What a hard thing it was for him to give them up! He pleaded for them, while they were persecuting his Lord and himself. He reminded his 20 Lord that he himself had also been that Lord's persecutor, and why not try them a little longer? "Lord," he said, "they know that I cast into prison, and beat in every synagogue, them that believed in Thee. And, when the blood of 25 Stephen, Thy witness, was shed, I stood by and consented, and kept the garments of them that killed him." You see, his old frame of mind, the feelings and notions under which he persecuted his Lord, were ever distinctly before him, and he 30 realized them as if they were still his own. "I bear them witness," he says, "that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." O blind! blind! he seems to say; O that there should be so much of good in them, so much zeal, so much of religious purpose, so much of 5 steadfastness, such resolve like Josias, Mathathias, or Machabæus, to keep the whole law, and honor Moses and the Prophets, but all spoiled, all undone, by one fatal sin! And what is he prompted to do? Moses, on one occasion, desired to suffer 10 instead of his rebellious people: "Either forgive them this trespass," he said, "or if Thou do not, strike me out of the book." And now, when the New Law was in course of promulgation, and the chosen race was committing the same sin, its 15 great Apostle desired the same: "I wished myself," he says, speaking of the agony he had passed through, "I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh." And then, 20 when all was in vain, when they remained obdurate, and the high decree of God took effect, still he would not, out of very affection for them, he would not allow after all that they were reprobate. He comforted himself with the thought of 25 how many were the exceptions to so dismal a sentence. "Hath God cast away His people?" he asks; "God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." "All are not Israelites that are of Israel." And 30 he dwells upon his confident anticipation of their recovery in time to come. "They are enemies," he says, writing to the Romans, "for your sakes;" that is, you have gained by their loss; "but they are most dear for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are without 5 repentance." "Blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in; and so all Israel should be saved."