. But at any
rate the doctrine of election has lost all that
gave it a colouring of arbitrariness and injustice
and narrow sympathies.
We ought to notice in the above passage how
St. Paul, in recalling the continual obstinacy and
hardening of the majority of the chosen people,
is following on the lines of St. Stephen's speech
(Acts vii. 51).
2. The imprecatory psalms are, especially in
our Anglican public services, a great stumbling-
block to many-especially the 6gth (here cited
by St. Paul) and the logth. These psalms do
not represent barely the cry of an individual
sufferer invoking God's curse upon his private
enemies. The sufferer, who is the psalmist,
or with whom at least the psalmist identi-
fies himself, represents afflicted righteousness.
It is God's people, His 'servant' and 'son'
according to the language of the Old T esta-
ment, that is under persecution from the
enemies of God. And he calls upon God to
vindicate Himself by punishing the adversary;
to let it be seen that His word and promise. is
truth. ' How long, 0 God, holy and true, dost
thou not judge and avenge?' Even from this
point of view, however, when with the assistance
II. F
66 Tile Eþzstle to tile ROJJzalls
of the modern critics \ve have in the main purged
a\vay the element of private vindictiveness, these
psalms no doubt remain \",ith the stamp of
narro\vness and bitterness upon them. They
haye none of the larger Ne\v Testament sense
that the \vorst enemies of the Church may be
converted and li\Te: that our attitude towards all
men is to \"ish them good, purely good and
not eyil, e",en though it be under the form of
judgement: 'Rejoice \",hen men revile you and
persecute you'; 'Bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, pray for them
\vhich despitefully use you'; 'That by your
good \vorks \"hich they shall behold, they may
glorify God in the day of visitation.'
But granted the IÜnitation and bitterness still
remaining in these psalms, their citation in
the N e\v Testament sho\\Ts us \vhat is for us
the right use of them. They are by implica-
tion taken up-\",here \ve should least expect
them-into the mouth of the Son of Man 1.
That is to say, it is His enemies on \vhom the
judgements are imprecated. There is a \vrath
of the Lamb. There is a divine s\vord of judge-
ment \\Thich proceeds out of His mouth. He,
the administrator of the righteousness of God,
1 Both in this passage and in Acts i. 20.
Bu! lOt all ejected, 10 .ft laIty 6
expects from His Father judgement on His
enemies. It is not necessarily, as S1. Paul
here indicates, final judgement: the judgement
upon the J e\vs ,vas not yet that; but judge-
ment of some sort-temporal or final-upon
His wilful adversaries, the Son expects of the
Father. And v."e men, as v. e repeat these
psalms, are, like the first Christians in face
of the suicide of Judas, to identify ourselves
,vith the divine righteousness and accept the
law of just retribution. This is the deepest and
truest sense in v."hich v."e can still say the impre-
catory psalms; and in these days of a philan-
thropy that often lacks the stern savour of
righteousness, it is very necessary that "
e
should I:1ake this sense our O\l,-n.
F 2
68 The Eptstle to tile R0111a1ZS
,.
DIVISION IV.
51. CHAPTER XI. 13-36.
God's þresent þurþose for the Jews through tht
Gentiles: and so for all hUl1za1Zity.
ST. PAUL \vould not have it supposed that,
in his zeal for the recovery of Israel, he was
proving faithless to his vocation as the apostle
of the Gentiles. On the contrary, he explains
(assuming the Roman Christians to be Gentiles
in the mass) that he is, by this very zeal, fulfilling
that vocation. The conversion of the Gentiles
\vas meant to react as a stimulus on the Jews.
When St" Paul magnifies his Gentile ministry,
he does so always with the motive of stinging
the jealousy of his own people, and so bringing
some of them to salvation. Ho\v can such a
consummation be too eagerly desired? For if
even so pitiable an event as their rejection has
yet, in God's providence, been overruled for
1 I follow, by preference, the paragraphs of the R. V., unless
there is very strong reason to the contrary.
A þurpose of love for all 1nankÙzd 69
a good end-the bringing back of the outside
\vorld into the fellowship of God 1: can \ve
doubt that so happy an event as their recovery
would be indeed (what Ezekiel saw in vision
in the valley of the dry bones) a veritable
resurrection ? For the consecration of God is
still upon them. The holy (i. e. consecrated)
people they still remain. As the 'heave offer-
ing' of the' first of the dough' 2 consecrates the
whole lump, so the first of the nation offered to
God-Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-have conse-
crated the whole nation. The holiness of the
root of God's olive tree 3 has passed to the latest
branches. It is quite true that some of these
branches of the Jewish olive tree were broken
off, and that the Gentiles were introduced in
their place; like a \vild olive grafted upon the
root of a cultivated plant, and so sharing its rich
sap. But that-to let the metaphor continue-
gives the \vild olive no ground for an insolent
contempt of the branches which naturally be-
longed to the tree. What advantage it now
has it wholly derives from that \vhich it is
1 Cf 2 Cor. v. 19, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto Himself.'
2 N urn. xv. 20, 21.
3 'The Lord called thy name A green olive tree.' ]er. xi. 16;
Hos. xiv. 6.
70 Tile Eþzstle to the R0111ans
affecting to despise. It is the root that supports
it, not it the root. And are the Gentiles dis-
posed to argue that these rejected Jewish
branches were broken off in order that they
might take their place; and that they, the
Gentiles, are thus plainly preferred by God
to the J e\vs ? The ans\ver is plain. Why \vere
they broken off? Because they \vould not main-
tain the correspondence of faith \vith the purpose
of God; and it is simply by maintaining this
attitude that the newly introduced Gentiles can
hope to retain their place. They had better
exhibit, not a groundless pride, but a reasonable
fear. Is God likely to be more sparing towards
them than towards His first chosen? God has
displayed before their eyes both His attributes
of severity and goodness, and they must take
note of both. At the present moment it is
severity towards J e\vs, goodness to\vards Gen-
tiles. Yes, goodness towards Gentiles; but so
long only as they abide faithfully in His good-
ness, no longer. When they fail of faithfulness,
they too, like their J e\vish predecessors, shall
be cut off. And, on the other hand, when those
J e\vs change their attitude, and their hardness
melts and faith returns, they shall be recovered
and reingrafted into the old olive tree. If God
A þurþose of love for all nzankind 7 1
could graft into it branches cut out of an alien
and inferior stock, how much more easily can
He reingraft into it what is really part of its
very self?
Here then \ve haye a real disclosure of a
divine secret \ to which the Gentiles would do
,yell to keep their eyes open, lest (like the J e\vs
before them) they mistake for \visdom their o\vn
self-conceit. The hardening of the Jews has
been used by God as an opportunity for the
gathering in of the full number of the nations of
the earth; and that \vith the further purpose
that, \vhen the nations are gathered in, Israel in
all its completeness should be recovered too.
And so shall be fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of
a redeemer from Zion, who should restore
Israel, and of a ne\v covenant \vith them, based
on a fresh forgiveness of their sins 2. Thus if
\ve think of the actual relation of the Jews to the
present preaching of the Gospel, \ve must think
of them as God's enemies, and as having by
their very enmity secured the Gentiles their
opportunity; but if \ve think of them in relation
1 On C mystery,' see Ephesians, p. 73. It means a divine secret
disclosed to the elect.
2 Isa. lix. 20, according to the Greek, and xxvii. 9. Cf. Ezek.
xxxvi. 25, 26.
. ;.'
72 The Eþlstle to tlze R011zans
to God's eternal choice, they still must appear
as sharing the divine love which rests on the
people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God's
gifts and vocation do not admit of being re-
pented of and recalled. Thus we know \vhat to
expect. As the Gentiles passed out from dis-
obedience under the divine compassion through
the opportunity afforded by the disobedience of
the J e\vs; so now the divine compassion which
rests on the Gentiles is intended (by stimulating
the Jews to recover their lost privileges) to
prove the means of recovering them too out of
their disobedience into the shelter of the divine
compassion which is the common heritage of all.
We see, in fact, all men in turn shut up in dis-
obedience to God, as in a prison house: it is
God who has so shut them up; but it is done in
view of the largest and most compassionate
purpose which can be even conceived. It is done
that (when men have become \vearied of their
own wilfulness, and have experienced their own
need) the divine mercy may welcome and
embrace all alike at last.
And if this is the purpose of God disclosed to
us, how can we fail to adore the fathomless
resourcefulness of His wisdom in determining
how to act, and His skill in executing what He
!"
. A þurþose of love for all I1zallkÙzd 73
has determined? H ow can we fail to recognize
our utter incompetence to explore His judge-
ment, or track out His \vays? Like inspired
men of old 1 we must recognize that the absolute
initiative is His, and our only reasonab1e attitude
the humblest correspondence. Truly in counsel
and operation we have contributed to God
nothing of our own: we have no claim with
which to approach Him. He is the unique
source of whatever is, and the sole executor of
whatever takes place, and the only end to which
all things tend: and to Him, therefore, alone all
praise is due, and shall be given.
But I speak to you that are Gentiles. Inasmuch then
as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I glorify my ministry:
ifby any means I may provoke to jealousy the1n that are
my flesh, and may save some of them. For if the casting
a\vay of them is the reconciling of the ,vorld, what shall
the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? And
if the firstfruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root
is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches
were broken off, and thou, being a wild olive, wast grafted
in among them, and didst become partaker with them of
the root of the fatness of the olive tree; glory not over
the branches: but if thou glariest, it is not thou that bear-
est the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then,
Branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.
Well; by their unbelief they were broken off, and thou
stand est by thy faith. Be not highminded, but fear: for
1 lsa. xl. 13. cr. Job xxxviii. 4; xli. II j Wisd. ix. 13.
74 The Eþls/le to the ROl1zans
if God spared not the natùral branches, neither will he
spare thee. Behold then the goodness and severity of
God: toward them. that fell, severity; but toward thee,
God's goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: other-
wise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they
continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in: for
God is able to graft them in again. F or if thou wast cut
out of that which is by nature a \vild olive tree, and wast
grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how
Iuuch more shall these, which are the natural brandzes,
be grafted into their o\vn olive tree?
For I 'would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this
mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that
a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness
of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be
saved, even as it is written,
There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;
He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
And this is my covenant unto them,
When I shall take away their sins.
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake:
but as touching the election, they are beloved for the
fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are
without repentance. For as ye in time past were dis-
obedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their
disobedience, even so have these also now been disobe-
dient, that by the mercy shewn to you they also may nov:
obtain mercy. For God hath shut up all unto disobedience,
that he might have mercy upon all.
o the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the
kno\vledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgements,
and his ways past tracing out! For who hath known the
mind of the Lord? or \vho hath been his counsellor? or
who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed
A purpose of love for all tJ1ankilld 75
unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto
him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.
I. There is a true patriotism which must at
times be content to wear the guise of disloyalty;
and not even Jeremiah C weakening the hands
of the men of war l' in the conflict \vith the po\ver
of Babylon, while all the time his very heart
,vas bleeding for Jerusalem, presents a more
pathetic and moving picture of such patriotism
than does St. Paul as he here shows himself to
us. While he was shaking off the dust of his
feet, as he left the synagogues to turn to the
Gentiles, while he was throwing all his tre-
mendous energy into the apostolate of the
nations, and vindicating their cause, even to
fierceness, against the narrowness of his own
nation, all the time the thought which buoyed
him up was that \vhen the catholic church had
become an established fact-when it should
have become plain, even to Jewish eyes, that
the elect people of God is no\v a fraternity of all
nations, and not their o\vn race only-then it
could not fail to happen, that the members of
the ancient people, finding themselves in their
turn C alienated,' 'strangers,' and 'far off,' while
1 J er. xxxviii. 4.
76 Tlze Eþzs/le to the ROl1zans
they knew so well, and needed so deeply, the
fellovlship of the covenant, should be stimulated
to resume their former privileges. Surely
then at last Israel 'should remember her way
and be ashamed,' and 'receive' her Gentile
'sisters,' though they had been to her as ' Sodom
and Samaria,' and though they were now given
to her for' daughters, but not by her covenant'-
not by any means on her own terms 1. All the
time that St. Paul is fighting Judaism and vindi-
cating catholicism, laying down the lines of the
great church of the nations, this is the vision that
cheers him-an Israel, penitent, humbled, wor-
shipping the Christ whom she had crucified, and
therefore welcomed back again with the honour
due to her great memories and her inextinguish-
able vocation. But we notice by the way, as
thro\ving an unmistakable light on the cir-
cumstances of Roman Christianity, that while
St. Paul thus shows his o\vn Jewish feeling, he
speaks to the Roman Christian as in the mass
Gentile 2.
2. If so miserable an event, one so revolting
to the divine heart, as the apostasy of Israel,
had yet in the determinate counsel and fore-
knowledge of God been overruled so as to
1 Ezek. xvi. 61.
2 See above, vol. i. 3.
A purþose of love for all 1nankÙzd 77
become the occasion for the calling of the
Gentiles, it must needs be, St. Paul argues,
that an event so dear to the heart of God as
the recovery of Israel, would have a result
even more blessed, nothing less than 'life from
the dead.' What does this last expression
mean? Does St. Paul mean that when once
the chosen people was recovered into a really
catholic church, there would be no further
delay-the consummation would be reached,
the resurrection of the dead which is to accom-
pany the (second) coming of the Christ would
take place at once? This thought would be
very natural to St. Paul, and thoroughly agree-
able to the old Messianic expectation; and it
would give, as nothing else gives so \veIl, the
needed climax to the sentence. Moreover it
cannot be said that the idea of the resurrection
was not intimately associated among Christians
with the return of the Christ in glory. But, on
the other hand, nowhere else does St. Paul speak
of 'the resurrection' so absolutely and without
explanation as the goal of all things; and, if he
had meant so to speak of it here, hë \vould
surely have said 'the resurrection,' and not used
the vaguer expression (life from the dead.' As
he has used this we m lIst interpret it in terms
78 The Eþls/le to the ROJJza1ls
of Ezekiel's vision 1: the recovery of Israel
will be nothing less than a case of dead men
coming to life again, of dry bones revivified.
The only drawback to this interpretation is-
\vhat need not trouble us much-the failure of
rhetorical climax. This revival of dead Israel
. is hardly a greater thing than the reconciliation
of an alienated world. And, though it would
improve the rhetorical climax to interpret the
phrase as meaning that the whole catholic
church would have ne\v life put into it by
Israel's recovery, and though we should expect
this idea to prove true, yet I do not think it is
natural to introduce it here.
3. S1. Paul's language - ' beloved for the
fathers' sake,' 'if the root be holy, so are the
branches '-comes very close to the current
Jewish language about 'the merits of the
fathers,' and yet is deeply distinguished from it.
The J e\vs as represented in the Talmud-and
the belief goes back to St. Paul's time 2_
believed that no prayer was so effective as that
\vhich was offered in the name of' the fathers.'
Thus: 'How many prayers did Elijah speak on
1\1ount Carmel that fire might fall from heaven,
and he was not heard; but \vhen he mentioned
1 Ezek. xxxvii.
Q See my Ephesians, pp. 258 ff.
A purpose of love for all mankz'nd 79
the name of the dead, and called Jehovah the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then at once
he was heard. So was it in the case of Moses.
When the Israelites had accomplished that bad
\vork, Moses stood up and spoke for their justi-
fication forty days and forty nights, and was not
heard. But when he mentioned the dead, he
was at once heard. . . . Therefore as the living
vine supports itself on a dead stock (i. e. gro\vs
out of a stock dry and seemingly dead), so
Israel lives and supports itself on the fathers
since they are dead 1.' The individual Israelite,
moreover, could supply his own deficiencies in
righteousness out of the treasury of merits
which belonged to him in virtue of his descent
from the common fathers of the race, or the
holy progenitors of his own family. In other
words the Israelites in various ways and senses
depended for salvation on having 'Abraham to
their father.' And it has already appeared
sufficiently how dangerous this belief was; and
how utterly S1. Paul, like Ezekiel 2 and John
1 Quoted, with much other illustrative matter, by Weber, l.c.
pp. 293 ff. The fancy is based on 1 Kings xix. 36; Exod. xxxii.
13. Cf. on Cant. i. 5, 'I am black but comely' -' The congrega-
tion of Israel speaks: I am black through mine own works, but
lovely through the works of my fathers.'
2 Ezek. xiv. 14.
80 TIle Eþzstle to tlze Ronlans
the Baptist before him, repudiated this idea of
genealogical and traditional merit as a ground
of confidence before God.
On the other hand, this belief in the transfer-
ence of merit was based on a true idea of the
organic unity of the race. The Jewish race was
bound up into one with its great progenitors;
and it is these men who are its true representa-
tives. They sho\v what their race can be and is
meant to be, and along \vhat lines it is meant to
move. Their election and walk with God laid
a consecration on all \vho came after them; as
51. Paul elsewhere says that the children of a
Christian parent in a mixed marriage are holy,
i. e. have a consecration laid upon them by their
partly Christian parentage 1. The patriarchs
exhibit Israel as God means it to be. And God,
so to speak, cannot forget that every Israelite is
a child of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and
that in their faith and religion lies his possi-
bility and his glory.
Thus stated, the idea of the 'communion of
saints' in the Jewish race is nothing else than
a ground of hope, and a stimulus to recovery.
And the idea admits at once of being trans-
ferred to the catholic Israel, as in fact its Jewish
1 I Cor. vii. 14.
A purpose of love for all mankÙld 81
parody has, at certain periods, been only too fully
and fatally transferred. I say, the true idea
admits of being- transferred. We belong to
the same body as the apostles and martyrs,
the virgins and saints, the Jewish patriarchs and
prophets also. Their possibilities are ours. Their
God is our God for ever and ever. And God
looks on us as in one body with them. We
too are beloved for these our fathers' sakes.
And they too, \ve cannot doubt, are conscious
of our fellowship with them, and if we are trying
to live in the same spirit with them, we must
believe, all the limitations of our knowledge
notwithstanding, that they are supporting and
helping us, as in Christ our sympathetic advo-
cates and allies.
4. The metaphor of the olive and the grafting
is intelligible enough without explanation. We
know how often the olive and the vine are taken
in the Old Testament and in other Jewish
writings-as in the passage just quoted from
the Talmud-for a symbol of Israel; we must
frankly recognize that 51. Paul, apparently in
forgetfulness and not by design, accommodates
the physical process of grafting to its spiritual
counterpart; for in physical fact, of course, the
ingrafted shoot (\vhich represents the Gentiles),
11.. G
82 Tlze Eþlstle to the ROl1zans
and not the stock upon which it is grafted (which
represents the Jews), would determine the cha-
racter and produce of the tree: but when this is
once recognized it may be forgotten, and the
metaphor is as intelligible to us as if the physical
process of grafting were really as St. Paul
represents it.
5. As we read the words, 'And so all Israel
shall be saved,'we cannot help asking ourselves-
Does St. Paul mean us to believe this of all
Israelites without exception, or even of Israel
in general with an absolute necessity? I think
the answer should be a negative in both cases I.
Just above St. Paul says, looking at the matter
from the side of Israel, 'They also, if they continue
not in unbelief, shall be grafted in.' Here he is
looking at the matter from the side of God. It
lies in the divine purpose that the establishment
of the catholic church, and the experience of
alienation on the part of the Jews, should stimu-
late them to regain their ancient privileges on a
ne,v basis; 'and so,' looking at the matter from
the point of vie,v of the divine intention, 'all
Israel shall be saved.' Just below, from the same
point of vie\v, it is stated to be God's purpose
1 'All Israel,' in I Kings xii. I, 2 Chron. xii. I, Dan. ix. II,
means' Israel in general.'
A purþose of love for all mankÙ,zd 83
'to have mercy upon all men.' But, in inter-
preting this latter passage, we are doing violence
to what 51. Paul says elsewhere with emphatic
distinctness, if we imagine that he asserts that
all individual men without exception shall ulti-
mately attain the end of their being and the
fellowship of God. In these passages, as else-
\vhere, 51. Paul looks at things from two points
of view, without attempting to present us with
a harmony of them. From one point of view
we have spread out before us the 'mystery,'
or revealed secret of God, and discern the
purpose of His love working on, and finding its
opportunities even in the gravest moral disasters.
From the other point of view we detect human
wilfulness, able in a measure, but never com-
pletely or on the whole, to baffle and thwart the
divine purpose. 51. Paul, I say, is content to
recognize both points of view, and not to hold
them in complete combination. He uses the
perception of the divine purpose-in this case, the
recovery of the Jews-as a motive for hope and
thankfulness and renewed energy; but he does
not, apparently, ask himself the metaphysical
questions whether God foreknows how particular
individuals or groups of men will act, or, if \ve
Inust say that God does so foreknow how each
G2
84 T Ize Eplstle 10 tlte R0111ans
man \vill act, how this is reconcilable with his
moral freedom. He is content to adore the
divine purpose, an
rest upon it; and recognize,
on the other hand, the thwarting power of human
wilfulness.
From the point of view of God's patiently
loving purpose, then, a great and fresh oppor-
tunity is being prepared for the recovery of the
whole of Israel, \vhen ' the times of the Gentiles'
are fulfilled and the Church stands really catholic
before their eyes. Just in the same \vay, in the
larger field of all mankind, the purpose of God
is at work through all rejections, and all judge-
ments of hardening, to convince all men of their
need of God, and so prepare their hearts 'that
he might have mercy upon all.' But from the
other point of view God respects human freedom.
Thus over against the divine purpose stands the
ambiguous human' if' -' if they continue not in
their unbelief.'
This ambiguous human element is a prominent
feature in Old Testament prophecy, though there
too the th\varting power of man's perverseness
is limited. If not in one way then in another,
if not through one set of agents then through
others-on the whole the purpose of God finds
its sure way to accomplishment.
Retrospect over tlze argzt1nent 85
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And now that we have given all the pains we
can to entering into the spirit of these chapters,
may we not say that they have become no longer
repellent but deeply attractive? Where could
we find a more liberating outlook over the wide
purpose of God in redeeming the world? Sin is
a stern fact, and demands stern dealing to over-
come it by moral discipline. Men of all sorts
must be brought to realize their need of God,
utterly to expel the false dream of independence,
and humbly to welcome the unmerited bounty
of the divine' mercy,' the free gift of pardon and
new life. This then is the way in which the
fundamental purpose of God for man shows
itself in a world of sin; it is by a discipline
preparing men to welcome a divine mercy of
\vhich they have learnt to know their need.
, That he may have mercy upon all '-this is the
generous end upon which all the divine dealings
with men converge. The Jews by one kind of
discipline \vhile they still were standing together
as the elect people of God, and by another when,
having rejected the Christ and fallen out of their
religious leadership, they were to be stirred to
UBRÞ,RY ST. MARY'S COLLEGa
86 Tile Epzstle to the ROl1ZallS
jealousy by the spectacle of a divine fellowship
from which they 'lVere excluded: the Gentiles
by a different sort of discipline, and each separate
race by its own; nay more, every individual,
J e\v and Greek, Englishman or Hindoo, by a
distinctive personal chastening, in as many ways
as man is various and God is resourceful: all
men are so to be dealt with as that all men
shall be brought to confess themselves to be
as they are in God's sight, and surrender them-
selves to Him to be refashioned after the divine
image. Through all national and personal voca-
tions realized, by which human character is
educated: through all national and personal
humiliations, which are divine judgements by
which human character is corrected and made
docile: God's untiring patience and forbearance,
in sternness and in love, works on to the one
universal end-that He might have mercy upon
all. The uttermost and most pitiable collapse,
even the imminence of death itself, may be, nay
certainly in God's intention is, His remedy for
human wilfulness: a means by which-
'God unmakes but to remake the soul
He else made first in vain, which must not be 1.'
1 These words (which in their full sense seem to go beyond
what we have a right to say) occur in Browning's Ring and the
Retrosþect over tlze argltnzent 87
- must not be, that is, so far as the resourceful-
ness of divine love, going all lengths short of
destroying the fundamental moral choice of the
soul, can avail to prevent it. This teaching of
St. Paul suggests a wonderful way of reading
human history, and inspires us with the right
sort of patience and hopefulness in our attitude
to\vards the wider problems of missionary work
and our o\vn dealings \vith individuals. The
races to whose conversion \ve would fain minister
seem so immovable and so indifferent. The
men and women whom we \vould fain help seem
so hardened or so weak. But' the gifts and
callings of God' within theln and about them,
'are without repentance.' God's remedies for
them are not yet exhausted. We therefore have
a right to hope and labour on, , never despairing 1.'
And where is a nobler presentation to be
found than here of the idea of divine election?
That in the great household of the world there
are magnificent and (comparatively, at least) igno-
minious vocations among races and individuals;
Book. It is the Pope's final reflection, when he condemns Guido
to death, that his execution may be the one chance for his spiritual
recovery-
'In the main criminal I see no chance
Except in such a suddenness of fate:
I Luke vi. 35, or ' despairing of no man/ marge R.V.
88 Tlze Epis 
