of Israel to the kingdom of God, or the benefits of Christianity, is to be regarded. He goes back to the absolute will of God, and argues that no one can derive from his outward position any right to make definite claims on God, since in such things as depend on the absolute will of God there can be no such thing as injustice towards one party or another. This standpoint, where we are referred to the absolute will of God, is of course liable to be compared with another where the man complaining of injustice at God's hands is reminded of his own sins voluntarily committed. The apostle, however, makes no attempt to reconcile these two positions. Neither here nor anywhere else does he feel called upon to deal with speculative extremes. And in whatever way the question between freedom and predestination be adjusted in speculation, the two positions, that of absolute dependence and that of moral selfdetermination are both involved and rooted in the immediate Christian self-consciousness. Thus all that is hard, repellent, and onesided in the argument of Rom. ix., is to be regarded merely as the extreme logical consequence of one of two positions. It is true, we must admit, but then there is the truth of the opposite position, which the apostle himself takes up afterwards, to be placed over against it. In making the practical application of his main proposition, verse 30, as he had developed it, verses 6-29, the apostle turns from the objective view of the matter to the subjective. The will of God being an absolute will, it is necessary to recognise it as such, and to remember our absolute dependence upon God. As the absolute will of God is not determined by anything human, so men's guilt is great if they refuse to recognise this dependence. With regard to the promises of God, the question is not whether a man belongs externally to the people of God, but whether he is himself elect of God, verses 6-9. It is of God's free choice to prefer one and to reject another, verses 10-13. Nor is this arbitrary choice to be regarded as an injustice on God's part, for man has no right to reclaim against him, the Lord of his fate, verses 14-21. And man is the less entitled to dispute God's absolute right of disposal when he considers that in those who are devoted to

destruction, God's longsuffering and retributive justice and omnipotence are manifested, and in the others the fulness of his grace, since he has called us as vessels of mercy from among both Jews and Gentiles, verses 22-29. The conclusion that is reached through all these considerations is that it does not depend on a man's willing and running; that the heathen obtained what they were not seeking, and the Jews did not obtain what they were seeking, namely, righteousness. And the reason of this was that righteousness is not to be obtained by seeking it through the law and the works of the law, but by faith alone. Thus the Jews brought their fate upon themselves; they did not obtain righteousness because they attached value to their own righteousness and did not submit themselves to the way of the divine appointment, through which righteousness may be obtained. For with Christ the life that is

under the law has an end, and righteousness may now be obtained through faith by all, both Jews and Gentiles. Salvation is only to be had through faith. Though Moses teaches a righteousness that is to be achieved in the way of the law, yet it cannot be obtained, nor the salvation that proceeds from it, save by doing all that the law contains. But the righteousness that comes from faith is so near every man that he need not go far to seek it, either to heaven, as if Christ had to be brought down from above, or to the depths, as if he had to be brought up from the dead. It is offered freely and at once, and has only to be laid hold of. There can be no excuse for the want of a faith like this.

It is obvious that as in chapter ix. the apostle seems to argue for absolute predestination, so in chapter x. he takes up the opposite position. Here the cause of the rejection of Israel is found not in the will of God, but in their own wilful unbelief. This is no solution of the problem of predestination; the one position is simply set over against the other. In chapter xi., however, the apostle approaches the same question in a different way. From the subjective side he recurs again to the objective. Israel is undoubtedly the chosen people of God, the subject of his promises. And what God has promised must be fulfilled. God cannot have rejected

the people whom he foreknew (πрoéyvw, xi. 2, in the same sense as viii. 29). What then of the unbelief of the people? how can God's decree be accomplished in spite of their unbelief? To bring out this point the apostle enters on a teleological view of the world, from which it appears that everything must be subjected sooner or later to the absolute idea of God. The decree of the election of Israel is accomplished in the following momenta :— -1. God has not cast away his people, since a part at least of them is accepted in virtue of his gracious choice, though the rest are hardened, xi. 1-10. 2. This hardening is certainly in contradiction with God's decree, yet it is not without its uses; it is not meant to lead to the final exclusion of the Jews, but only to provide an opportunity for the conversion of the Gentiles. 3. The hardening is only for a time, and will issue at last in the general conversion of Israel. This last point is reached by way of deduction from the other two. If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more will their general entrance into the Messianic kingdom and blessedness bring about a great era of salvation? For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world (of the Gentiles with God), what can the receiving of them be but the quickening of the dead, the last great catastrophe which we look for at the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world? If then the hardening of Israel be so full of blessing even for the heathen, it cannot but have blessed consequences for Israel also. The final and universal conversion of the Jews may also be inferred from the beginning which has already been made. For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy, and if the root be holy, so are the branches. The hardening of a part of the Jews, then, can only last till all the heathens have entered in, and then all Israel will be saved. The apostle grounds this hope and confidence on the original election of Israel attested by the divine promises. For if in regard to the gospel they be hated of God for the sake of the Gentiles (inasmuch as the Gentiles believe-as it is God's will that the Gentiles should obtain salvation—through the unbelief of the Jews), yet as regards

the election they are beloved of God for the fathers' sake. For God cannot revoke his gifts and calling. As the Gentiles were once disobedient to God, but have now, through the disobedience of the Jews, become the objects of God's mercy, so have the Jews in their turn become disobedient, that in consequence of the mercy shown to the Gentiles they also might obtain mercy. For God has concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. And here the apostle sees the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God; the unsearchableness of his judgments; the mystery and hiddenness of his ways; the absolute dependence of all on God, since from Him all things proceed, through Him all things come to pass, and to Him all things tend. The apostle's main idea is the universality of the grace of God; no man can be excluded from it, it must extend at last to all, both Jews and Gentiles, in order to achieve the end it has in view. Grace being absolute, and it being impossible that what God has promised should remain unfulfilled, the apostle infers that the ends of grace must be realized universally. This universalism of grace, however, contains a decidedly particularist element. Grace may be universal in its operation, yet the peculiar object of the divine decree of the bestowal of grace and salvation (the πpółeσis κατ' ἐκλογὴν Rom. ix. 11, the ἐκλογὴ xi. 28, ἐκλογὴ χάριτος, xi. 5) are the Jews as descendants of the patriarchs to whom God gave his promises. God's decree is therefore particular, inasmuch as it applies only to the Jews and not to the Gentiles. And it is also an absolute decree, for the election of the Jews precludes the possibility of their being cast away; it cannot be thought that the promise God has given to the Jews can remain unfulfilled. Now, how does it agree with this particularism and this absoluteness that the Gentiles have been brought into the kingdom of God, and that by far the greater part of the Jews is excluded from it? It is inconceivable except in this way, that each of these two events, the reception of the Gentiles and the exclusion of the Jews, is considered as itself constituting a momentum in the realization of the divine decree. The apostle does so regard the

reception of the Gentiles when he asserts that the Gentiles have been received only for the Jews' sake. The Jews have stumbled, he says, xi. 11, not to fall for ever; but rather through their fall salvation has come to the Gentiles, to provoke the Jews to emulation. Through their unbelief the Jews have been broken off as branches from the olive tree, and the Gentiles stand by faith as branches on the tree, verse 20. But blindness happened to a part of Israel, till the fulness of the Gentiles should have come in to the kingdom of God, verse 25. For the fact that the Jews did not receive the Gospel the apostle has no explanation but this: that what was wanting on the side of the Jews for the accomplishment of the divine decree was to take place on the other side, that of the Gentiles. The Jews did not submit themselves to the divine ordinance of justification by faith; and so, as justification could only be by faith, it had to be received by the Gentiles. Thus the unbelief of the Jews has provided, as it were, an opportunity for the Gentiles to obtain a part of that salvation, to which they had no claim in virtue of any election. They take part in it because in justification by faith God has opened up a way in which it is possible for them also to obtain it. But the position which they occupy in thus partaking of the gospel is in reality merely that of substitutes for the Jews. They receive the gospel in virtue of that election of which the Jews were the objects originally; they, the branches of a wild olive tree, are grafted into the good olive tree. Here the particularism of the election appears in a very strong light. Particularism is to lead to universalism at last, but the idea of the particular decree is not departed from. Now if the divine mercy has been extended to the Gentiles in this way, it is impossible that the Jews, on the basis of whose election the Gentiles have obtained mercy, should continue to be excluded from that mercy themselves, verse 31. Their blindness cannot shut out mercy from them for ever; their election cannot remain for ever unfulfilled. And though they be at present in a state of blindness, unbelief, and disobedience, that merely shows that their unbelief is a stage upon the road to the divine mercy.