{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32674/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32674","id":"gutenberg_32674","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32674","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Romans -- Commentaries","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_St. Paul's_\n\n_Epistle to the Romans_\n\n\n_A Practical Exposition_\n\n\n\nBY CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D.\n\n  OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION\n  CANON OF WESTMINSTER; CHAPLAIN TO THE KING\n\n\n\nVOL. II\n\n(CHAPTERS IX-XVI)\n\n\n\nNEW IMPRESSION\n\n\n\n\nLONDON\n\nJOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET\n\n1901\n\n\n\n\nOXFORD\n\nHORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY\n\n\n\n\n{v}\n\nPREFACE\n\nThere would be no need for a preface to this second volume were it not\nthat a very kindly and careful review of the first volume in _The\nGuardian_ of May 24 last, requires a word of notice.  The reviewer\nwarns me off 'the dialogue system of exegesis.'  Now no doubt this\nprinciple, like every other, may be abused.  'The Jewish objector' may,\nas the reviewer complains, be allowed to 'run riot.'  Still I cannot\ndoubt that the Jewish objector is a reality of an illuminative kind in\nthe argument of such passages as Romans iii. 1-8, or the great passage\n(ix-xi), to which the first part of this volume is devoted.  Of the\nother points of detail noticed by the reviewer--which a volume of this\nkind is not the place to discuss--many are confessedly doubtful, and\nsome unimportant.  On most of {vi} them I am still disposed to retain\nmy former opinion, but I would, in accordance with my critic's wishes,\nalter 'the actual life' (vol. i. p. 203) into 'the principle of life,'\nand (p. 213) instead of saying that the principle of living by dying\n'belongs only to a fallen world' say that 'it belongs, _as St. Paul\nviews it, though probably not in its ultimate law_, to a fallen world.'\nI agree that in its deepest sense the principle appears to be an\nultimate law of all created life of which the conditions are known to\nus.\n\nC. G.\n\nWESTMINSTER ABBEY,\n  _Conversion of St. Paul_, 1900.\n\n\n\n\n{vii}\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.\n\n                                                                 PAGE\n\nDIVISION IV  _The theodicy or justification of God for His\n             dealings with the Jews_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1\n\nCHAPTER\n\n   IX.  1-13 Sec. 1 The present rejection of Israelites no\n                 breach of a divine promise  . . . . . . . . . .   14\n\n       14-29 Sec. 2 God's liberty in showing mercy and judgement\n                 always retained and asserted  . . . . . . . . .   31\n\n     30-x.21 Sec. 3 Lack of faith the reason of Israel's rejection    44\n\n   XI.  1-12 Sec. 4 God's judgement on Israel neither universal\n                 nor final . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   59\n\n       13-36 Sec. 5 God's present purpose for the Jews through\n                 the Gentiles: and so for all humanity . . . . .   68\n\n\nDIVISION V _Practical exhortation_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   95\n\n  XII.   1-2 Sec. 1 Self-surrender in response to God . . . . . . .   97\n\n        3-21 Sec. 2 The community spirit  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  103\n\n XIII.   1-7 Sec. 3 The Christians and the imperial power . . . . .  116\n\n        8-10 Sec. 4 The summary debt  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  127\n\n       11-14 Sec. 5 The approach of the day . . . . . . . . . . . .  133\n\n  XIV.  1-23 Sec. 6 Mutual toleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  137\n\n   XV.  1-13 Sec. 7 Unselfish forbearance and inclusiveness . . . .  159\n\n\n\n{viii}\n\nDIVISION VI _Conclusion_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  170\n\n    XV. 4-33 Sec. 1 St. Paul's excuse for writing, and his hope\n                 of coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  171\n\n   XVI.  1-2 Sec. 2 A commendation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  189\n\n        3-16 Sec. 3 Personal greetings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  191\n\n       17-20 Sec. 4 Final warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  198\n\n       21-23 Sec. 5 Salutations from companions . . . . . . . . . .  200\n\n       25-27 Sec. 6 Final doxology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  201\n\n\nAPPENDED NOTES:--\n\nA.  The meanings of the word 'faith' . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  205\n\nB.  The use of the word 'conscience' . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  207\n\nC.  Recent reactions from the teaching about hell  . . . . . . .  210\n\nD.  Difficulties about the doctrine of the atonement . . . . . .  215\n\nE.  Evolution and the Christian doctrine of the Fall . . . . . .  219\n\nF.  Baptism by immersion and by affusion . . . . . . . . . . . .  237\n\nG.  A prayer of Jeremy Taylor  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  238\n\nH.  The origin of the maxim 'In necessariis unitas, &c.' . . . .  239\n\nI.  St. Augustine's teaching that 'The Church is the\n       body of Christ offered in the eucharist'  . . . . . . . .  240\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS\n\nDIVISION IV.  CHAPTERS IX-XI.\n\n_The theodicy or justification of God for His dealings with the Jews._\n\nSt. Paul has concluded his great exposition of the meaning of 'the\ngospel': that in it is the disclosure of a divine righteousness into\nwhich all mankind--Jews and Gentiles on the same level of need and\nsin--are to be freely admitted by simply believing in Jesus.  The\nbeliever in Jesus first welcomes the absolute and unmerited forgiveness\nof his sins, which his redeemer has won for him, and thus acquitted\npasses into the spiritual strength and joy and fellowship of the new\nlife, the life of the redeemed humanity, lived in Jesus Christ, the\nsecond Adam or head of our race.  The {2} contemplation of the present\nmoral freedom, and the glorious future prospect, of this catholic\nbody--the elect of God in Jesus Christ--has in the eighth chapter\nfilled the apostle's language with the glow of an enthusiasm almost\nunparalleled in all the compass of his epistles.  And he is intending\nto pass on to interpret to the representatives of this church of Christ\nat Rome some of the moral obligations which follow most clearly from\nthe consideration of what their faith really means.  This ethical\ndivision of the epistle begins with chapter xii.  The interval (ix-xi)\nis occupied with a discussion which is an episode, in the sense that\nthe epistle might be read without it and no feeling of a broken unity\nwould force itself upon us.  None the less the discussion not only\nconfronts and silences an obvious objection to St. Paul's teaching, but\nalso brings out ideas about the meaning of the divine election, and the\nresponsibility involved in it, which are vital and necessary for the\ntrue understanding of the 'free grace of God.'  For these chapters\nserve really to safeguard the all-important sense of our human\nresponsibility under the rich and unmerited conditions of divine\nprivilege in which we find ourselves.\n\n{3}\n\nSt. Paul's argument so far has involved an obvious conclusion.  God's\nelect are no longer the Jews in particular.  On the contrary, the Jews\nin bulk have lost their position and become apostates in rejecting the\nChrist.  This result in the first place cuts St. Paul to the heart, for\nhis religious patriotism was peculiarly intense.  But in the second\nplace it furnishes an objection in the mouth of the Jew against St.\nPaul's whole message.  For if God had really rejected His chosen\npeople, He had broken His word in so doing.  God had pledged Himself to\nIsrael: the Old Testament scriptures were full of passages which might\nbe quoted to this effect.  Thus--\n\n  'My mercy will I not utterly take from David\n    'Nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.\n  'My covenant will I not break,\n    'Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.\n  'Once have I sworn by my holiness;\n    'I will not lie unto David;\n  'His seed shall endure for ever,\n    'And his throne as the sun before me.\n  'It shall be established for ever as the moon,\n    'And as the faithful witness in the sky[1].'\n\nBut according to St. Paul's teaching, had not God 'broken His\ncovenant'?  What had {4} become of the 'faithful witness'?  To this\nobjection, then, St. Paul sets himself to reply.  The chapters we are\nnow to consider may be best represented as an animated defence of his\nteaching directed toward a Jew who pleads this objection.  St. Paul, no\ndoubt, had heard too much of it since he began to preach the gospel,\nand had felt it too deeply in his own mind in the earlier days, when\nthe word of Jesus was as a goad against which he was kicking, for it to\nbe possible for him to pass it by.  And his defence--his 'theodicy' or\njustification of God--is in brief this: God never committed Himself or\ntied Himself to Israel physically understood.  He always kept hanging\nover their heads declarations of His own freedom in choosing His\ninstruments, and warnings of possible rejection, such as ought to have\nprevented their resting satisfied with merely having 'Abraham to their\nfather' (ix).  And if the question be asked: Why has Israel been\nrejected?  The answer is: That so far as actual Israel has fallen out\nof the elect body, it is because they refused to exhibit the\ncorrespondence of faith (x); but also Israel, as such, has not been\nrejected; for, as of old, so now there is a faithful remnant.  Nor\nagain is the partial alienation of Israel which {5} has occurred final.\nGod is simply waiting for their recovery of faith, to restore them to\ntheir ancient and inalienable position of election.  Meanwhile He uses\ntheir temporary alienation as the opportunity of the Gentiles, who in\ntheir turn can only retain their newly won position by maintaining the\ncorrespondence of faith with the purposes of God, and who also wait for\ntheir fulfilment and the perfecting of their joy upon the recovery of\nIsrael as a body.  Thus through all stages of election and\nrejection--by both methods of mercy and of judgement--God, in His\ninscrutable wisdom, works steadily for the opportunity of showing His\nmercy upon all men.\n\nWhen we have a brief analysis of the argument of these chapters under\nour eyes, we may well rub them in astonishment, and look again, and ask\nwhy, in the reaction against Calvinism[2], we had come (to put it\nfrankly) to dislike these chapters so much.  We know that as a fact\nthese chapters have been taken as a stronghold of the Calvinistic\nposition by both its {6} friends and foes.  They have come to\nconstitute in modern literature a sort of reproach upon\nChristianity[3], just on the ground on which the best Christian\nconscience of our time is most sensitive.  Many of us would have to\nadmit that we have shrunk from these chapters as we have heard them\nread, and probably avoided them in our own reading.  We have shrunk\nfrom the sound of the words--'the children being not yet born, neither\nhaving done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to\nelection might stand, not of works but of him that calleth'--'Jacob\nhave I loved, and Esau have I hated'--'Whom he will he\nhardeneth'--'Hath not the potter power over the clay.'  Yet these\ntexts, with their arbitrary, unfair and narrow sound, appear as steps\nin an argument which has for its conclusion the most universal\nconception possible of the purpose of the divine love.  'God shut up\nall unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.'  The\nconclusion of the argument is so unmistakable, and so plain against any\nCalvinistic attribution to God of {7} a narrow and arbitrary\nfavouritism, that there must have been some great mistake in our\nunderstanding of its main point and drift.  It is worth while then to\nindicate at starting where the error has lain.\n\n1.  It has been in part owing to our mistaken habit of taking isolated\n'texts' out of their connexion, as if they were detached aphorisms.\nNow St. John, in his meditative method, does very generally round off a\nfundamental Christian truth into an aphorism which really admits of\nbeing detached and quoted apart from its context.  And no doubt there\nare in St. Paul detachable texts.  But on the whole St. Paul, least of\nall men, admits of being judged by detached fragments.  His thought is\nalways in process.  It looks before and after.  He is seriously wronged\nby the mere fact of his epistles being divided into separate verses,\nand sometimes arbitrary chapters, as in the Authorized Version.  Thus\nin the case of these three chapters, the common mistake as to the\nmeaning of particular phrases could hardly have arisen if the argument\nhad been kept in mind as a whole, and especially its conclusion as to\nthe universal purpose of divine love--'to have mercy upon all.'\n\n2.  For, among other things, the true meaning {8} of 'election' in\nthese chapters would then have been apparent.  St. Paul has been\npopularly misunderstood to be referring to God's 'election' of some\nindividual men to salvation in heaven, and His abandonment of the rest\nto hell.  Whereas the argument as a whole and its conclusion make it\nquite certain that what he is speaking of is the election of men in\nnations or churches (only subordinately of individuals)[4] to a\nposition of special spiritual privilege and responsibility in this\nworld, such as the Jews had formerly occupied, and the Christians were\noccupying now--an election to be the people of God, and bear His name\nin the face of the world--the sort of election which carries with it a\ngreat joy and a special opportunity, but not by any means a certainty\nof final personal acceptableness to {9} God, apart from moral\nfaithfulness.  Apart from such faithfulness the 'children of the\nkingdom shall be cast into the outer darkness,' and the highest shall\nbe put lowest, while the lowest are raised highest.\n\n3.  Another cause of misunderstanding has been forgetfulness of the\npoint of view of the opponent with whom St. Paul is arguing.  In modern\ntimes assertions of divine absoluteness, like St. Paul's, have been\nmade by teachers who were refusing to recognize any such freedom of the\nwill in the individual human being--any such power to control his own\npersonal destiny--as seems to our common sense to be involved in moral\nresponsibility in any real sense.  St. Paul has therefore been\nsupposed, like these more recent teachers, to be asserting divine\nabsoluteness, or the unrestricted freedom of divine choice, as against\nhuman freedom, or in such a way as to destroy the idea of moral\nresponsibility.  But in fact St. Paul is vindicating moral\nresponsibility.  His opponent is the Jew, who holds that God had so\ntied His hands and lost His liberty in choosing Israel once for all for\nHis elect people, that every child of Abraham can at all times claim\nthe privileges of his election for no other reason than because of his\n{10} genealogy.  Such a doctrine of election does indeed destroy all\nreal moral responsibility in the subject of it, and all freedom of\nmoral choice in God.  St. Paul, on the other hand, asserts that God\nremains free and absolute to elect and to reject, irrespective of all\nquestions of race, where He will and as He will.  The absolute reason\nof God's selections, the reason why certain races and individuals are\nchosen for special privileges and as special instruments of the divine\npurpose, lies in a region into which we cannot penetrate.  But because\nGod has shown us His moral character and requirement, we can know how,\nand how only, we may hope to retain any position which God has given\nus; it is by exhibiting moral correspondence with His purpose--that is\nfaith--or malleability under His hand.\n\nThis is a doctrine then which lays upon 'the elect,' at any particular\nmoment, the moral responsibility of correspondence with a divine\npurpose.  In a word, St. Paul asserts divine sovereignty in such a\nsense as vindicates instead of destroying moral responsibility, while\nhis opponent is claiming for Israel a sort of freedom from being\ninterfered with, which would really destroy their moral responsibility\naltogether.  {11} Thus, as has already been pointed out[5], nothing can\nwell be more important than to keep clearly in mind, here as elsewhere,\n_with whom_ St. Paul is arguing.\n\n4.  It is worth while remarking, before we apply ourselves to St.\nPaul's argument in detail, that it is essentially 'apologetic': it is a\njustification of God in view of certain felt difficulties: and it is an\nargument _ad hominem_, that is an argument with certain people on their\nown assumptions, the sort of argument which takes the form of saying,\n'you at least have no right on your own principles to urge such and\nsuch difficulties.'  Now we are bound to recognize how very important\nat all periods this _ad hominem_ appeal is: how very important it is to\nget men to see what their own principles really involve.  A great part\nof the evil of the world comes through people not thinking out what\nthey really mean and believe.  But on the other hand, this sort of\nargument, which proceeds upon a certain set of assumptions, has often a\nmerely temporary force, and carries with it an accompanying danger.\nWhen the state of mind contemplated becomes a matter of history, the\nargument based on its assumption has lost its power.  In {12} view of a\nquite different set of assumptions it may become even misleading.  For\nexample, Bishop Butler argued for the truths of natural and revealed\nreligion, on the analogy of the facts of nature and on the assumption\nof a divine author of nature, thus--If, as you admit, God made nature,\nand yet nature is shown to contain such and such facts or processes,\nhow can you argue against the divine authorship of natural religion and\nrevelation on the ground that it attributes to God similar facts and\nprocesses?  This was a very effective argument so long as men did treat\nthe doctrine of God having created the world as a matter of course.\nBut when 'agnosticism' arose--when men ceased to discover in nature any\ndecisive argument for God or against God, and professed only an\ninability to draw any conclusion at all, Butler's argument had lost its\nforce, and the difficulties in nature and religion to which he called\nattention could even be used against ascribing a divine authorship to\neither.  Apologetic arguments are always liable to this peril.  Thus\nSt. Paul's arguments, based on an unhesitating belief that the Old\nTestament contained really the words of God, that what they asserted\nabout God was certainly true, and that God was certainly just {13} and\nthe standard of justice, may have an effect very contrary to his\nintention when they are applied to people who feel no such certainties.\nSt. Paul may seem to be making the difficulties of believing in the\nBible only more obvious, by calling attention to its 'harsh and\nunedifying' elements.\n\nBut this unfortunate result of most 'apologies' is, at least in the\ncase of St. Paul and Bishop Butler, only superficial.  If the\napologetic argument is really deep, it retains, if not exactly its\noriginal value, yet a value not the less real.  Butler's indications of\nthe profound analogy which holds between the doctrines of religion and\nthe facts of nature, can never be out of place or lose force.  Still\nless can men ever cease to learn the deepest lessons from his temper of\nmind and method.  And that it is so with St. Paul's apology--that it\ncontains the profoundest and most abiding lessons about the\nresponsibility and danger of all elect bodies and individuals--will\nappear plainly enough in what follows, now that we are in a position to\napproach his argument in detail.\n\n\n\n[1] Ps. lxxxix. 33-7.\n\n[2] By this phrase is commonly meant the doctrine that God created some\nmen absolutely and irresistibly predestined to eternal life and joy,\nand created the rest of mankind absolutely and hopelessly abandoned to\neternal misery.\n\n[3] Matthew Arnold, _St. Paul and Protestantism_ (Smith, Elder, 1870),\np. 99, admits that St. Paul 'falls into Calvinism,' but patronizingly\nexcuses him on the ground that this Calvinism is with him secondary, or\neven less than secondary.\n\n[4] Of course the election of the nation or the church is felt,\nespecially in the New Testament, or whenever in the Old Testament\nindividuality is fully realized, to involve the election of each of the\npersons composing the nation or the church.  But still their election\nis a challenge to their faith, and no guarantee of ultimate salvation.\nSt. Paul is left praying and suffering 'for the elect's sake that they\nalso may obtain the salvation ... with eternal glory' (2 Tim. ii. 10).\nThe elect have to 'make their calling and election sure' (2 Peter i.\n10).  It should, however, be noticed that election may be, and in the\nGospels is, used to describe the final selection of those who are\nproved worthy of the 'marriage supper of the Lamb.'  (Matt. xxii. 14.)\n\n[5] Vol. i. pp. 114 f.\n\n\n\n\n{14}\n\nDIVISION IV.  Sec. 1.  CHAPTER IX. 1-13.\n\n_The present rejection of Israelites no breach of a divine promise._\n\nSt. Paul has finished his glowing description of the position and\nprospects of the elect people of God.  And then, by contrast, the\nmisery of the outcast people once called elect--his own people--wrings\nhis heart with pain.  The very idea that in his new enthusiasm for the\ncatholic church he can be supposed to be forgetting those who are of\nhis own flesh and blood, stirs him to a profound protest.  He solemnly\nasseverates that the pain which Israel's rejection causes him is acute\nand continuous.  He has caught himself at the point of praying to be\nhimself an outcast from Christ, if so be he could bring the people of\nhis own kindred and blood into the Church.  For who indeed could seem\nto have so good a title to be there?  They are the Israelites--that is\nGod's own people: the eye of God was so specially upon this race {15}\nthat He redeemed it and made it His own son[1]: to them was vouchsafed\nthe shining of His continual presence in the tabernacle[2]: to them, in\nthe persons of the patriarchs and of Moses, God gave special covenants,\nthat is to say, pledged His word to them in an unmistakable manner and\nrepeatedly that He should be their God and they should be His people:\nthus in pursuance of a divine purpose they were brought under the\neducation of the divinely given law and ritual worship: and all this\nwith direct and repeated promises of a more glorious position in the\nfuture to be brought about by the divine king, the Christ who was to\nbe.  To them finally belongs all the sanctity which can attach to a\npeople from having numbered among its members the holy ones of God: for\nof this race were the patriarchs, the friends of God; and of this race,\nso far as human birth is concerned, came in fact the Christ who, born a\nJew, is sovereign of the universe and ever blessed God.  Surely then,\nSt. Paul implies, that this race, now that the Christ they were\nexpecting is at last come, now that the goal of all God's dealings with\nthem is at last reached, should have fallen outside the circle of His\npeople and be no longer sharers in {16} the sonship or the election,\nwould seem a result too monstrous to contemplate.  The contrast between\nwhat they were and were intended for, and what in present appearance\nthey are, is indeed appalling.\n\nYet the natural conclusion for the Jew to draw, which at this point\nflashes into St. Paul's mind, the conclusion that God has proved\nunfaithful, is not the true one.  No: God's word, God's promise, has\nnot broken down.  For, if the facts are looked at, it appears quite\nplainly that the Israel of God was never simply the Israel of physical\ndescent, nor the children of Abraham simply his physical seed.  Plainly\nnot.  For Isaac and Ishmael were equally Abraham's seed, physically\nconsidered, but for the purpose of God the promise is given only to the\nfamily of the younger son, Isaac (Gen. xxi. 12), who moreover was born,\nnot in the mere natural order, but under circumstances of special\ndivine promise and intervention (Gen. xviii. 10).  And if in this case\nit be said that the younger son Isaac was the only son of Sarah, the\nwife and free woman, and therefore had a natural prerogative over\nIshmael, yet the same inscrutable principle of selection is apparent in\nthe next generation, in a case where there is no possible inequality\n{17} of natural claim--in the case of the two sons born simultaneously\nto Isaac of the same mother.  Prior to their birth, and prior therefore\nto any possible merit or demerit on their own part--so that God's\nabsolute freedom of choice should appear quite conspicuously--the\nyounger Jacob was deliberately preferred over the elder Esau (Gen. xxv.\n23).  And in fact this race of Esau, this Edom--though they were\nIsraelites after the flesh--appear in history as something much worse\nthan merely secondary to the true Israel; for God speaks by Malachi and\ndeclares that, whereas Israel is His beloved son, Esau, that is Edom,\nHe has 'hated' (Mal. i. 3).  No Israelite therefore who reads his\nscriptures (St. Paul would conclude) ought to have failed to perceive\nan inscrutable element in God's choice of his chosen people.  He ought\nnot to have felt in his own case, any more than in that of the first\nchildren of Abraham or Isaac, that he could be sure of membership in\nthe people of God merely because of his physical descent.\n\n\nI say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness\nwith me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain\nin my heart.  For I could wish[3] that I myself were anathema from\nChrist for my {18} brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh:\nwho are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the\ncovenants, and the giving of the law, and the service _of God_, and the\npromises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning\nthe flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.  Amen.  But _it is_\nnot as though the word of God hath come to nought.  For they are not\nall Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are Abraham's\nseed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.\nThat is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God;\nbut the children of the promise are reckoned for a seed.  For this is a\nword of promise, According to this season will I come, and Sarah shall\nhave a son.  And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one,\n_even_ by our father Isaac--for _the children_ being not yet born,\nneither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God\naccording to election might stand, not of works, but of him that\ncalleth, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.  Even\nas it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.\n\n\n1.  St. Paul's earnest asseveration is very noticeable in form.  It\nshows so much of his instinctive inward life.  He lives 'in Christ,'\nwho is light as well as life[4], and to speak the truth is the very\natmosphere of this new life[5].  As it comes natural to many people to\nsay 'upon my word as a gentleman,' it comes natural to St. Paul to say,\n'speaking as in Christ, who is the light.'  And his natural\nconscience--that is the faculty of passing judgement on one's own\nactions, {19} which in St. Paul's case bears witness to the truth of\nwhat he says by passing no censure on him--that too does not act of\nitself merely, but in the Spirit of the new life, the Holy Spirit of\nChrist, which inspires and ratifies the moral judgement, otherwise so\nliable to be degraded or perverted or silenced: his conscience bears\nwitness with his word in the Holy Ghost.  Here, then, is the whole\nsecret of Christian truthfulness.  The Christian is truthful because he\nlives and speaks in God, in Christ, in the Spirit.\n\nAs to St. Paul's half-expressed prayer ('I was praying,' he says, i.e.\n'I caught myself praying'), it resembles that of Moses for his\nrebellious people[6].  'And now, O Lord, if thou wilt forgive their\nsin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou\nhast written.'  But St. Paul's instinctive desire is not apparently\nlike that of Moses, to perish with his people rather than be saved\nwithout them; but to offer himself for rejection with a view to their\nsalvation.  The prayer is, as St. Paul implies, an impossible prayer,\nbut it expresses, as hardly anything else could, the intensity of his\nfeeling.  And such intensity of feeling was natural to the deep\nreligious patriotism of a Jew.\n\n{20}\n\nWe may illustrate St. Paul's feeling by comparing a fine expression of\na more commonplace sorrow over the ruin of Israel from a period after\nthe destruction of Jerusalem[7].  'Now therefore I will speak; touching\nman in general, thou knowest best; but touching thy people will I\nspeak, for whose sake I am sorry; and for thine inheritance, for whose\ncause I mourn; and for Israel, for whom I am heavy; and for the seed of\nJacob, for whose sake I am troubled.'  'Thou seest that our sanctuary\nis laid waste, our altar broken down, our temple destroyed; our\npsaltery is brought low, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is\nat an end; the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of our\ncovenant is spoiled, our holy things are defiled, and the name that is\ncalled upon us is profaned; our freemen are despitefully treated, our\npriests are burnt, our Levites are gone into captivity, our virgins are\ndefiled, and our wives ravished; our righteous men carried away, our\nlittle ones betrayed, our young men are brought into bondage, and our\nstrong men are become weak; and, what is more than all, the seal of\nSion--for she hath now lost the seal of her {21} honour, and is\ndelivered into the hands of them that hate us.'\n\n2.  As we read St. Paul's enumeration of the glories of Israel, it is\nof course obvious for us to pursue the line of thought taught us\nelsewhere by St. Paul, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews; and to\nrecognize how each element of the 'glory,' which belonged once to the\nJewish 'ministration of condemnation,' belongs in deeper and fuller\nmeasure to the Christian 'ministration of the Spirit[8].'  Ours is the\nvocation of the chosen people; ours is the sonship to God; and the\nperpetual presence; and the security of divine covenant; ours is the\ndivine law, and with it, what is much better, the Spirit for its\naccomplishment; ours is the corporate worship in spirit and in truth,\nthe Church's eucharist; for us, too, are promises which the realization\nof those of the first covenant has made 'more sure'; ours finally is\nthe communion of the saints from Abraham onward into the body of\nChrist.  And in proportion therefore to the greatness of our\nprivileges, even as compared with those of the older covenant, is the\ngreatness of our responsibility; 'For I would not, brethren, have you\nignorant[9],' St. Paul would {22} say; he would not have us fail to\nprofit by the warnings of old days.  And another voice warns us 'Of how\nmuch sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden\nunder foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant,\nwherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite\nunto the Spirit of grace[10].'\n\n3.  There has been amongst critics, since Erasmus, much controversy\nover the clause, 'who is over all, God blessed for ever.'  There is no\ndoubt that it is translated most naturally, and most agreeably to the\nbalance and movement of the sentence, if we attribute it to Christ, as\nabove.  But many critics, including some who were orthodox, have\nstumbled at the idea of St. Paul speaking of Christ straight out as\n'over all, God blessed for ever.'  Generally no doubt 'God' is used by\nSt. Paul as a proper name of the Father.  But Christ is continually\nrecognized as possessing strictly divine attributes, and exercising\nstrictly divine functions; and in all St. Paul's epistles, beginning\nwith his earliest to the Thessalonians, He is God's Son, His own or\nproper Son[11].  His blood, as shed for our ransoming, is God's own\nblood, or {23} (possibly) the blood of one who is 'His own'[12].  He\nsubsisted eternally in the form, or essential attributes, of God, and\nin possession of equality with Him; and He possesses now, as glorified\nin humanity, the divine name of universal sovereignty, the object of\nuniversal worship[13].  Therefore He is in the strictest sense divine;\nand whatever or, I should say, whoever is essentially divine and proper\nto the being of God, can rightly be called God.  For, indeed, there is\nnothing in the strict sense divine but God Himself.  It was then merely\na question of time when Christians would become sufficiently familiar\nwith the new revelation of the threefold name to apply the word God to\nthe Son and the Spirit as naturally as to the Father.  And there is\nnothing really to surprise us in St. Paul here applying it to\nChrist[14]: nothing certainly to warrant us in doing violence to the\nsentence, in order to obviate the conclusion that he did so, by putting\na full stop after 'flesh,' and then supposing an abrupt exclamation 'He\nwho is over all is God blessed for ever[15]!'\n\n{24}\n\nLet it be recognized, then, that St. Paul here plainly speaks of Christ\nas 'over all,' i.e. in His glorified manhood, and also as 'God blessed\nfor ever'--that is, as the one proper and eternal object of human\npraise; and that he speaks of Him again elsewhere[16], as 'our great\nGod and Saviour.'  It was only because He was essentially and eternally\n'God' that He could, in our manhood and as the reward of His human\nobedience, be exalted to divine sovereignty and be 'over all.'\n\n4.  In the rest of the section St. Paul is arguing with a Jew, who\nmakes the claim that because of the divine covenant God is bound to the\nIsraelites, and to all Israelites for ever.  'We have Abraham to our\nfather,' and that is enough[17].  The higher prophetic spirit of the\nOld Testament had already realized that God's election of Israel was a\nchallenge to her to prove herself worthy of an undeserved\nprivilege[18], and that, though a faithful remnant would {25} never\nfail, yet unfaithfulness in the bulk of the nation would bring\ndestruction upon them and loss of God's favour[19].  The prophetic\nspirit had realized also that God's servant Israel was not 'called' for\nhis own selfish honour's sake, but was entrusted with a divine ministry\nto fulfil for all the nations of the earth[20].  It is to this higher\nsense of what Israel's position meant, and the perils it involved, that\nJohn the Baptist and our Lord Himself had sought to recall the Jews.\nThey must not 'think to say within themselves, They had Abraham for\ntheir Father; for God was able of the stones to raise up children unto\nAbraham.'  For 'many should come from the east and the west, and sit\ndown with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, and the\nsons of the kingdom should be cast into {26} the outer darkness[21].'\nBut it is evident that this higher meaning of the doctrine of election\nhad been forgotten by contemporary Judaism, and they would not be\nrecalled to it.  They refused to contemplate the spiritual risk of\nmissing their vocation, or the universal purpose for which it was\ngiven.  They chose to think that Israel, i.e. the actual Israelites in\nbulk, _must_ remain God's elect; that the Christ, when He came, must\ncome to exalt their race and nation: that they were bound to inherit\nthe blessings of the world to come: that the divine government of the\nworld existed for their sakes[22].\n\nSt. Paul, then, is here intending to vindicate the real meaning of\nelection, in the sense in which it is bound up with the ethical\ncharacter of God and carries with it a deepened feeling of\nresponsibility in those who are the subjects of it.  {27} But his\nargument is directed, first of all, to one point only--to bringing the\neyes of the Jews straight up to their own scriptures, and forcing them\nto see that _they_ do not justify the idea of election purely by race.\nIt is not all of a certain seed, but only part of it, that is chosen.\nThere is nothing to hinder a great part of the race again becoming as\nIshmael or as Edom by the side of Israel.  Ultimately, no doubt, there\nare _two_ points to be proved.  First, that God's method of choosing an\nelect body to be His people in the world is inscrutable, so that we\ncannot produce or determine His election by any calculation, or by any\nreal or supposed merits, of ours; secondly, that though we cannot\ncreate our vocation, we can retain it by moral correspondence or faith,\nand by that only.  But at present it is only the first point that is\ninsisted upon--the absolute, inscrutable element in the divine choice.\nAnd that, we should notice, is a fact not merely of scriptural evidence\nbut of common experience.  Men are born to higher and lower positions\nof privilege and opportunity.  They are born Jacobs or Esaus, in\nrespect of moral, intellectual, religious, or physical endowment--with\nten talents, or five, or two, or one; and God does not often give us so\n{28} much as a glimpse of the reason why.  All He does make clear to us\nis that the determination of human vocations, higher or lower, is in\nwiser hands than ours.\n\nIt is of course evident, as has already been said, that what St. Paul\nis speaking about is the election of men, and specially races or\nnations of men, to a position of _spiritual privilege in this world_.\nWe know now, better than the Jews of the Old Covenant could know it,\nthat behind all the apparent injustices and inequalities of this world\nlies the rectifying equity of God.  St. Peter had come to believe that\nthe divine mercy had rectified in the world beyond death the apparently\nrough and heavy handed judgement upon the rejected mass of mankind in\nthe time of the Flood.  That physical catastrophe at least was an\ninstrument of mercy in disguise[23].  St. Paul believed the same about\nall God's rejections, as well as elections, in this world.  They served\none universal purpose: 'That he might have mercy upon all[24].'  But\n{29} all the same here and now in this world God does work by means of\nenormous inequalities.  There are Jacobs whom He plainly loves, upon\nwhom He showers all His richest blessings, and Esaus whom, to judge\nfrom present evidence, we should say He hates--whom He sets to live in\nhardest and most cramping surroundings.  And no man can determine which\nlot he shall enjoy.  That lies in the inscrutable selectiveness of God.\n\nThat there is no question at all about the eternal welfare of the\nindividual Esau's soul--that the question is simply of the comparative\nstatus of Israel and Edom in this world--appears plainly in the passage\nof Malachi, which St. Paul quotes.  And we must notice how unexpected\nan application St. Paul gives to this passage in a direction most\nunfamiliar to Jewish thought.  For Edom was to the Jew the very type of\nall that was most hateful.  He anticipated for the Edomites God's worst\nvengeance, as for Israel God's best blessings.  But St. Paul forces him\nto think--Why should he assume that he will be better off than Edom?\nEdom was once physically on Israel's level, or his superior in claim,\nwhen their first fathers were but just born infants.  But God chose one\n{30} and not the other.  He may exercise the like unscrutable\nselectiveness upon the seed of Israel to-day.  And Edom did not remain\nin a merely secondary position.  He sank to be a byword for all that is\nmost hateful to God.  Be warned, St. Paul would say, it may be that\n'with change of name the tale is told of thee[25].'\n\n\n\n[1] Exod. iv. 23; Hos. xi. 1.\n\n[2] Exod. xvi. 10.\n\n[3] Or 'pray' (marg.) literally 'I was praying.'\n\n[4] Cf. Eph. v. 8-14.\n\n[5] Cf. Col. iii. 9.\n\n[6] Exod. xxxii. 32.\n\n[7] 2 Esdr. viii. 15-16, x. 21-23.  The latter passage is not spoken to\nGod, but by one Jew to another.\n\n[8] 2 Cor. iii. 8.\n\n[9] See 1 Cor. x. 1-13.\n\n[10] Heb. x. 29.\n\n[11] 1 Thess. i. 10; Rom. viii. 3.\n\n[12] Acts xx. 28.\n\n[13] Phil. ii. 6-11.\n\n[14] Without the article which makes it a proper name of the Father.\n\n[15] R. V. margin^2.  It does further violence to the Greek to\ntranslate as R. V. margin^1, 'He who is God over all is (be) blessed\nfor ever.'  I have nothing to add on the matter to S. and H. _in loc._,\nespecially p. 236.\n\n[16] Tit. ii. 13.  This is probably the right rendering.\n\n[17] St. Matt. iii. 9.\n\n[18] Great stress was laid by the prophets on the absence of any\noriginal merit or power in Israel, which caused the divine election;\nsee Ezek. xvi, Deut. xxvi. 5.\n\n[19] See especially Amos ix. 7-10: 'Are ye not as the children of the\nEthiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord.  Have not I\nbrought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from\nCaphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?  Behold, the eyes of the Lord God\nare upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of\nthe earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,\nsaith the Lord.  For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of\nIsrael among all the nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet\nshall not the least grain fall upon the earth.  All the sinners of my\npeople shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake\nnor prevent us.'\n\n[20] Gen. xii. 3; Isa. lxvi. 18; Zech. viii. 23, &c.\n\n[21] Matt. viii. 11, 12.\n\n[22] In Weber's _Juedische Theologie_ (Leipzig, 1897, formerly called\n_System der Altsynagog. Palaestin. Theol._ or _Die Lehre des Talmud_),\npp. 51 ff, there are striking illustrations from the Talmud of this\nfixed tendency of thought among the Jews.  Thus 'there exists no\nclearer proof of the Talmudic conviction of the absolutely holy\ncharacter of Israel than that in all the places of Scripture in which\nIsrael is reproved and has evil attributed to it, the expression, \"the\nhaters of Israel,\" is substituted for Israel.'  'We read: Isaiah was\npunished, because he called Israel a people of unclean lips,' &c.  Cf.\nS. and H., p. 249, and my _Ephesians_, p. 261.\n\n[23] 1 Pet. iv. 6.  'The gospel was preached to' these 'dead men that\nthey might be judged according to men in the flesh,' i.e. by perishing\nin the flood, 'but live according to God in the spirit,' i.e. through\nour Lord's preaching in Hades.  There is, I think, so far, no ambiguity\nabout this passage.\n\n[24] Not, however, without regard to man's will to respond to the\ndivine offer, see later, p. 82 ff.\n\n[25] Mal. i. 2, 3.  'Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet\nI loved Jacob; but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation,\nand gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.  Whereas Edom\nsaith, We are beaten down, but we will return,' &c.  This passage (1)\nplainly refers to _Esau_ as meaning _Edom_, the people; (2) describes\nnot the original lot of Esau, which was secondary indeed, but highly\nblessed (Gen. xxvii. 39, 40); but the ultimate lot of Esau when he had\nmisused his original endowment in violence and cruelty.\n\n\n\n\n{31}\n\nDIVISION IV.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER IX. 14-29.\n\n_God's liberty in showing mercy and judgement always retained and\nasserted._\n\nBut the obvious reply of the Jewish objector to St. Paul's assertion of\nthe absolute and apparently arbitrary freedom of God's election is that\nit is unfair.  It convicts God of unrighteousness.  To this objection\n(ver. 14), which St. Paul deprecates with horror, he replies not by any\nlarge consideration of divine justice, but still by keeping the Jew to\nhis own scriptures.  The God revealed in scripture must be to the\nobjector still the just God.  He cannot call God unjust if His method\nas it now appears is that to which He called attention long ago.  Look\nback, then, at the past records.  Did God disclose Himself as bound to\nshow mercy on Moses the Israelite, or to harden and judicially condemn\nPharaoh the Egyptian?  No, He declares to Moses His unrestricted\nfreedom to exhibit His {32} compassion on whom He will (Exod. xxxiii.\n19).  Men cannot by any choice or efforts of their own produce an\nexhibition of divine favour such as was shown to Moses the leader of\nIsrael: the absolute initiative must come from God, and in taking that\ninitiative He declares Himself absolutely free.  In the same way God\nimplicitly asserts His sovereign freedom when He brings Pharaoh out\nupon the stage of history as an example of the way in which He hardens\nmen's hearts with a hardening which is the prelude to overthrow, that\nmen all over the world may see and tremble at the divine power.  It is\nnot because Pharaoh is an Egyptian that he is hardened.  He is\nhardened, as Moses has compassion shown him, simply because it is the\nwill of God so to do in his case.\n\nBut the objector comes forward again (ver. 19): 'If this is the\narbitrary method of God--if we are simply powerless puppets in the\nhands of an absolute and arbitrary will, to be saved or be\ndestroyed--at any rate He has no reason to complain of us.  If all the\npower is His, so is the responsibility.'  Now St. Paul has it in his\nhand to show that there remains to man a very real power to retain his\nposition, and consequently a very real responsibility and room for {33}\nbeing blamed or praised: for if we cannot create our vocation, we can\nand we are required to correspond with it in a reverent and docile\nfaith; and it was exactly here that the Jews had failed, in spite of\nall their prophets had taught them.  But he keeps back this answer\nawhile, because he finds the attitude of such an objector toward God in\nitself so reprehensible.  Such an one has not given consideration to\nwhat the relation of man to God really is--the creature to the creator.\nHis critical, complaining attitude is nothing better than foolish.\n\nThus he takes his antagonist back upon the old prophetic metaphor of\nthe potter and his clay, with which Isaiah and Jeremiah had rebuked the\narrogance and impatience of men long ago: 'Shall the thing framed say\nof him that framed it, He hath no understanding; and shall the clay say\nto him that fashioneth it, What makest thou[1]?'  He follows, however,\nmost closely upon the later writer of the Book of Wisdom: 'For a\npotter, kneading soft earth, laboriously mouldeth each several vessel\nfor our service: nay, out of the same clay doth fashion both the\nvessels that minister to clean uses, and those of a contrary sort.  All\nin {34} like manner; but what shall be the use of each vessel of either\nsort, the craftsman himself is the judge[2].'  The thought was often in\nSt. Paul's mind of the inequality of lots in the world and the Church.\nThere are more and less honourable limbs in the body politic: there are\nvessels for honourable and vessels for dishonourable purposes in the\ngreat social economy[3].  So it is with the races of men.  They are all\nof one blood--of the one lump.  But some have high and others low\nvocations, and the right to determine of what sort the lot shall be in\neach case lies absolutely with the Divine Potter.  It is childish to\ndispute His title.  And not only so: when the potter, whom Jeremiah was\nordered to observe, found a vessel he was making marred under his hand,\n'he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make\nit[4].'  Accordingly, when the chosen material (i.e. the Jews) would\nnot mould to the high purpose for which the Potter was fashioning it,\nwho shall complain if He diverted it to lower uses or threw it away to\ndestruction, and produced out {35} of His stores other vessels which He\nhad already prepared and destined for glorious functions (that is to\nsay, the Gentile Christians)?  But the case is even stronger than this.\nWho indeed shall complain if, when the vessels originally destined for\nthe higher uses prove fit for nothing but destruction, the Divine\nPotter--though willing, now as in the case of Pharaoh, to let His wrath\nfall and to manifest His power--yet shows almost unlimited forbearance\nwith them (as in fact God did with the Jews); and when at last He does\nlet His wrath fall, only does so in order to manifest anew the\nresourcefulness of His mercy[5] upon a new and larger Israel, gathered\nnot from among the Jews only, but from among all nations, to be the\nobject of His compassionate regard?\n\nIndeed, the prophet Hosea (ii. 23, i. 10) foresaw this choice of a yet\nunrecognized people to be God's people.  Isaiah again (x. 22)\nanticipated no more than a remnant surviving of all the multitudes of\nIsrael, because of the sharpness and conclusiveness of the divine\njudgement upon them.  And (i. 9) it is only to the compassion of God\nthat he attributes their exemption by means {36} of the faithful\nremnant from entire annihilation, like that of the Cities of the Plain.\n\n\nWhat shall we say then?  Is there unrighteousness with God?  God\nforbid.  For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,\nand I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.  So then it is\nnot of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath\nmercy.  For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did\nI raise thee up, that I might shew in thee my power, and that my name\nmight be published abroad in all the earth.  So then he hath mercy on\nwhom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.\n\nThou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he still find fault?  For who\nwithstandeth his will?  Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest\nagainst God?  Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why\ndidst thou make me thus?  Or hath not the potter a right over the clay,\nfrom the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another\nunto dishonour?  What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make\nhis power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath\nfitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his\nglory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, _even_\nus, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the\nGentiles?  As he saith also in Hosea,\n\n  I will call that my people, which was not my people;\n  And her beloved, which was not beloved.\n  And it shall be, _that_ in the place where it was said\n        unto them, Ye are not my people,\n  There shall they be called sons of the living God.\n\nAnd Isaiah crieth concerning Israel, If the number of the children of\nIsrael be as the sand of the sea, it is the {37} remnant that shall be\nsaved: for the Lord will execute _his_ word upon the earth, finishing\nit and cutting it short.  And, as Isaiah hath said before,\n\n  Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,\n  We had become as Sodom, and had been made like\n        unto Gomorrah.\n\n\nWhat has been already said will have been enough to guard against the\nmain sources of mistake in reading this section.  St. Paul might have\nmuch to say about God's righteousness in general, and large ways of\nvindicating it.  But here he holds fast to the single aspect of\nrighteousness according to which it means that God has been true to the\noriginal principles of His covenant.  The God who chose Abraham and\nMoses is the God who is now, and rightly on His own declared principles\nof government, rejecting the greater part of the people of Abraham and\nMoses.  This--faithfulness to His own declared principles--is what St.\nPaul here means by His righteousness.  And as it was God's declared\nprinciple to retain His own liberty to show mercy on men according to\nHis free will, inside or outside the chosen people, so on the other\nhand He retained His liberty to exhibit His judgement of hardening\naccording to His will inside or outside the chosen people.  He who\nbrought Pharaoh the Egyptian upon the stage {38} of history[6], as an\nexample of hardening judgement, is within His right in doing the same\nnow with (the mass of) the people of His choice.  The liberty asserted\nfor God is wholly consistent with His being found, in fact, to have\n'hardened' those only who have deserved hardening by their own\nwilfulness.  It was for such a moral cause that God hardened the hearts\nof the Jews, that 'seeing they might not see, and hearing they might\nnot hear[7].'  We can feel no doubt that some similar moral cause\nunderlay the hardening of Pharaoh.  But this is not St. Paul's present\npoint.  All his argument is directed to asserting God's liberty to show\nmercy or harden, irrespectively of considerations of race, when and\nwhere He in His sovereign moral will chooses.\n\nWe should notice that St. Paul's method is here, as elsewhere, what is\ncalled ideal or abstract, in the sense that he makes abstraction {39}\nof a particular point of view; and, apparently indifferent to being\nmisunderstood, substantiates his argument upon the particular aspect\nwhich he has taken apart from the whole matter in hand, till it is done\nwith, and then other points can be taken in their turn.  And he does\nnot, as a modern writer would do, painfully correlate the various\naspects of the subject[8].\n\nBy means of the famous simile of the potter St. Paul asserts two\nprinciples about God: (1) that God is free, and condescends to give no\naccount to His creatures, in absolutely determining the high or low\nvocations of men.  To one man or nation He gives five talents, to\nanother two, to another one.  He makes vessels to honourable and\nvessels to (comparatively) dishonourable uses.  He makes men Jews or\nAssyrians, Englishmen or Hottentots, at His absolute discretion.  (2)\nThat God is absolutely free, when the human material which He is\nmoulding for His purposes proves intractable, to repudiate and reject\nwhat has, by its refusal to mould, become a 'vessel of wrath' fit 'to\nbe taken and destroyed.'  And it is only by a voluntary limitation of\nthis freedom that He exhibits long toleration with the intractable and\n{40} obstinate, and is longsuffering with them even when His wrath is\nready and waiting to show itself.  These are the two distinct points in\nthe simile of the potter.  We must distinguish carefully between the\n'vessels _destined for_ dishonour'--the 'less honourable limbs' of\nhumanity--and the 'vessels _of_ wrath,' or 'vessels fitted for\ndestruction,' i.e. those which have proved themselves unfit for the\nvocation to which they were destined and have to be rejected.  We note\nthat St. Paul does not say that _God fitted_ vessels for destruction,\nbut that He bore long with those which had so _become fitted_.  St.\nPaul never gives us any real justification--if we look at his language\ncarefully--for the idea of any predestination to _rejection_, as\ndistinct from predestination to higher or lower purposes.  And the New\nTestament is full of assurances that a predestination to a low vocation\nin this world may be a predestination to high glory in eternity, if the\nhumble calling is faithfully followed.\n\nIt ought not to be denied, however, that in all this passage St. Paul's\nfeet, as he moves along his argument, are dogged by the metaphysical\ndifficulty of finding room for human free-will inside the universal\nscope of the divine action and the prescience of the divine wisdom.\nThis {41} is a perennial difficulty.  But St. Paul does not touch it.\nHe does not even touch the question of whether God does actually (in\nour sense) _foreknow_ the final destiny of every individual, and how he\nwill act on each occasion[9]; he does not touch the question how or how\nfar human wilfulness can be allowed to disturb the divine order.  In\nthe Pharisaic schools he would certainly have been brought up, as\nJosephus tells us, both to 'attribute everything to fate and God,' and\nalso to recognize that it 'lay with men for the most part to do right\nor wrong': to believe that 'everything was foreseen,' and also that\n'free-will was given'; or, as Josephus elsewhere puts it (as if it made\nno difference), to believe 'that some things, but not all, are the work\nof fate, and other things are in men's own power and need not\nhappen[10].'  That is to say, he would have been educated to believe\nboth in predestination and in freedom, without any {42} special attempt\nto reconcile the two.  We can tell for certain that this inherited\nbelief was further moralized in St. Paul's case by his enlarged view of\nthe divine purpose as working through high and low estates alike, for\nthe final good of all men; and by his deepened perception of the\ncorrespondence with God's purpose, which, in the exercise of our\nfreedom, is required of us.  But, so far as we know, St. Paul left the\nstrictly metaphysical question exactly where he found it--as an\nimperfectly reconciled antithesis.  And there perhaps we men shall\nalways have to leave it, or at least till we come to know even as we\nare known.\n\nIn the quotations from the Old Testament, with which the section\nconcludes, we notice that St. Paul varies the original application of\nthe passages from Hosea.  In the prophet they refer to the recovery of\ndejected and dishonoured _Israel_, while the apostle applies them to\nthe exaltation of _the Gentiles_ from their low estate.  As is often\nthe case, while other passages in the prophets were there to prove\nexactly what he wanted[11], St. Paul takes the words which come {43}\ninto his mind with a considerable latitude of application, and without\nany critical argument.  Thus, if he makes somewhat free with the\nparticular texts, it is in order to vindicate the real teaching of the\nOld Testament.  He has, if not exact criticism, what is much better,\nprofound spiritual insight.\n\nThe passages quoted from Isaiah are characteristic and central.  This\ngreat prophet first clearly perceived that most striking law of human\nhistory--that progress comes, not mostly through the majority of a\nnation, but through the faithful remnant.  It is the few best through\nwhom alone God can freely work.  It is the best who in the long run\ndetermine the moral level of the nation, and either keep the mass of\nmen around them from corruption, or, if that is impossible, provide a\nfresh point of departure and hope in a society now inevitably, as a\nwhole, hastening to decay and judgement.  'As a terebinth, and as an\noak, whose stock remaineth, when they are felled; so the holy seed is\nthe stock thereof[12].'\n\n\n\n[1] Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, lxiv. 8; Jer. xviii. 6; Ecclus. xxxiii. 13.\n\n[2] xv. 7.\n\n[3] 1 Cor. xii. 22-5; 2 Tim. ii. 20.\n\n[4] Jer. xviii. 4.  The passage continues with a strong assertion of\nGod's freedom to govern the destinies of nations on moral principles.\n\n[5] When Moses asked to see God's glory (Exod. xxxiii. 18), what was\nrevealed to him was His goodness and free mercy, and what St. Paul here\nmeans by God's glory is His mercy especially.\n\n[6] In the original the words run, 'For this cause have I made thee to\nstand,' i.e. probably, 'I have preserved thy life under the plague of\nboils, and other plagues, in order to make thee an example of a more\nconspicuous judgement.'  But St. Paul, departing from the Greek Bible,\nuses a word 'raised thee up,' which in Pharaoh's case, or in that of\nCyrus, means to bring upon the stage of history.  Isa. xli. 2; cf. Jer.\n1. [xxvii in the Greek] 41; Hab. i. 6.\n\n[7] See Matt. xiii. 14, 15; Mark iv. 12; John xii. 40.\n\n[8] Cf. vol. i. p. 75.\n\n[9] On the meaning of divine foreknowledge in St. Paul see vol. i. p.\n317.\n\n[10] See Joseph. _Antiq._ xiii. 5, 9; xviii. 1, 3; _Bell. Jud._ ii. 8,\n14.  Cf. Schuerer, _Jewish People_ (English trans.), Div. ii. vol. ii.\npp.14 ff.; James and Ryle, _Ps. of Solomon_, p. 96.  The Essenes,\nJosephus says, believed in fate, and not in free-will; the Sadducees in\nfree-will and not in fate; but the Pharisees in both.  No doubt\nJosephus is importing Greek philosophical views into his account of\nJewish parties, but substantially his account is probably true.\n\n[11] e.g. Isa. xix. 24; Ezek. xvi. 55.  (The exaltation into the\nfellowship of the chosen people of Egypt, Assyria, Sodom, and Samaria.)\n\n[12] Isa. vi. 13.\n\n\n\n\n{44}\n\nDIVISION IV.  Sec. 3.  CHAPTER IX. 30-X. 21.\n\n_Lack of faith the reason of Israel's rejection._\n\nWhat is to be our conclusion then?  That Gentiles, men beyond the pale\nof God's covenant, who made no pretension of pursuing righteousness,\nall at once laid hold on righteousness and made it their own, simply by\naccepting in faith the divine offer which came their way; while Israel,\nthe chosen people, devoted to pursuing a law of righteousness, never\ncaught up with that of which it was in pursuit.  The result seems\nstrange enough.  But the reason of it is apparent.  Israel[1] had been\nput under a divine election, which required of them the open ear, the\nresponsive will, of faith.  But instead of cultivating this temper of\nfaith, they fastened upon the specified {45} observances of the Mosaic\nlaw, and blindly adhered to them, as if God had nothing deeper or\ngreater to teach them, and they had nothing deeper or greater to\nreceive.  Thus, when the Christ came, with His completer light and\nclaims, they would not have Him.  They wanted nothing further, nothing\nmore than they were accustomed to.  And thus Isaiah's prophecy was\nfulfilled, that the Christ, the tried foundation stone, the destined\nsecurity of all who should believe in Him, would turn out to be a stone\nat which the chosen people should stumble, and a rock on which it\nshould meet disaster[2] (ix. 30-33).\n\nAnd here is the pathos of the situation.  Here is what puts passion\ninto St. Paul's desire and his prayer for Israel's entrance into the\ngreat deliverance.  It is that they have such a real zeal for God,\nthough without any spiritual insight to guide it.  A real zeal for God!\nof that St. Paul's own experience qualified him to testify.  But in\nwhat sense without insight?  In the sense that with Jesus of Nazareth\nthere appeared a divine righteousness, which God was communicating to\nmen[3]; but the Jews, {46} preoccupied with maintaining a standard of\nrighteousness which they had taken for their own--which had become\nidentified, that is to say, with their own self-satisfaction and pride\nof privilege and independence of interference--failed to perceive the\ndivine purpose, and, in fact, refused to submit themselves to it.  For\nthat principle of law which the Jews had come to regard as God's final\nword, He really intended only as a temporary discipline to be brought\nto an end by the coming of the Christ, and by the disclosure of the\nreal righteousness which, in Christ, God should offer and man should\nsimply accept in faith.  Law and faith are in sharp and intelligible\ncontrast.  Under the law of works a man, as Moses says[4], stands to\npreserve his life (or save his soul) according as he performs the\nspecified requirements (as if man were an independent being who could\nthus stand over against God on his merits).  But faith, attributing\nnothing to itself, simply accepts the offer of God, the divine message\nof compassion brought near to it.  Moses of old told the Israelites[5]\nthat the commandment was not {47} too hard for them, neither was it far\noff.  _It was not in heaven, that they should say, who shall go up for\nus to heaven, and bring_ it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we\nmay do it?  Neither was it beyond the sea, that they should say, _who\nshall go_ over the sea for us, _and bring_ it unto us, and make us to\nhear it that we may do it?  But _the word was very nigh unto them, in\ntheir mouth and in their heart_, that they might do it.  These words\nreally describe the character of the Christian message of faith, of\nwhich the apostles are the heralds.  Truly there is no need for the\nbeliever in Jesus to seek some one to scale heaven to reach a remote\nGod, for Christ is come down.  Or to descend into the abyss to seek a\nChrist dead and lost, for Christ is risen.  The great deliverance is\noffered to us on very easy terms.  A man has only openly to confess\nthat the human Jesus is really the divine Lord, and heartily to believe\nthat God raised Him from the dead.  Let him heartily accept that\nmessage, and the fellowship in the divine righteousness is his.  Let\nhim publicly confess that creed, and the great salvation is open to\nhim.  It is the old teaching of Isaiah[6]--if a man but believe (in the\nChrist) there is no {48} fear of his being put to shame.  And here Jews\nand Greeks are all on the same level of need and opportunity.  There is\nover all the same Lord Christ, with the same inexhaustible good will\ntowards all who simply call on Him.  Again the old scripture testifies\nthat it is every one who calls on the name of the Lord who shall be\nsaved[7].  The conditions then are very simple.  To call on the Lord,\nwe may say, men must believe in Him.  To have the opportunity of\nbelieving on Him, they must have heard about Him.  To hear about Him,\nthey need one to speak in His name.  And how can men speak in the name\nof God except as His apostles, as men commissioned and sent from Him?\nAnd these terms we know well enough have all been fulfilled.  The\ncommissioned heralds of the good tidings of God have gone forth, so\nthat all men may hear and believe and call out to God.  Truly Isaiah's\nvision of the welcome preacher of good tidings[8] is realized to-day\n(x. 1-15).\n\nNow we have clear before us the simplicity of the gospel, the message\nto faith.  And we have before us the plain fact that the Israelitish\npeople, preoccupied with their own temporary {49} and misunderstood\nstandard of the law, have not generally accepted it.  But this is no\nmore than Isaiah led us to expect.  'Lord,' he cries, 'who gave\ncredence to our message[9]?'  (Faith, you see, according to the\nprophet, requires just a listening to a divine message; and this\nmessage has come to men by the preaching about Christ.)  And can it be\npleaded that the Jews have not had the opportunity of hearing the\nmessage?  No, truly, as the Psalmist says, the voice of God's\nmessengers has gone over all the earth, and their words to the end of\nthe inhabited world[10].  Or can it be said that Israel did not know\nthat a preaching to the _Gentiles_ was to be looked for?  No, a\nsuccession of warnings had reached them.  Thus Moses foretold that it\nshould be a nation which (religiously speaking) was no nation, a people\nwithout understanding, that God would use to provoke His people to\njealousy, and stimulate their emulation[11].  Again, Isaiah uses\nstartling words, and declares that God has been discovered by those who\nnever sought Him, and revealed to those who never asked for\nHim[12]--that is the Gentiles.  But the words of Isaiah {50} that\nfollow describe truly the relation of God and Israel.  God has tenderly\nand persistently been offering His love to them, but they have proved\nthemselves only rebellious and full of contradiction (x. 16-21).\n\nThis, then, is the plain summary.  Israel is rejected because, after\nevery offer, and with every opportunity, they have refused God's\nleading, refused to be docile, refused to believe, refused to obey.\n\n\nWhat shall we say then?  That the Gentiles, which followed not after\nrighteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which\nis of faith: but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, did\nnot arrive at _that_ law.  Wherefore?  Because _they sought it_ not by\nfaith, but as it were by works.  They stumbled at the stone of\nstumbling; even as it is written,\n\n  Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence:\n  And he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame.\n\nBrethren, my heart's desire and my supplication to God is for them,\nthat they may be saved.  For I bear them witness that they have a zeal\nfor God, but not according to knowledge.  For being ignorant of God's\nrighteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject\nthemselves to the righteousness of God.  For Christ is the end of the\nlaw unto righteousness to every one that believeth.  For Moses writeth\nthat the man that doeth the righteousness which is of the law shall\nlive thereby.  But the righteousness which is of {51} faith saith thus,\nSay not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring\nChrist down:) or, Who shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring\nChrist up from the dead.)  But what saith it?  The word is nigh thee,\nin thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we\npreach: because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus _as_ Lord,\nand shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou\nshalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;\nand with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  For the\nscripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be put to shame.\nFor there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same _Lord_\nis Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him: for, Whosoever\nshall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.  How then shall\nthey call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they\nbelieve in him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear\nwithout a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?\neven as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring\nglad tidings of good things!\n\nBut they did not all hearken to the glad tidings.  For Isaiah saith,\nLord, who hath believed our report?  So belief _cometh_ of hearing, and\nhearing by the word of Christ.  But I say, Did they not hear?  Yea,\nverily,\n\n  Their sound went out into all the earth,\n  And their words unto the ends of the world.\n\nBut I say, Did Israel not know?  First Moses saith,\n\n  I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation,\n  With a nation void of understanding will I anger you.\n\nAnd Isaiah is very bold, and saith,\n\n  I was found of them that sought me not;\n  I became manifest unto them that asked not of me.\n\n{52}\n\nBut as to Israel he saith, All the day long did I spread out my hands\nunto a disobedient and gainsaying people.\n\n\nIn this passage St. Paul gives us the other side of the question of the\nrejection of the Israelites.  God had retained an absolute freedom, not\nto be questioned by men, to reject whom He willed.  That was the first\npoint.  But can we see whom our God wills to reject, or why in\nparticular He rejected (though not finally, as will appear) the chosen\npeople?  It is because they failed in faith.  And faith is precisely\nthat which is necessary to maintain correspondence with God--it is\n_the_ faculty of fellowship with Him.  They failed because the false\nprinciple of justification by works had obscured in their minds the\nneed and meaning of faith.  The false principle meant, as we have\nalready seen, the maintaining an accepted standard of conduct and\ndivine service, especially in outward matters, and for the rest\nclaiming to be left alone.  The accepted standard was that which\ndistinguished Israel from the rest of the world, and what they had\nbecome accustomed to.  It was a righteousness of 'their own.'  They\nprided themselves on it.  Their public opinion required its observance.\nIt had come to usurp the place of any direct {53} relationship to the\nvoice of God.  They had no idea that God could have anything more or\ndeeper to require of them.  They had lost personal touch with Him.\nTherefore seeking to establish this, their own righteousness, they\nfailed to submit themselves to the (now newly revealed) righteousness\nof God in Christ.  This unprogressiveness of the Jewish ideal, this\nsubstitution of the accepted standard under the law for the word of\nGod, on the part of the Pharisees, the religious representatives of\nIsrael, is precisely what the pages of the Gospel record.  Therefore\nthe 'corner stone of sure foundation' for the divine building became to\nthem the stone on which they stumbled and fell.  And yet that the law\nwas a temporary expedient, and not the whole counsel of God, was the\ndeepest witness of the Old Testament; and in being false to the further\nrevelation of the will of God in Christ, they were false to their own\ndeepest principles.  All this ground we have gone over already, and\nneed not traverse again[13].\n\nSo also we have already become familiar with the simplicity of the\nmessage of God in Christ, and the simplicity of the faith which, {54}\nrooted in the consciousness of sin and need, and equally possible for\nall men who can share this consciousness, is required to welcome God's\noffer, and so be brought by Christ into living union with Him.  All\nthis St. Paul has already elaborated, and is here only resuming and\nrecapitulating by the way.  But one or two points in the recapitulation\nrequire notice.\n\n1.  St. Paul takes the basis of his statement of the principle of grace\nand faith out of the heart of the books of Moses--the idea of the 'word\nvery nigh thee,' of the simple message claiming only to be simply\naccepted, and of the 'very present help' of a gracious God needing only\nto be welcomed.  The fact is that St. Paul usually idealizes when he\ntreats of 'the law of Moses'; as, for example, when he here says that\n'Moses writeth that the man that _doeth_ the righteousness ... shall\n_live_ thereby,' as if that was all that Moses said.  The principle of\nlaw, as Saul the Pharisee had learned to understand it, is the dominant\nprinciple in the five Books of the Law, but not the only one.  'Grace,\nalready existing in the Jewish theocracy, was the fruitful germ\ndeposited under the surface, which was one day to burst forth and\nbecome the peculiar character {55} of the new covenant[14].'  The God\nof the new covenant is the God also of the old, and was there already\nintimating His truer and deeper character.  To this St. Paul bears\nwitness by resting his statement of the principle of the new covenant\nupon the words of the old.\n\n2.  In this passage we have the germ of what we call the creed.  The\nlordship of Jesus, in the sense which implies His proper divinity, and\nHis resurrection and triumph over death--was already matter of public\nconfession in the Christian church: to make profession that 'Jesus is\nLord' qualified for 'the salvation'[15]: and in this lay hid all that\nis essential to the Christian creed.  Already then in the earliest\nchurch subjective faith involved a certain objective and public\ncreed[16] which came very soon to be called 'the faith.'  In this\npassage also, as in xiv. 9 and in St. Peter's epistle, we recognize, as\nan element in the common tradition, the belief in the Descent into\nHades (the abyss).\n\n3.  St. Paul incidentally shows us his {56} instinctive feeling that to\nbe a trustworthy ambassador for God one needs 'apostolate.'  'How shall\nthey preach except they be _sent_?'  And this apostolate, as he uses\nit, means not only an inward sense of mission, but an external sending\nby Christ Himself; and in pursuance of the same principle, when once\nthe Church has been established, it would mean a sending by those\nauthorized to send in His name.  This is the root principle of the\nChristian 'stewardship.'  As the subapostolic Clement expresses it,\n'Christ (was sent) from God, and the apostles from Christ.  Each came\nin due order from the will of God.  Therefore, having received the\nwords of command, and having been fully convinced by the resurrection\nof our Lord Jesus Christ, and been assured in the message of God with\nconviction of the Holy Ghost, they came forth, preaching the gospel\nthat the kingdom of God was to come.  Therefore as they preached in\ncountry and towns they established their first-fruits, when they had\nput them to the proof, to be bishops (i.e. presbyters), and deacons of\nthose who were to come to the faith.'  And afterwards, in view of\ndisputes over the presbyteral office, which divine inspiration enabled\nthem to anticipate, they made provision for a due succession {57} in\nthe 'episcopate' on the death of those first appointed[17].\n\n4.  St. Paul's singularly free, but deeply inspired, manner of applying\ntexts from the Old Testament is especially illustrated in this passage.\n\nThus the passages quoted from Isaiah about the Stone, which St. Paul\napplies to Christ, refer originally to Jehovah simply in one case (Isa.\nviii. 14), and probably to His will and covenant as the foundation of\nIsrael's polity in the other (Isa. xxviii. 16).  Jewish tradition had\npossibly already referred them to the Christ[18]; and certainly our\nLord's use of Ps. cxviii. 22--'The stone which the builders\nrejected'--as applying to His own rejection, made the reference more\nobvious.  It is indeed in deepest accordance with the spirit of Isaiah:\nand St. Peter (1 Peter ii. 6), we notice, follows St. Paul in the use\nof them.  Another passage (lii. 7) about 'the feet of those who preach\ngood tidings' is transferred, with added meaning, from the heralds of\nthe redemption from Babylon, to the heralds of the greater redemption.\nAnd the opening of chapter lxv, which originally refers altogether to\napostate Israel, is divided, {58} and applied in part to the Gentiles,\nin part to the Jews.  (Other passages in the prophets, we should\nobserve, would justify the former application.)  Again, a passage from\nPs. xix is transferred very beautifully from the witness of the heavens\nto the witness of the Gospel; as if St. Paul would say--grace is become\nas universal as nature.  The language of a passage from Deuteronomy, as\nwe have seen, is taken from the law to express the spirit of the\ngospel.  The calling upon Jehovah in Joel becomes in St. Paul's\nquotation the calling upon Christ.  All this free citation, uncritical\naccording to our ideas and methods, yet rests upon a profoundly right\napprehension of the meaning of the Old Testament as a whole.  The\nappeal to the Old Testament, even if not to the particular passage, is\njustified by the strictest criticism.\n\n\n\n[1] I have endeavoured sometimes in this analysis to expand what St.\nPaul means by 'pursuing righteousness,' by 'works' and by 'faith,' in\naccordance with the meaning already assigned to these words; see vol.\ni. pp. 7-24.\n\n[2] Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16.  Cf. Matt. xi. 6.\n\n[3] See above, vol. i. p. 17.\n\n[4] Levit. xviii. 5.\n\n[5] Deut. xxx. 11-14.  I have italicized the words substantially\nreproduced by St. Paul, but I have quoted the whole passage because its\nwhole meaning is in his mind.\n\n[6] Isa. xxviii. 16.\n\n[7] Joel ii. 32.\n\n[8] Isa. lii. 7.\n\n[9] Isa. liii. 1.\n\n[10] Ps. xix. 4.\n\n[11] Deut. xxxii. 21.\n\n[12] Isa. lxv. 1, 2.\n\n[13] See vol. i. pp. 7 ff., 165 f., 250 ff.\n\n[14] Godet _in loc._\n\n[15] Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 3.  The lordship of Jesus, we see in this passage,\nmeans that He can have applied to Him the sayings of the Old Testament\nabout the Lord Jehovah; and can be 'called upon' as such in prayer\n(Joel ii. 32).\n\n[16] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 1-3.\n\n[17] Clem, _ad Cor._ 42, 44.\n\n[18] See S. and H. _in loc._\n\n\n\n\n{59}\n\nDIVISION IV.  Sec. 4.  CHAPTER XI. 1-12.\n\n_God's judgement on Israel neither universal nor final._\n\nBut if Israel has thus by her own fault fallen from her high estate,\nare we then to suppose that God has simply rejected His own chosen\npeople?  Such a thought cannot be entertained.  How could it have been\nin the mind of such an Israelite as St. Paul, one who came of Abraham's\ngenuine seed, and of the tribe which held so fast by Judah?  No: the\npeople on whom from eternity God's eye rested, to mark them out for\nHimself and for His purposes, assuredly cannot, as a people, have been\ncast away[1].  What has happened now is only what is recorded long ago\nin the history of Elijah.  Then, as now, a general unfaithfulness in\nthe bulk of the nation concealed the existence of a faithful remnant.\nYet God had, as He assured the prophet, {60} reserved for Himself such\na remnant, and of very considerable numbers.  And now also such a\nremnant of true Israelites exists in accordance with the selective\naction of grace--that is to say, God's gratuitous and unmerited good\nwill.  Yes: let there be no mistake about it; their position is due to\nnothing else than the original and continuous action of God's grace;\nand grace means God's absolutely gratuitous and unmerited good will\n(which may therefore come upon Gentiles equally with Jews).  It\nexcludes the idea of these remnants owing their position to previous\nmerits, or of its being in any way God's response to an antecedent\nclaim[2].\n\nThis then is what we have to recognize.  What Israel in bulk sought for\n(by way of its supposed merit), that it did not get, but a select\nremnant got it; and upon the rest there fell that judicial\nhardening--that reversal of their true relation to God--which Moses and\nIsaiah already discerned in the chosen people[3]: an abiding {61}\nstupor, and deafness, and blindness, with regard to God's purpose and\nwill for them.  David too, as God's righteous servant, demands, as a\ndivine requital upon his bitter and cruel enemies, that their very\nabundance should betray them into captivity and prove their\nstumblingblock; that their spiritual vision should be lost and their\nbacks bent downward to the ground.  Which is just what has happened to\nIsrael through their rejection of the Son of David.\n\nThe bulk of the people then has stumbled.  But we must not exaggerate\nwhat has happened.  As it is not all of them who have stumbled, so also\nit is not for ever.  Their stumbling is not equivalent to a final fall.\nAlready we can perceive how it may be reversed.  The refusal of the\nJews to recognize the Christ has been the occasion for a turning to the\nGentiles.  Thus the salvation of the Christ has come to them.  And this\nhas happened in the divine providence in order that, as Moses\nanticipated, they may in their turn provoke the Jews to jealousy--to a\njealous determination not to lose their old {62} privileges.  Thus if\neven the transgression of Israel has proved the occasion for enriching\nthe world as a whole, if even the deficiency of Israel (leaving vacant\nspace, as it were, in the Church) has proved the occasion for enriching\nthe Gentiles, how much more enrichment is to be expected when the\nchosen people are recovered in their full number?\n\n\nI say then, Did God cast off his people?  God forbid.  For I also am an\nIsraelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.  God did\nnot cast off his people which he foreknew.  Or wot ye not what the\nscripture saith of Elijah[4]? how he pleadeth with God against Israel,\nLord, they have killed thy prophets, they have digged down thine\naltars: and I am left alone, and they seek my life.  But what saith the\nanswer of God unto him?  I have left for myself seven thousand men, who\nhave not bowed the knee to Baal.  Even so then at this present time\nalso there is a remnant according to the election of grace.  But if it\nis by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.\nWhat then?  That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but\nthe election obtained it, and the rest were hardened: according as it\nis written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not\nsee, and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day.  And David\nsaith,\n\n  Let their table be made a snare, and a trap,\n  And a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them:\n  {63}\n  Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see,\n  And bow thou down their back alway.\n\nI say then, Did they stumble that they might fall?  God forbid: but by\ntheir fall salvation _is come_ unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them\nto jealousy.  Now if their fall is the riches of the world, and their\nloss the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?\n\n\n1.  We learn a little more exactly about St. Paul's doctrine of\nelection in this chapter.  God's final purpose for good is, as we shall\nsee at the end of the chapter--and in what sense we shall have to\nconsider--upon all men whatsoever.  But this universal purpose is\nworked out through special 'elect' instruments.  Thus God recognized[5]\nIsrael beforehand, i.e. in His eternal counsels, as the people to bear\nHis name in the world.  This was the selection of Israel, and was an\nact of which the initiative was wholly on God's side.  It was a pure\nact of the divine favour.  This 'selection of grace' was upon Israel as\na whole, but at later stages of the history, frequently enough, owing\nto the disobedience and apostasy of the majority, it is found to rest\nin an effective sense only upon a 'remnant' whom God has reserved for\nHimself, because they have not utterly refused to {64} correspond to\nthe original and continuous call of the divine grace.  For the rest\ntheir privileges become the occasion of their fall: their light becomes\ntheir darkness.  For judgement always and inevitably waits upon any\nform of misused privilege.  Thus, when the Christ came, only an elect\nremnant of the nation welcomed Him.  The rest fell under judgement.\nBut God overrules even this apostasy.  He takes the opportunity of the\nabsence of those who should have been at the marriage supper of the\nking's son, to fill the great vacancy from the Gentile world.  They are\nbrought within the scope of the selecting call.  But God's original\nvocation is still irrevocably upon apostate Israel.  The new Gentile\nconverts are to stimulate them to recover their lost privileges.  Their\nwilfulness and obstinacy is to give place to humility and faith; and\nJew and Gentile all together are to constitute the elect catholic\nchurch.\n\nThis is very simple and cheerful teaching.  It leaves for us to\nconsider later the question whether God's original and special vocation\nresting upon the Jews is finally to _constrain_ them all to conversion,\nand whether in the same way His ultimate purpose of salvation for all\nmen is to take place infallibly in all cases.  This {65} question is\nstill to be considered.  But at any rate the doctrine of election has\nlost all that gave it a colouring of arbitrariness and injustice and\nnarrow sympathies.\n\nWe ought to notice in the above passage how St. Paul, in recalling the\ncontinual obstinacy and hardening of the majority of the chosen people,\nis following on the lines of St. Stephen's speech (Acts vii. 51).\n\n2.  The imprecatory psalms are, especially in our Anglican public\nservices, a great stumblingblock to many--especially the 69th (here\ncited by St. Paul) and the 109th.  These psalms do not represent barely\nthe cry of an individual sufferer invoking God's curse upon his private\nenemies.  The sufferer, who is the psalmist, or with whom at least the\npsalmist identifies himself, represents afflicted righteousness.  It is\nGod's people, His 'servant' and 'son' according to the language of the\nOld Testament, that is under persecution from the enemies of God.  And\nhe calls upon God to vindicate Himself by punishing the adversary; to\nlet it be seen that His word and promise is truth.  'How long, O God,\nholy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge?'  Even from this point\nof view, however, when with the assistance {66} of the modern critics\nwe have in the main purged away the element of private vindictiveness,\nthese psalms no doubt remain with the stamp of narrowness and\nbitterness upon them.  They have none of the larger New Testament sense\nthat the worst enemies of the Church may be converted and live: that\nour attitude towards all men is to wish them good, purely good and not\nevil, even though it be under the form of judgement: 'Rejoice when men\nrevile you and persecute you'; 'Bless them that curse you, do good to\nthem that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you'; 'That by\nyour good works which they shall behold, they may glorify God in the\nday of visitation.'\n\nBut granted the limitation and bitterness still remaining in these\npsalms, their citation in the New Testament shows us what is for us the\nright use of them.  They are by implication taken up--where we should\nleast expect them--into the mouth of the Son of Man[6].  That is to\nsay, it is His enemies on whom the judgements are imprecated.  There is\na wrath of the Lamb.  There is a divine sword of judgement which\nproceeds out of His mouth.  He, the administrator of the righteousness\nof God, {67} expects from His Father judgement on His enemies.  It is\nnot necessarily, as St. Paul here indicates, final judgement: the\njudgement upon the Jews was not yet that; but judgement of some\nsort--temporal or final--upon His wilful adversaries, the Son expects\nof the Father.  And we men, as we repeat these psalms, are, like the\nfirst Christians in face of the suicide of Judas, to identify ourselves\nwith the divine righteousness and accept the law of just retribution.\nThis is the deepest and truest sense in which we can still say the\nimprecatory psalms; and in these days of a philanthropy that often\nlacks the stern savour of righteousness, it is very necessary that we\nshould make this sense our own.\n\n\n\n[1] Three times--1 Sam. xii. 22, Ps. xciv. 14, xcv. 3 (in the\nGreek)--the promise occurs 'The Lord will not cast away His people.'\n\n[2] The vocation and election which made Israel the chosen people were\nabsolutely of God.  What distinguished the faithful remnant from the\nbulk of the nation was simply that they had not altogether failed in\nfaith, so that the unchanging election was not in their cases\npractically suspended, but God 'reserved them for Himself.'\n\n[3] St. Paul refers chiefly to Isa. xxix. 10--the description of a\nbesotted people whose prophets are eyes that cannot see, and their\nseers ears that cannot hear; so that the word of God has become as a\nsealed book; cf. also Isa. vi. 9.  But there is a similar passage in\nDeut. xxix. 4, which partly moulds his language, and supplies the words\n'unto this day.'\n\n[4] Rather, as margin, in Elijah, i.e. the passage of Scripture about\nElijah.\n\n[5] This--to recognize or mark out beforehand--is the meaning of divine\n'foreknowing' in St. Paul.  See vol. i. pp. 317 f.\n\n[6] Both in this passage and in Acts i. 20.\n\n\n\n\n{68}\n\nDIVISION IV.  Sec. 5[1].  CHAPTER XI. 13-36.\n\n_God's present purpose for the Jews through the Gentiles: and so for\nall humanity._\n\nSt. Paul would not have it supposed that, in his zeal for the recovery\nof Israel, he was proving faithless to his vocation as the apostle of\nthe Gentiles.  On the contrary, he explains (assuming the Roman\nChristians to be Gentiles in the mass) that he is, by this very zeal,\nfulfilling that vocation.  The conversion of the Gentiles was meant to\nreact as a stimulus on the Jews.  When St. Paul magnifies his Gentile\nministry, he does so always with the motive of stinging the jealousy of\nhis own people, and so bringing some of them to salvation.  How can\nsuch a consummation be too eagerly desired?  For if even so pitiable an\nevent as their rejection has yet, in God's providence, been overruled\nfor {69} a good end--the bringing back of the outside world into the\nfellowship of God[2]: can we doubt that so happy an event as their\nrecovery would be indeed (what Ezekiel saw in vision in the valley of\nthe dry bones) a veritable resurrection?  For the consecration of God\nis still upon them.  The holy (i.e. consecrated) people they still\nremain.  As the 'heave offering' of the 'first of the dough'[3]\nconsecrates the whole lump, so the first of the nation offered to\nGod--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--have consecrated the whole nation.  The\nholiness of the root of God's olive tree[4] has passed to the latest\nbranches.  It is quite true that some of these branches of the Jewish\nolive tree were broken off, and that the Gentiles were introduced in\ntheir place; like a wild olive grafted upon the root of a cultivated\nplant, and so sharing its rich sap.  But that--to let the metaphor\ncontinue--gives the wild olive no ground for an insolent contempt of\nthe branches which naturally belonged to the tree.  What advantage it\nnow has it wholly derives from that which it is {70} affecting to\ndespise.  It is the root that supports it, not it the root.  And are\nthe Gentiles disposed to argue that these rejected Jewish branches were\nbroken off in order that they might take their place; and that they,\nthe Gentiles, are thus plainly preferred by God to the Jews?  The\nanswer is plain.  Why were they broken off?  Because they would not\nmaintain the correspondence of faith with the purpose of God; and it is\nsimply by maintaining this attitude that the newly introduced Gentiles\ncan hope to retain their place.  They had better exhibit, not a\ngroundless pride, but a reasonable fear.  Is God likely to be more\nsparing towards them than towards His first chosen?  God has displayed\nbefore their eyes both His attributes of severity and goodness, and\nthey must take note of both.  At the present moment it is severity\ntowards Jews, goodness towards Gentiles.  Yes, goodness towards\nGentiles; but so long only as they abide faithfully in His goodness, no\nlonger.  When they fail of faithfulness, they too, like their Jewish\npredecessors, shall be cut off.  And, on the other hand, when those\nJews change their attitude, and their hardness melts and faith returns,\nthey shall be recovered and reingrafted into the old olive tree.  If\nGod {71} could graft into it branches cut out of an alien and inferior\nstock, how much more easily can He reingraft into it what is really\npart of its very self?\n\nHere then we have a real disclosure of a divine secret[5], to which the\nGentiles would do well to keep their eyes open, lest (like the Jews\nbefore them) they mistake for wisdom their own self-conceit.  The\nhardening of the Jews has been used by God as an opportunity for the\ngathering in of the full number of the nations of the earth; and that\nwith the further purpose that, when the nations are gathered in, Israel\nin all its completeness should be recovered too.  And so shall be\nfulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of a redeemer from Zion, who should restore\nIsrael, and of a new covenant with them, based on a fresh forgiveness\nof their sins[6].  Thus if we think of the actual relation of the Jews\nto the present preaching of the Gospel, we must think of them as God's\nenemies, and as having by their very enmity secured the Gentiles their\nopportunity; but if we think of them in relation {72} to God's eternal\nchoice, they still must appear as sharing the divine love which rests\non the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  God's gifts and vocation\ndo not admit of being repented of and recalled.  Thus we know what to\nexpect.  As the Gentiles passed out from disobedience under the divine\ncompassion through the opportunity afforded by the disobedience of the\nJews; so now the divine compassion which rests on the Gentiles is\nintended (by stimulating the Jews to recover their lost privileges) to\nprove the means of recovering them too out of their disobedience into\nthe shelter of the divine compassion which is the common heritage of\nall.  We see, in fact, all men in turn shut up in disobedience to God,\nas in a prison house: it is God who has so shut them up; but it is done\nin view of the largest and most compassionate purpose which can be even\nconceived.  It is done that (when men have become wearied of their own\nwilfulness, and have experienced their own need) the divine mercy may\nwelcome and embrace all alike at last.\n\nAnd if this is the purpose of God disclosed to us, how can we fail to\nadore the fathomless resourcefulness of His wisdom in determining how\nto act, and His skill in executing what He {73} has determined?  How\ncan we fail to recognize our utter incompetence to explore His\njudgement, or track out His ways?  Like inspired men of old[7] we must\nrecognize that the absolute initiative is His, and our only reasonable\nattitude the humblest correspondence.  Truly in counsel and operation\nwe have contributed to God nothing of our own: we have no claim with\nwhich to approach Him.  He is the unique source of whatever is, and the\nsole executor of whatever takes place, and the only end to which all\nthings tend: and to Him, therefore, alone all praise is due, and shall\nbe given.\n\n\nBut I speak to you that are Gentiles.  Inasmuch then as I am an apostle\nof Gentiles, I glorify my ministry: if by any means I may provoke to\njealousy _them that are_ my flesh, and may save some of them.  For if\nthe casting away of them _is_ the reconciling of the world, what\n_shall_ the receiving _of them be_, but life from the dead?  And if the\nfirstfruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root is holy, so are the\nbranches.  But if some of the branches were broken off, and thou, being\na wild olive, wast grafted in among them, and didst become partaker\nwith them of the root of the fatness of the olive tree; glory not over\nthe branches: but if thou gloriest, it is not thou that bearest the\nroot, but the root thee.  Thou wilt say then, Branches were broken off,\nthat I might be grafted in.  Well; by their unbelief they were broken\noff, and thou standest by thy faith.  Be not highminded, but fear: for\n{74} if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare\nthee.  Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that\nfell, severity; but toward thee, God's goodness, if thou continue in\nhis goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.  And they also, if\nthey continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is\nable to graft them in again.  For if thou wast cut out of that which is\nby nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a\ngood olive tree: how much more shall these, which are the natural\n_branches_, be grafted into their own olive tree?\n\nFor I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye\nbe wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen\nIsrael, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel\nshall be saved, even as it is written,\n\n  There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;\n  He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:\n  And this is my covenant unto them,\n  When I shall take away their sins.\n\nAs touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching\nthe election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake.  For the gifts\nand the calling of God are without repentance.  For as ye in time past\nwere disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their\ndisobedience, even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the\nmercy shewn to you they also may now obtain mercy.  For God hath shut\nup all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.\n\nO the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!\nhow unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out!\nFor who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his\ncounsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed\n{75} unto him again?  For of him, and through him, and unto him, are\nall things.  To him be the glory for ever.  Amen.\n\n\n1.  There is a true patriotism which must at times be content to wear\nthe guise of disloyalty; and not even Jeremiah 'weakening the hands of\nthe men of war[8]' in the conflict with the power of Babylon, while all\nthe time his very heart was bleeding for Jerusalem, presents a more\npathetic and moving picture of such patriotism than does St. Paul as he\nhere shows himself to us.  While he was shaking off the dust of his\nfeet, as he left the synagogues to turn to the Gentiles, while he was\nthrowing all his tremendous energy into the apostolate of the nations,\nand vindicating their cause, even to fierceness, against the narrowness\nof his own nation, all the time the thought which buoyed him up was\nthat when the catholic church had become an established fact--when it\nshould have become plain, even to Jewish eyes, that the elect people of\nGod is now a fraternity of all nations, and not their own race\nonly--then it could not fail to happen, that the members of the ancient\npeople, finding themselves in their turn 'alienated,' 'strangers,' and\n'far off,' while {76} they knew so well, and needed so deeply, the\nfellowship of the covenant, should be stimulated to resume their former\nprivileges.  Surely then at last Israel 'should remember her way and be\nashamed,' and 'receive' her Gentile 'sisters,' though they had been to\nher as 'Sodom and Samaria,' and though they were now given to her for\n'daughters, but not by her covenant'--not by any means on her own\nterms[9].  All the time that St. Paul is fighting Judaism and\nvindicating Catholicism, laying down the lines of the great church of\nthe nations, this is the vision that cheers him--an Israel, penitent,\nhumbled, worshipping the Christ whom she had crucified, and therefore\nwelcomed back again with the honour due to her great memories and her\ninextinguishable vocation.  But we notice by the way, as throwing an\nunmistakable light on the circumstances of Roman Christianity, that\nwhile St. Paul thus shows his own Jewish feeling, he speaks to the\nRoman Christian as in the mass Gentile[10].\n\n2.  If so miserable an event, one so revolting to the divine heart, as\nthe apostasy of Israel, had yet in the determinate counsel and\nforeknowledge of God been overruled so as to {77} become the occasion\nfor the calling of the Gentiles, it must needs be, St. Paul argues,\nthat an event so dear to the heart of God as the recovery of Israel,\nwould have a result even more blessed, nothing less than 'life from the\ndead.'  What does this last expression mean?  Does St. Paul mean that\nwhen once the chosen people was recovered into a really catholic\nchurch, there would be no further delay--the consummation would be\nreached, the resurrection of the dead which is to accompany the\n(second) coming of the Christ would take place at once?  This thought\nwould be very natural to St. Paul, and thoroughly agreeable to the old\nMessianic expectation; and it would give, as nothing else gives so\nwell, the needed climax to the sentence.  Moreover it cannot be said\nthat the idea of the resurrection was not intimately associated among\nChristians with the return of the Christ in glory.  But, on the other\nhand, nowhere else does St. Paul speak of 'the resurrection' so\nabsolutely and without explanation as the goal of all things; and, if\nhe had meant so to speak of it here, he would surely have said '_the_\nresurrection,' and not used the vaguer expression 'life from the dead.'\nAs he has used this we must interpret it in terms {78} of Ezekiel's\nvision[11]: the recovery of Israel will be nothing less than a case of\ndead men coming to life again, of dry bones revivified.  The only\ndrawback to this interpretation is--what need not trouble us much--the\nfailure of rhetorical climax.  This revival of dead Israel is hardly a\ngreater thing than the reconciliation of an alienated world.  And,\nthough it would improve the rhetorical climax to interpret the phrase\nas meaning that the whole catholic church would have new life put into\nit by Israel's recovery, and though we should expect this idea to prove\ntrue, yet I do not think it is natural to introduce it here.\n\n3.  St. Paul's language--'beloved for the fathers' sake,' 'if the root\nbe holy, so are the branches'--comes very close to the current Jewish\nlanguage about 'the merits of the fathers,' and yet is deeply\ndistinguished from it.  The Jews as represented in the Talmud--and the\nbelief goes back to St. Paul's time[12]--believed that no prayer was so\neffective as that which was offered in the name of 'the fathers.'\nThus: 'How many prayers did Elijah speak on Mount Carmel that fire\nmight fall from heaven, and he was not heard; but when he mentioned\n{79} the name of the dead, and called Jehovah the God of Abraham, Isaac\nand Jacob, then at once he was heard.  So was it in the case of Moses.\nWhen the Israelites had accomplished that bad work, Moses stood up and\nspoke for their justification forty days and forty nights, and was not\nheard.  But when he mentioned the dead, he was at once heard....\nTherefore as the living vine supports itself on a dead stock (i.e.\ngrows out of a stock dry and seemingly dead), so Israel lives and\nsupports itself on the fathers since they are dead[13].'  The\nindividual Israelite, moreover, could supply his own deficiencies in\nrighteousness out of the treasury of merits which belonged to him in\nvirtue of his descent from the common fathers of the race, or the holy\nprogenitors of his own family.  In other words the Israelites in\nvarious ways and senses depended for salvation on having 'Abraham to\ntheir father.'  And it has already appeared sufficiently how dangerous\nthis belief was; and how utterly St. Paul, like Ezekiel[14] and John\n{80} the Baptist before him, repudiated this idea of genealogical and\ntraditional merit as a ground of confidence before God.\n\nOn the other hand, this belief in the transference of merit was based\non a true idea of the organic unity of the race.  The Jewish race was\nbound up into one with its great progenitors; and it is these men who\nare its true representatives.  They show what their race can be and is\nmeant to be, and along what lines it is meant to move.  Their election\nand walk with God laid a consecration on all who came after them; as\nSt. Paul elsewhere says that the children of a Christian parent in a\nmixed marriage are holy, i.e. have a consecration laid upon them by\ntheir partly Christian parentage[15].  The patriarchs exhibit Israel as\nGod means it to be.  And God, so to speak, cannot forget that every\nIsraelite is a child of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that in their\nfaith and religion lies his possibility and his glory.\n\nThus stated, the idea of the 'communion of saints' in the Jewish race\nis nothing else than a ground of hope, and a stimulus to recovery.  And\nthe idea admits at once of being transferred to the catholic Israel, as\nin fact its Jewish {81} parody has, at certain periods, been only too\nfully and fatally transferred.  I say, the true idea admits of being\ntransferred.  We belong to the same body as the apostles and martyrs,\nthe virgins and saints, the Jewish patriarchs and prophets also.  Their\npossibilities are ours.  Their God is our God for ever and ever.  And\nGod looks on us as in one body with them.  We too are beloved for these\nour fathers' sakes.  And they too, we cannot doubt, are conscious of\nour fellowship with them, and if we are trying to live in the same\nspirit with them, we must believe, all the limitations of our knowledge\nnotwithstanding, that they are supporting and helping us, as in Christ\nour sympathetic advocates and allies.\n\n4.  The metaphor of the olive and the grafting is intelligible enough\nwithout explanation.  We know how often the olive and the vine are\ntaken in the Old Testament and in other Jewish writings--as in the\npassage just quoted from the Talmud--for a symbol of Israel; we must\nfrankly recognize that St. Paul, apparently in forgetfulness and not by\ndesign, accommodates the physical process of grafting to its spiritual\ncounterpart; for in physical fact, of course, the ingrafted shoot\n(which represents the Gentiles), {82} and not the stock upon which it\nis grafted (which represents the Jews), would determine the character\nand produce of the tree: but when this is once recognized it may be\nforgotten, and the metaphor is as intelligible to us as if the physical\nprocess of grafting were really as St. Paul represents it.\n\n5.  As we read the words, 'And so all Israel shall be saved,' we cannot\nhelp asking ourselves--Does St. Paul mean us to believe this of all\nIsraelites without exception, or even of Israel in general with an\nabsolute necessity?  I think the answer should be a negative in both\ncases[16].  Just above St. Paul says, looking at the matter from the\nside of Israel, 'They also, _if they continue not in unbelief_, shall\nbe grafted in.'  Here he is looking at the matter from the side of God.\nIt lies in the divine purpose that the establishment of the catholic\nchurch, and the experience of alienation on the part of the Jews,\nshould stimulate them to regain their ancient privileges on a new\nbasis; 'and so,' looking at the matter from the point of view of the\ndivine intention, 'all Israel shall be saved.'  Just below, from the\nsame point of view, it is stated to be God's purpose {83} 'to have\nmercy upon all men.'  But, in interpreting this latter passage, we are\ndoing violence to what St. Paul says elsewhere with emphatic\ndistinctness, if we imagine that he asserts that all individual men\nwithout exception shall ultimately attain the end of their being and\nthe fellowship of God.  In these passages, as elsewhere, St. Paul looks\nat things from two points of view, without attempting to present us\nwith a harmony of them.  From one point of view we have spread out\nbefore us the 'mystery,' or revealed secret of God, and discern the\npurpose of His love working on, and finding its opportunities even in\nthe gravest moral disasters.  From the other point of view we detect\nhuman wilfulness, able in a measure, but never completely or on the\nwhole, to baffle and thwart the divine purpose.  St. Paul, I say, is\ncontent to recognize both points of view, and not to hold them in\ncomplete combination.  He uses the perception of the divine purpose--in\nthis case, the recovery of the Jews--as a motive for hope and\nthankfulness and renewed energy; but he does not, apparently, ask\nhimself the metaphysical questions whether God foreknows how particular\nindividuals or groups of men will act, or, if we must say that God does\nso foreknow how each {84} man will act, how this is reconcilable with\nhis moral freedom.  He is content to adore the divine purpose, and rest\nupon it; and recognize, on the other hand, the thwarting power of human\nwilfulness.\n\nFrom the point of view of God's patiently loving purpose, then, a great\nand fresh opportunity is being prepared for the recovery of the whole\nof Israel, when 'the times of the Gentiles' are fulfilled and the\nChurch stands really catholic before their eyes.  Just in the same way,\nin the larger field of all mankind, the purpose of God is at work\nthrough all rejections, and all judgements of hardening, to convince\nall men of their need of God, and so prepare their hearts 'that he\nmight have mercy upon all.'  But from the other point of view God\nrespects human freedom.  Thus over against the divine purpose stands\nthe ambiguous human 'if'--'if they continue not in their unbelief.'\n\nThis ambiguous human element is a prominent feature in Old Testament\nprophecy, though there too the thwarting power of man's perverseness is\nlimited.  If not in one way then in another, if not through one set of\nagents then through others--on the whole the purpose of God finds its\nsure way to accomplishment.\n\n{85}\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\n_Retrospect over the argument_\n\nAnd now that we have given all the pains we can to entering into the\nspirit of these chapters, may we not say that they have become no\nlonger repellent but deeply attractive?  Where could we find a more\nliberating outlook over the wide purpose of God in redeeming the world?\nSin is a stern fact, and demands stern dealing to overcome it by moral\ndiscipline.  Men of all sorts must be brought to realize their need of\nGod, utterly to expel the false dream of independence, and humbly to\nwelcome the unmerited bounty of the divine 'mercy,' the free gift of\npardon and new life.  This then is the way in which the fundamental\npurpose of God for man shows itself in a world of sin; it is by a\ndiscipline preparing men to welcome a divine mercy of which they have\nlearnt to know their need.  'That he may have mercy upon all'--this is\nthe generous end upon which all the divine dealings with men converge.\nThe Jews by one kind of discipline while they still were standing\ntogether as the elect people of God, and by another when, having\nrejected the Christ and fallen out of their religious leadership, they\nwere to be stirred to {86} jealousy by the spectacle of a divine\nfellowship from which they were excluded: the Gentiles by a different\nsort of discipline, and each separate race by its own; nay more, every\nindividual, Jew and Greek, Englishman or Hindoo, by a distinctive\npersonal chastening, in as many ways as man is various and God is\nresourceful: all men are so to be dealt with as that all men shall be\nbrought to confess themselves to be as they are in God's sight, and\nsurrender themselves to Him to be refashioned after the divine image.\nThrough all national and personal vocations realized, by which human\ncharacter is educated: through all national and personal humiliations,\nwhich are divine judgements by which human character is corrected and\nmade docile: God's untiring patience and forbearance, in sternness and\nin love, works on to the one universal end--that He might have mercy\nupon all.  The uttermost and most pitiable collapse, even the imminence\nof death itself, may be, nay certainly in God's intention is, His\nremedy for human wilfulness: a means by which--\n\n  'God unmakes but to remake the soul\n  He else made first in vain, which must not be[17].'\n\n{87} --must not be, that is, so far as the resourcefulness of divine\nlove, going all lengths short of destroying the fundamental moral\nchoice of the soul, can avail to prevent it.  This teaching of St. Paul\nsuggests a wonderful way of reading human history, and inspires us with\nthe right sort of patience and hopefulness in our attitude towards the\nwider problems of missionary work and our own dealings with\nindividuals.  The races to whose conversion we would fain minister seem\nso immovable and so indifferent.  The men and women whom we would fain\nhelp seem so hardened or so weak.  But 'the gifts and callings of God'\nwithin them and about them, 'are without repentance.'  God's remedies\nfor them are not yet exhausted.  We therefore have a right to hope and\nlabour on, 'never despairing[18].'\n\nAnd where is a nobler presentation to be found than here of the idea of\ndivine election?  That in the great household of the world there are\nmagnificent and (comparatively, at least) ignominious vocations among\nraces and individuals; {88} that some men are born for the top, and\nother men for the bottom of society; that there are 'honourable' and\n'dishonourable' limbs in the body of humanity, the latter fulfilling\ntheir necessary function no less than the former, is an indisputable\nfact.  It is no use challenging it, any more than any other fundamental\nlaw of the universe.  And, if we can see why certain races and certain\nindividuals are fitted for certain tasks, yet on the whole we can\nadvance but a very little way in seeing the reason of human\ninequalities as in fact they exist.  All that lies in the inscrutable\nand free counsels of God, and the responsibility is--in spite of the\nmodifying effects of human sin--ultimately His[19].  But in St. Paul's\ntreatment of it, the recognition of the fact that God works universal\nends through selected races and individuals, is robbed of all that\nministers to pride and narrowness in the elect, or to hopelessness and\na sense of injustice in the rest.\n\nThe New Testament writers in general would teach us that with God is no\nrespect of persons; {89} so that the lowest vocation may result in the\nhighest glory, where it is faithfully fulfilled, and the highest\nvocation, misused, in the deepest degradation; but St. Paul in\nparticular makes us feel the humbling responsibility which attaches\nnecessarily to any state of election.  The Jews failed because they\nlacked the faith and docility which would have enabled them to\ncorrespond to God's larger leading.  The time came when God who had,\n'through the Jews, prepared the Christ for the world,' had also,\n'through the Gentiles, prepared the world for Christ'; but the Jews\nwere ready neither to welcome the Christ, nor to 'receive' the world.\nThus the richest ministry ever vouchsafed to a race was waiting for the\nJews, and they proved false to it, because they had turned their\nprivileges into an occasion for pride and selfishness, and would not\nlearn the new truth or rise to the new opportunity.\n\nHere is a serious warning to the 'elect' of every age.  How often has\nthe church at large, or a national church, refused the call to\nexpansion, and lost some rich part of its heritage because it was\nself-satisfied, and therefore blind?  How often does a 'good catholic'\nfail to recognize that he is utterly misusing the gifts of grace, {90}\nif his Catholicism does not mean a generous and self-sacrificing desire\nto win the lost and save the world?  How often has the profession of\nbeing 'saved' put an end to spiritual growth and the struggle with sin?\nHow many religious orders and societies have lived on the reputation of\nthe past, and appeared to fancy that the achievements of their\nfounders--'the merits of the fathers'--would justify the apathy and\ncarelessness of those who had inherited an honourable name?  Indeed, to\nwhatever we are elect--whether national, or ecclesiastical, or personal\nprivileges--the temptation dogs us to rest on our inherited merits and\nhave no open ear to the guiding voice of God, as it calls us to fresh\nventures and renewed sacrifices, like those which laid the basis of the\nposition of which we now make our empty or insolent boast.  But thus to\nevade the uncomfortable requirements of the present by an appeal to the\nachievements of the past--whether it be the past of catholic tradition\nor 'the Reformation settlement'--is to expose ourselves inevitably to\ndivine condemnation.\n\nThose who keep the open ear are the 'remnant' in every age and church\nand nation.  They are the men who refuse to 'make the word of God {91}\nof none effect,' because of the blinding, deadening force of social\ntradition.  They are alive and awake to 'buy up the opportunity,' as it\npresents itself.  And for such St. Paul's teaching, inherited from the\nprophets, of the function of the remnant is full of encouragement.  The\nBible is a book contemptuous of majorities.  The mass of men,\nconventional, easily satisfied, self-centred, accomplish nothing,\nredeem and regenerate nothing.  But those who have ears to hear have\nevery motive, though they be few in number, to live at the highest\nlevel possible, and believe to the full that the purpose of God can be\nrealized.  God's purpose can work, and has in history worked, through\nsmall minorities, through single individuals.  They are the true\nrepresentatives of their church, their nation, their class.  And when\nthe inner history of any epoch comes to be known, while the inert mass\nof people, 'important' or 'unimportant,' is lost in the dim background,\nthey will be seen distinctive in the foreground: the real movement of\nGod in history, the real witness of the truth, the real spiritual\nsuccession of the kingdom of God, will be seen to have been carried on\nthrough them for the enriching of the whole world.\n\nI would add two reflections on subordinate, {92} but still important\npoints.  It is the function of the catholic church to let its light so\nshine before men that it shall 'provoke to jealousy,' by the manifest\npresence of God in the midst of it, the ancient and now alienated\npeople, the Jews.  At the moment, with the anti-semite cry strong\nthroughout Europe, and on the morrow of the 'affaire Dreyfus,' these\nwords ring with a bitter irony.  And in our own East London how utterly\nunlikely it is that the spectacle of our Christianity should make the\nJews feel that Christian society cannot but be divine!  Indeed, the\nunfulfilled debt Christendom owes to the Jews is appalling.  That\nancient and indomitable race retains, with all its faults, its\nclose-knitting sense of brotherhood, its faith, its frugality, its\nindustry, its patience, its heroism.  We are meant to show it the\ngreater glories of the New Covenant, the splendour of the purity, the\nunworldliness, the expansiveness, the love of the brotherhood of\nChrist.  And we do show it--what?  Is there that in our common\nChristianity, as they see it, which should obviously make Judaism\nashamed of itself?  Could St. Paul, looking at our Christendom, have\nexpected 'all Israel to be saved' by the spectacle of a catholic\nchurch?  These are considerations {93} which indeed should drive us to\nbitter penitence and earnest prayer.\n\nFinally, before we leave these chapters, we shall do well to look\nsteadily at St. Paul's habit of mind in dealing with antithetic or\ncomplementary truths.  No one could believe with a more glorious\nconviction than St. Paul in the dominance of the purpose of God in the\nworld: in the certainty of the accomplishment of what God has\npredestined.  If the very rejection of the Christ by the Jews was\nturned into an opportunity for the conversion of the Gentiles, what\ncrime can be too great for the divine wisdom to overrule it for good?\nNo one, on the other hand, could realize more deeply the responsibility\nwhich lies upon men: their strange power to correspond with God, or\npartly thwart His purpose for them and through them.  My point is only\nthis: he is true to both sides of an antithesis, even though the exact\nrelationship and interworking of the twin truths is necessarily and\nfinally obscure.  He refuses to be one-sided at the requirement of an\nincomplete human logic.  It has been often pointed out, and in many\ndirections, how prone we all are to take up with one side of\ntruth--with predestination or free-will, with the divinity or the\nmanhood {94} of Christ, with the unity or the trinity of the Godhead,\nwith sacraments or conversion, with authority or personal judgement;\nand if we are intellectually disposed, we call our one-sidedness 'being\nlogical.'  But we had better let St. Paul teach us once for all that\nimpartiality is a greater thing than this cheap logic; even as Church\nhistory teaches us that a sharp-witted but one-sided zeal for truth is\none main cause of bitterness, narrowness, and schism.\n\n\n\n[1] I follow, by preference, the paragraphs of the R.V., unless there\nis very strong reason to the contrary.\n\n[2] Cf. 2 Cor. v. 19, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto\nHimself.'\n\n[3] Num. xv. 20, 21.\n\n[4] 'The Lord called thy name A green olive tree.'  Jer. xi. 16; Hos.\nxiv. 6.\n\n[5] On 'mystery,' see _Ephesians_, p. 73.  It means a divine secret\ndisclosed to the elect.\n\n[6] Isa. lix. 20, according to the Greek, and xxvii. 9.  Cf. Ezek.\nxxxvi. 25, 26.\n\n[7] Isa. xl. 13.  Cf. Job xxxviii. 4; xli. 11; Wisd. ix. 13.\n\n[8] Jer. xxxviii. 4.\n\n[9] Ezek. xvi. 61.\n\n[10] See above, vol. i. 3.\n\n[11] Ezek. xxxvii.\n\n[12] See my _Ephesians_, pp. 258 ff.\n\n[13] Quoted, with much other illustrative matter, by Weber, _l.c._, pp.\n293 ff.  The fancy is based on 1 Kings xix. 36; Exod. xxxii. 13.  Cf.\non Cant. i. 5, 'I am black but comely'--'The congregation of Israel\nspeaks: I am black through mine own works, but lovely through the works\nof my fathers.'\n\n[14] Ezek. xiv. 14.\n\n[15] 1 Cor. vii. 14.\n\n[16] 'All Israel,' in 1 Kings xii. 1, 2 Chron. xii. 1, Dan. ix. 11,\nmeans 'Israel in general.'\n\n[17] These words (which in their full sense seem to go beyond what we\nhave a right to say) occur in Browning's _Ring and the Book_.  It is\nthe Pope's final reflection, when he condemns Guido to death, that his\nexecution may be the one chance for his spiritual recovery--\n\n  'In the main criminal I see no chance\n  Except in such a suddenness of fate.'\n\n[18] Luke vi. 35, or 'despairing of no man,' marg. R.V.\n\n[19] We hold, therefore, with regard to the lots of men in this world,\nexactly the opposite of what Plato suggested under the impulse of the\ndoctrine of transmigration, 'It is the man's own choice, God is\nblameless.'\n\n\n\n\n{95}\n\nDIVISION V.  CHAPTERS XII-XV. 13.\n\n_Practical Exhortation._\n\nWe must almost all of us, in climbing some high hill, have experienced\nthe necessity for two distinct efforts, the second more or less\nunanticipated.  We started to climb to the apparent summit, only to\nfind, when we got there, that it was no real summit at all, but a\nprominent spur, and that a second climb was required of us before we\nwere really at the top.  An intellectual experience not unlike this is\nthe lot of the student of the Epistle to the Romans.  The apparent\nclimax of the epistle is the end of chapter viii, and the student at\nstarting expects his brain to be chiefly taxed in following the closely\nknit argument which is to lead him thither.  But he reaches it only to\nfind another like effort of mind required of him in grasping the\nmeaning of the section (chapters ix-xi) in which St. Paul is occupied\nin justifying God's dealings with the chosen people.  But now,\nintellectually speaking, his work is almost over.  {96} As the climber,\nseated on the summit of the hill when at last it is gained, lets his\neye range over a rich and wide prospect, and takes in its vastness and\nvariety, or traces below him the delightful descent: so it is with the\nreader of this epistle who has entered sincerely into the spirit of St.\nPaul.  His intellectual scruples as to the divine dealings have been\njust laid to rest; before that his mind had been convinced, and his\nheart and will attracted and won, by the unfolding of the divine\nrighteousness, that is to say of the free grace and love of God.  And\nnow, proportionate to the greatness of the effort by which this\nsatisfaction of intellect and heart and will has been won, is the joy\nof expansion which remains--the joy of the surrendered mind in\nappreciating all that is practically possible for it in the light of\nthe love of God.  'I will run the way of thy commandments, because thou\ndost enlarge my heart,' that is, expand it with a sense of liberty and\njoy[1].  'All things are ours,' if but once in completeness of\nself-surrendering faith 'we are Christ's' as assuredly 'Christ is\nGod's[2].'  'I can do all things in Christ that strengtheneth me[3].'\n\n\n\n[1] Ps. cxix. 32.  See Driver's _Parallel Psalter_, Oxford (1898).\n\n[2] 1 Cor. iii. 21-3.\n\n[3] Phil. iv. 13.\n\n\n\n\n{97}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. i. CHAPTER XII. 1-2.\n\n_Self-surrender in response to God._\n\nAnd first of all the general attitude of mind is defined, which it\nbefits us to adopt towards God as He has now revealed Himself to us.\nIt is the response of entire self-surrender--the response of sacrifice\nto sacrifice.  St. Paul 'beseeches,' or rather 'encourages,' or\n'summons' the Roman Christians, using for his motive power[1] all the\nrich store of divine compassions which he has just been occupied in\ndisclosing or explaining to them, to make the only response really\npossible to such an exhibition of divine love; and that is to present\nthemselves in sacrifice to God.  What God asks is not dead victims but\nliving men, in body as well as spirit consecrated to His service and\nrendered acceptable in His sight: and this sort of self-oblation, {98}\non the pattern of Christ, is the only reasonable sort of divine service\nfor man to offer.  The transitory world, to which such an ideal is\nquite alien, is indeed all around them, but they are not to suffer\nthemselves to be assimilated to its fleeting fashion.  Their whole\npoint of view is changed and become new; and this must result in so\nthorough a transformation of their old worldly ways of thinking that a\nnew inward light will shine in their hearts, and they will be able to\ndiscriminate and see what God's will is, and so to follow the way of\nperfection.\n\n\nI beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present\nyour bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, _which_ is\nyour reasonable service.  And be not fashioned according to this world:\nbut be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove\nwhat is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.\n\n\nThis short paragraph is full of meaning, and is profoundly\ncharacteristic of St. Paul in thought and language.\n\nThe 'therefore' is one of the great transitional 'therefores[2]' by\nwhich St. Paul shows his constant sense of the inter-connexion of\ndoctrine and life: the doctrine passing by a clear logic into the\npractical life, and the life drawing all its {99} practical motives\nfrom the realities disclosed in the doctrine.  It is truly nothing\nwhatever but shallowness and 'shortness of thought' which can suffer us\nto imagine that the Christian character--I do not say all morality, but\nthe Christian character--could long survive the Christian creed.\n\nAnd the character of this summary exhortation shows us that any idea of\na faith which stops short of moral identification with its object is\nutterly alien to St. Paul's mind.  Faith is no true Christian faith, if\nit is content to receive from the Father, or from Christ, a gift which\nleaves it still outside the life of God.  The faith which Christ\ninspires asks for and receives nothing less than real fellowship in His\ndivine and human life, and that life is, in its joys as well as its\nsorrows, a life of self-surrender, of sacrifice.  Thus the Christian\nonly welcomes the gift of pardon through Christ's sacrifice in order to\nbe admitted into the freedom of the dedicated life in Christ, which is\nthe life of sacrifice.  It is the sort of sacrifice (as St. Paul's\nlanguage indicates) which is as different as possible from any such\nasceticism as is prompted by contempt of the flesh or the body, or\nrefusal of joy, or love of death.  It is sacrifice which seeks to\ncultivate {100} into full vitality every faculty of body as well as of\nmind (and that in an active society or brotherhood), in order to\nconsecrate all we are or can be to the service of God, and so realize\nin conscious correspondence with the divine will the rational worship\nfor humanity.\n\nSt. Paul's words here about a 'living' as opposed to a bloody, and a\n'rational' as opposed to an animal sacrifice, may be the basis on which\nthe eucharist, the Christian worship 'in spirit and in truth,' was\noften called in early times the 'reasonable' and 'bloodless\nsacrifice[3].'  And whether this be the case or no, at any rate we must\nrelearn the lesson that St. Augustine is for ever insisting upon, that\nthe eucharistic sacrifice essentially involves and implies the offering\nof the Church as the body of Christ, {101} that is, the offering of\nourselves as members of the body; and we may feel profoundly thankful\nthat, in our service of Holy Communion, this truth has been restored to\nits proper prominence, after having been, in the pre-Reformation\nservice, almost ignored.  'And here we offer and present unto thee, O\nLord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and\nlively sacrifice unto thee.'  In this prayer is really the climax of\nour sacrificial worship[4].\n\nThe true service of God is intelligent correspondence with the divine\nwill--this is perfection; and to correspond with the divine will we\nmust be able to know it: and this is what we can do if we are true to\nthe principle of our new birth, and suffer it _radically and\npermanently to transform_ us and our point of view (for nothing less\nthan this is carried by St. Paul's expression rendered 'transform').\nNegatively, this means that we must maintain our separateness from the\nworldly world, to which we died at our baptism--the world of human\nsociety as it devotes itself to its business and its pleasures, {102}\nleaving God out of account[5].  For if the worldly world is suffered to\n_fashion us in accordance with its shallow and transitory show_ (this\nis the idea conveyed by the word rendered 'fashion'), we shall be\nblinded to what our regeneration ought to have made plain to us.\n\n\n\n[1] For the use of 'by,' cf. xv. 30; 1 Cor. i. 10 ('through' is the\nsame word); 2 Cor. x. 1.\n\n[2] See further, _Ephes._ pp. 172 ff.\n\n[3] It is more likely, however, that the phrases 'rational worship' and\n'bloodless sacrifice' had an earlier Jewish origin.  They occur in _The\nTestament of the XII Patriarchs_, which is apparently a Jewish document\nchristianized.  There the _angels_ are said (_Levi._ 3) to 'offer to\nthe Lord a rational odour of sweet savour and a bloodless offering.'\nPhilo also, as Mr. Conybeare points out to me, in several passages\ndescribes the true sacrifices as 'bloodless': and by bloodless\nsacrifices he means either the meal offerings as opposed to the animal\nsacrifices (_De Anim. Sacrif._ ed. Mangey ii. 250), or truly spiritual\nacts as opposed to merely outward (_De Ebreitate_, i. p. 370, cf. ii.\n254).  These two ideas run easily into one another, and the earliest\nuses of the expression 'bloodless sacrifice' for the eucharist have a\nsimilar ambiguity.\n\n[4] See further, p. 179.  I may be allowed to express the earnest\ndesire that we might have liberty in our Church to read _both_ of the\nPost-Communion Prayers, which seem supplementary rather than\nalternative to one another.\n\n[5] See _Ephes._ p. 92.\n\n\n\n\n{103}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER XII. 3-21.\n\n_The community spirit._\n\nAnd when St. Paul, justifying himself here, as before and later on, by\nthe special divine favour which has made him the apostle of the\nGentiles[1], proceeds to develop his exhortation, it appears that with\nhim, as with St. James[2], the form in which 'divine service' shows\nitself must be love of the brethren.  To be called into the body of\nChrist--the society which is bound into one by His life and spirit--is\nto be called to social service, that is, to live a community life, and\nto cultivate the virtues which make true community life possible and\nhealthy.  Of these the first is humility, which in this connexion means\nthe viewing oneself in all things as one truly is, as a part of a\nwhole.  Of the faith by which the whole body lives, a share, but only\n{104} a share, belongs to each member--a certain measure of faith--and\nhe must not strain beyond it.  But he is diligently to make the best of\nhis faculty, and do the work for which his special gift qualifies him,\nin due subordination to the welfare of the whole, whether it be\ninspired preaching, or ordinary teaching, or the distribution of alms,\nor presidency, or some other form of helping others which is his\nspecial function.  Besides humility there are other virtues which make\nthe life of a community healthy and happy, and St. Paul enumerates\nthem, as they occur to his mind, in no defined order or completeness.\nThere must be sincerity in love, that is in considering and seeking the\nreal interest of others; there must be the righteous severity which\nkeeps the moral atmosphere free from taint; there must be tenderness of\nfeeling, which makes the community a real family of brothers; and an\nabsence of all self-assertion, or desire for personal prominence; and\nthorough industry; and spiritual zeal; and devotion to God's service;\nand the cheerfulness which Christian hope inspires; and the ready\nendurance of affliction; and close application to prayer; and a love\nfor giving whenever fellow Christians need; and an eagerness to\nentertain them when they are {105} travelling--for 'the community'\nembraces, not one church only, but 'all the churches.'\n\nNay in a wider sense the community extends itself to all mankind, even\nthose who persecute[3] them.  According to his Lord's precepts, the\nChristian is only to bless his persecutors.  Generally he is to be, in\nthe deep, original sense, sympathetic with his fellow men everywhere in\ntheir joys and sorrows, and (to return to the Christian community) he\nis to seek to let it be pervaded by an impartial kindness; and, not\nthinking himself a superior person suited only for superior affairs, he\nis to let the current of ordinary human needs bear him along.  He is\nnot to set undue store on his own opinions[4]; he is utterly to banish\nthe spirit of retaliation; he is deliberately to plan so to live as\nthat his life shall prove, not a stumblingblock, but a moral attraction\nto men in general[5]; he is never to quarrel with any one if he can\npossibly help it; he is completely to suppress his resentment {106}\nwhen he is wronged, and simply to leave the matter to the wrath of God,\nas indeed the law would have him do[6]; so that, by his very meekness\nand returning good for evil, he may, according to the wise man's\nsaying, heap burning shame upon his enemy, like coals of fire[7].  Evil\nis all around the Christian, and it is a strong man armed; but the\nChristian has with him the forces of good which are yet stronger, and\nby no passive withdrawal, but by the active exercise of good, he is to\nwin the victory over evil.\n\n\nFor I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is\namong you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think;\nbut so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to\neach man a measure of faith.  For even as we have many members in one\nbody, and all the members have not the same office: so we, who are\nmany, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.\nAnd having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us,\nwhether prophecy, _let us prophesy_ according to the proportion of our\nfaith; or ministry, _let us give ourselves_ to our ministry; or he that\nteacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he\nthat giveth, _let him do it_ with liberality; he that ruleth, with\ndiligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.  Let love be\nwithout hypocrisy.  Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is\ngood.  In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another;\nin honour preferring one another; in diligence not slothful; {107}\nfervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in\ntribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer; communicating to the\nnecessities of the saints; given to hospitality.  Bless them that\npersecute you; bless, and curse not.  Rejoice with them that rejoice;\nweep with them that weep.  Be of the same mind one toward another.  Set\nnot your mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly.\nBe not wise in your own conceits.  Render to no man evil for evil.\nTake thought for things honourable in the sight of all men.  If it be\npossible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men.  Avenge\nnot yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is written,\nVengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.  But if\nthine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in\nso doing thou shall heap coals of fire upon his head.  Be not overcome\nof evil, but overcome evil with good.\n\n\n(1) It is the idea of corporate life which dominates all this\nexhortation.  No writing in the New Testament has done more than the\nEpistle to the Romans to strengthen the sense of spiritual\nindividuality, and to rouse the individual spirit to protest, as it\nprotested in Luther, against spiritual tyranny.  But it is a complete\nmistake to suppose that the epistle is individualistic in tendency.\nThe life into which the individual's faith in Jesus admits him is the\nlife of a community, and its virtues are the virtues of community life.\nThe strengthened individuality is to go to enrich an organized society.\n\n{108}\n\nThis is expressed in the familiar metaphor of the body which had been\nemployed in non-Christian thought before St. Paul identified it with\nhimself and Christianity by the vigorous and profound use which he made\nof it[8].  The Christian community is a body bound together in a common\nlife by a common inspiring presence and spirit.  The divine grace and\ngood favour of Christ shows itself in special 'gifts' (in the Greek\nthis word 'charisma' expresses a particular embodiment of the general\ngrace, 'charis,' of God); and no individual member is without his\nspecial endowment.  It is not a few officers of the community who are\ngifted, but all; and all are to co-operate in the common life and work.\nOf gifts there are various sorts which we hear of in the New Testament.\nThere are the official gifts, the result of what we call ordination, as\nthe gift which was 'in' Timothy 'by the laying on of hands.'  And those\namong the Christians at Rome, who 'presided' and 'ministered,' would\nhave been, we should suppose, official presbyters or 'bishops,' and\ndeacons.  But the Roman Christians hardly constituted yet an organized\nchurch, and we cannot tell whence such officers of {109} the community\nreceived their appointment.  There is no ground for a positive\nassertion of any kind[9].  Again we hear of special gifts, such as\npowers of healing, speaking with tongues and prophesying, which\nsometimes accompanied the bestowal of the Spirit, through the laying on\nof hands which was given to all.  And the gift of prophesying among the\nRoman Christians may have been a gift of this kind.  But St. Paul is\nperhaps writing with the circumstances of the Corinthian church, rather\nthan those of the Roman Christians, in his mind; and we can gather but\nlittle about the exact condition of things at the capital.  Once more,\nSt. Paul uses the word 'gifts' for more personal and moral endowments,\nas for the bent of mind which leads men, under divine guidance, towards\ncelibacy or marriage[10].  But in this place he is not distinguishing.\nHe is hardly speaking in view of any special circumstances at Rome.  He\nis but emphasizing the fact which is the basis of all the life of\nChristians everywhere--the fact that each individual member of the body\nhas a special gift, and a special function for the good of the whole\nbody, by which the gift is to express itself.  What every individual\nChristian has to do, {110} then, is to realize his own gift and\ncorrespond to it.  The gift involves a certain 'measure of faith.'  The\nfaith of each individual Christian is the same in its basis.  It holds\nhim in spiritual allegiance to the same Lord, and in confession of the\nsame elemental creed.  But, besides this, it involves a special\ninsight, which is the peculiar endowment of the individual.  There is\nsomething which each man can realize and impart, as no one else is\nqualified to do.  The Church is the poorer if he holds back or fails to\nstir up this gift of his own, and on the other hand he incurs the peril\nof presumption if he ventures beyond it.  Even the inspired man, the\nprophet, must prophesy within the limits of what his own special\nproportion of faith enables him to perceive and grasp[11], even though\nanother prophet with a larger faith might rightly say what he may not\nventure upon.  'Let each man be fully {111} persuaded in his own mind.'\nFor any assertion which goes beyond what the faith of the individual\nenables him to be convinced of, is for him 'sin.'  We greatly need this\nexhortation to-day.  The convictions of many are vague and uncertain,\nand their teaching without heart or force, because, like parrots, they\ncatch up and repeat what others may have insight enough to warrant\ntheir asserting, but they have not.  To correspond with one's own\npersonal gift of faith is to realize one's vocation; and, by the\ndevelopment of the individual points of view, inside the common\n'tradition,' the fullness and richness of the corporate faith is\nsecured.\n\nThe cohesion of the body lies in each one's realizing his own gift, and\nalso reverencing that of others.  Here is humility.  Humility is not\nself-contempt, or cringing to others.  To realize one's own gift, one's\nown relation to God, gives to each man a dignity, a power to stand\nupright and face the world.  The sovereign Master and Giver has given\nme my own life and my own gifts.  He is responsible for the existence\nwhich He gave me, and I am not to shame Him by shrinking from making\nthe best of it.  But also humility is, in all relations, truth about\nourselves.  It is truth about ourselves as regards God, who {112} is\nsimply the giver of whatever we have and are; and it is truth about\nourselves as regards our fellow men--our own gifts being justly\nappraised only when they are regarded as means of serving the body as a\nwhole, without any self-aggrandizement, with a due respect to the gifts\nof others, and even a positive will to let them have higher place than\nourselves.\n\nIndeed we shall do well to meditate deeply on this.  What good work is\nthere which is not in more or less continual danger of suffering, or\neven being abandoned, because fellow Christians, zealous fellow\nChristians, will plainly, and it must be wilfully, yield to the\nambition to be first: will not be content to be second or third: will\nnot do the unobtrusive work: will think 'How can I shine,' rather than\n'How can I serve'?  In fact, how very unwilling we are to recognize, in\nour ideals of education, and in our theory of grown life, that\nambition, in the strict sense of the word--the desire to obtain\ndistinction for ourselves, as distinct from the desire to serve--is not\na motive which Christianity can sanction, or from which it can hope for\na blessing.\n\nWe linger lovingly, wistfully, on the picture of the corporate life of\na Christian community.  Has it vanished from the earth, this real\nfraternal {113} living, 'high and low, rich and poor, one with\nanother,' each supplementing the deficiencies of the other, and\nreceiving of their fullness?  May we not do something more than we are\ndoing to realize it in our congregations or parishes?  Is nearly enough\nemphasis laid on the _social_ relationship of each congregation of\nfellow worshippers or each local church?\n\nDimly through the mist of ages in old churchwardens' accounts, in the\nrare instances where they have been preserved from days before the\nReformation, we discern what a really fraternal, self-governing and\nmutually co-operative community the mediaeval English parish was.  Let\nme extract a few sentences from the excellent preface[12] which Bishop\nHobhouse prefixed to an edition of the surviving _Churchwardens'\nAccounts_ of a number of Somersetshire parishes.\n\n'The (parish) community was completely organized with a constitution\nwhich recognized the rights of the whole and of every adult member to a\nvoice in self-government, but kept the self-governing community under a\nsystem of inspection and (if need should be) restraint from central\nauthority.'  'The whole adult population were accounted parishioners,\nand had an equal voice {114} when assembled for consultation under the\nrector.  Seeing that both sexes served the office of warden, there can\nbe no doubt that both had a vote.'\n\nThe strongly existing spirit of good will and pride in the parish\nchurch found all the necessary funds for the maintaining of the church\nand the services, and for the provision of often a sumptuous and rich\ntreasury of ornaments.  The needs of the Church were met generally by\nthe local industry of 'such as were wise-hearted'--builders,\ncarpenters, workers in gold and silver, bell-founders, embroiderers,\nwriters, illuminators, book-binders, and others.\n\nHard by the church the church-house was the centre of the popular\nrecreations of the holy day or holiday.\n\nThe parish elected and paid its own officers, except the rector, and\nthe affairs and ornaments of the church, even in part the arrangement\nof the services, were under the government, not of the rector, but of\nthe parish meeting, of which he was president, under the restraining\nhand of the rural dean and archdeacon.\n\nThe support of the poor or disabled was a wholly voluntary matter.\n'The brotherhood tie was so strongly realized by the community, that\n{115} the weaker ones were succoured by the stronger as out of a family\nstore.'\n\n'All the tendency of the feudal system, working through the machinery\nof the manorial court, was to _keep the people down_.  All the tendency\nof the parochial system, working through the parish council, holding\nits assemblies in the churches, where the people met on equal terms as\nchildren and servants of the living God, and members of one body in\nChrist Jesus, was to _lift the people up_.'  In these assemblies there\nwas no distinction between lord and vassal, high and low, rich and\npoor; in them the people learnt the worth of being free.  Here were the\nschools in which, in the slow course of centuries, they were\ndisciplined to self-help, self-reliance and self-respect[13].\n\nNo doubt these descriptions of mediaeval parish life represent an ideal\nvery imperfectly realized.  But is it not an ideal we need to recover?\nIs there not a call for Church reform, both moral and formal, to\nrestore to us the community life of our parishes, and fill St. Paul's\nlanguage again with its primary and natural meaning?\n\n\n\n[1] See i. 5, 11-15; xv. 15-17.\n\n[2] Jas. i. 17.\n\n[3] The word is the same as St. Paul has just used to describe the\neager 'pursuit' of opportunities of hospitality by the Christian.  He\n'pursues' opportunities of doing good, while he is himself 'pursued' by\nenemies to do him evil.\n\n[4] Cf. xi. 25, and Prov. iii. 7.\n\n[5] Prov. iii. 4 LXX.  'Provide things honourable in the sight of the\nLord and of man.'\n\n[6] Deut. xxxii. 35.\n\n[7] Prov. xxv. 21.\n\n[8] The truth, however, which underlies the metaphor of the body is, we\nmay say, equally present in all the New Testament writers.\n\n[9] See, however, p. 196.\n\n[10] 1 Cor. vii. 7.\n\n[11] Dr. Liddon, with many others, interprets 'according to the\nproportion of _the_ faith,' i.e. according to 'the majestic proportion\nof the (objective) faith.'  This is the characteristically Latin, as\nagainst the Greek, interpretation, and the Greek is certainly to be\npreferred, because 'according to the proportion of our faith' follows\nnaturally upon 'according as ... the measure of faith' just above;\nindeed 'faith' in this context can hardly have assigned to it without\nviolence the objective meaning which, however, in the context of the\nPastoral Epistles it no doubt frequently bears.  Cf. app. note A, p.\n205.\n\n[12] _Somersetshire Records_, vol. iv, 1890.\n\n[13] Dr. Jessop, 'Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage,'\n_Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1898, p. 55; cf. also Dom Gasquet on 'The\nLayman in the Mediaeval Period,' _Tablet_, Sept. 2, 1899.\n\n\n\n\n{116}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 3.  CHAPTER XIII. 1-7.\n\n_The Christians and the imperial power._\n\nIt is possible that the thought of the innocent victim of injustice and\nwrong waiting upon the divine wrath, brings to St. Paul's mind the idea\nof the State which exists to represent divine justice in the world, and\nminister divine wrath on behalf of the innocent.  But, whether this\nparticular connexion of thought was really in St. Paul's mind or no, at\nany rate the previous section has made it plain that the 'love of the\nbrethren' must extend itself to become a right relation to all men,\nwhether Christians or not[1].  In particular, therefore, the relation\nof the Christians to the imperial authority could not fail to be a\nmatter which required attention and apostolic counsel.  The Jews, whose\ntheocratic {117} principles made submission to government by 'the\nuncircumcised' at least a real abandonment of a religious ideal[2], had\nalways an instinctive tendency to rebellion; and the Christian church\nbuilt upon Judaism might easily have inherited this instinct.  The\ncatholic church of the new covenant, might have claimed to be a\ntheocracy like that of the old.  Especially at Rome, where the Jews\nwere a vast and formidable body who had recently given trouble and been\nexpelled[3], the attitude of the Christians, who were identified with\nthem, might easily be misunderstood.  Or on the other hand the Jews\nthemselves, at Rome as at Thessalonica[4], might represent the\nChristians as disloyal to Caesar.  Moreover, apart from all unjustified\nslanders, the spirit of the 'fifth monarchy men' has seldom been\naltogether absent from periods of Christian enthusiasm; and the\nrestless and undisciplined {118} tendencies at Thessalonica[5], which\nthe mistaken expectation of the immediate second coming of Christ had\nencouraged, were a sign that Christians might easily find it difficult\nto settle down as good citizens in the great empire of the world.\n\nSt. Paul therefore, here and elsewhere, would make it quite plain that\nthe catholic church, if it is like the ancient Israel, is like it only\nas it was in exile--when the children of Israel were bidden to be good\ncitizens of the Babylonian empire, and to seek the peace of the city\nwhither God had caused them to be carried away captive, and to pray\nunto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof they should have\npeace[6].  Thus the Church was not a theocracy, but a 'settlement of\nstrangers and exiles[7],' waiting for the visible establishment of the\nkingdom or city of God, and meanwhile maintaining a polity or ordered\nsocial life of their own, but on a voluntary and catholic (or\nnon-national) basis.  Therefore, so long as God maintains 'the present\nworld,' they must be good citizens of whatever earthly state they\nhappen to live under.  On this basis, then, St. Paul reminds each\nsingle person {119} of the duty of political loyalty.  The earthly\nstate is of God's establishing, as well as the kingdom of Christ, and\nfulfils a divine purpose with divine authority.  It exists to suppress\nmoral outrage and lawlessness[8], to maintain justice and right.  Its\nofficers are God's ministers (as truly as the officers of the Church,\nthough in a different order), and must be obeyed accordingly, under\nperil not only of civil punishment for disobedience, but under peril of\ndivine judgement also, and as a matter of conscience.  The good man,\nand therefore the good Christian, has nothing to fear from the empire\nor its officers.  And he will readily, and as a matter of conscience,\npay his tribute as a subject, and his taxes as a citizen, to the proper\nauthorities, and give to each imperial officer the respect which is his\ndue.\n\n\nLet every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no\npower but of God; and the _powers_ that be are ordained of God.\nTherefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of\nGod: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgement.\nFor rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil.  And\nwouldest thou have no fear of the power? do {120} that which is good,\nand thou shalt have praise from the same: for he is a minister of God\nto thee for good.  But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he\nbeareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger\nfor wrath to him that doeth evil.  Wherefore _ye_ must needs be in\nsubjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience\nsake.  For for this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers\nof God's service, attending continually upon this very thing.  Render\nto all their dues: tribute to whom tribute _is due_; custom to whom\ncustom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.\n\n\nOur Lord, by His whole bearing towards Jewish nationalism and by His\nclear prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as by His\nparticular injunction to 'render unto Caesar the things that were\nCaesar's,' had made it evident to His disciples that the sceptre had\ndeparted from Judah, and had determined the attitude of Christians\ntowards the empire.  They could not indeed be as other inhabitants of\nthe empire, for they were waiting, and praying, and working, for the\nvisible establishment of a city and kingdom of God on earth--little as\neither the 'times and seasons,' or the character and manner, of that\ncity and kingdom had been revealed to them.  Thus the Roman empire\ncould not but be in their eyes a kingdom of this world destined for\noverthrow.  But it was by the methods of meekness, and by purely\nspiritual weapons, that the kingdom of {121} God was to come, and the\ngreat overthrow, whatever it should prove to be, was to be effected.\nThis at least was certain; and meanwhile the Roman empire represented\nthe divine principle of authority and order, and must be obeyed.\n\nSt. Paul no doubt had, more than any other apostle, a real feeling for\nthe empire and the city of which he was a citizen.  Moreover, he saw in\nthe organization of the empire a great framework and vehicle for the\nestablishment and spread of the catholic church.  And hitherto\ncertainly (at least, since the fatal moment of Pilate's weakness) the\nChurch had continually experienced the assistance of the imperial\nauthorities.  It was a misused _spiritual_ authority, before which the\nprotest had to be made, 'We must obey God rather than man[9].'  It was\nthe Jewish authorities who persecuted the Church.  It was the Jewish\nking who put James to death.  At Paphos, Thessalonica, Corinth,\nEphesus, the imperial authorities had been more or less friendly, and\neven at Philippi they had been reduced to an attitude of apology by the\nbare mention of Roman citizenship.  St. Paul's experiences, therefore,\nhad prepared him to 'appeal unto Caesar,' and to expect justice {122}\nand freedom for himself and his cause.  Even the beginnings of the\nexperience of imperial hostility and persecution did not quash or even\nweaken this attitude in St. Peter[10].  St. Peter and St. Paul idealize\nthe empire almost as if it could do no wrong, and the righteous had\nnothing to fear from it.  Of course, when this expectation had been\nrudely shattered--when the imperial authority had come chiefly to mean\nthe persecution of the saints--an opposite sort of idealism takes\nplace, and Rome appears as the great 'beast' of violence in the\nApocalypse of John.  Both idealizations represent truth--the truth of\nwhat the State is meant to be on the one side, and of what it may\nbecome on the other.  But after considerable experience of persecution,\nClement of Rome is still full of admiration for the divine order of the\nimperial rule, and recognizes the duty of obedience to his 'rulers and\ngovernors upon earth,' side by side with the duty of obedience to\n'God's almighty and most excellent name'; and as it is God who has\ngiven the rulers their authority, he prays for grace to submit to them,\nand offers rich prayer for their welfare and that of the empire.  And\nthe spirit lived on in the Christian {123} church through all the\npersecutions, and the apologists for Christianity loved to protest\ntheir loyalty to the empire, and to think of their church as 'the soul\nof the world,' maintaining it by prayer and virtue in the midst of\nimpiety and corruption.\n\nIn England this passage has often been put to two conspicuously\nunjustifiable uses.  First, it was the stronghold of the maintainers of\n'the divine right of kings' and of 'passive obedience.'  In reality it\nasserts the divine right of civil authority, but not of any particular\nkind of civil authority.  Indeed the government of the empire was still\nnominally a republic in its fundamental forms, though it was becoming a\ndespotism in fact.  And supposing the senate and people had--as is of\ncourse conceivable--reasserted their authority over their 'emperors,'\nor military officers, the Christian doctrine of divine right would have\nafforded no guidance as to which of the claimants to authority had the\ndivine will on its side.  What is barely asserted is the divine right\nof the existing civil authority, democratic or regal.  And while our\npassage exalts the normal duty of obedience, it suggests no answer to\nthe question--Is there not a point where a government so manifestly\nfails to {124} maintain the divine order in the world, or to represent\nthe will of God and the best interests of the people, that it deserves\nto be put an end to?  At such a point Christianity can only serve to\nreinforce the natural instincts of justice and right.\n\nAnd again, the words, 'the powers that be are ordained of God:\ntherefore he that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of\nGod,' have often been used in England to justify a claim on behalf of\nthe State to coerce and govern the Church and the consciences of men in\nspiritual matters.  But such an idea is utterly alien to the mind of\nthe New Testament.  In the matters which concern our spiritual\nsalvation, the authority which is to discipline and control us is the\nbinding and loosing, absolving and retaining, authority which is\nentrusted not to the State, but to the Church.  Attempts are recorded\nin history on the part of the State to crush out the Church, and on the\npart of the Church to usurp the authority of the State and use its\nweapons.  Such attempts, we trust, belong to past history.  An attempt,\ntoo, specially identified with England, has been made to identify a\nnational Church and State as only different aspects of the same\nsociety, so that the government of the national Church can be more\n{125} or less fused in that of the State.  But whatever may be said of\nsuch an attempt in the past, in our modern England the plain facts of\nthe political and religious situation are flatly repugnant to it; and\nthere can evidently be no reasonable religious government in the Church\nof England till it is conducted again in obedience to the fundamental\nChristian principle that our national and local Church is part of a\ngreat catholic society, which Christ endowed with an independent\nspiritual authority, and a law and constitution and ministers of its\nown.  The State may need an established national church as much as ever\nto enable it to fulfil its highest functions, but any 'Establishment'\nin these days must be consistent with the fullest recognition of the\nspiritual and political liberties of those members of the State who\nbelong to other religious bodies, and also must be based upon\nrecognition that the Church and State are fundamentally distinct, and\nrelatively independent societies.\n\nBut it behoves us Churchmen, not only to assert the spiritual liberties\nof the Church, but also to realize a great deal more fully than we do,\nthe divine authority of the civil ministers and civil laws in their own\ndepartment.  The State {126} exists to embody and represent in the\nworld the divine justice, which is to be the basis of the government of\nmen.  Its ministers--magistrates, legislators, officers of justice--are\n'God's ministers': laws which are passed by the State in fulfilment of\nits divine mission--laws intended to maintain the health and prosperity\nof the people as a whole--have a divine sanction; and we Churchmen can\nonly be what the Church should be, 'the soul of the world,' if we make\nit a matter of conscience, a great deal more deliberately than it is at\npresent with most of us, to aid vigorously in the administration of the\ngood laws which already exist, national and municipal, and to promote\nintelligently and enthusiastically the purposes of civil government by\nhelping towards better laws; so that our government, as a whole, may\nbecome a continually completer image of the equitable and impartial\nrighteousness of God.\n\n\n\n[1] Cf. 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love,' i.e.\nlet the temper bred inside the closer bond of Christian fellowship\nextend itself universally.\n\n[2] Deut. xvii. 15, 'Thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, which\nis not thy brother.'\n\n[3] Acts xviii. 2.  'Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from\nRome,' cf. Suetonius, Claud. 25.  'The Jews who had been persistently\nbreaking into disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ?) he\nexpelled from Rome.'  We cannot certainly explain these words, but St.\nPaul knew all about the occurrence from Priscilla and Aquila, whom the\nexpulsion had brought across his path at Corinth.\n\n[4] Acts xvii. 7.\n\n[5] 1 Thess. iv. 11; v. 14; 2 Thess. iii. 6.\n\n[6] Jer. xxix. 7; cf. 1 Tim. ii. 2.\n\n[7] 1 Pet. i. 11.  The word for such a 'settlement of strangers,'\n_paroecia_, has become, by a suggestive history, our 'parish.'\n\n[8] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 6.  'That which restraineth' the outbreak of\nlawlessness is (almost certainly) the empire, and 'he that restraineth'\n(ver. 7) the emperor.\n\n[9] Acts v. 29.\n\n[10] 1 Pet. ii. 13-17.\n\n\n\n\n{127}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 4.  CHAPTER XIII. 8-10.\n\n_The summary debt._\n\nChristians are willingly to pay tribute and tax as a debt, a thing due\nin God's sight to His ministers.  But this obligation is a specimen of\ninnumerable obligations which we owe to our 'neighbours'--debts only\nlimited by human need.  And the Christian is to take a wide view of his\nobligations, and to let there be no legitimate claim upon him\nunfulfilled, no debt unpaid, except the one which a man ought always to\nbe paying and still to be owing, for it is infinite--the debt of love.\nHere, in loving each other man with the same real regard to his\npersonal interests as we devote to our own, is the satisfaction of the\nmoral law.  All the particular 'commandments'--those of the Second\nTable, and any other there may be--are comprehended in this one.  For\nlove can do no harm to any other, and can therefore break no\ncommandment.\n\n{128}\n\nOwe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his\nneighbour hath fulfilled the law.  For this, Thou shalt not commit\nadultery, Thou shall not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not\ncovet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this\nword, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  Love worketh\nno ill to his neighbour: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law.\n\n\nSt. Paul gives here a very noticeable expansion to the idea of not\nbeing in debt.  In its literal sense we have all of us a horror of it,\nat least in theory.\n\n  'No debtor's hands are clean\n  However white they be.'\n\nWe must both let that theoretic horror of debt dominate our practice in\nmoney matters, and also expand our idea of 'debts.'  According to\nChrist's teaching, the priest and Levite did not pay their debt to\ntheir Samaritan neighbour, because they thought him a stranger with no\nclaim on them.  Dives ignored his rich man's debt to Lazarus.  Of those\nwho are to appear on the left hand of Christ's judgement-seat, each\nwill be condemned because he never realized his debt to Christ in the\npersons of all those who had needs to which he might have ministered.\nSt. Paul, as an apostle, acknowledged his debt {129} to all the Gentile\nworld[1], and we members of a church, catholic in idea, but as yet so\nfar from catholic in fact--we Englishmen, members of an imperial and\nspreading race, responsible for the name of Christ all over the\nworld--have a portentous and lamentably unfulfilled debt to the races\nof Africa and India, and to the whole world.\n\nWe can all think of manifold debts--to the lonely whom we might visit,\nthe misunderstood whom we might sympathize with, the ignorant whom we\nmight teach, the weak and oppressed whom we might support and combine,\nthe sinful whom we might convert and establish in good living; so many\ndebts to family and friends; so many debts to Englishmen and fellow\nChristians, to Africans and Asiatics.  Is it not bewildering even to\nattempt to realize our debts?  And yet, let a man make a beginning, and\nall will be well.  Let him steadily set himself to behave towards those\nwhom he employs or those who employ him, towards his domestic servants\nor his masters, towards railway porters and shop assistants and others\nwho minister to his convenience, as being men and women with the same\nright to courteous treatment, and to a real opportunity to {130} make\nthe best of themselves, as he has himself; let him steadily refuse to\n'exploit' those immediately concerned with him, or treat them as merely\nmeans to his ends or instruments of his convenience; let him thus\nrealize his debts to his nearest 'neighbours,' and the whole idea of\nhumanity, of brotherhood, will be deepened and made real to him.\nServing the few, he will come to serve the many.  His prayers will go\nbefore his actions, and enlarge their scope.  He will get a habit of\nconsiderateness and thoughtfulness for others, as belonging to Christ,\nwhich will express itself habitually towards all, and especially the\nweak.  His 'neighbour' will come to mean, as in our Lord's parable and\nin St. Paul's expression in this place, any 'other man[2].'  And in our\ndays when the old personal relations of masters to workers have been so\nlargely merged in the relation of companies to unions or to men and\nwomen in masses, we shall never allow ourselves to forget that\ncombinations are combinations of individuals, and that neither\nindividual responsibility, nor responsibility for the individual, can\nbe obliterated by union or by numbers.\n\nSt. Paul, we notice, is here plainly {131} reproducing our Lord's\nsaying about love and the law[3]; and he would seem to have the\nteaching of the parable about the Good Samaritan in his mind; as in the\nprevious section the saying 'Render unto Caesar the things that are\nCaesar's,' and in the end of the preceding one (xii. 14, 19) the\nprohibition of vengeance and the injunction of love to enemies in the\nSermon on the Mount.  St. Paul's ethical teaching is in fact found to\nbe throughout based on our Lord's, whether our Lord's words were with\nhim in a written form or came to him simply in the oral tradition.\n\nAnd we do well to remember, as we read this familiar passage, that here\nis the centre and kernel of Christianity.  It is the revelation of a\nnew and universal duty, based on a revealed relationship of all men to\na common Father: the duty which lies upon all men of loving all men,\nbecause God loves all men with a father's love, or rather because God\nis love, and only by the life of love can we share His fellowship[4].\nThe {132} Christian 'enthusiasm for humanity' has thus its roots in a\ndisclosure of the character of God, and of His mind towards every man.\n\n\n\n[1] Rom. i. 14.\n\n[2] ver. 8, 'his neighbours': margin, 'the other.'\n\n[3] Matt. xxii. 40; cf. Gal. v. 14, and James ii. 8.\n\n[4] It has been commonly said that Christianity almost created a new\nword to express the new duty.  But this now appears not to be strictly\nthe case.  _Agape_, love, is a word unknown indeed to classical\nwriters, but it is found in the popular speech of Alexandria in the\nsecond century B.C.  See Deissmann, _Bibelstudien_ (Marburg, 1895), p.\n80.  (I was referred to this work by Dr. Bernard, _Pastoral Epistles_,\np. 24.)  Hence, i.e. from the popular speech of Greek Egypt, it passed\ninto the Greek Bible and so into Christianity.\n\n\n\n\n{133}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 5.  CHAPTER XIII. 11-14.\n\n_The approach of the day._\n\nAnd the motive for paying our debts, in this wide sense, is that we\nmust 'agree with our adversary quickly, while we are with him in the\nway,' for the day of account is at hand.  This worldly world lies\nasleep to the spiritual realities, but its short night--the time of\ndarkness--is nearly over.  The great deliverance is nearer to us than\nwhen we first became Christians.  The day of the Lord is almost\ndawning.  Let us see to it then that all that is only fit for the\ndarkness is stripped off us: that we are suitably equipped for the day,\nso that when it suddenly dawns it shall not put us to shame.  Sensual\nlusts and loveless passions indulged--gross sins, such as none of the\nChristian communities had quite got rid of--will appear improper\nconduct indeed when the sun rises.  And there is only one garment\nproper for the day; it is the garment of Christ's righteousness, or\nrather of Christ Himself, with whom we must invest {134} ourselves.  As\nfor our lower nature, it is to be our servant merely--not a master,\nwhose clamorous demands we are to study to satisfy.\n\n\n'And this, knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to\nawake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we\n_first_ believed.  The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: let\nus therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the\narmour of light.  Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in revelling\nand drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and\njealousy.  But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision\nfor the flesh, to _fulfil_ the lusts _thereof_.\n\n\nSt. Paul, no doubt, was still in eager expectation of the immediate\nsecond coming of Christ; and that expectation has proved mistaken.  Now\nour Lord plainly did not mean His disciples to know when His judgement\nwas to be made manifest, and St. Paul apparently recognized this[1], so\nthat his immediate anticipation of the end can never have been part of\nhis faith--never more than the reflection of the eager desire which\nfilled the heart of the Church.  On the other hand, our Lord did mean\nHis disciples to go on expecting Him.  Thus {135} St. Paul's admonition\nis as applicable now as ever.  The future of the world and of each\nnation and institution is precarious: things which seem solid and\nstrong may crumble and melt; how soon God is to make plain His\njudgements, in part or on the whole, we do not know; when each one of\nus is to pass by death to the great account we do not know.  There is\nno reasonable attitude towards the unknown coming of judgement except\nto be ready, and, though the darkness of the alienated and godless\nworld is all around us, to live as children of the light eagerly\nexpecting the dawning of the day[2].\n\nAnd to meet Christ we must be like Christ.  And to be like Christ we\nmust be in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, invested with His\nnew nature, fighting with the weapons of His victorious manhood.  The\n'evil' which is in ourselves, the unregulated flesh, we can only\n'overcome with good'--the good which is Jesus Himself: for it is no\nlonger we that live in our bare selves, but Christ that liveth in us.\nWe are baptized into Him, we possess His spirit, we eat His flesh and\ndrink His blood.  What remains is practically to clothe ourselves in\n{136} Him[3], appropriating and drawing out into ourselves by acts of\nour will His very present help in trouble.  So can we become like Him,\nand be fitted to see Him as He is[4].\n\nThis passage played a memorable part in St. Augustine's life; for when\nthe child's voice had bidden him 'open and read,' these were the words\nupon which he opened, and which sealed his conversion to the faith he\nserved so nobly--'not in rioting and drunkenness, ... but put ye on the\nLord Jesus Christ.'  'I had no wish,' he tells us, 'to read any\nfurther, nor was there any need.  For immediately at the end of this\nsentence, as if a light of certainty had been poured into my heart, all\nthe shadows of doubt were scattered[5].'\n\n\n\n[1] 1 Thess. v. 1: 'The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the\nnight.'  To know this is to have answer enough to questions about the\ntimes and seasons of the coming (v. 1).\n\n[2] It is interesting to compare this passage with the closely similar\none of Thess. v. 1-4.  Cf. Eph. v. 14 ff.; vi. 11.\n\n[3] Christ is 'put on' in baptism by all, Gal. iii. 27; but we all\nstill need to appropriate what we have received, and so 'put Him on'\nfor ourselves; cf. Eph. iv. 24; Col. iii. 12.\n\n[4] See app. note G, p. 238, for an admirable prayer by Jeremy Taylor\nbased on this thought.\n\n[5] _Conf._ viii. 12.\n\n\n\n\n{137}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 6.  CHAPTER XIV. 1-23.\n\n_Mutual toleration._\n\nSt. Paul's practical exhortations show no definite scheme, but flow out\nof one another in a natural sequence.  He began with the fundamental\nmoral disposition required by life in the Christian community (xii).\nHe proceeded to the relation between the Christian community and the\ngovernment of the world outside (xiii. 1-7).  This led him to lay brief\nand vigorous emphasis upon the universal range of Christian obligation\n(8-10), and the motive which is to make Christians zealous in rising to\nits fulfilment (11-14).  Now[1] he comes back to the difficulties which\narise among Christians--the difficulties in actually living together as\nmembers of the same community--difficulties on those small points of\nreligious observance which seem so unimportant {138} in the abstract,\nand which, in the actual experience of intercourse, prove to be so\nterribly important, and so easily give rise to a 'crisis in the\nChurch.'  How were the reasonably-minded majority[2], who thought that\nall kinds of food were morally indifferent, to behave towards the\nscrupulous who would only eat vegetables?  How were those Christians,\nwho recognized no distinction between one day and another, to behave\ntowards people who still held the mind of the writer of Ecclesiasticus,\nthat 'some days God had exalted and hallowed, and some he had made\nordinary days[3]'?\n\nThe problem of 'lawful meats' had often been before the early\nChristians.  It could not but have been so, seeing that those among\nthem, who had passed under Jewish influences had been brought under a\nsystem in which the distinction between clean and unclean meats had\nbeen rigorously observed.  True, our Lord had 'made all meats\nclean[4],' as He had opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.\nAnd the vision which reassured St. Peter on the {139} latter point, and\nforbade him 'to call any man common or unclean[5],' was expressed in a\nform which implied that the same principle would apply to food.  But\nthis fundamental catholic principle, in its sharp opposition to Jewish\nparticularism, was not accepted without a struggle at every point.  How\nhotly, for a time, the struggle raged, we dimly perceive in the\nnarrative of the Acts, and especially in St. Paul's Epistle to the\nGalatians[6].  But at the Jerusalem conference the fundamental catholic\nprinciple was unmistakably reaffirmed.  Gentiles were to be admitted to\nbrotherhood without circumcision or the keeping of the law.  Henceforth\nthen the reactionaries had no ground to stand on.  The law of clean and\nunclean meats had gone with the rest of the Jewish laws.  But while the\nGentiles won a complete victory on the main principle, they were\nrequired by the apostolic council to make concessions to Jewish habits\nin eating, such as could not affect the main principle.  They were to\neat meat killed in the Jewish manner, with the blood thoroughly drained\nout.  This in itself would probably exclude them from {140} the Gentile\nshambles, where also much of the meat which was for sale would have\nbeen offered to idols[7].  By the observance of such a concession,\nthen, Jew and Gentile were to live and eat together in peace.\n\nThe actual enactment of the Jerusalem conference had a limited\napplication to the Gentile Christians of Antioch and Syria and\nCilicia[8].  But the principle was a vital and universal one: to hold\nfirm the catholic or 'indifferentist' principle, but to make\nconcessions for love's sake and to facilitate mutual fellowship.  And\nthis same principle St. Paul soon had reason to apply again at Corinth.\nThere the problem was not--How could Jew and Gentile live and eat\ntogether? but How far could Gentiles, who had become Christians,\nassociate with Gentiles who were still adherents of the old religion,\nand eat their meats?  St. Paul, in answering this question for the\nCorinthians, strongly asserts the indifferentist principle--that meat\nof all kinds is God's gift and good, and that it can have contracted no\nmoral pollution through any idolatrous ceremony to which it has been\nsubjected.  No questions, therefore, are to be asked as to its\nantecedents.  In this physical sense meats which had been {141} offered\nto idols might be freely eaten.  But when such eating could do harm,\nwhen, for instance, one man points out to another that a particular\nportion of food has been part of a sacrifice, and it is plain he will\nbe scandalized by the eating of it, then the other must abstain[9],\nrestricting his own lawful liberty for charity and Christian\nbrotherhood's sake.\n\nNow St. Paul had heard of a new form of the old difficulty at Rome[10].\nThere was a Jewish asceticism--similar to what is found frequently\namong orientals, and was practised in Europe among the\nPythagoreans--which required men to abstain from animal food altogether\nand from wine.  Such was probably the rule of the Essenes in\nPalestine[11], as of the Therapeutae in Egypt, and such was, according\nto a very early authority, the rule of St. James, the Lord's brother.\nSuch a practice, then, had found favour among a minority of Christians\nat Rome.  And {142} St. Paul in the passage we are now to study, in\nprinciple plainly approves of the indifferentist practice of the\nmajority.  He knows, and _is persuaded in the Lord Jesus_, that nothing\nis unclean of itself.  It is, he implies, a weak and unduly scrupulous\nconscience which makes men vegetarians.  But, on the other hand, this\nweaker brother--this man with less clear perception of Christian\nprinciple in the matter--must in no way be alienated.  He is to be made\nwelcome.  There is no obligation upon him to eat meat.  God laid no\nsuch requirement upon him when he became a Christian.  'God received\nhim.'  The Church must continue the like liberality, and not even seek\nto pronounce judgement in the matter.  In life and death each man is\nChrist's servant, and is responsible to God for what he does or does\nnot do.  Therefore let each man simply be faithful to his own\nconscience before God in this matter, so that whatever he eats he can\n'say his grace,' or 'give thanks,' with a good conscience; and let him\nbe respectfully tolerant of his brother's practice--the strong not\ndespising the weak, nor the weak judging and condemning the strong.\n\nSo far for liberty.  But if, by using our liberty to eat meat, we are\nfound to run a risk of really {143} troubling our brother, or even\n(what is worse) leading him to act against his conscience and eat what\nhe feels he ought not[12], then we must abstain.  This becomes matter\nof character and peaceable fellowship and spiritual joy, and these are\nthe really material things in the kingdom of God.  Sooner than do\ninjury to this really divine cause, sooner than be a hindrance to his\nbrother, the Christian had better willingly abstain altogether from\nflesh and wine too.\n\nIn passing St. Paul had noticed another indifferent matter besides the\neating of meats.  It was the observance of days.  St. Paul undoubtedly\nconsidered that all distinction of high days and common days, all\ndistinction of the sabbath from other days, had been in principle\nabolished by Christianity.  For Gentile Christians, like the Galatians,\nto be 'observing (Jewish) days, and months, and seasons, and\nyears[13],' is to show a miserable disposition to fall back upon a\nsuperannuated legal idea of religion--to fall back from the religion of\nthe Spirit to the religion of the letter; from the substance to the\n{144} shadow.  For the Christian, in fundamental principle, there are\nno 'sacred days,' for all days are indifferently sacred.  As instructed\nChristian men could eat all meats, so they could regard all days as on\nthe same level in God's sight.  But all Christians had not the full\nperception of principle.  Among the Galatians, indeed, the tendency to\nobserve days is viewed more severely as part of a general reactionary\ntendency.  But at Rome it appears to have represented simply the\npractice of a harmless, if imperfectly enlightened, minority, and St.\nPaul merely ranks it among things indifferent, which are to be frankly\ntolerated.  It is to be purely left to the individual conscience.\n\nWith these preliminary explanations--which in this case will serve our\npurpose better than an analysis--we can read this section without\nexperiencing any great difficulty.\n\n\nBut him that is weak in faith receive ye, _yet_ not to doubtful\ndisputations[14].  One man hath faith to eat all things: but he that is\nweak eateth herbs.  Let not him that eateth set at nought him that\neateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth: for\nGod hath {145} received him.  Who art thou that judgest the servant of\nanother? to his own lord he standeth or falleth.  Yea, he shall be made\nto stand; for the Lord hath power to make him stand.  One man esteemeth\none day above another: another esteemeth every day _alike_.  Let each\nman be fully assured in his own mind.  He that regardeth the day,\nregardeth it unto the Lord: and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord,\nfor he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he\neateth not, and giveth God thanks.  For none of us liveth to himself,\nand none dieth to himself.  For whether we live, we live unto the Lord;\nor whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or\ndie, we are the Lord's.  For to this end Christ died, and lived\n_again_, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.  But\nthou, why dost thou judge thy brother? or thou again, why dost thou set\nat nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgement-seat\nof God.  For it is written,\n\n  As I live, saith the Lord, to me every knee shall bow,\n  And every tongue shall confess to God[15].\n\nSo then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.\n\nLet us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge ye this\nrather, that no man put a stumblingblock in his brother's way, or an\noccasion of falling.  I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that\nnothing is unclean of itself: save that to him who accounteth anything\nto be unclean, to him it is unclean.  For if because of meat thy\nbrother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love.  Destroy not with\nthy meat him for whom Christ died.  Let not then your good be evil\nspoken of: for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but\nrighteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.  For he that herein\n{146} serveth Christ is well-pleasing to God, and approved of men.  So\nthen let us follow after things which make for peace, and things\nwhereby we may edify one another.  Overthrow not for meat's sake the\nwork of God.  All things indeed are clean; howbeit it is evil for that\nman who eateth with offence.  It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink\nwine, nor _to do anything_ whereby thy brother stumbleth.  The faith\nwhich thou hast, have thou to thyself before God.  Happy is he that\njudgeth not himself in that which he approveth.  But he that doubteth\nis condemned if he eat, because _he eateth_ not of faith; and\nwhatsoever is not of faith is sin.\n\n\n1.  According to St. Paul a catholic church ought to mean a tolerant\nchurch, and a 'good catholic' a large-hearted Christian.  If men of all\nraces, with all sorts of traditional instincts and habits, were to live\ntogether in close social cohesion in the Christian community--and that\nwas essential--this must involve much mutual forbearance, much\nself-restraint, and deliberate toleration of differences[16].  St. Paul\nplainly not merely uses, but loves, the language of toleration.  'One\nman eateth, another man eateth not,' 'One man esteemeth one day above\nanother; another esteemeth every day alike.  Let each man be fully\nassured in his own mind,' 'Receive ye him ... not with a view to\ndecisions of disputed questions.'  Thoroughly in St. Paul's spirit is\n{147} the familiar saying 'in necessary things unity: in those less\nthan necessary liberty: in all things charity[17].'\n\nIn necessary things unity.  To St. Paul this principle meant a clear\nlimit to toleration.  There is a common teaching which lies at the\nbasis of the Church which must not be interfered with, which is\nstrictly necessary.  'Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach\nunto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him\nbe anathema[18].'  'How say some among you that there is no\nresurrection of the dead?  But if there is no resurrection of the dead,\nneither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised,\nthen is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain[19].'  Plainly\nthere is an essential fundamental creed which must not be trifled with.\nThe same is true about the moral law.  In respect of that also the\nChristian body must exercise upon its members the severity of\njudgement[20], that 'he that hath done' the evil deed 'might be taken\naway from among them,' or excommunicated.  Once more, we cannot\nconceive St. Paul making the necessity of visible unity a secondary\nconsideration[21], nor {148} the recognition of the authority of the\napostolic ministry which is to be the centre of unity, nor the\nsacraments, which again are not only means of divine grace to the\nindividual but instruments and bonds of unity.  Nor again would St.\nPaul undervalue the spirit of obedience to the rules of the Church.  He\nhates the spirit of heresy or separatism.  'We have no such custom,' he\nwould say to the recalcitrant, 'neither the churches of God[22].'  Once\nagain, St. Paul is prepared to let everything turn on even a small and\nunessential point, if that point has become the symbol of a vital\nprinciple for good or evil.  Thus, in itself, 'circumcision was\nnothing,' but when among the Galatians the practice of it came to mean\na practical Judaizing--a practical abandonment of the fundamental\nChristian principle--then 'Behold, I Paul say unto you, that, if ye\nreceive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing[23].'\n\nHere, then, are St. Paul's essentials, as to which he is intolerant--a\nfundamental tradition of faith and morals: the maintenance of the unity\nof the body by means of the apostolic stewardship, and through the 'one\nbaptism,' and the 'one loaf': and the spirit of due subordination {149}\nwhich is necessary to corporate life.  But in a spirit very unlike what\nhas at times become prevalent in the Church, he would clearly minimize\nthe action of authority, and leave large room for the free movement of\nconscience in Christians.  'Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be\nthus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this\nshall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have already attained, by\nthat same _rule_ let us walk[24].'\n\nSurely it is not very difficult to apply this spirit of St. Paul to our\nown time, in view of those subordinate points which excite such deep\nanimosities.  Men are by fundamental disposition, in great measure,\nritualist or puritan, ecclesiastically or individually minded,\ndisciplinarian or mystical.  And the Church should lay on all a certain\ncommon law of doctrine and morals and worship, sufficient to keep them\nall together in one body.  But, consistently with the coherence of the\nbody, why should there not be both an ornate and a bare ritual of\nworship, both societies of strict observance and individual freedom,\nand a wide field of open questions in which we do not even expect\n'decisions of doubts'?  Instead of my own reflections on this {150}\nsubject I will ask my readers' attention to the following extracts from\na suggestive book[25].\n\n'At all times there are those to whom what we may call the minor\nsymbolism of ritual is far from being as helpful as it is to others.\nThere is the greatest diversity here.  Modes of worship, which repel\none man as bleak and bare, attract another by their very simplicity.\nThe diversity is so natural and so obvious that it calls for neither\napology nor explanation; yet it is easily strained into a cause of\ndisruption.'\n\n'St. Paul is speaking of strong brethren and of weak; of those who need\nearthly guides and of those who do not; of those who attach high value\nto rules and forms and helps; and of those for whom ordinances have but\nlittle significance; of mystics and disciplinarians.'\n\n'Again, do we not still want a scientific theology?  I mean a theology\nwhich should do what any scientific treatise does.  It should lay down\nclearly and plainly the essential conditions of unity, and as regards\nthe unessential should content itself with saying, \"Here men differ;\none thinks thus, another thus.\" ... Ask yourself, What is it that will\ncarry me, being {151} what I am, to heaven?  What is it will carry my\nbrother here, who is so unlike me, to heaven?  What is it that will\ncarry us both to heaven?  There you will find the essential.'\n\nSt. Paul, we observe, lays great stress upon honesty of conscience.  He\nwishes men, even in small matters, seriously to cultivate a conscience\nof what is right, as men should do who even in small things expect a\ndivine judgement; and seriously also to cultivate the faculty of not\ninterfering with their brother's conscience.  ('Hast thou faith?  Have\nit to thyself.'  Do not parade your superior enlightenment.)  He is\ngreatly afraid of people leading others, or being led for mere\nagreement's sake, to do what their own conscience does not justify.\nAnd to do even a good thing because another does it whom we want to be\nlike, without ourselves feeling sure it is good, or with a doubtful\nconscience[26], this, St. Paul says, is sin.  This warning we really\nneed to lay to heart in our age, when fashion is such a very strong\nforce in religion.  This individual follows that individual and\n'supposes it must be all right, as every one seems to do it'; this\ncongregation follows that {152} congregation in adopting a popular\npractice, without its real basis and justification being considered.\nBut fashion and the influence of members is a great danger in religion.\n'Let every man be fully assured in his own mind.'  'Whatever is not of\nfaith is sin[27].'\n\n2.  Plainly, when St. Paul wrote his epistles, there was no observance\nof a Sabbath obligatory upon Christians[28].  But was there none of\nSunday?  'The first day of the week' was already 'the Lord's day,' so\nfar as that Christians who could not meet to 'break the bread' every\nday, met on that day specially to commemorate the death of their risen\nLord till He should come again[29].  It was already sufficiently\ndistinctive for St. Paul to name it as the appropriate day for laying\nby alms for the poor[30].  But these special observances of it were not\nobligatory.  Christians, when they could meet every day, might make\ntheir eucharist every day.  No such observance of Sunday was yet\nenjoined as was incompatible with regarding {153} all days of the week\nalike.  Nothing less than this can satisfy St. Paul's words.  In\nprinciple, as Bishop Lightfoot said[31], 'the kingdom of Christ has no\nsacred days or seasons, because every time alike is holy.'\n\nYet the bishop adds, 'appointed days are indispensable to her\nefficiency.'  This was soon found to be the case.  Probably before the\nend of the first century, the _Didache_ mentions not only the\nobservance of Sunday by the eucharistic service, but the observance\nalso of the Wednesday and Friday fasts.  Clement, about the same date,\nstrongly emphasizes the principle of order in place and time, as still\nbelonging to Christian worship.  'They, therefore, that make their\noffering at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed.'  The\nCanons of Hippolytus show that by the end of the second century there\nmust have been a great development of ecclesiastical regulations, so\nfar restraining the individual {154} liberty of the earliest days, and\nthat, as far as we know, without protest or sense of alarm.  Nor need\nSt. Paul have been in opposition to such church rules.  The spirit of\nregulation is strong in him[32].  On the other hand, there is no doubt\nthat the Church has not generally, one might say has hardly ever, been\nconscious, as St. Paul was, of the danger of religious regulations as\nsuch.  It is so much easier to keep certain rules than to acquire and\nmaintain a certain mind and spirit and principle of action.  In the\nhistory of the Church St. Paul, we feel, would very often have been\nsaying, 'I am afraid of you: the rules are good in themselves, but\nthere are dangers attaching to all rules of which you seem to be quite\nunconscious.  There is a lower sort of religion of forms and\nobservances, and you may fall back into it as easily as the Galatians.'\n\nBut after all, rules for living religiously, private or ecclesiastical,\nare, we all know, invaluable, and practically necessary.  A man or a\nchurch that should attempt to dispense with them would come to\ndisaster.  It is very difficult to fathom the depth of the mischief\nthat has come {155} about in the corporate social life of the Church of\nEngland, through the neglect of the surely moderate amount of\nregulation which was provided for us by the Prayer Book in the way of\nfestival and fast days and of daily service.  To keep a few simple,\nintelligible, religious rules all together gives almost as much as a\ncommon creed the feeling of social coherence.  Even the extremest\nPaulinist need have no fear so long as the ecclesiastical regulations\ndo not reach the point of becoming a burden--so long as no one could be\nin danger of priding himself on 'acquiring merit' by their mere\nobservance; and so long also as the principle is kept clearly in view\nthat 'the rules were made for man and not man for the rules.'  But I do\nnot think there can be any reasonable doubt that St. Paul would\nrepudiate the idea that any rules of worship and observance, other than\nthose which are necessarily involved in the administration of the\nsacraments, can obtain by prescription a right to permanence.  'They\nmay be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and\nmen's manners.'  They were made for man; and the Church or the\nchurches--with due regard to mutual fellowship--can modify or abolish\nthem.\n\n{156}\n\n3.  'Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God.'  'It is good not\nto eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother\nstumbleth.'  'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will\neat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble[33].'\nHere is the right principle of 'total abstinence' which does not deny\nthe legitimate use of what it yet permanently abandons for love's sake.\nSt. Paul would have Timothy use a little wine when it was for his\nhealth's sake, but when health was not in question, he would have all\nmen ask, not how much liberty in this or that is lawful for them, but\nhow they can avoid causing offence--how they can do most good.  This\nprinciple admits of application in many directions.  For instance, it\nmay be very hard to determine why certain minor forms of gambling are\nwrong, or whether they are positively wrong.  But St. Paul would have\nthe other question asked--Can it be denied that the best way to avoid\nleading my brother into one of the most common dangers of our time, is\nto keep altogether free from a habit which in any case can do no good\nto body or mind?\n\n{157}\n\n4.  Here, as in x. 7, St. Paul touches upon the descent into Hades, and\nindicates the purpose of it.  'For this end Christ died, that He might\nbe Lord of the dead.'  It might have been imagined that the dim realms\nof the dead were outside the jurisdiction of Christ--that the dead have\nno king--that the kingdom of redemption does not include them.  To\nobviate such an idea, to show the universality of His realm, Christ\nwent down among the dead.\n\n5.  In many places of the New Testament there is mention of the\nthanksgiving before food--the Christian's 'saying grace.'  Whether he\neat flesh or vegetables he 'giveth God thanks[34].'  And the word used\nis the word which, in its substantive form, is 'eucharist.'  And indeed\nthere is meaning in this.  The thankful reception by the Christian of\nthe ordinary bread of his daily life as coming from God, touched his\ncommon meals with something of the glory of divine communion; and the\neucharist in its turn {158} is the common blessing and breaking of the\nbread, raised by the Holy Spirit to a higher power and consecrated to\nbecome the vehicle of the bread of life[35].\n\n\n\n[1] Possibly his mind passes by a natural reaction from the thought of\nsensual licentiousness (xiii. 13) to that of unenlightened asceticism.\n\n[2] It is implied (xiv. 1; xv. 1 and 7) that the strong-minded brethren\nwere in the ascendant.  It is them chiefly to whom St. Paul addresses\nhimself.\n\n[3] Ecclus. xxxiii. 9.\n\n[4] Mark vii. 19.\n\n[5] Acts x. 28.\n\n[6] The matter of 'eating with the Gentiles' was prominent, cf. ii. 12.\n\n[7] 1 Cor. x. 25.\n\n[8] Acts xv. 23.\n\n[9] 1 Cor. viii, and x. 23-33.\n\n[10] The exact point--abstaining from all flesh meat--is so different\nfrom what had presented itself at Corinth that there must be a\nparticular reference to Roman circumstances, of which St. Paul was\nprobably informed by Priscilla and Aquila.\n\n[11] This seems to follow from Philo's statement that they did not make\nanimal sacrifices: and from Josephus' description of their way of life\nas Pythagorean.\n\n[12] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 10.\n\n[13] Gal. iv. 10; cf. Col. ii. 16, 17: 'Let no man therefore judge you\nin meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a\nsabbath day: which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is\nChrist's.'\n\n[14] Or _for decisions of doubts_, marg.  This, or something like this,\nis the right meaning; cf. Hebr. v. 14: 'for decision between good and\nevil.'  1 Cor. xii. 10: 'discernings of spirits,' i.e. decisions as to\ntheir true character.\n\n[15] From Isa. xlv. 33.\n\n[16] Cf. Ephes. pp. 271 f.\n\n[17] See app. note H, p. 239.\n\n[18] Gal. i. 8.\n\n[19] 1 Cor. xv. 12, 13.\n\n[20] 1 Cor. v. 6\n\n[21] Cf. Ephes. p. 126.\n\n[22] 1 Cor. xi. 16.\n\n[23] Gal. v. 2.\n\n[24] Phil. iii. 15, 16.\n\n[25] _Unity in Diversity_, by Charles Bigg, D.D. (Longmans, 1899), pp.\n84, 85, 95.\n\n[26] 'Whatever is not of faith is sin--that is whatever is against\nconscience.'  Aquinas, quoted in _S. and H. in loc._\n\n[27] Cf. xii. 6: 'Let us prophesy according to the proportion of our\nfaith.'\n\n[28] Col. ii. 16: 'Let no man judge you in respect of a sabbath day.'\n\n[29] This is probably implied in Acts xx. 7.\n\n[30] 1 Cor. xvi. 1.\n\n[31] _Philippians_, on 'the Christian Ministry,' p. 181.  The language\nin the immediate context I cannot make my own.  But the statement\nquoted is surely true.  And to this day I suppose, for those living in\nreligious communities and similar institutions, there is very little\npractical difference between Sundays and week-days.  This almost\ncomplete absence of distinction, however, must always come about, if it\nis to be legitimate, by raising the week-days to the spiritual level of\nthe Sundays, and not by the opposite process.\n\n[32] Especially in the Pastoral Epistles: but also in the epistles to\nthe Thessalonians and Corinthians.\n\n[33] 1 Cor. viii. 13.\n\n[34] Cf. 1 Cor. x. 30: 'Why am I evil spoken of for that for which I\ngive thanks.'  1 Tim. iv. 3, 4: 'Meats, which God created to be\nreceived with thanksgiving....  For every creature of God is good ...\nif it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified through the\nword of God and prayer.  Cf. Acts xxvii. 35: 'And when he had taken\nbread, he gave thanks to God in the presence of all: and he brake it,\nand began to eat.'\n\n[35] Matt. xxvi. 26; cf. Luke xxiv. 30.\n\n\n\n\n{159}\n\nDIVISION V.  Sec. 7.  CHAPTER XV. 1-13.\n\n_Unselfish forbearance and inclusiveness._\n\nIt was essential, as has been said, that men whose prejudices and\ninstincts were different should live in the same church and eat at the\nsame love feast.  This would require a large-hearted and unselfish\nself-control.  Formerly, as in Syria and Palestine, it was the Jews who\noccupied the position of vantage in the Christian communities, and were\nnot disposed to tolerate the ways of the Gentiles.  Now the tables are\nturned, and the Gentiles are in the majority.  The danger is now that\nthose whose instincts are Gentile should bear hardly upon the minority\nwhose prejudices are more or less Jewish.  Such St. Paul anticipates,\nor knows from Priscilla and Aquila, will be the danger among the Roman\nChristians.  Formerly Judaic narrowness had been a formidable danger.\nIt had developed a most perilous heresy, and St. Paul had dealt with it\nas a deadly poison.  Now what remained {160} of Jewish feeling was a\nweakness to be generously borne with.  It affords St. Paul an\nopportunity of falling back on the general principle, that the measure\nof Christian strength and full-grown manhood is the readiness to bear\nthe weaknesses of others.\n\nTo be told he must not use his normal liberty, must not eat his usual\nmeal or drink his usual cup of wine, because it might scandalize some\nChristian with the ascetic prejudices of an Essene, or even induce him\nto do the same against his own conscience--to be told this was annoying\nto a man who held the 'strong' Christian conviction that all kinds of\nfood were indifferently allowable.  The weak scruple of his brother\nChristian had become an annoying burden of self-denial and\nself-restraint laid on himself.  But this, St. Paul says, is how\nChristian strength--whether it be the moral strength of clear\nconvictions, or any other sort of faculty[1]--must show itself, in\nreadiness to suffer on account of other people's deficiencies, in not\nresenting the restraints they lay on us, in not expecting to do as we\nplease, but being {161} ready to accommodate ourselves to our\nneighbour's tastes where it is for his good.  That is what our great\nexample did.  Plainly His whole human life was putting Himself under\nthe restraints which our weaknesses and narrownesses and slownesses\nlaid on Him.  The righteous man in the psalm complains that he has to\nbear all the reproaches of God which impatient and rebellious\nIsraelites might utter; and that is the picture of Christ bearing our\ninfirmities.  (The reproaches which fell on Him were for the very\nlargeness of His love; 'because He received sinners,' and because He\nreceived them on the Sabbaths as well as on other days.  They were\nreproaches of God, like Jonah's, because He was too forbearing, too\ngenerous.)\n\nThen St. Paul pauses a moment to justify his use of the Psalms.  These\nancient scriptures did not fulfil their purpose in their own time, or\nfor the old covenant.  God intended them for Christians.  Their\nteaching is what they need.  The burdens of life are so many, its\nrequirements upon their patience so constant, that they find it hard to\nmaintain their hope.  Yet what is the Old Testament so full of?\nLessons of endurance and words of encouragement.  The encouragement and\nendurance then, which they gain from {162} the Old Testament, are to\nhelp them to maintain Christian hope.  They must not lose heart.  The\nend is a great one: it is the maintenance of a united spirit in the\nChurch, such as Christ can approve, such as can express itself in a\nreally unanimous adoration of Him whom Christ recognized as His God and\nFather.  May the God who inspires endurance and encouragement, grant\nthem not to fail in this great end!\n\nHere is the central requirement, then, which a catholic church lays on\nthem.  It is to be unselfishly inclusive, to welcome into fellowship\npeople who are not naturally to their taste.  Our Lord did not\nscrutinize us men, but received us, of whatever sort we were, that God\nmight be glorified in human brotherhood.  He vindicated the truth of\nGod by fulfilling the covenant of circumcision: first, to confirm the\npromises given to the fathers of Israel[2]; and, secondly, to enlarge\nthe compass of Israel, so that the Gentiles too might share its\nblessings, out of God's pure mercy apart from any promises.  And this\nalso--the fellowship of Jew and Gentile--was matter of ancient\nprediction by psalmist {163} and prophet.  The Roman Christians must\nnot therefore let themselves be discouraged because they have a\ndifficult task to fulfil.  And the apostle prays that God, the inspirer\nof hope, may fill them with such a rich sense of the blessings of\nbelieving in Him, that His Spirit, dwelling in them, may make hope to\nabound in their hearts.\n\n\nNow we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and\nnot to please ourselves.  Let each one of us please his neighbour for\nthat which is good, unto edifying.  For Christ also pleased not\nhimself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached\nthee fell upon me.  For whatsoever things were written aforetime were\nwritten for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of\nthe scriptures we might have hope.  Now the God of patience and of\ncomfort grant you to be of the same mind one with another according to\nChrist Jesus: that with one accord ye may with one mouth glorify the\nGod and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Wherefore receive ye one\nanother, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God.  For I\nsay that Christ hath been made a minister of the circumcision for the\ntruth of God, that he might confirm the promises _given_ unto the\nfathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it\nis written,\n\n  Therefore will I give praise unto thee among the Gentiles,\n  And sing unto thy name.\n\nAnd again he saith,\n\n  Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.\n\n{164}\n\nAnd again,\n\n  Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles;\n  And let all the peoples praise him.\n\nAnd again, Isaiah saith,\n\n  There shall be the root of Jesse,\n  And he that ariseth to rule over the Gentiles;\n  On him shall the Gentiles hope.\n\nNow the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that\nye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Ghost.\n\n\n1.  The connexion of thought in this passage is undoubtedly somewhat\nobscure.  But we know to-day, as well as ever, how difficult it is to\nbear with what is disagreeable to us in others, with what seem to us\ntheir deficiencies, without breaking real Christian brotherhood and\nco-operation.  And we know also that where we are possessed by an\nenthusiasm for brotherhood such as inspired the early Christians, the\ndivisions which small differences tend to produce are peculiarly\ndiscouraging, because they suggest that real brotherhood is impossible\nwhere men are so differently constituted.  We ought not, therefore, to\nbe at a loss to see why St. Paul should pass so easily from speaking of\ndivisions among Christians to speak of the grounds of patience and\nencouragement and hope.  The Christian hope is--in substantial\npart--the hope {165} of a really catholic church--a real brotherhood\namong people of different races, classes, tastes, and habits; and it is\nthis great hope which, even in St. Paul's day, was continually\nsuffering discouragement and continually needed reinforcing.  And the\nreinforcement must be 'supernatural.'  It is the divine love of the\nSpirit possessing us which alone can give it vigour.  When we are full\nof the divine consolation, then it is that we are least inclined to be\ncritical, and most disposed 'to receive one another, as Christ also\nreceived us, to the glory of God.'  For this is the thought we are to\nhave constantly in view, when we find people 'aggravating'--Christ\nreceived us, and made the best of those whom 'God gave him,' in spite\nof the infinite annoyances which we men, even the apostles, caused Him;\nHe dealt with us with infinite patience; He made us welcome; He\n'received us.'\n\nIn fact, the reason why the connexion of thought in this passage seems\nobscure to us, is probably in part that we have ceased to think of the\nreal fellowship of the naturally unlike--fellowship in all that makes\nup human life--as a necessary part of the Christian religion.  But to\nSt. Paul there was no Christianity without the reality of catholic\nbrotherhood.\n\n{166}\n\n2.  St. Paul here, as in writing to the Corinthians[3], shows himself\nspecially anxious that Gentile Christians should not think they could\nmake light of the Old Testament, or imagine that 'Christ was the end of\nthe law' in any such sense as would make the books of the old covenant\nsuperfluous under the new.  Their value, he insists, remains permanent.\nWhen he is writing to the Corinthians, he finds it in the moral\nwarnings--the warnings of divine judgement upon the chosen people--of\nwhich the history is full.  In this epistle he is thinking chiefly of\nthe lessons of 'endurance' and divine 'encouragements,' which histories\nand prophets provide.  In his epistle to Timothy[4] he thinks of the\nbooks as instruments by the use of which the minister or representative\nof God may become fully educated and equipped for all the purposes of\nmoral supervision and discipline.  They can thus educate and equip him,\nSt. Paul {167} teaches, because they were originally written under the\ninfluence of a divine inspiration; but it is only when faith has\nfinally attained its true object in Jesus Christ that their real\nmeaning becomes apparent.  And this last principle is implied in almost\nall his use of the Old Testament.\n\nIt is a comfort to perceive that none of the elements of permanent\nvalue, which St. Paul discerns in the Old Testament, are the least\nlikely to be affected by reasonable criticism of its documents.  Its\nhistory, critically read, does not become less truly pregnant with\nmoral warnings or lessons of endurance.  The encouragements of the\nprophets are in no respect reduced in force when they are brought into\nright relation to their own times.  The whole library of books is, at\nleast, as capable of educating and equipping the minister of Christ as\never.  Their inspiration is still obvious, when it is interpreted\ncandidly in view of all the facts.  And still they can only be rightly\nregarded when they are looked upon as various elements in a progress\nwhich has Christ for its goal.\n\nIn his use of particular passages in the Old Testament St. Paul here\nshows himself as free as ever, but with the same fundamental {168}\nadherence to the true tendency of the Old Testament as a whole.  In\nquoting Ps. lxix. 9 (ver. 3) he is seeing in the afflicted righteous\nman a type of Christ.  This psalm is constantly cited in the New\nTestament with the same reference[5].  It has been supposed[6] that St.\nPaul here adopts a cry addressed _to God_ by the righteous sufferer in\nthe psalm, and represents it as addressed by Christ _to his brother\nman_.  'The reproaches aimed at thee, my despised brother, have fallen\nupon me.'  But, as I have tried to show in the analysis above, this\nsupposition is not needed.  Christ is represented appealing to God for\nsuccour, because He utterly refuses to take the line of self-pleasing;\nbut bears all that men's impatience of God lays upon Him--all their\n'wild and weak complaining.'  And it is suggestive to remember, with\nOrigen, that it was Christ's 'receiving of sinners and eating with\nthem,' receiving them on the Sabbath as well as other days, that\nchiefly brought on Him the reproaches of men.  This was probably in St.\nPaul's mind.\n\nIn Ps. xviii. 49 (quoted ver. 9) the victorious {169} king declares\nthat he will praise God for his victory 'among the nations.'  St. Paul\napplies this to Christ, whose victory among the nations means their\nredemption--their becoming His people.\n\nIn Deut. xxxii. 43 (ver. 10) 'the nations are invited to congratulate\nIsrael on possessing a God like Jehovah, who will effectually take up\nHis people's cause.  Such an invitation addressed to the nations (cf.\nIsa. xlii. 10-12; Ps. xlvii. 2, lxvii. 1-7, &c.) involves implicitly\nthe prophetic truth that God's dealings with Israel have indirectly an\ninterest and importance for the world at large[7].'  This is still more\nplainly implied in Ps. cxvii. 1 (ver. 11).\n\nIsa. xi. 10 (ver. 12) is quoted from the Greek Bible, which is\nparaphrastic; but the Hebrew also asserts that the messianic king of\nDavid's line is to be a 'signal to the nations,' and that they are to\n'resort to him' as to an oracle or place of refuge[8].\n\n\n\n[1] We are all 'strong' in some respect, Origen remarks, so that 'ye\nthat are strong bear the infirmities of the weak' comes to be as broad\na precept as 'bear ye one another's burdens.'\n\n[2] Cf. Gal. iv. 4, 5: 'Christ, born of a woman, born under the law,\nthat he might redeem them which were under the law, that we (Jews and\nGentiles) might receive the adoption of sons.'\n\n[3] 1 Cor. x. ii: 'These things happened unto them (the Jews in the\nWilderness) by way of example; and they were written for our\nadmonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.'\n\n[4] 2 Tim. iii. 15-17.  'Sacred writings which are able to make thee\nwise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.  Every\nscripture inspired by God _is_ also profitable for teaching, for\nreproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness:\nthat the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every\ngood work.'\n\n[5] Cf. above, xi. 9; in the Gospels, Matt. xxvii. 34; John ii. 17;\nxix. 28; also Acts i. 20.\n\n[6] See _S. and H. in loc._\n\n[7] Driver, _in loc._\n\n[8] Cheyne, _in loc._\n\n\n\n\n{170}\n\nDIVISION VI.  CHAPTERS XV. 14-XVI. 27.\n\n_Conclusion._\n\nThe long letter is almost ended.  St. Paul has developed the meaning of\nthe revelation of the divine righteousness.  He has vindicated the ways\nof God to the Jews.  He has drawn out sufficiently the moral\nconclusions from God's mercy to mankind.  Now he has only to secure\nagain his good terms with the Roman Christians--which he does with the\nsame tact and the same anxiety as at the beginning[1],--to explain his\nmovements, to send his greetings to individuals, and to bid farewell.\n\n\n\n[1] Vol. i. p. 53.\n\n\n\n\n{171}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 1.  CHAPTER XV. 14-33.\n\n_His excuse for writing and his hope of coming._\n\nSt. Paul is very anxious not to be understood as if, while giving the\nChristians at Rome these exhortations which we have just been reading,\nhe stood in any doubt himself of their goodness of heart and full grasp\nof Christian principles, or of their fitness to admonish one another.\nHe has only been bold to put them in mind of what they already knew,\nbecause of the priestly commission on behalf of his Lord towards all\nthe Gentiles, which the divine grace has bestowed upon him as apostle\nof the Gentiles.  The gospel entrusted to him requires him as a priest\nto prepare and offer sacrifice; and the sacrifice which he is to\nprepare, which the consecration of the indwelling Spirit alone can make\nacceptable, is that of the whole Gentile world.  The extent to which\nthis great charge laid upon him has been fulfilled, gives him good\nreason for {172} boasting as he stands before God--not in himself, but\nin Christ Jesus.  His work has been a pioneer's work.  He has made it\nhis ambition purely to lay foundations.  Taking words of Isaiah[1] for\nhis motto, he had resolved to go nowhere where any other had been\nbefore him to make Christ known.  But in that free and open area of a\nyet unevangelized world, Christ had worked through him to bring the\nGentiles to His obedience, and had accompanied his preaching with\nevidences of miraculous power and with the strong manifestations of the\nSpirit.  So that in the result the work of proclaiming the gospel had\nbeen accomplished, starting from Jerusalem, in an extending circuit[2]\nor irregular progress, as far as Illyria.\n\nThis world-wide mission would give St. Paul his title to visit Rome[3].\nBut its very greatness has hitherto hindered him.  Now however he is\nhoping to satisfy the desire that has so long possessed him, and to pay\nthem a visit of some length on his way to Spain.  That is to say, he\nhopes to come to them when the task is over {173} which is immediately\noccupying him.  The good will of the churches in Macedonia and Achaia\nhas shown itself in a collection of money for the poor Christians at\nJerusalem.  This is really the payment of a debt to those to whom they\nowe their fellowship in Christ's salvation.  When then St. Paul has\nhanded over this collection, and secured to its recipients this fruit\nof his mission, he hopes to pass to Spain by way of Rome; and again, as\nin his introduction[4], he expresses his confidence that at Rome, as\nelsewhere, the fullness of the rich gifts of Christ will accompany his\ncoming.\n\nMeanwhile he makes his urgent request, by their allegiance to Christ\nand their fellowship in the spirit of love, that they will join with\nhim in wrestling with God in prayer for the success of his present\nundertaking--that he may escape the danger to which he is exposed from\nthe hostility of the unbelieving Jews, and that the gift, as ministered\nby him, may not prove unacceptable to the Jerusalem church; so that he\nmay get happily to Rome and find repose there with them.  And he prays\nfor the blessing of the God of peace upon all of them.\n\n{174}\n\nAnd I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye yourselves\nare full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish\none another.  But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as\nputting you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given\nme of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the\nGentiles, ministering[5] the gospel of God, that the offering up of the\nGentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.\nI have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to\nGod.  For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which\nChrist wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word\nand deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy\nGhost; so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I\nhave fully preached the gospel of Christ; yea, making it my aim so to\npreach the gospel, not where Christ was _already_ named, that I might\nnot build upon another man's foundation; but, as it is written,\n\n  They shall see, to whom no tidings of him came,\n  And they who have not heard shall understand.\n\nWherefore also I was hindered these many times from coming to you: but\nnow, having no more any place in these regions, and having these many\nyears a longing to come unto you, whensoever I go unto Spain (for I\nhope to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward\nby you, if first in some measure I shall have been satisfied with your\ncompany)--but now, _I say_, I go unto Jerusalem, ministering unto the\nsaints.  For it hath been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia to\nmake a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at\nJerusalem.  Yea, it hath been their good pleasure; and their debtors\nthey are.  For if the Gentiles have been {175} made partakers of their\nspiritual things, they owe it _to them_ also to minister unto them in\ncarnal things.  When therefore I have accomplished this, and have\nsealed to them this fruit, I will go on by you unto Spain.  And I know\nthat, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing\nof Christ.\n\nNow I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love\nof the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God\nfor me; that I may be delivered from them that are disobedient in\nJudaea, and _that_ my ministration which _I have_ for Jerusalem may be\nacceptable to the saints; that I may come unto you in joy through the\nwill of God, and together with you find rest.  Now the God of peace be\nwith you all.  Amen.\n\n\n1.  St. Paul has a habit of representing those he writes to in the best\nlight[6].  But the words 'full of goodness,' 'filled with all\nknowledge,' 'able to admonish,' are no idle compliments.  It is not too\nmuch to suggest that St. Paul, as he sees the high part which the\nchurch of the capital must play in the world, perceives also, in what\nhe hears of the Roman Christians, evidences of the spirit which will\nenable them to fulfil it.  And history verifies the apostle's\nanticipation.  The letter of the Roman church to the Corinthians, which\npasses under Clement's name, and was written some forty years after\n{176} this letter of St. Paul's, is the very embodiment of the spirit\nof goodness, knowledge, and power to admonish.  The princely generosity\nof the Roman church in all directions was proverbial in the second\ncentury[7].  If it did not become as distinguished as Alexandria in\ntheological science, it did become a chief centre of theological\northodoxy and government.  And the repeated evidences we gain that\nrigorists, from Hippolytus to Novatian, were so dissatisfied with the\npolicy of the Roman bishops as to separate themselves from their\ncommunion, give us good reason to believe that the internal policy of\nthis church was, within just limits, liberal and tolerant.\n\n2.  St. Paul here describes his apostolic commission in priestly\nlanguage.  'The sacrificial terminology is far more marked in the\noriginal than it can be in a translation[8].'  The word for 'minister\nof Christ Jesus' is a technical word for priest in the Greek Old\nTestament[9].  The word translated 'ministering' means 'offering\nsacrifice.'  (That which St. Paul describes {177} himself as offering\nin sacrifice is not the gospel, as our translation might imply: the\ngospel assigns the sphere of the sacrifice[10], but the sacrifice he\nhas to offer is that of the Gentile world, in Christ, consecrated to be\na fit sacrifice by the Spirit.)  The phrase also, 'in things pertaining\nto God' (cf. Hebr. ii. 17), is appropriate to the priest as he stands\nbefore God.  'But this is all symbolical language,' it is said.  That\ndepends on what we take as the standard of reality in the sacrificing\npriesthood.  If Christ is the standard of priesthood, and His method of\nmaking sacrifice the standard method, then St. Paul's account of his\npriestliness is not appreciably metaphorical, except so far as metaphor\nbelongs to all earthly expressions of heavenly realities; it is rather\ntrue to say that the Jewish or heathen priest, with his material\nvictims, was but the dim shadow of a true priest.\n\nThe point is that the true Christian idea of sacrifice makes the\nsubstance of it to be always persons returning to God the life He gave\nthem.  If we must offer sacrifices of money and fruits of the earth,\nthat is because we cannot offer ourselves without our bodies[11], or\nour bodies {178} without the material supplies on which they depend.\n'All things come of God, and of His own do we give Him.'  And all our\nlabour and prayer for others must be an offering of them, or a\npreparation to offer them[12], to God; which again is only our\nassisting them to offer themselves.  And all this offering in sacrifice\nof ourselves and others is rendered possible by the one effectual\nsacrifice, through which alone we and all men have access to the\nFather.  It takes place 'in Christ Jesus,' who, 'through eternal Spirit\noffered _himself_ without spot to God.'  There, at the head of all, is\nthe sacrifice of the person, and that person the Son of Man, who can\ntake up into His very life and sacrifice even all mankind.  Throughout\nit is a sacrifice of persons, or of things only as appertaining to\npersons.  This is the fundamental Christian idea, and this at the\nbottom necessarily forbids us to separate the thing offered from the\nperson offering, the victim from the priest.  The priest is the victim,\nfor what he offers is himself.\n\nIt is this idea of sacrifice which is realized in the eucharist.  The\neucharist is the central sacrifice of the Christian body.  It is to\nstart {179} with a presentation of material things, bread and wine of\nthe fruits of the earth, with alms and other offerings it may be: and\nthese oblations are accompanied with prayers and symbolic rites.  But\nall is done that both by word and act the One Sacrifice may be\ncommemorated and pleaded.  The outward rite but finds its meaning and\njustification in that--the sacrifice of the Person.  Again we can only\ntake part in it with any spiritual reality by becoming ourselves\nsharers of His sacrifice--ourselves the sacrifice we offer.  'And\nhere,' we cry, 'we offer and present unto Thee ourselves.'  We men, St.\nAugustine does not scruple to say, are the body of Christ, which is\noffered in that sacrifice[13].  And a quite new light is shed on\nintercessory prayer, in the eucharist and in the rest of life, when we\nview it as St. Paul would have us view it, as a presenting in sacrifice\nbefore God those for whom we pray, according to the true idea of them\nwhich the sanctification of the Spirit would make possible and actual.\nAnd a quite new light is shed upon all work for others, when we regard\nit as the preparing of such a sacrifice for the Holy Spirit to\nconsecrate.\n\nFrom a different point of view St. Paul's {180} conception of his\nmission as the priest of the Gentile world, might well suggest\nreflections to the Church of England.  If a Christian nation in the\nprovidence of God is to overrun the world and possess the nations not\nyet Christian, it goes with a mission entrusted to it by God.  Its\nmission may be expressed, according to St. Paul's idea, as that of\nevangelizing the world, but also as that of preparing the heathen\nnations to be offered to God.  It is the return of all humanity to\nHimself that God desires, and we are to be the ministers of this\nperfected offering.  It strikes us with profound humiliation to realize\nhow 'far fetched' St. Paul's idea would appear to-day to the mass of\nour nation, which, more than any other, is called by circumstances to\nan apostolate of the world.\n\n3.  St. Paul speaks, here and in many places elsewhere, of his grounds\nfor 'glorying,' or rather 'boasting[14],' in what Christ has wrought\nthrough him, and of his 'being ambitious' to preach only where no one\nhad been before him[15].  And in reading such passages the question\n{181} sometimes arises in Christian minds--was there, after all, a\nstrain of egotism unsubdued in St. Paul's character?  Now no doubt,\nunlike other apostles whose writings remain in the New Testament, St.\nPaul had that sort of passionately personal and individual nature which\neasily passes into spiritual egotism.  This at least is discernible in\nhis epistles.  It is also true that the necessity which lay so long\nupon him of vindicating his own apostolic authority, makes it necessary\nfor him at times to talk about himself and his experiences and his\npersonal methods in a way that to some minds suggests egotism; and\nthere is no obligation upon us to maintain that St. Paul was perfect.\nBut we only understand these passages aright when we remember that\nthere runs through them all a conscious irony.  The basis of St. Paul's\nwhole theology was the denial of any possible ground for a man to boast\nin himself.  'Where is boasting? it is excluded.'  'He that boasteth,\nlet him boast in the Lord.'  It is Christ who 'leads St. Paul in' His\n'triumph.'  What he boasts of is not his own, but Christ's.  Of course,\nthis sort of language very easily admits of self-deception.  St. Paul\nshows himself conscious of its danger[16].  But there can {182} be no\nquestion of the vehement sincerity of St. Paul in repudiating any\nhomage to himself which seemed to put him in the place of Christ, or to\nsubstitute the teacher for his message[17].  And where his personal\ngifts of intellect might most easily have shone, he had determined to\nabjure all 'the wisdom of men' in the method of his preaching[18].  It\nis remarkable again that as soon as ever the real peril from Judaism\nwas over in the Church, St. Paul drops his anti-Judaistic polemic, and\nall that brings the personal element into prominence.  He is absolutely\nfree from the charge of pursuing his advantage so as to magnify a\npersonal victory.  The more thoroughly we grow to know St. Paul, the\nmore, I think, we feel that his profession is true that he will 'boast'\nonly 'in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ'; and that truly the world,\nwith all its personal ambitions, had been for him nailed to the cross\nand killed[19].\n\nBut what exactly was it that St. Paul had to 'boast' that Christ had\nwrought through him?\n\nHe had, he says, accomplished the preaching of the gospel in an\nirregular circuit from Jerusalem to Illyria.  After he had made a\nbeginning of Christian preaching at Damascus, he {183} had, in fact,\nshared the apostolic preaching at Jerusalem (Acts ix. 29), but his own\nspecial work began at Tarsus, or rather at Antioch.  After that he had\n'fulfilled the proclamation of the gospel,' so far, that is to say, as\nit belonged to the apostolic office, by founding churches in a\ngradually enlarging circuit, especially in the chief centres, as the\nnarrative of the Acts shows us, till travelling by the Egnatian way he\nwould have come within sight of the Illyrian mountains at\nThessalonica[20].  He may even have entered Illyria when the Acts\nvaguely describes him as going to Macedonia and then 'passing through\nthose parts[21]'; but the expression in this epistle does not require\nthis.  It is sufficient that the border of Illyria, through which the\nEgnatian way led to Rome, had been so far his nearest point to the\ncapital.\n\nSt. Paul certainly implies that Rome was included in his province of\nwork, and that he owed them a yet unpaid debt[22].  This must surely\nmean, according to St. Paul's principle, that no other of the greater\napostles had yet evangelized them or founded the church there[23].\n{184} Rome was no other man's foundation.  But none the less, the\nelements of a church had collected there.  The gospel was being\npreached there by 'apostles' from among his own circle.  And St. Paul,\nfor this reason, does not contemplate any permanent stay with the\nRomans, but regards Rome only as a place where he can rest and refresh\nhimself, as well as supply deficiencies in the spiritual equipment of\nthe church there, before he passes further west to the untouched region\nof Spain.  St. Paul, we see plainly enough, had no power to foresee the\nfuture.  But after the long residence at Rome during his first\ncaptivity, which he did not the least anticipate, did he, we ask,\nactually get to Spain?  There is certainly no good reason to say he did\nnot, for his movements are, in the main, unknown to us in the last\nperiod of his life; and on the other hand in Clement's letter to the\nCorinthians, written within the first century, he is said to have\npassed before his martyrdom to 'the limits of the west'--the extreme\nwest--which is certainly most naturally interpreted of Spain[24].\n\n4.  St. Paul speaks of having wrought 'signs and wonders.'  The two\nwords are habitually {185} combined in the New Testament.  The word\n'wonders' describes the miraculous and astonishing character of the\nevents, while 'signs' indicates that moral witness and significance\nwhich distinguishes Christian miracles from vulgar portents.  We read\nof St. Paul working miracles in the Acts.  What he says here, and\nelsewhere[25], implies that they were frequently worked, and especially\nat Corinth, where no such events are recorded in the history.  What it\nis important for us to recognize is, that St. Paul so plainly and\nrepeatedly appeals, in the face of those who could bear witness, to the\nfact that he himself had power given to him to work miracles, as if it\nwere indisputable.\n\n5.  St. Paul tells us that he had it specially laid upon him by the\napostles of the circumcision that he was to 'remember the poor,' i.e.\nthe poor Christians at Jerusalem; where poverty was specially rife,\nbecause, as we should gather, the wealthier Jews had held aloof from\nChristianity[26].  And this, he adds, was the very thing he himself was\nzealous to do[27].  How much it was in his mind, both the Acts and his\nown epistles bear witness.  We hear much in {186} the epistles to the\nCorinthians[28] of the collection made in the churches of Macedonia and\nAchaia.  Not only was this expression of Gentile good will intended to\nconciliate the half-alienated and suspicious Jewish Christians of\nJerusalem, but the acceptance of the gift at St. Paul's hands, as the\nfruit of his own labour, was to diminish their suspicion of himself.\nSt. Paul was at pains to prevent any suspicion attaching to his\nadministration of this bounty, and at every point we perceive how much\ntrouble he took about the matter.  But, hopeful and zealous as he was\nabout this work of charity, he did not underrate its dangers.  His\nurgent request for the Roman Christians' prayers in this passage, and\nhis readiness to meet his death, if need be, at Jerusalem, as expressed\nin the narrative of the Acts, show us that he knew the danger he was\nincurring from the fierce hostility of the Jerusalem Jews.\n\n6.  This passage about the collection[29], coupled with the allusion to\nCenchreae, the port of Corinth, at the beginning of the next chapter,\nand the allusion to the Corinthian Gaius as St. Paul's host[30], enable\nus to fix the occasion of {187} the writing of this epistle exactly at\nthe moment recorded in Acts xx. 3--the end of his three months'\nresidence in Greece.  We also gather from the Acts[31], as well as from\nthis epistle, that it was his intention at that period, when he had\npaid his visit to Jerusalem, to go to Rome.  Once more we know from the\nActs[32] that Sosipater and Timothy were with him at this point, and\nthey join in the greetings of the epistle[33].  So that all the\nindications taken together fix with wonderful accuracy the exact point\nwhen the epistle was written[34].\n\n7.  We do well to note the word used by St. Paul in asking the Roman\nChristians' prayers.  He begs them to 'strive together' with him in\ntheir prayers.  This word is a derivative of that which describes our\nLord's 'agony' in prayer; and Origen's comment upon it is this: 'Hardly\nany one can pray without some idle and alien thought coming into his\nmind, and leading off and interrupting the intended direction of his\nmind to God....  And, therefore, prayer is a great striving (_agon_,\nwrestling), so that the fixed direction of the soul towards God may\n{188} be maintained, in spite of the enemies which interfere and seek\nto scatter the sense of prayer; so that one who prays may justly say,\nwith St. Paul, \"I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course.\"'\n\n\n\n[1] lii. 15, according to the Greek.\n\n[2] 'Round about,' literally 'in a circle,' as opposed to a straight\ncourse; cf. Mark vi. 6, 'round about the villages.'\n\n[3] Cf. i. 13-16.\n\n[4] i. 11.\n\n[5] '_Ministering in sacrifice_' marg.\n\n[6] Cf. the opening of 1 Cor., a letter which contains on the whole so\nmuch blame.\n\n[7] Euseb. _H. E._ iv. 23.\n\n[8] Sanday, _Conception of Priesthood_ (Longmans), p. 89.\n\n[9] Like 'agape' (see above, p. 131, n. 2) so this word 'liturgus'\nappears to have been adopted in its priestly sense by the Greek\ntranslators of the Bible from the current Greek of Alexandria, cf.\nDeissmann, _Bibelstudien_, pp. 137 f.\n\n[10] Cf. _S. and H. in loc._  'Making sacrifice as a priest under the\nGospel.'\n\n[11] Cf. xii. x.\n\n[12] Col. i. 28: 'Teaching every man ... that we may present every\nman,' i.e. present him in sacrifice.\n\n[13] For his repeated statements see app. note I. p. 240.\n\n[14] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 15; xv. 31; 2 Cor. i. 14; vii. 4, 14; viii. 24; ix.\n3; x. 8, 13; xi. 10, 16-xii. 9; Phil. ii. 16; 1 Thess. ii. 19.  These\npassages are worth examining in connexion.\n\n[15] Cf. 2 Cor. x. 15, 16.\n\n[16] See 2 Cor. xi. 17; xii. 1.\n\n[17] 1 Cor. i. 13 ff.\n\n[18] 1 Cor. ii. 1-5.\n\n[19] Gal. vi. 14.\n\n[20] See _S. and H. in loc._\n\n[21] Acts xx. 2.\n\n[22] i. 14, 15.\n\n[23] Not Peter therefore, though he was doubtless afterwards at Rome.\n\n[24] _Ad Cor._ 5, see Lightfoot _in loc._\n\n[25] 2 Cor. xii. 13.\n\n[26] Cf. Jas. ii. 5, 6.\n\n[27] Gal. ii. 10.\n\n[28] 1 Cor. xvi. 1-4; 2 Cor. viii, ix.\n\n[29] Cf. Acts xxiv. 17.\n\n[30] Rom. xvi. 23.  Cf. 1 Cor. i. 14, which shows us a Gaius at\nCorinth.  Cf. the allusion to Erastus in the same verse, coupled with 2\nTim. iv. 20.\n\n[31] Acts xix. 21.\n\n[32] Acts xx. 4.\n\n[33] Rom. xvi. 21.\n\n[34] See further, on the purpose of the epistle, vol. i. pp. 4 ff.\n\n\n\n\n{189}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 2.  CHAPTER XVI. 1-2.\n\n_A commendation._\n\nOne strong link among Christians of different towns, constraining them\nto remember that their brotherhood did not depend on physical nearness\nor personal acquaintance, lay in the 'letters of commendation' from one\nlocal church to another, which the Christian traveller carried with\nhim.  And here we have an example of such a letter given by St. Paul to\nthe Corinthian deaconess, Phoebe, who was probably the bearer of his\nletter to the Roman Christians.\n\n\nI commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant[1] of the church\nthat is at Cenchreae: that ye receive her in the Lord, worthily of the\nsaints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever matter she may have need\nof you: for she herself also hath been a succourer of many, and of mine\nown self.\n\n\nThe necessity of instructing women inquirers or catechumens, visiting\nthem at their homes, preparing them for baptism, attending to their\n{190} unclothing and reclothing at the font, and looking after them\nafterwards, forced upon the Church the institution of an order of\ndeaconesses, side by side with the deacons and for similar purposes.\nPliny found these female officers among the Christians in Bithynia in\nthe beginning of the second century, and there is no reason why already\nat this date the female order should not have existed[2].  'Here we\nlearn,' says Origen on this passage, 'that female ministers are\nrecognized in the Church.'\n\nPhoebe is also called a succourer or 'patroness' of Christians,\nincluding St. Paul, which suggests a woman of wealth and influence.  If\nso, we have here an example of wealth, not asserting itself but\ndevoting itself to service, according to our Lord's teaching: 'He that\nis greatest among you shall be your servant (deacon)'; 'I am in the\nmidst of you as he that serveth (the deacon)[3].'  Such an one is to be\nreceived in a manner 'worthy of the saints,' the consecrated family of\nGod, and to be allowed to lack nothing which the Roman Christians can\nsupply her with.\n\n\n\n[1] Or _deaconess_, as margin.\n\n[2] See on this subject Deaconess Cecilia Robinson, _The Ministry of\nDeaconesses_ (Methuen, 1898), and Bernard, _Pastoral Epistles_, p. 59.\nWith Lightfoot, he interprets 1 Tim. iii. 11 of deaconesses rather than\nof the wives of the deacons.\n\n[3] Matt, xxiii. 11; Luke xxii. 37.\n\n\n\n\n{191}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 3.  CHAPTER XVI. 3-16.\n\n_Personal greetings._\n\nThen St. Paul, according to his custom, winds up his epistle with\npersonal greetings.  In this case they are sent to the individual\nChristians, among those who from various parts of the empire had\ncollected at Rome, whose names his memory--so retentive of personal\nrelationships--enabled him to recall.\n\n\nSalute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who for my\nlife laid down their own necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but\nalso all the churches of the Gentiles: and _salute_ the church that is\nin their house.  Salute Epaenetus my beloved, who is the firstfruits of\nAsia unto Christ.  Salute Mary, who bestowed much labour on you.\nSalute Andronicus and Junias[1], my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners,\nwho are of note among the apostles, who also have been in Christ before\nme.  Salute Ampliatus my beloved in the Lord.  Salute Urbanus our\nfellow-worker in Christ, and Stachys my beloved.  Salute Apelles the\napproved in Christ.  Salute them which are {192} of the _household_ of\nAristobulus.  Salute Herodion my kinsman.  Salute them of the\n_household_ of Narcissus, which are in the Lord.  Salute Tryphaena and\nTryphosa, who labour in the Lord.  Salute Persis the beloved, which\nlaboured much in the Lord.  Salute Rufus the chosen in the Lord, and\nhis mother and mine.  Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas,\nHermas, and the brethren that are with them.  Salute Philologus and\nJulia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints that are\nwith them.  Salute one another with a holy kiss.  All the churches of\nChrist salute you.\n\n\n1.  Aquila, a Pontic Jew, had resided in Rome, doubtless in pursuit of\nhis business as a tent-maker; but the edict of Claudius had compelled\nhim to quit the capital in common with his brethren, and he had taken\nrefuge at Corinth with his wife Prisca (as St. Paul calls her), or\nPriscilla (according to St. Luke[2]); and there, shortly after their\narrival, St. Paul had found them, made their acquaintance, and combined\nwith them in a common trade.  To this was possibly due their conversion\nto Christianity.  When St. Paul left Corinth, they accompanied him to\nEphesus, and remained there when he left for Jerusalem; their\ninfluential position in the Christian community being indicated to us\nby their dealings with so important a teacher as {193} Apollos.  When\nSt. Paul had returned to Ephesus, and was writing his First Epistle to\nthe Corinthians, their house was the centre for a Christian\ncongregation[3].  It was possibly during the Ephesian disturbances that\nthey risked their lives, or 'laid down their own necks' for St. Paul.\nWhether on account of this peril incurred, or for whatever reason, they\nreturned, as they were now free to do, to Rome.  The Epistle to the\nRomans follows the First Epistle to the Corinthians by not more than a\nyear, and it finds Prisca and Aquila established at Rome, with a church\nmeeting at their house.  Probably they had been St. Paul's informants\nas to affairs among the Roman Christians.  A good many years\nafterwards, when St. Paul was writing his Second Epistle to Timothy[4],\nwe hear of them again at Ephesus.  So much travelling as we find in\ntheir life was not unusual in the Roman empire, and perhaps least of\nall among the Jews.\n\nThe fact that Priscilla is generally mentioned before her husband, both\nby St. Paul and St.  Luke[5], as if she were more important, combined\nwith (1) a tradition which connects her with the {194} _titulus_ (or\nparish-church) _Priscae_ at Rome, (2) evidence connecting the\n_Coemeterium Priscillae_ with the Acilian gens,--has led some scholars\nto believe that Priscilla was a noble Roman lady married to a Jewish\nhusband.  But the evidence is not cogent, and it is more likely that\nboth she and her husband owed their Roman names to being freedmen[6].\nIt was probably her prominence among the Christians which led to her\nname preceding that of her husband.  We need only think of Phoebe and\nPriscilla to understand how influential women were in the earliest\nChristian churches.\n\n'The church (which met) at their house' is a significant phrase[7].\nThe wealthier Christians, or those whose houses were commodious, turned\nthem into churches, where the neighbouring Christians met for worship,\nlove feast and eucharist.  Several of the oldest churches {195} in Rome\ngrew in this manner out of private houses.\n\n2.  St. Paul's brief characterizations of individuals are full of\npersonal memory and tenderness--'my beloved, who is the firstfruits of\nAsia unto Christ[8],' 'who bestowed much labour on you,' 'my kinsmen\n(i.e. Jews) and fellow prisoners (on some occasion which we cannot fix,\nbut which St. Paul remembers), who also were in Christ before me,' 'our\nfellow worker,' 'the man approved in Christ,' who has been tried and\nfound not wanting, 'his mother and mine.'  St. Paul, notwithstanding\nhis wide ecclesiastical plans and theological labours, as he thought no\npains too much to bestow on the details of his scheme for collecting\nGentile money for the needs of poor Jews, so also never lets great\ndesigns obscure the memory of persons and their intricate relations to\nhimself.\n\n3.  Andronicus and Junias (or junianus) are 'of note among the\napostles.'  There are other indications that the term 'apostle' was not\nconfined to the twelve.  Not St. Paul only, but Barnabas also, and the\nLord's brother, were included in it.  Later, in the _Didache_, we find\nit used in a wide but somewhat dim sense, for the {196} chief teachers\nof the Church who were not settled in particular churches[9].\nNevertheless, this passage describing two men of unknown names as\n'conspicuous among the apostles' is surprising.  Probably the real\nrequirement for sharing the title of apostle was to have received\ncommission from the Lord (as 'other seventy' did besides the Twelve),\nand to have seen Him after His resurrection.  These two--'early\ndisciples' as St. Paul tells us--may have fulfilled these requirements.\nThey were Jews like himself, who with him had laboured and suffered.\nThey would be centres of authority among the Christians at Rome[10]:\nand possibly to the laying on of their hands other brethren at Rome who\n'ruled' or 'taught' or 'ministered' owed their qualifying gift.\n\nChrysostom takes the second name to be a woman's--Junia; and expresses\nhis astonishment at finding a woman thought worthy of the title of an\napostle.\n\n4.  'Them that are of the household of Aristobulus.'  This Aristobulus\nwas very probably the {197} grandson of Herod the Great, who lived and\ndied at Rome in a private station, and whose 'household' would\nnaturally include many Jews and orientals.  The following name of a Jew\nsuggests connexion with the Herods.\n\n5.  'Rufus' may very likely be the son of Simon of Cyrene, whom St.\nMark, writing probably at Rome, refers to as well known[11].\n\n6.  'A holy kiss.'  'It was from this and similar words,' says Origen,\n'that it has been handed down as a custom in the Church that after the\nprayer the brethren should welcome one another with a kiss.'  He goes\non to urge that this ritual kiss should be neither unchaste nor without\nreal feeling.\n\n7.  'All the churches of Christ salute you.'  This unique phrase is\nprobably used, as Dr. Hort suggests, to express how 'the church of Rome\nwas an object of love and respect to Jewish and Gentile churches alike.'\n\n\n\n[1] Or _Junia_ (a woman's name), as margin.\n\n[2] See the readings of Rom. xvi. 3; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; 2 Tim. iv. 19 (in\nR. V. which is probably right); and of Acts xviii. 2, 18, 26.\n\n[3] 1 Cor. xvi. 19.\n\n[4] 2 Tim. iv. 19.\n\n[5] Twice out of three mentions in each case.\n\n[6] Perhaps both freedmen of the same member of the Acilian gens.  For\nPriscus or Prisca (or Priscilla) was a favourite cognomen in the gens,\nand the nomen itself was commonly written Aquilius.  This nomen a male\nslave, when freed, would have borne (besides his own name and his\nmaster's praenomen); and a female could have borne the cognomen Prisca\nor Priscilla.  '[Greek] _Akulios_ could be corrupted into {Greek]\n_Akulas_, the Greek form of a different name Aquila.\n\n[7] Cf. Acts xii. 12; Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2.  See _S. and H. in loc._\n\n[8] Cf. 1 Cor. xvi. 15.\n\n[9] The term 'apostle' is also used in 2 Cor. viii. 23, Phil. ii. 25,\napparently in the sense of messenger.\n\n[10] Others, including Liddon, would translate 'highly esteemed among,\ni.e. _by_, the apostles' but this is not probable.\n\n[11] Mark xv. 21.\n\n\n\n\n{198}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 4.  CHAPTER XVI. 17-20.\n\n_Final warning._\n\nSomething occurred before the letter to the Romans was concluded and\ndispatched to make St. Paul insert a final warning against false\nteachers, who were causing divisions and perverting the gospel as all\nChristians had at first received it, in the interests of their personal\naggrandizement.  St. Paul makes a brief but vigorous appeal to the\nRomans to be true to their first obedience, and maintain their\nreputation unsullied.\n\n\nNow I beseech you, brethren, mark them which are causing the divisions\nand occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned:\nand turn away from them.  For they that are such serve not our Lord\nChrist, but their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they\nbeguile the hearts of the innocent.  For your obedience is come abroad\nunto all men.  I rejoice therefore over you: but I would have you wise\nunto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil.  And the\nGod of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.\n\nThe grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.\n\n{199}\n\nThis abrupt insertion strongly reminds us of the Epistle to the\nGalatians (see i. 7-9, vi. 13), and of the similar outburst in the\nEpistle to the Philippians (iii. 1-3).  St. Paul believed that such\nJudaizing teaching was inconsistent with the fundamental Christian\n'tradition.'  He does not imply that Rome was already corrupted, but he\nscents danger.\n\n\n\n\n{200}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 5.  CHAPTER XVI. 21-23.\n\n_Salutations from St. Paul's companions._\n\nTimothy my fellow-worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and\nSosipater, my kinsmen.  I Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in\nthe Lord.  Gaius my host, and of the whole church, saluteth you.\nErastus the treasurer of the city saluteth you, and Quartus the brother.\n\n\nMost of these persons are very probably otherwise known to us.  Leaving\naside the well-known Timothy, we find a Lucius of Cyrene among the\nprophets in Acts xiii. 1[1]; a Jason at Thessalonica, as St. Paul's\nhost, in Acts xvii. 5 ff; a Sopater (or Sosipater) of Beroea, Acts xx.\n4.  Gaius was one of the few whom St. Paul had baptized at Corinth (1\nCor. i. 14), and the Christian church, it appears, met at his house.\nErastus, the treasurer of Corinth, is probably the man mentioned in 2\nTim. iv. 20.\n\n\n\n[1] And closely associated with St. Paul.\n\n\n\n\n{201}\n\nDIVISION VI.  Sec. 6.  CHAPTER XVI. 25-27.\n\n_Final Doxology._\n\nNow to him that is able to stablish you according to my gospel and the\npreaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery\nwhich hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is\nmanifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the\ncommandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto\nobedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to\nwhom[1] be the glory for ever.  Amen.\n\n\nThere is no idea in this doxology with which this epistle has not made\nus familiar in substance.  We have been led to think of the gospel, now\nproclaimed and entrusted to St. Paul, as the disclosure of a divine\npurpose long working secretly: we have been bidden to adore the\nunfathomable resourcefulness of the wisdom of God: we have been\nconstantly referred to the {202} testimony borne by law and prophets to\nthe gospels: we have been made familiar with the object of the\nevangelical preaching, as being to secure 'the obedience of faith among\nall the nations.'  And a particular phrase in an epistle written about\nthe same time[2]--'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the\nwisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds\nunto our glory, which ... unto us God revealed by his Spirit,'--is\nstrikingly parallel to the beginning of the doxology.  At the same time\nthe elaborate richness of the style, as well as many of the ideas,\nreminds us irresistibly of the Epistle to the Ephesians[3].  This,\ncoupled with the fact that there is considerable authority for placing\nthe doxology at the end of chap. xiv, has led some scholars to adopt\nthe idea--accepted and elaborated by Dr. Lightfoot--that St. Paul first\nwrote the epistle down to xvi. 23, as his Epistle to the Romans, and\nsubsequently, perhaps during one of his sojourns at Rome, turned it\ninto a circular letter, omitting for this purpose the last two\nchapters, with their personal matter, and adding the doxology in {203}\nthe rich manner of the Epistle to the Ephesians.  Subsequently the\ndoxology would have been added also to the complete epistle.  There are\nmany difficulties in such a theory.  Especially why should the\nbeginning of chap. xv be cut off from the end of chap. xiv, when there\nis no break in thought?  But I do not pursue the subject here[4], for\nit would be out of place, and alien to our practical purpose.  There is\nno ground for doubting that the whole of what we receive as the epistle\nwas written by St. Paul; and no ground for thinking that any part of\nthe whole, down to xvi. 23, was not found in the letter as originally\ncarried by Phoebe; but it cannot be denied that some mystery, not\neasily solved, hangs about the manifold and interrupted conclusions of\nthe epistle; and that the rich style of the doxology is somewhat unlike\nboth the rest of the epistle, and the other epistles of this period.\nHowever, whether or no it was written at a later date, at least it\nforms a splendid summing up of what is probably the greatest and most\ninfluential letter ever written.\n\nAnd there is no teaching which we more {204} urgently need to-day than\nthe teaching of this epistle.  Whether the need be to expand our\npersonal religion into social service, and also to reinvigorate our\nsocial service with the power of personal religion; or so to reassert\nthe divine authority of the Church as never to forget that it depends\nfor its vitality upon personally converted hearts; or to teach men to\nremember the inexorable severity of divine judgement, as well as the\ndepth of the divine compassion; or to rebuke the shallowness which\nattempts to separate Christian character from Christian doctrine; or to\nharmonize individual freedom with the social claim; or to impart to\nself-sacrifice the spirit of humility and gladness and indomitable\nhope; or at once to exalt and restrict the function of the State; or to\nemphasize the true grounds and limits of toleration in a catholic\nchurch--whatever, one may almost say, be the need to which the special\ndeficiencies and perils of our church and age give rise, or of which at\nthe moment we are most conscious, the teaching of St. Paul in this\nepistle is found to meet it full face.\n\nTruly we may thank God with a continually growing gratitude for the\ngift to us of a letter so inexhaustibly full of spiritual wealth, and\nso complete in its provision for the whole of life.\n\n\n\n[1] If we retain the words 'to whom' the grammar of the sentence breaks\ndown, but the object to whom praise is ascribed is probably the Father.\n\n[2] 1 Cor. ii. 7, 10.\n\n[3] See especially Eph. iii. 1-13.  Cf. also 2 Tim. i. 9-11; Titus i.\n2, 3.\n\n[4] It is fully treated in Lightfoot's _Biblical Essays_ (Macmillan,\n1894), pp. 287 ff, by Lightfoot himself and Hort from different points\nof view, and by S. and H., pp. lxxxv. ff.\n\n\n\n\n{205}\n\nAPPENDED NOTES\n\n\nNOTE A.  See vol. i. p. 59.\n\nTHE MEANINGS OF THE WORD 'FAITH.'\n\nThe history of the original Hebrew and Greek words for believing or\nfaith, is very interesting.  The Hebrew verb ('aman') means 'to prop'\nor 'support'[1].  Now (1) a form of this verb means 'to be supported,'\nhence 'to be firm,' hence '_to be trustworthy_'; (2) another form of\nthe verb means 'to support oneself on,' and hence '_to trust_,' '_to\nbelieve_.'  From (1) comes the Hebrew substantive ('emunah') meaning\n'faithfulness,' 'trustworthiness,' which is used, as elsewhere, so also\nin Habakkuk ii. 4.  In that passage it is revealed to the prophet,\nthat, while the apparently overwhelming wave of Chaldaean barbarism\nrolls over him and passes away, 'the just man shall live (or save his\nlife) by his faithfulness.'  But this faithfulness of the righteous\nIsraelite means a faithful holding on through the dark days to the word\nof God as to a secure ground of confidence; and thus the substantive\nused in this place in the Greek Bible ('pistis') tends to pass into the\nmeaning which it mostly, though not always[2], has in the New\nTestament--a meaning derived {206} not from form (1) but from form (2)\nof the Hebrew verb mentioned above (which however had no corresponding\nsubstantive)--trust or faith in the word and promise of another,\nespecially God or Christ; or, still more characteristically, trust in\n_the person_ of Christ and so of God.\n\nEven under this heading of belief or trust the range of the word's\nmeaning is considerable.  In one passage of St. James' Epistle it is a\nbare intellectual recognition of the truth of things, without any moral\nvalue ('the devils also believe' that God is one, James ii. 19).  More\noften it is that confidence in the divine word or promise, by which the\ngood man, in lack of present evidence, sustains his courage or his\nprayer and wins his victory over the world: so especially in Hebr. xi,\nLuke xviii. 8, James ii. 23, 2 Cor. v. 7, 1 John v. 4.  But its most\ncharacteristic use, as said above, is what first appears in the\nGospels.  The person of Jesus is there represented as eliciting from\nmen a supreme trust in His power to heal diseases, and also to satisfy\nthat deeper human need of which the disease is an outward symbol.  And\nthis power of Jesus to heal men in body and soul is seen in the Gospels\nto depend upon the extent of their faith: 'Thy faith hath saved thee;'\n'According to thy faith be it unto thee.'  Thus Jesus Christ appears\nconstantly as inspiring, requiring, and rewarding faith in Himself, and\nthat as the manifested Son of God, e.g. John xiv. 1.  This is 'the\nfaith which is through Him,' i.e. which He produces; and which as\n'faith in His name' remains the characteristic Christian quality when\nHe is gone from sight (Acts iii. 16).  'The faith' in the Acts (vi. 7,\nxiii. 8, xiv. 22, &c.) means this Christian attitude towards the unseen\nbut living and energizing Christ.\n\nThus when St. Paul came to believe in Jesus Christ, 'faith in\nJesus,'--as meaning not merely acceptance of His claim or of His word\nor of His grace, but {207} whole-hearted devotion to His person, entire\nself-surrender or self-committal to Christ or God in Christ--became the\ndominant note of his new state: 'I know him whom I have believed, and I\nam persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto\nhim against that day' (2 Tim. i. 12[3]).  And this same devotion to\nChrist becomes, in St. Paul's theology, in its various stages, the only\nground of man's acceptance with God.  And though he uses 'faith' in a\nmorally lower sense, as distinct from love--the faith which qualifies\nfor miracles (1 Cor. xiii. 2)--yet in his characteristic sense of the\nterm it involves the deepest love towards its divine object[4].\n\nNaturally, as faith is thus _the_ characteristic of Christianity, and\nthis faith in a person involves a belief about Him--His divine sonship,\nHis resurrection, His mission of the Spirit--so 'the faith' comes to\nmean (objectively) that which the Christian believes, or his creed; and\nthis sense of the word appears almost in the Acts, in Gal. i. 23, and\nin Eph. iv. 5, and certainly in the Pastoral Epistles frequently (see\nDr. Bernard in _Camb. Gr. Test._ on 1 Tim. i. 19) and St. Jude's\nEpistle, verse 2.\n\n\n\n[1] We are familiar with the derived adverb of confirmation, 'Amen.'\n\n[2] In Rom. iii. 3, Matt, xxiii. 23, it is still used for\n'faithfulness.'\n\n[3] In spite of Ellicott, Holtzmann, and Bernard, I believe this to be\nthe true rendering, and not that of the R.V. margin.\n\n[4] On the development of the principle of faith in the soul, see vol.\ni. pp. 29, 30; and on its naturalness, in the highest sense, for man,\nsee pp. 21, 22.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE B.  See vol. i. p. 103.\n\nTHE USE OF THE WORD 'CONSCIENCE.'\n\nThere is no word for conscience in the Old Testament.  'The\nconception,' says Delitzsch (_Bibl. Psychology_, Clark's {208} trans.,\np. 160), 'is not yet impressed upon it.'  And he accounts for this by\nquoting, 'The positive law took away its significance from the natural\nmoral consciousness.'  The Jews, that is--like other nations at certain\nstages of their history--lived so constantly under the detailed\nguidance of a law believed to be divine, that there was not much room\nfor reflection as to the right and wrong of things.  For the idea of\nconscience to develop, the will of God must be less clearly and\ndecisively pronounced as to the details of conduct.  There was,\nhowever, of course among the Jews, in proportion to their belief in a\nclear divine law, the consciousness of having done wrong; and on this\naccount a man's 'heart' is described as 'privy to' an offence, and as\n'reproaching' or 'smiting' him: see 1 Kings ii. 44, Job xxvii. 6[1], 1\nSam. xxiv. 5, xxv. 31, 2 Sam. xxiv. 10.  Here is the root of the idea\nof conscience, i.e. of something in the man behind his surface self,\nreflecting upon what he has done, a self behind himself acquitting or\ncondemning him, and so anticipating the divine judgement.  For, as\nstated above[2], this was in the main the Stoic doctrine of conscience,\nand it was among them that the idea was first developed.  Conscience\nwas conceived of as that in man which lay behind his working self and\nreflected on his actions _after they were done_, bringing them into the\nlight of the 'law of nature' or universal divine law for man.  There is\nthus, as it were, in each man a double self, or double consciousness\n(_conscientia_), so that one can reflect upon himself, and pass\njudgement on his own actions.\n\nIt is in this sense of a self-judging faculty in all men reflecting on\nwhat they have done, anticipating a divine {209} judgement, that the\nidea of conscience was acclimatized among the Jews.  Thus, in Wisdom\nxvii. 11, we read, 'For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a\ncoward thing, and being pressed hard by conscience, always forecasteth\nthe worst lot.'  In St. John viii. 9, according to one reading, the\nJews are 'convicted by their own conscience.'  So St. Paul, in the\npassage discussed above (ii. 15), seems to distinguish the subsequent\nreflective 'conscience' from the previous informing reason, 'the effect\n(equivalent) of the law written in their hearts.'  And in most of the\npassages of the New Testament, this meaning of conscience--the faculty\nby which we sit in judgement on what we have already done--is\nsufficient.  But sometimes, as also among the Stoics[3], the word\npasses into meaning the positive directing faculty, as when (1 Cor.\nviii. 10) a man's 'conscience' is said to be 'emboldened' to adopt a\nnew practice, or (Hebr. ix. 14) to be cleansed for positive service.\nMoreover, though it is an individual faculty (see Rom. ii. 15), and\nexists primarily to pass judgement on one's own actions only, yet\nperforce it must also look without and condemn or approve the actions\nof others (2 Cor. iv. 2, v. 11).\n\nSt. Paul also brings into notice that our conscience is a faculty for\nthe condition of which we are responsible.  It is not the voice of God,\nbut a faculty capable of reflecting His voice, if it be well guarded.\nThus you may have a 'weak' or a 'strong,' i.e. a more or less\nenlightened, conscience (1 Cor. viii).  And a man may 'defile' his\n'mind and conscience,' i.e. he may corrupt his moral reason and powers\nof moral self-judgement (Tit. i. 15).  {210} Then the 'conscience' may\nbecome hardened and 'seared' (1 Tim. iv. 2), so that 'the light that is\nin' men becomes itself 'darkness' according to our Lord's warning (St.\nMatt. vi. 23).  And there is nothing which is more necessary at the\npresent day than to remind men that they are not 'safe' because they\nare not acting against their conscience, unless they are also\nconstantly at pains to enlighten their conscience and keep it in the\nlight, by the help of the best moral thought of their time, the\nguidance of the Church and the word of God.  Our conscience, if it is\nrightly to reassure us by its witness, must, like St. Paul's\nconscience, bear its witness 'in the Holy Ghost' (Rom. ix. 1).\n\nWith us moderns 'conscience' has generally the wider meaning of the\nwhole practical moral consciousness.  It enjoins as well as judges, and\nis occupied with the present and the future, as well as with the past.\n\n\n\n[1] In LXX [Greek] _ou gar sunoida emauto atopa praxas_.\n\n[2] Vol. i. p. 103, n. 2.\n\n[3] e.g. when conscience was described by Epictetus as the grown man's\ninward tutor [pedagogue], which must obviously mean that it is to\ninstruct as well as reprove.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE C.  See vol. i. p. 129.\n\nRECENT REACTIONS FROM THE TEACHING ABOUT HELL.\n\nThere is no doubt that there has been within the last forty years a\ngreat, and in large measure legitimate, reaction from the\nold--mediaeval and Calvinist--teaching about hell.  But one who reads\nthe early chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, or the Gospels, or\nother parts of the New Testament, in view of this reaction, will\nprobably feel an uncomfortable sense that it has gone too far.  It is\nworth while then to try and discriminate.\n\nTo put the matter in as brief a summary as befits a note, I should hold\nthat the reaction has been legitimate so far as it has involved a\nrepudiation of--\n\n{211}\n\n(1) the Calvinist doctrine that God has created some men, no matter\nwhether many or few, inevitably doomed to everlasting misery.  This\ndoctrine is flat contrary to some particular statements of the New\nTestament (as to its general spirit) and is only a misunderstanding of\nothers (see above, pp. 8, 29).\n\n(2) any such crude idea of the divine judgement as that God condemns\nmen for merely _external_ reasons, e.g. because in fact, apart from any\nquestion of will, they were not baptized, or remained pagans or\nheretics.  Such a conception is quite inadequate, for the divine\njudgement penetrates to the heart.  God is a father: He is absolutely\nequitable: He judges men in the light of their opportunities.  He will\nreject none whose will is not set to evil.  'This is the judgement that\n... men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were\nevil' (John iii. 19).\n\n(3) the tendency to exaggerate what is revealed to us, and what,\ntherefore, we can say we _know_ about the state of man after death.\nThus (_a_) there is nothing really revealed to us as to the relative\nproportions of saved and lost.  (_b_) It is certain that we only _know_\nof a probation for man here and now--'Now is the accepted time--now is\nthe day of salvation.'  And the absolutely equitable Father may see the\nconditions of an adequate probation equally in every man's earthly lot.\nIt is therefore foolish to entertain, or encourage any one else to\nentertain, an expectation of any other state of probation except that\nwhich we certainly have here in this world.  'It is appointed unto men\nonce to die, and after that the judgement.'  But if St. Peter could\nspeak (as of a familiar subject) of the 'gospel' as having been\n'preached' by our Lord's human spirit in Hades 'to the dead,' i.e. to\nthose who had perished in their wickedness under the divine judgement\nof the flood: and preached with the intention {212} that _the judgement\nmight be turned into a blessing and means of spiritual life_--and he\ncertainly does speak thus (1 Peter iv. 6, cf. iii. 19): I do not see\nhow we can deny the possibility at any period, or in the case of any\nperson, of an unfulfilled probation being accomplished beyond death.\n(_c_) Careful attention to the origin of the doctrine of the necessary\nimmortality or indestructibility of each human soul, as stated for\ninstance by Augustine and Aquinas[1], will probably convince us that it\nwas no part of the original Christian message, or of really catholic\ndoctrine[2].  It was rather a speculation of Platonism taking\npossession of the Church.  And this consideration leaves open\npossibilities of the ultimate extinction of personal consciousness in\nthe lost, which Augustinianism somewhat rudely, closed.\n\nBut to have convicted our forefathers of going, in certain parts of\ntheir teaching, beyond what was certainly revealed, affords no\njustification for doing the same ourselves in an opposite extreme; by\nasserting for example positively (_a_) that almost all men will be\n'saved'; or (_b_) that there is probation to be looked for beyond\ndeath; or (_c_) that the souls of 'the lost' will be at the last\nextinguished.  These positive positions are no more justified than\nthose of our forefathers which we have deprecated.  We must recognize\nthe limits of positive knowledge.\n\nAnd when we have come to the end of what a legitimate reaction from the\nteaching of our forefathers restores to us, in the direction of a\n'larger hope,' we are still face to {213} face with the fact of\n'eternal judgement.'  Men, as far as their individual destinies are\nconcerned, are passing towards one of two ends, not towards one only--a\ndivine judgement of approval _or_ of condemnation; and both judgements\nare represented as final and irreversible; and they are the inevitable\noutcome of the moral law by which our probation is realized--that\nvoluntary acts form habits, and habits stereotype into a fixed\ncharacter.  It is foolish to look to the process or moment of death for\nredemption from sin; for death, as far as we know, only transplants us\nwith the character we have made for ourselves, and with continuous\nconsciousness, into the unknown world; so that if in this life we have\nunfitted ourselves for God, we must find it out beyond death, and know\nthere the full meaning of our awful miscalculation here.  And the\nawakening of the 'lost' to what they have cast away--to the meaning of\nirreversible self-exclusion from the presence of God--is imaged as\nunspeakably awful; and their state is pictured in metaphors and phrases\ndescriptive both of torment and finality--'outer darkness,' 'gnawing\nworm,' 'unquenchable fire,' 'eternal punishment,' 'eternal sin,' 'sin\nwhich shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in that which\nis to come,' eternal 'death,' or exclusion from eternal life, 'eternal\nruin,' 'wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish.'\n\nIn face of all these sayings, it seems to me indisputable that\n'universalism'--the teaching that there are to be none finally lost--is\nan instance of wilfulness.  To speak of that which lies beyond death,\neven in the case of the worst and most impenitent criminal, as a place\n\n  'Where God unmakes but to remake the soul\n  He else made first in vain--which must not be,'\n\nis, I cannot but feel, in flat contradiction to the whole tone of the\nNew Testament.\n\n{214}\n\nIt is no doubt true that there is in the New Testament an expectation\nof a final unity of the whole universe in God, and that we find it hard\nto conceive the relation of lost souls in hell to this final unity.\nCertainly all legitimate avenues of dim conjecture that a very limited\nrevelation allows to be kept open, ought to be kept open.  Certainly we\nknow in part--the partialness of our knowledge can hardly be\nexaggerated.  But we must be true to both elements in what is disclosed\nto us; and Dr. Martineau has reminded us[3] how deeply 'the belief in a\nseparate heaven and hell, and a corresponding distribution of men into\nonly two classes of good and bad, friends and enemies of God,' though\n'at first sight nothing can appear more unnatural and defiant of all\nfact,' is yet bound up with 'the inward look' of moral evil and the\nfundamental reality of moral choice.  In fact it seems to be true to\nsay that a really Christian Theism, and a really Christian doctrine of\nhuman freedom, are inseparable from the belief in the possibility of\nwilful sin leading to final ruin.\n\n'It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgement';\nand this judgement in the case of those of us who have wilfully\nhardened themselves, or remained loveless and love-rejecters, in face\nof the real offer of God to man in Christ Jesus, is a divine\ncondemnation which takes effect in an eternal punishment, the\nbitterness as well as the justice of which the soul realizes, and\nwhich--if it does not necessarily mean an everlasting continuance of\npersonal consciousness--is yet final and irreversible, and unspeakably\nawful[4].\n\n\n\n[1] _Summa_, pars. 1, qu. 75, art. 6, 'Respondeo dicendum, quod necesse\nest dicere, animam humanam, quam dicimus intellectivum principium, esse\nincorruptibilem.'\n\n[2] See Dr. Agar Beet's _Last Things_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1898), pp.\n194 ff, and Gladstone's _Studies Subsidiary to Butler_ (Oxford, 1896),\npart ii. pp. 260 ff.\n\n[3] See _Types of Ethical Theory_ (Oxford, 1885), ii. pp. 60 ff.\n\n[4] The only passage in the New Testament which strongly suggests an\n_everlasting_ persistence of personal consciousness of pain, is Rev.\nxx. 10, 'Shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.'  This is\nexplicit enough.  But I am persuaded that all the numbers and\nexpressions for periods of time in the Apocalypse are strictly\nsymbolical.  'A thousand years,' 'forty and two months,' 'three days\nand a half,' 'day and night for ever and ever,' are expressions which\nhave to be translated into some moral equivalent before they can be\nmade the basis of literal teaching.  Thus 'day and night for ever and\never' describes in a picture the _completeness_ of the final overthrow\nand the anguish of the enemies of the Lamb.  The symbolical character\nof the expression is further indicated by 'the beast' and 'the false\nprophet'--themselves symbolical figures--being with the devil the\nsubjects of the torment.\n\nSome will say that the deterrent effect of the doctrine of hell depends\nupon its being held to be a state of strictly endless conscious\ntorment.  I do not believe this is the case.  The language of the New\nTestament is full enough of deterrent horror if we are faithful to it.\nAnd after all, this is all we have a right to be.\n\n\n\n{215}\n\nNOTE D.  See vol. i. pp. 143 ff.\n\nDIFFICULTIES ABOUT THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.\n\nI have endeavoured above to sketch the positive conception of the\nAtonement, as St. Paul seems to put it before us.  Christ inaugurates\nthe church of the new covenant, the new life of union with God.  He\nlays its basis in a great act of reparation to the righteousness of\nGod, which 'the old Adam' had continually outraged.  This act of\nreparation lies in a moral sacrifice of obedience, carried to the\nextreme point by the shedding of His blood.  This is the great\npropitiation in virtue of which God is enabled, without moral\nmisunderstanding, to forgive freely the sins of any one who comes in\nfaith to unite himself to Christ, and set him free to begin the new\nlife.\n\nThe subject is a divine 'mystery,' and we shall never adequately probe\nit.  Nay more, one man's thought will rightly seem inadequate to\nanother, who has gained, or thinks he has gained, some special avenue\nof insight into {216} the divine depths.  But when we pass from special\npoints of view, which are necessarily more or less individual, and can\nnever become certainties for men in general--when we pass on to the\nground of what should be the common church belief, the statement of the\noriginal revelation, it is not, it seems to me, liable to any of the\nfamiliar moral objections, or indeed a subject of any special\ndifficulty.  The difficulties experienced by the moral consciousness of\nour age have been due to gross and unnecessary misunderstandings, of\nwhich the following are, perhaps, the most considerable.\n\n(1) The propitiation has become separated from the new life, for which\nit merely prepares the way.  It has been elevated, with disastrous\nmoral results, from a means to an end.  Christ's work _for us_ has been\ntreated apart from His work _in us_, in which alone it is realized.  He\nalone can act _for_ all men, because He only can be their new life\nwithin.  But on this see vol. i. pp. 141 f, and _Ephes._ pp. 54 ff.\n\n(2) The idea of injustice has been introduced into the 'transaction' of\nthe Atonement, and has been the most fruitful source of\ndifficulty;--but quite unnecessarily.  There is a story that when\nEdward VI was a child, and deserved punishment, another boy was taken\nand whipped in his place.  This monstrously unjust transaction has been\ntaken by Christian teachers as an illustration of the Atonement; and it\nis truly an illustration of the Atonement as they misconceived it.  But\nthe misconception is gratuitous: there is no real resemblance in the\ntwo cases.  For first, what is represented to us in the New Testament\nis not that Jesus Christ, an innocent person, was punished, without\nreference to His own will, by a God who thus showed Himself indifferent\nas to whom He punished so long as some one suffered.  But He, being\nHimself very God, the Son of the Father, the administrator of the {217}\nmoral law and judge of the world, of His own will became man, and\nsuffered what the sin of the world laid upon Him, in order that He\nmight lift the world out of sin.  Voluntary self-sacrifice for others\nis at least not to be described as injustice.  At least we rejoice to\nrecognize that God accepts such self-sacrifice.  It is to vicarious\nself-sacrifice like our Lord's that the human race owes the greater\npart of whatever moral progress it has hitherto made.\n\nSecondly, God is not represented as imposing any specially devised\npunishment on His only Son in our nature.  As the matter is stated in\nthe New Testament, He required of Him obedience, the obedience proper\nto man; and, if we regard sympathy with our fellow men as a part of our\nduty to God, we may say obedience only.  Thus, 'Lo, I come to do thy\nwill, O God' is the one cry of the Christ.  In His simple acceptance of\nthe whole of human duty lies the moral essence and value of His\nsacrifice.  All the physical and mental sufferings of Christ came out\nof His fulfilment of the human ideal, Godward and manward, and were\ninvolved in it.  He died because obedience to the terms of His\nmission--'the word of truth, and meekness, and righteousness'--in a\nworld of sin such as this is, involved dying.  'He was obedient'\nwithout reserve--'unto death, even the death of the cross[1].'  The\nvalue of the bloodshedding lies in this, so far as Scripture enables us\nto judge--that it represents utter obedience under conditions which\nhuman sin, the sin of Jews and Gentiles, laid upon Him: and it was in\nthis sense, which does not leave out of consideration the mental\ntorment caused to His sinless spirit by contact with sin[2], that He\n'bare our sins in his body {218} on the tree,' and that 'the Lord made\nto light on him the iniquity of us all.'  What is ascribed to the\nFather is that He 'spared not' His only Son by miraculously exempting\nHim from the consequences of His mission; and that He foresaw,\noverruled, and used for His own wise and loving purposes the sin of\nmen[3].\n\nThirdly and lastly, the Christ (as represented in the New Testament)\ndid not suffer in order that we might be let off the punishment for our\nown sins, but in order to bring us to God.  'By his stripes we\nare'--not excused punishment, but--'healed.'  In fact, there are two\ndistinguishable punishments for sin.  There is the spiritual\npunishment, which is involved in being morally alienated from God,\nwhich may become irreversible and eternal, but which is gone when the\nmoral alienation is gone.  From this Christ delivers us in making us at\none again with the Father, but He Himself did not endure it.  God\nforbid that we should imagine such a thing!  Besides this there is the\ntemporal penalty which our sins bring as inevitable consequences upon\nourselves and upon the race.  All these consequences of human sin the\nsinless Christ bore for us, but not that we might be let off {219}\nbearing them.  We must bear them too--both the death of the body and\nthe chastisement of particular sins.  Christ bore the punishment of\nsins that were not His own, in order that in our case the punishments\nof sins which are our own might, through His bringing us back to God,\nbe converted into healing chastisements and gracious penances.  The\nrecord of God's dealings with His saints is still, as in Ps. xcix. 8,\nthat they are heard, forgiven and punished.\n\nHow gratuitously then the idea of injustice has been introduced into\nthe doctrine of Christ's sacrifice for us becomes evident when once it\nis brought within the scriptural limits.  Christ suffered voluntarily.\nHe suffered simply what was involved in becoming man in a world of sin.\nHe suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us\nback to God, that so we might have grace to bear our own sufferings and\nshare His.\n\nThis alone, it seems to me, is what the New Testament certainly\nteaches.  And the matter of most importance is that, ridding our minds\nof distracting and often needless difficulties, we should drink in,\nwith heart and intelligence alike, the full force of what is certainly\npart of the Gospel--the doctrine of the one, full, perfect, and\nsufficient atonement with the Father, won for us by the self-sacrifice\nof the Christ.\n\n\n\n[1] Phil. ii. 8; Hebr. x. 5-9.\n\n[2] The perfect Man perfectly realized the misery and horror of the\nsins on behalf of which He suffered.  How much is involved in this in\nthe way of detailed realization of each individual sin of each\nindividual sinner, is a matter on which we have no clear grounds for\nexact statement.\n\n[3] I believe that nothing more than this is really suggested by\nScripture.  The phrase, 'made _sin_ for us' (2 Cor. v. 21), means, I\nbelieve, according to the clear use of the word in the LXX, 'made a\n_sin-offering_ for us.'  The same words in the Hebrew stand for sin and\nsin-offering, and the use of the Greek follows: see especially (in LXX)\nLev. iv. 31, 'It is the sin (= sin-offering) of the assembly;' 24, 'It\n(the goat) is a sin;' 29, 'He shall lay his hand upon the head of the\nsin;' vi. 25, 'This is the law of the sin'; viii. 14, 'The bullock of\nthe sin.'  Cf. Hos. iv. 8, &c.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE E.  See vol. i. p. 196.\n\nEVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE FALL.\n\nThere is a wide-spread and popular notion that a marked contradiction\nexists between the biological theory {220} of evolution and the\nChristian doctrine of the Fall, which may be stated and examined under\nseveral heads:--\n\nI.--'According to the theory of evolution man began his career at the\nbottom, emerging from purely animal life, and slowly struggled upwards\nto his present level of attainment.  According to the Christian\ndoctrine, on the contrary, he was created perfect, and then\nsubsequently fell into sin and accompanying misery.  Thus, according to\none theory, man began at the bottom; according to the other, he began\nat the top.'\n\nNow there is no doubt that when so stated the evidence is all in favour\nof the scientific point of view, and against the Christian.  But such a\ncontrast requires the greatest modification on both sides before it can\nbe taken as truly representing the facts.  Thus, it is not the case\nthat the Bible suggests that man was created perfect, i.e. perfectly\ndeveloped, and that his later course has been simply the effect of the\nFall, i.e. a downward course.  Leaving first out of account Gen. i-iii,\nwe notice that the Bible is conspicuously, and in marked contrast to\nthe religious books of other nations, the book of development.  It\nlooks continuously and systematically forward, not backward, for the\nperfecting of man.  It traces the beginning of civilization in Abel,\nthe keeper of sheep, Cain, the tiller of the ground, in Jabal, 'the\nfather of such as dwell in tents and have cattle,' in Jubal, the father\nof music, 'of all such as handle the harp and pipe,' in Tubal Cain, the\nfirst forger of brass and iron work; it indicates the origin of\nreligious worship (in some sense) at the time of Enoch, and the origin\nof building with the tower of Babel.  The names of Noah, Abraham,\nMoses, Samuel, David, &c., represent stages of advance along the line\nof a chosen people; and later on it appears also that upon the chosen\npeople centres a hope for all nations, and a purpose is discovered in\nuniversal history.  The special {221} intellectual qualities of various\nraces or civilizations, as of Egypt and Tyre, are recognized by some of\nthe prophets, and recognized as part of a divine purpose for the\nworld[1].  The Bible then is the book of development; it looks forward,\nnot backward.  But it is also true that all this development is\nrepresented as having been (we may say) a second-best thing.  It has\nnot been according to God's first purpose.  There has been a great and\ncontinual hindrance, which has consisted in a persistent rebellion or\nsin on man's part against God; and this again has had its root in a\ncertain perversion of the heart of mankind which is regarded as\napproximately universal.  If we now take into account again the first\nthree chapters of Genesis (which, however, have left much less trace\nthan is commonly supposed in the Old Testament as a whole[2]) we find\nthat they describe an original act of rebellion on the part of the\nfirst human pair, which is there spoken of as at least entailing\nexternal consequences of a penal sort upon their descendants--that is\ndeath, pain, and the loss of Paradise; and that later, especially in\nthe teaching of St. Paul, the universal moral flaw in human nature\n(original sin) is also represented as having its source in this initial\nact of rebellion.\n\nSin is therefore, according to our Christian scriptures, something\nunnatural to man: the violation of his nature by his rebellion; and it\nis a continual element of deterioration.  But the idea that man was\ncreated perfect, i.e. so as not to need development, is not suggested.\nNo doubt theologians, from the age of Augustine down to recent times,\nhave done something more than suggest it.  Thus Robert South supposes\nthat 'an Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the\nrudiments of Paradise'; and Milton implanted the idea in the {222}\nimagination of Englishmen; but it is in no way suggested by the Bible,\nand was expressly repudiated by the earliest Christian theologians in\neast and west.  Thus, in answer to the question whether Adam was formed\nperfect or imperfect, Clement of Alexandria replied, 'They shall learn\nfrom us that he was not perfect in respect of his creation, but in a\nfit condition to receive virtue.'  And Irenaeus says that it was in the\npower of God to make men perfect from the beginning, but that such an\ninitial perfection would be contrary to the law of human nature, which\nis the law of gradual growth[3].  We must therefore modify the\nstatement of Christian doctrine from which we started, thus:--_Man has\nbeen slowly led, or has slowly developed, towards the divine ideal of\nhis Creator; but his actual development has been much less rapid and\nconstant than it might have been, owing to the fact of sin from which\nhe might have been free_.\n\nNow, can it be fairly said that science can take any legitimate\nexception to such a statement?  The progress of man which\nanthropological science discloses is very broken, very partial; if\ndevelopment of some sort is universal, progress is very rare, distinct\ndeterioration not uncommon.  Science, like poetry and philosophy, must\nbear witness to the disappointing element in human nature, of which He\nwas so conscious of whom it is said that 'He did not trust himself to\nman, because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning\nman, for he himself knew what was in man'--the sad secret of human\nuntrustworthiness and unsatisfactoriness[4].\n\nAgain, can science assert that this actual development of man, so\nthwarted and tainted and partial, has been the only possible\ndevelopment, and that there could not have been a better?  If it cannot\nsay this, there is in the {223} general view of human progress and\ndeterioration no antagonism between religion and science.\n\nII.--But it may be said, 'Science certainly does say that the actual\ndevelopment of man has been the only possible development.  Science\nexcludes the idea of sin in the sense of something which need not have\nhappened, because it excludes the idea of freedom or contingency\naltogether.  Good and bad characters are like good and bad apples--mere\nfacts of natural growth'; or more suggestively, 'Sin (so called) is\nonly the survival of brute instincts, which, from a higher condition of\nevolution, men have come to be ashamed of.'\n\nIt cannot be made too emphatic that here is the real battle-ground of\nreligion and science to-day, though the fact is often concealed in\npopular controversy.  _I do not believe there is any real difficulty in\nadjusting sufficiently the relations of religion and science as to the\nFall when once the idea of sin has been admitted--that is, the idea of\nfree, responsible action, with its correlative, the possibility of\nwrong action which might have been avoided_.  Christian and other\nteachers have, no doubt, often failed to see how limited human freedom\nis, but they have never been wrong in asserting that the reality of\nfreedom within limits is essential to Christianity and morality.  Sin\nis not a mere fact of nature.  It is a perversion which ought not to\nhave been.  This subject is not what is directly before us now; but the\nheart of the controversy is here; and I will make the following very\nbrief remarks upon it.\n\n(1) A theory that cannot be put into practice, or a theory that cannot\naccount for the facts, is a false or at least inadequate theory.  Now\nthe theory of necessary determinism cannot be put into practice.  To\nbelieve that our own conduct is not really under our own control--that\nthe idea of responsibility is at bottom an illusion--is to destroy the\nbasis of human life and education.  Even {224} the holders of the\ntheory admit that it must be kept out of sight in practice.\n\nFurther, it is a theory that cannot account for the facts--viz. for the\nexistence of the universal sense of responsibility; and the application\nto human action of moral blame and praise, which penetrates the whole\nof thought and language, and which holds too large a place in human\nlife to be a delusion.  We are not ashamed of a physical accident, but\nwe are ashamed of telling a lie.  And this difference is fundamental\nand based on reality.\n\n(2) The Christian assumption may be stated as follows: granted that we\ncannot increase the sum of force which passes from external sources\ninto our system, and passes out again in manifold forms of human\naction, yet within certain limits we can direct it for good or\nevil--i.e. the 'voluntary' part of a man's action may be determined\nfrom below, so to speak, by purely animal motives, or by rational and\nspiritual motives.  In the latter case, the action is of the proper\nhuman quality, and stamps a rational and spiritual character upon all\nthat falls within its range.  In the former case, it may be truly\nregarded as a survival of the physical instincts of animal progenitors,\nand no doubt it emerges as a part of the physical order of the world.\nBut, considered as human action, it represents a lapse, a culpable\nsubordination of the higher to the lower in our nature, a violation of\nthe law proper to manhood[5].  This is the point.  St. John says, 'All\nsin is lawlessness,' and (by the exact form of expression which he\nuses) he implies also that all lawlessness is sin.  Here, and here only\nwhere voluntary action begins, do you see violation of law, and\ntherefore, within limits, a disturbance of the divine order--something\nwhich ought to have been otherwise.\n\n{225}\n\n(3) The belief that the moral evil of our nature does not properly\nbelong to our nature but is its violation, and that if once the will be\nset right it can be remedied, has been the secret of the moral strength\nof Christianity.  Christianity has said to all men, However corrupted\nyour nature, the corruption does not essentially belong to you.  Give\nyour wills to God, and, if slowly, yet surely, if not fully in this\nworld, then beyond it, all can be set right.  'According to thy faith\nbe it unto thee.'  And the practical power of this appeal, shows its\nagreement with reality.\n\n(4) On the other hand, it cannot be claimed that the theory is contrary\nto any real scientific _knowledge_; for biology confesses that it knows\nvery little as to the actual methods by which force is redistributed in\nhuman action.  It is contrary only to some large and unverifiable\nassumptions--assumptions which ignore the abstract character of\nbiological psychology, as of other sciences.\n\nNow granted this reality of free voluntary action, it will hardly be\ndenied that history discloses to us a practically universal prevalence\nof sin[6], in the present and in the past; and we can hardly fail to\nperceive, lying behind actual sins, a tendency to sin--what Shelley\ncalls 'the ineradicable taint of sin,' a perverse inclination inhering\nin the stock of our manhood, which is what theology calls original sin.\n\nIII.--But here a more modern objection occurs.  Christianity assumes\nthat this moral flaw or taint, weakness or grossness, in human nature\nis the outcome of actual transgressions, in other words that original\nsin is due to actual sin, whereas the tendency of recent biological\nscience is to deny that acquired characters can be inherited, and\ntherefore to deny that any acts of any man or men could have any effect\non the congenital moral nature of their descendants; the taint or fault\nin {226} human nature, must be a taint or fault in that original\nsubstance which what is called man derived from his pre-human ancestry.\nTo this I reply:--This is no doubt the view which Professor Weismann\nhas made more or less prevalent.  The substance of heredity\n('germ-plasm') is taken to be a substance _per se_, which has always\noccupied a special 'sphere' of its own, without any contact with that\nof 'somatoplasm' further than is required for its lodgement or\nnutrition; hence it can never be in any degree modified as to its\nhereditary qualities by use-inheritance.  It has been absolutely\ncontinuous 'since the first origin of life.'\n\nBut this doctrine does not appear yet to have assumed a fixed form[7];\nand in its extreme or absolute form it is highly disputable, and\nrejected by large sections of biologists.  Professor Haeckel[8]\ndeclares contemptuously that he should feel it more reasonable to\naccept the Mosaic account of special creations!  The late Mr. Romanes,\nafter summing up the evidence on both sides without any contempt,\ndecides: 'No one is thus far entitled to conclude against the possible\ntransmission of acquired characters[9].'  Again, 'that this substance\nof heredity is largely continuous and highly stable, I see many and\ncogent reasons for believing.  But that this substance has been\nuninterruptedly continuous since the origin of life, or absolutely\nstable since the origin of sexual propagation, I see even more and\nbetter reasons for disbelieving[10].'  And he remarks[11], 'I doubt not\nWeismann {227} himself would be the first to allow that his theory of\nheredity encounters greater difficulties in the domain of ethics than\nin any other--unless indeed, it be that of religion.'\n\nI ought to add, in view of the apparently improbable event of the\ndoctrine of Weismann becoming in its absolute form the accepted\ndoctrine of biologists, that of course it only concerns the material\norganism.  No one who is not a materialist would deny the _possibility_\nof the character of the parent modifying at its very root that of the\nchild, without even the smallest conceivable modification of the\nphysical organism; because in the origination of a spiritual\npersonality, and in the link which binds it to the antecedent\npersonalities to which it owes its being, there is that which lies\noutside the purview of biological science.  There _may_ be an\ninheritance of sinful tendencies derived from sinful acts in the region\nof the spiritual personality, even if no physical transmission is\npossible.\n\nHowever it be explained, it appears to be the case that Christianity is\nbound to maintain the position that in the region of moral character\nthere is, in fact, a solidarity in humanity.  We are bound together.\nOur acts, as they form our own character, do somehow or other, however\nslightly, modify the characters of our descendants for good or evil.\nAnd this modification of the tendencies of the race by the acts of\nindividuals may have been more marked at the beginning than it is\nto-day.\n\nOn the other hand Christianity is not in any way interested in denying\nthat man derives a physical heritage of habits and tendencies from a\npre-human ancestry.  All I imagine that Christianity is interested in\naffirming is this--that when the animal organism became the\ndwelling-place of the human spirit (so to speak) that human spirit\nmight have taken one of two courses.  It {228} might have followed the\npath of the divine will; and in that case human development would have\nrepresented a steady and gradual spiritualizing of the animal nature\nreaching on towards perfection.  It might have taken, on the other\nhand, and did in fact take (more or less), the line of wilful\ndisobedience.  And the moral effects of this wilfulness and\ndisobedience from the beginning onwards have been felt from parent to\nson.  So that the springs of human conduct have been weakened and\nperverted, and no man has started without some bias in the wrong\ndirection which would not have been there if his ancestors for many\ngenerations had been true to God.\n\nIt is worth noticing in passing that 'original sin' is not a fixed\nquantity derived from one lapse of the original man, but is a moral\nweakness continually reinforced by every actual transgression, and, on\nthe other hand, reduced in force by moral resistance and self-control.\nIndividuals start at very different levels of depravity.  Only it would\nappear that practically in no man but One is there any reason to\nbelieve the fundamental nature immaculate.\n\nIV.--But it will be said 'You have not yet touched upon a big central\ncontradiction between religion and science.  According to the Christian\ndoctrine mankind is derived from a single specifically human pair, made\nhuman by a special inspiration of the Divine Spirit.  According to the\ntheory of evolution, a certain species of apes under specially\nfavourable conditions gradually advanced to become what might be called\nman, though of a very low type.'  To this I am inclined to make reply\nthus: Christianity is really bound up with maintaining four\npositions--(1) the reality of moral freedom; (2) the fact of sin,\nproperly so called as distinct from imperfection; (3) its practical\nuniversality, at least as an inherited tendency; and (4) the unity of\nthe human race in such {229} sense that the same postulates may be made\nwith regard to all men, and the same capacity for moral redemption\n(more or less) assumed to be in them.  Now, as regards the first three\nof these positions enough has been said already, and the last of them\ndoes not appear to be at present in dispute between science and\nreligion.  St. Paul says, 'God made of one' (or 'of one blood,' for\nthis reading is possibly right) 'every nation of men' (Acts xvii. 26).\nAnd of one blood, if not of one individual, all men are, according to\nthe present conclusions of biological science.  A recent work on\nethnology, by Mr. Keane (Cambridge Geographical Series), speaks\nthus:--'The hominidae are not separately evolved in an absolute\nsense--i.e. from so many different anthropoid precursors, but the\npresent primary divisions are separately evolved from so many different\npleistocene precursors, themselves evolved through a single pliocene\nprototype from a single anthropoid precursor[12].'\n\nIt does not seem to me, then, that Christianity is really bound up with\nanything more than the unity of the human race, which science also\nstrongly asserts.  But to pass from these positions, which may be\nregarded as certain, to something more conjectural (apart from any\nquestion of the literary character of Genesis iii), we may argue thus:\nSin is a fact having the same character universally in human history,\nthough the sense of sin has varied greatly, reaching back as far as\nhuman history extends.  This would lead us to suppose that it goes back\nto the roots of the race.  It suggests some original {230} fall, some\ntainting of the race in its origin.  I do not see, then, anything\nabsurd or contrary to evidence in such a hypothesis as this.--The\nDivine Spirit is assumed to be at work in all the development of the\nworld.  The 'laws of nature' are but His methods.  At a certain moment\na new thing had emerged in the universe hitherto inorganic.  It was the\nfact of life.  It was new[13].  But it was in continuity with what had\ngone before.  This principle of life had its great development,\nvegetable and animal.  It had attained a form in certain anthropoid\napes such as we are familiar with in men.  Suppose then that the Divine\nSpirit breathes Himself, again in a new way, into one single pair or\ngroup of these anthropoid animals.  There is lodged in them for the\nfirst time a germ of spiritual consciousness, continuous with animal\nintelligence, and yet distinct from it.  From this pair or group\nhumanity has its origin.  If they and their offspring had been true to\ntheir spiritual capacities the animal nature would have been more\nrapidly spiritualized in motives and tendencies.\nDevelopment--physical, moral, spiritual--would have been steady and\nglorious.  Whereas there was a fall at the very root of our humanity;\nand the fall was repeated and reiterated and renewed, and the\ndevelopment of our manhood was tainted and spoiled.  There was a lapse\ninto approximately animal condition, which is dimly known to us as\nprimitive savagery.  So that the condition of savage man is a parody of\nwhat God intended man in his undeveloped stages to be, just as the\ncondition of civilized man in London and Paris is a parody of what God\nintended developed man to come to.  And there have been long and dreary\nepochs when men have {231} seemed to lose almost all human ideals and\ndivine aspirations; when, in St. Paul's phrase, they were 'alive\nwithout the law,' living a physical life unvisited by the remorse\nconsequent upon any knowledge of better things.  And there have been,\non the other hand, epochs and special occasions of spiritual\nopportunity and spiritual restorations.  And so, on the whole, side by\nside with the continually deteriorating effect of sin, has gone on the\nslow process of redemption, the undoing of the evil of sin and the\nrealization of the divine purpose for man.  Such an idea of human\nhistory, partly only hypothetical, partly assured, conflicts with no\nscientific ethnology, and is but a restatement of old-fashioned\nChristianity in all that has religious importance.\n\nV.--Of course, in all this I am assuming that the doctrine of sin and\nof the Fall in its true importance has a much securer basis than the\nsupposition that Genesis iii is literal history.  The doctrine of the\nFall is, as I have said, not separable from the doctrine of sin, or the\ndoctrine of sin from that of moral freedom.  It rests upon the broad\nbasis of human experience, especially upon Christian experience, which\nis bound up with its reality.  Most of all it rests, for Christians, on\nthe teaching of Christ.  For Christ's teaching and action postulate\nthroughout the doctrine of sin.  But that doctrine in its turn goes\nback upon the Old Testament, which is full of the truth that the evils\nof human nature are due, not to its essential constitution, but to\nman's wilfulness and its results; that the disordering force in human\nnature has been moral, the force of sin; that human history represents\nin one aspect a fall from a divine purpose, a fall constantly\nreiterated and renewed in acts of disobedience.  These constant acts of\ndisobedience are in part caused by an evil heart in human nature, and\nthis in its turn exhibits the fruits of past sins.  Granted this, {232}\nthe story in Genesis iii, whether it be historical or whether (as not\nonly many modern Christians, but some of the greatest of early\nChristians, have thought) it be not an historical account of a single\nevent, but a generalized account of what is continually happening, has,\nat any rate, vital spiritual truth.  The character of its inspiration\nis apparent.  Teach a child what sin is, first of all on the ground of\ngeneral Christian experience and the teaching of Christ, and then read\nto it the story of Genesis iii, and the child must perforce recognize\nthe truth in a form in which it cannot be forgotten.  There in that\nstory all the main points of truth as to the meaning of sin are\nsuggested, and the main sources of error precluded.  Sin is not our\nnature, but wilfulness; sin is disobedience to the divine law, the\nrefusal of trust in God; there is such a thing as being tempted to sin,\nand yielding to it, and then finding that we have been deceived, being\nconscience-stricken and fearing to face God; and the curse of our\nmanhood springs from nowhere ultimately but our own evil heart.  And if\nour sins lay us under an outward discipline, which is God's punishment,\nyet in the very discipline lies the hope of our recovery.  God the\ndestroyer is also the God who promises redemption.  Thus all that we\nmost need to know about God and man, about obedience and disobedience,\nabout temptation, about the blessing and the cursing of human nature,\nabout conscience good and bad, is to be found in the story of Genesis\niii, written in language suitable to the childhood of the individual\nand of the race.\n\nVI.--But once more, and for the last time, the biologist will reply,\n'You are not going to get off so easily.  The fact of physical death is\ninextricably interwoven into the structural growth of the world long\nbefore men appeared.  But Christianity regards it as a mere consequence\nof human sin.'  This is not the case.  Long before science {233} had\ninvestigated the early history of life on our globe, Christian teachers\nboth in East and in West--St. Augustine as well as St. Athanasius--had\ntaught that death is the law of physical nature, that it had been in\nthe world before man, and that 'man was by nature mortal,' because, as\nbeing animal, he was subject to death.  How, then, do they interpret\nthe language of Scripture?  In this way: They hold that if man had been\ntrue to his spiritual nature, the supernatural life, the life in God,\nwould have blunted the forces of corruption, and lifted him into a\nhigher and immortal state.\n\nCertainly, in some sense, death, as we know it, for man, is regarded,\nespecially in the New Testament, as the penalty of sin.  But then what\ndo we mean by death?  If sin is said to have introduced human death,\nChrist is constantly said to have abolished it.  'This is the bread\nthat cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.'\n'Whosoever believeth on me shall never die.'  'Christ Jesus abolished\ndeath.'  Sin, then, we may suppose, only introduced death in some sense\nsuch as that in which Christ abolished it.  Christ has not abolished\nthe physical transition from this world to the invisible world, but He\nhas robbed it of its terror, its sting, its misery.  Apart from sin we\nmay suppose man would not have died; that is, he would never have had\nthat horrible experience which he has called death.  There would have\nbeen only some transition full of a glorious hope from one state of\nbeing to another.\n\nWe are again in the region of conjecture.  All that I am here\ninterested in asserting is that Christianity never has held to the\nposition that human sin first introduced death _into the world_.  What\nit has taught is that _human_ death, as men have known it, with its\nhorror and its misery, has represented not God's intention for man, but\nthe curse of sin.\n\n{234}\n\nVII.--Now I have endeavoured to face and meet the points which are\nurged in the name of science against the Christian doctrine of the\nFall.  I have endeavoured to point out that what is essential to\nChristianity is to believe in the reality of moral freedom, and the\nconsequent reality of sin, as something which need not have been in the\nindividual, or in the race considered as a unity.  This is all that\nChristianity is really pledged to maintain.  In maintaining this we are\nmaintaining what is absolutely essential to the moral well-being of the\nrace, and, moreover, what has the deepest roots in man's moral\nexperience and in the teaching of Christ.  In holding this we hold the\ndoctrine of the Fall, a doctrine, that is, that man's condition has\nbeen throughout a parody of the divine intention, owing to the fact of\nsin tainting and spoiling his development from the root.  But\nChristianity is not in any kind of way pledged against the doctrine of\ndevelopment, only against the doctrine which no reasonable science can\nhold, that the actual development of man has been the best or only\npossible one.  Nor, I have urged, can it be reasonably said that the\nChristian doctrine of sin and of the Fall is bound up with one\nparticular interpretation of Genesis iii.  All, then, that we must\nadmit in the way of collision between Christianity and science is, on\nthe one hand, that Christianity is not intended to teach men science,\nand that when there is any great advance in human knowledge it takes a\nlittle while for Christianity to extricate itself from the meshes of\nthe language and ideas belonging to one stage of scientific knowledge,\nand to assimilate the terms and ideas of the new.  But, on the other\nhand, there is perennial and necessary warfare between Christianity and\nmaterialistic science, or a science which denies the reality of moral\nfreedom.  And as to Christianity giving up what is proper to its own\nground--its teaching about {235} freedom and sin and the Fall, and\nGod's purpose for man, and the love shown in his redemption--to give up\nthis is to give up what is the best and deepest motive of human\nprogress, and what is most surely certificated by the witness of Christ\nand the spiritual experience of Christendom.  Indeed all schemes of\nhuman improvement are shallow and inadequate, which do not deal with\nman as what, in fact, he has been proved to be, a sinful, that is a\nfallen, being, needing not only education but redemption.\n\nBefore leaving this attempt to show that there is no necessary conflict\nbetween biological and theological science, it is important to call the\nattention of the intelligent public to the fact that what formerly\nappeared to be the solid consistency of the 'Darwinian' creed, has been\nbroken up into a state not far removed from chaos.  It has become\napparent how very little way has really been made towards showing what\nhave been the actual factors in evolution--how the fact of evolution\nthrough variation has actually occurred.  Thus Mr. Bateson[14] remarks,\n'If the study of variation can serve no other end, it may make us\nremember that the complexity of the problem of specific difference is\nhardly less now than it was when Darwin first showed that natural\nhistory is a problem, and no vain riddle.'  What is the cause of\nvariations occurring?  What law do they exhibit in their occurrence?\nDo variations occur with a certain degree of sudden completeness[15]?\nOr how are we to {236} explain the maintenance of variations, which in\na more developed stage are to be very useful, before they can be shown\nto be useful at all?  What is the place held in evolution by 'natural\nselection'?  What, if any, the place held by use-inheritance?  Is the\nfactor of 'mimicry,' supported by Darwin, an important or even real\nfactor in evolution?  What is to be the issue of the controversy\nbetween the biologist and the physicist on the question of the time\nrequired for organic development?  Are we to suppose that organic\ndevelopment at the beginning proceeded very much more rapidly than at a\nlater stage?  Or even that it exhibited laws of which we have no\nexperience now, such as would admit of a 'natural' development of life\nout of what is not living?  All these, and many more questions, appear\nto be so completely open that, granted the general theory of continuous\nevolution as against special creation, hardly anything as regards the\nfactors or causes of evolution can be said to be scientifically\nsettled.  Thus on such subjects as the origin of the human race, its\nexact relation to an animal ancestry, and the right interpretation of\nthe fact of sin, {237} before science can make demands on theology,\nthere must be more agreement in her own camp.\n\n\n\n[1] See especially Ezekiel xxviii, xxxi.\n\n[2] See vol. i. p. 193.\n\n[3] Clem. Alex. _Strom_, vi. 12. 96; Iren. _c. Haer._ iv. 38.\n\n[4] See also above, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.\n\n[5] On the meaning of 'freedom of will,' see vol. i. pp. 230 ff.\n\n[6] See above, vol. i. pp. 80-1.\n\n[7] Romanes, _Examination of Weismannism_ (Longmans, 1893), pp. 61-70,\n153.\n\n[8] _The Last Link_ (Black, 1899), p. 79.\n\n[9] Romanes, _Darwin and after Darwin_ (Longmans, 1895), ii. p. 279.\n\n[10] _Examination of Weismannism_, pp. 114, 115.\n\n[11] _Darwin and after Darwin_, ii. p. 90.\n\n[12] See also in Haeckel, _Last Link_, p. 148: 'We assume the single\nmonophyletic origin of mankind at one place, in one district'; and\npassages cited above, vol. i. p. 196, n. 1.  The science of comparative\nreligions also suggests the same conclusion.  Everywhere common\nunderlying religious needs and tendencies appear.  Acts xvii. 27 is\njustified by a comparison of religions.\n\n[13] It must not be left out of sight that the idea of life as\nnaturally derived from what was inorganic, has not yet been made to\nappear even scientifically probable, in view of the evidence.\n\n[14] W. Bateson, _Materials for the Study of Variations, treated with\nespecial regard to discontinuity in the origin of species_ (Macmillan,\n1894), p. xii.\n\n[15] Biologists are now apparently more disposed than formerly to admit\nthe sudden appearance of considerable and important modifications and\nrapid developments.  Cf. Haeckel, _l. c._ p. 144, and Bateson, p. 568.\nHe concludes that 'discontinuity of species results from discontinuity\nof variation.'  'The existence,' he says, 'of sudden and discontinuous\nvariation, the existence, that is to say, of new forms having from\ntheir first beginning more or less of the kind of perfection which we\nassociate with normality, is a fact that disposes, once and for all, of\nthe attempt to interpret all perfection and definiteness of form as the\nwork of selection.  The study of variation leads us into the presence\nof whole classes of phenomena that are plainly incapable of such\ninterpretation.'  This relative perfection of variations at starting\nMr. Bateson attributes in great measure to the principle of 'symmetry,'\nor 'repetition of parts' in living things.  An organism is symmetrical,\nand thus what happens in one of many similar organs repeats itself\nnormally in all the others.  Change in one part is not an isolated\nfact, but there is 'similarity and simultaneity of change.'\n\n\n\n\nNOTE F.  See vol. i. p. 215.\n\nBAPTISM BY IMMERSION AND BY AFFUSION.\n\nThe following passage in the Didache, c. 7, is of the plainest\nimportance for the history of this matter: 'If thou have not living\n[i.e. running] water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not\nin cold, then in warm.  And if thou have not either [in sufficient\namount for baptism, i.e. immersion in the water] pour forth water\nthrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.'\nCf. Dr. Taylor, _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_ (Cambridge, 1886), p.\n52: 'The primitive mode of baptism was by immersion.  According to the\nJewish rite a ring on the finger, a band confining the hair, or\nanything that in the least degree broke the continuity of contact with\nthe water, was held to invalidate the act.  The Greek word \"baptize,\"\nlike the Hebrew _tabol_, means to dip: to \"baptize\" a ship is to _sink_\nit.  The construction [in the above passage of the Didache] \"baptize\n_into_ other water,\" points to immersion, as likewise does Hermas, when\nhe writes (_Simil._ 9): \"They go down therefore into the water dead,\nand come up living;\" and Barnabas (chap. xi): \"Herein he saith that we\ngo down into the water laden with sins and filthiness, and come up\nbearing fruit in our heart, and having our fear and our hope towards\nJesus in the Spirit.\"  This was still the normal way of administering\nthe rite, but it was no longer insisted upon as necessary: {238} \"_If\nthou have not either_,\" not enough of \"living\" or \"other\" water for\nimmersion, \"_pour water thrice upon the head_,\" &c.'\n\n\n\n\nNOTE G.  See vol. ii. p. 136.\n\nA PRAYER OF JEREMY TAYLOR.\n\nO holy and almighty God, Father of mercies, Father of our Lord Jesus\nChrist, the Son of Thy love and eternal mercies, I adore and praise and\nglorify Thy infinite and unspeakable love and wisdom; who hast sent Thy\nSon from the bosom of felicities to take upon Him our nature and our\nmisery and our guilt, and hast made the Son of God to become the Son of\nMan, that we might become the sons of God and partakers of the divine\nnature; since Thou hast so exalted human nature be pleased also to\nsanctify my person, that by a conformity to the humility and laws and\nsufferings of my dearest Saviour I may be united to His Spirit, and be\nmade all one with the most holy Jesus.  Amen.\n\nO holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying in his blood and\nsin and misery, and didst choose our sadnesses and sorrows that Thou\nmightest make us to partake of Thy felicities; Let Thine eyes pity me,\nThy hands support me, Thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in\nmy way to heaven; let me dwell in Thy heart, be instructed with Thy\nwisdom, moved by Thy affections, choose with Thy will, and be clothed\nwith Thy righteousness; that in the day of judgement I may be found\nhaving on Thy garments, sealed with Thy impression; and that, bearing\nupon every faculty and member the character of {239} my elder Brother,\nI may not be cast out with strangers and unbelievers.  Amen.\n\nO holy and ever blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow the Holy\nVirgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to conceive by a miraculous\nand mysterious manner; be pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten\nmy spirit, that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear\nHim in my mind, and may grow up to the fullness of the stature of\nChrist, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus.  Amen.\n\nTo God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; to the eternal Son that\nwas incarnate and born of a virgin; to the Spirit of the Father and the\nSon, be all honour and glory, worship and adoration, now and for ever.\nAmen.--Jeremy Taylor, _Holy Living_; see his _Works_, vol. iii. p. 238.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE H.  See vol. ii. p. 147.\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF THE MAXIM--'IN NECESSARIIS UNITAS, ETC.'\n\nThe expression 'In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in\nomnibus caritas' is cited by Richard Baxter in the dedication of _On\nthe True and Only Way of Concord of all Christian Churches_, 1679,\nthus, 'I once more quote you the pacificator's old and despised words.'\nBut the pacificator appears to be no one older than a Protestant who\nwrote (1620 to 1640), under the name of Rupertus Meldenius, a\n_Paraenesis votiva pro pace ecclesiae ad theologos Augustanae\nConfessionis_.  In the Paraenesis occurs the sentence 'si nos\nservaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non necessariis libertatem, in\nutrisque caritatem optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.'  See A. P.\nStanley in _Macmillan_, {240} Sep., 1875, referring to G. C. F. Luecke,\n_Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die urspruengliche Fonn und den wahren\nSinn des kirchlichen Friedensspruchs_: 'in necessariis unitas &c.,'\nGoettingen, 1850.\n\nThis information was supplied me in correction of a mistaken\nattribution of the saying of which I was guilty in a sermon; and has\nbeen verified for me by Mr. Arthur Hirtzel.  The saying has been\ncommonly attributed to St. Augustine, and indeed the matter of it is\nthoroughly in his spirit; cf. my _Ephesians_, p. 272; and see also _De\nGen. ad litt._, viii. 5: 'Melius est dubitare de occultis quam litigare\nde incertis.'  _De Civ. Dei_, xix. 18: 'qua [i.e. faith in scripture]\nsalva atque certa, de quibusdam rebus quas neque sensu, neque ratione\npercepimus, neque nobis per Scripturam canonicam claruerunt, nec per\ntestes, quibus non credere absurdum est, in nostram notitiam\npervenerunt, sine iusta reprehensione dubitamus.'\n\n\n\n\nNOTE I.  See vol. ii. p. 179.\n\nST. AUGUSTINE'S TEACHING THAT 'THE CHURCH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST OFFERED\nIN THE EUCHARIST.'\n\nThe following passages are full of interest:--_De Civ. D._ x. 6: 'So\nthat the whole redeemed city, that is the congregation and society of\nthe saints, is offered as a universal sacrifice to God by the High\nPriest, who offered nothing less than Himself in suffering for us, so\nthat we might become the body of so glorious a head, according to that\n'form of a servant' which He had taken.  For it was this (our human\nnature) that He offered, in this that He was offered, because it is in\nrespect of this that He is mediator, priest and sacrifice.'  Then after\na reference to Rom. xii. 1-6 {241} he continues, 'This is the Christian\nsacrifice: the \"many\" become \"one body in Christ.\"  And it is this that\nthe Church celebrates by means of the sacrament of the altar, familiar\nto the faithful, where it is shown to her that in what she offers she\nherself is offered.'  And x. 20: Of Christ's perfect sacrifice of\nHimself 'He willed the Church's sacrifice to be a daily sacrament.  For\nas she is the body of Him the head, she learns through Him to offer up\nherself.'  Again xix. 23: 'God's most glorious and best sacrifice is we\nourselves, that is His city, of which we celebrate the mystery in our\noblations, which are known to the faithful.'  Cf. xxii. 10: 'The\nsacrifice itself is the body of Christ, which is not offered to them\n(the martyrs), for they themselves also are it' (quia hoc sunt et\nipsi).  Cf. _Serm._ 227: 'If you have well received (the body of Christ\nin the sacrament) you are what you have received ... He willed us to be\nHis sacrifice.'\n\nIn all this we have a very plain and much forgotten teaching.  But we\nmust not misunderstand St. Augustine's use of apparently exclusive\nlanguage--as if the sacrifice of ourselves was the only sacrifice\noffered in the eucharist.  The sacrifice of the Church is offered up\nthrough Christ.  Thus he also speaks of the celebration of the\neucharist (on the occasion of his mother's death, _Conf._ ix. 12) in\nthe phrase 'the sacrifice of our ransom (pretii nostri) was offered for\nher.'\n\nWe do well to remember by the way that in _De Civ._ x. 5, 6, St.\nAugustine twice over defines what he means by sacrifice thus: 'A true\nsacrifice is everything that is done in order that we may by a holy\nfellowship inhere in God.'\n\n\n\n\nOXFORD: HORACE HART\n\nPRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY\n\n\n\n\n_A Series of Simple Expositions_\n\n_of_\n\n_Portions of the New Testament_\n\nBY THE\n\nREV. CHARLES GORE.\n\n\nTHE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.\n\nTHE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.  In Two Vols.\n\n\n\nIN CONTEMPLATION.\n\nTHE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.","title":"St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":56664}