imperfection and death, but not without hope of deliverance (Rom. viii. 18-25). In this passage in which the present condition and the hope of both nature and man are described, the apostle has strikingly approximated the great modern generalization of evolution. In Colossians and Ephesians he portrays the "cosmic significance" of Christ, and shows that he has always been in the world to which he sustains an original relation. Thus the forces of redemption have always penetrated the world. Christ was not only in the history of Israel a "spiritual rock" of which they drank (1 Cor. x. 4), but is in the whole history of man. In these broad conceptions of God's all-embracing interest for his world, Paul's ideas of his special purposes, dispensations, and promises are grounded.

Accordingly the apostle teaches that revelation is universal. God has not "left himself without witness" in the case of any people (Acts xiv. 17), but in the bounties. of his providence has taught men to recognize him. The course of history, also, and the testimony of conscience are means by which God has led men to " feel after him " and to divine their kinship to him (Acts xvii. 26-28). Thus, even to the heathen, God made himself known, and "that which may be known of God" (Tò yvwotòv toû deoû, Rom. i. 19) was evident (pavepóv) to them, for God made it evident (pavépwoev) to them. Such a disclosure of himself as they were capable of receiving in the dim light of nature, God gave them. This he did through the evidences of his wisdom and power which are displayed in nature, and which the reason of man is competent to interpret (Rom. i. 20); but still more plainly did he do so through the voice of conscience, the moral law written on the hearts of men, which speaks of a holy authority to which they are subject. Man's rational and religious mature makes him susceptible to the evidences of a supernatural power and a moral lawgiver to whom he is responsible. This "light of nature," or universal selfrevelation of God in his world, is sufficient to found moral obligation and responsibility, and to render the heathen without excuse for the gross idolatries and wickedness

finto which they have fallen (Rom. i. 20). It is true that the world by its wisdom knew not God" (1 Cor. i. 21), (that is, the Greek philosopher did not attain by his speculations to such a saving knowledge of God as the Christian possesses. Yet there is a real knowledge of God which is available for all, and which might have been the possession of all men if they had not in wicked perversity become vain in their reasonings, darkened their foolish thearts, and so refused to retain God in their knowledge (Rom. i. 21, 28).

The God in whom Paul believes is not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles (Rom. iii. 29). Yet he bears a special relation to Israel. To the Jewish people he specially revealed himself, and, despite their sin and unbelief, his faithfulness to his covenant shall not fail (Rom. iii. 1-5). What, now, was the nature and purpose of this divine election of Israel? I answer that Paul conceives of it as a historic action of God in setting apart the Jewish nation to a special mission or function in the world as the bearer of his revelation to all mankind. God's purpose of blessing for the world is uniIsrael is a chosen instrument for carrying that blessing to all men. The gospel has been from of old, and is designed for mankind and adapted to man as man. The great sin of the Jewish nation is that they have narrowed the mercy of God and have fallen into thinking that the blessings of heaven are pledged to them and terminate upon them, instead of seeing them as a gift intrusted to them to be passed on to others. The current particularism against which Paul contended, sprang out of a narrow conception of Israel's election as an arbitrary preference for the Jewish people, for their own sake

versal.

a divine partiality in the government of the world. Against this view Paul's whole doctrine is a protest.

In Rom. ix.-xi. he deals with the perplexing question : How can the election of Israel be harmonized with the actual history of the nation? How can the Jews' rejection of the Messiah consist with God's purpose to make the nation the means of ushering in his Messianic King

dom?1 Paul begins by pointing out the fact that there may be now, as in previous epochs, an election within the election a faithful nucleus in an otherwise faithless nation. If the mass of the nation should perish in rejecting the Messiah, there might still be a faithful remnant, an Israel within Israel (ix. 6-13). Moreover, besides. this providential selection, there is God's free supremacy. He may choose the instruments of his providence for reasons of his own. We should not criticise what he does. Paul here attempts no concrete theodicy, but only urges that what God does, however perplexing to us, is just and wise (ix. 14-33). But these general considerations, the one a fact of observation, the other a maxim based upon the nature of God, do not wholly satisfy the apostle's mind or relieve the subject of its difficulties. Something analogous to the present situation may, indeed, be seen in the past, and God may, of course, do what he will. But God must be self-consistent. The question returns: How is the Jews' attitude towards the Messiah reconcilable with God's own covenant? Is not the prom

ise to the fathers annulled by the present position of the nation?

At this point the apostle introduces a new consideration. If the Jews do fail of the Messianic Kingdom, it will be by their own fault. Their present partial failure is due to their seeking to establish their own righteousness. If they lose the Messianic salvation, it will be from unbelief. It will be another case such as Isaiah describes when he speaks of Jehovah as stretching out his hands all day long to a disobedient and gainsaying people. This is the gist of the tenth chapter.

1 Dr. Bruce (St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, p. 311) holds that the question before Paul's mind, in these chapters, is: How adjust the Jews' rejection of the Messiah with my doctrine of a universal gospel? I think that this question is logically involved, and that the solution which the apostle reaches bears upon it; but I see no evidence that this was precisely the question which was directly before his mind in the discussion. He starts with the problem: How reconcile the present attitude of the Jewish people towards the Messiah with the "word of God" (ix. 6) in his covenant with Israel?

But Paul now shifts his defence somewhat. Thus far he has been developing an argumentum ad hominem. His point is that the Jews' idea of an election of God, based upon an exclusive preference for them, is groundless. It is contrary alike to their own history, to the nature of God, and to the fact that man is required to fulfil the conditions of obedience and faithfulness if he is to continue in God's favor. The problem to which Jewish history gives rise is, indeed, a perplexing one. But whether, in itself considered, it can be solved or not, what can be confidently said in regard to it is amply sufficient to refute the Judaizing interpretation of the divine purpose in the election of Israel. Paul interprets it in the light of the boundless mercy of God and in accord with his doctrine of a universal gospel. But what has been said in chapters ix. and x. is occasioned by looking at the subject only on its dark side. It is as if he said: Most of my countrymen, the nation as a whole, are refusing the Messiah. If this rejection goes on indefinitely, how can such a fact be adjusted to my view of God and of the providential mission of Judaism? But that is to assume that the lapse is to be substantially complete. From this assumption the apostle, "animated by the invincible optimism of Christian patriotism" (Bruce), now recovers himself. "Did God cast off his people?" "By no means," he answers. In the eleventh chapter he pursues this more hopeful view of Israel's future. He, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, cannot admit that such is to be the goal of the nation. Just now the prospect is, indeed, dark as dark as it was when Elijah contemplated the prevailing idolatry of the nation. Yet he learned that

a far larger number than he had supposed were faithful to Jehovah. It may prove so again (vv. 1-10).

But the matter may be looked at in another way. It seems as if the Gentiles were taking the place of the Jews in the Messianic Kingdom; as if the reception of the heathen meant the rejection of the Jews. But this is not really so, says the apostle. The conversion of the Gentiles, so far from closing the doors of the Kingdom against the Jews,

opens them the wider. Paul's hope is that when the Jews see the heathen possessing the blessings which were so freely offered to them, they will be "provoked to jealousy" and constrained to receive the Messiah. And thus, if the refusal of the Jews to believe on Christ occasioned an earlier preaching of the gospel to the heathen, it is the apostle's hope that the acceptance of Christ by the Gentiles may act as a motive upon the Jews to accept him also, "that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy" (v. 31). Paul presents this idea pictorially by describing the Old Testament theocracy, which was the historic basis of the Messianic Kingdom, as a sacred olive tree. The natural branches- the Jews have been broken off on account of their unbelief, and in their place the branches of a wild olive tree-the Gentiles-have been grafted in. But these retain their places in the sacred trunk only by faith. Should they be guilty of the same unfaithfulness, they would be lopped off as the natural branches have been. But what the apostle hopes for is that the grafting in of the wild olive branches will be followed by the recovery of the natural branches. He argues a fortiori that, if salvation has now come to the Gentiles, it is reasonable to think that the natural heirs of God's promise will not ultimately fail of it. Certainly this ingenious and, to us, somewhat strange argument is the product of a persistent and splendid hopefulness for the world. Paul refuses to despair of his people. He insists that there is light behind the dark events of the present hour; that Gentiles and Jews shall yet be united in one Church. Sin and unbelief do dim the light of hope, but God is over all, and his purpose of grace will not fail. In spite of all, the apostle raises the triumphant cry: "That he might have mercy upon all"; "O, depth of the riches of divine love"; "Of God, and through him, and unto him are all things" (vv. 32, 33, 36).

From this brief review of these chapters the following points are evident: (1) They treat, primarily, of the election of a people, not of the election of individuals. (2) They treat of election to a historic function or mis