Christ performed his divinely appointed mission by his death on the Cross, and his subsequent resurrection; having borne and discharged the obligation of the unfulfilled Law, and thereby released all, whether Jews or Gentiles, from the bondage of sin. Righteousness was now attainable through faith in Christ; and I presume that Paul meant by righteousness, harmony with God, resulting from such an attitude on the part of the believer towards Christ as that in which Paul himself stood towards him, in other words, a complete surrender of heart and will to Christ, so as to "put off the old man" and become "a new creature." Those who did this would thereby attain to perfect harmony with God, which is righteousness. I do not stop to dwell upon the way in which Paul explained the fact that the offer of salvation was not universally accepted. For I do not forget that my task is not to expound the whole of Paul's theology, but to explain his view of Pharisaism. I leave out, therefore, all mention of election and reprobation, in order to come to the question how the Jews were dealt with in Paul's theory. For here he was confronted with the fact that the Jews had rejected Christ, and not only rejected him but killed him. In the most emphatic manner they had refused the means of grace which had been offered to them through him. They had, to that extent, frustrated the purpose of God in sending him. They, in common with the Gentiles, had been, as stated already, shut up under sin that God might have mercy on them. And they had spurned that mercy. How was that to be explained? "Did God then cast off his people?" Paul asked (Rom. xi. 1). Not so. "But a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Rom. xi. 25). All that God had willed towards Israel, and declared in the ancient Scriptures, still held good; but its fulfilment was delayed by the disobedience of Israel; and that disobedience was made to serve the purpose of God, in that by its means salvation should come to the Gentiles. The full development of this thought will be found in chapters ix. to xi. of the Epistle to the Romans, and need not be given here. It was Paul's way of getting over a formidable difficulty, namely, the obvious fact that the attitude of the Jews towards Christ was not at all what was to be expected, if his theory of the person and work of Christ were true. It must not be forgotten that the starting point of his theory was his own personal relation to Christ, as he felt it with an intense certainty which nothing could shake for a moment. That was his foundation of absolute truth; and that could not but be the clue by which he interpreted all that he beheld in the world, and read in the history of man. With his application of this clue to the case of the Gentiles I am not now concerned. But, in applying it to the case of the Jews, he was reasoning from premises which were not, and never have been, accepted by Jews.