The passages quoted from Isaiah are characteristic and central. This great prophet first clearly perceived that most striking law of human history--that progress comes, not mostly through the majority of a nation, but through the faithful remnant. It is the few best through whom alone God can freely work. It is the best who in the long run determine the moral level of the nation, and either keep the mass of men around them from corruption, or, if that is impossible, provide a fresh point of departure and hope in a society now inevitably, as a whole, hastening to decay and judgement. 'As a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth, when they are felled; so the holy seed is the stock thereof[12].' [1] Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, lxiv. 8; Jer. xviii. 6; Ecclus. xxxiii. 13. [2] xv. 7. [3] 1 Cor. xii. 22-5; 2 Tim. ii. 20. [4] Jer. xviii. 4. The passage continues with a strong assertion of God's freedom to govern the destinies of nations on moral principles. [5] When Moses asked to see God's glory (Exod. xxxiii. 18), what was revealed to him was His goodness and free mercy, and what St. Paul here means by God's glory is His mercy especially. [6] In the original the words run, 'For this cause have I made thee to stand,' i.e. probably, 'I have preserved thy life under the plague of boils, and other plagues, in order to make thee an example of a more conspicuous judgement.' But St. Paul, departing from the Greek Bible, uses a word 'raised thee up,' which in Pharaoh's case, or in that of Cyrus, means to bring upon the stage of history. Isa. xli. 2; cf. Jer. 1. [xxvii in the Greek] 41; Hab. i. 6. [7] See Matt. xiii. 14, 15; Mark iv. 12; John xii. 40. [8] Cf. vol. i. p. 75. [9] On the meaning of divine foreknowledge in St. Paul see vol. i. p. 317. [10] See Joseph. _Antiq._ xiii. 5, 9; xviii. 1, 3; _Bell. Jud._ ii. 8, 14. Cf. Schürer, _Jewish People_ (English trans.), Div. ii. vol. ii. pp.14 ff.; James and Ryle, _Ps. of Solomon_, p. 96. The Essenes, Josephus says, believed in fate, and not in free-will; the Sadducees in free-will and not in fate; but the Pharisees in both. No doubt Josephus is importing Greek philosophical views into his account of Jewish parties, but substantially his account is probably true. [11] e.g. Isa. xix. 24; Ezek. xvi. 55. (The exaltation into the fellowship of the chosen people of Egypt, Assyria, Sodom, and Samaria.) [12] Isa. vi. 13. {44} DIVISION IV. § 3. CHAPTER IX. 30-X. 21. _Lack of faith the reason of Israel's rejection._