the Gentiles disposed to argue that these rejected Jewish branches were broken off in order that they might take their place; and that they, the Gentiles, are thus plainly preferred by God to the Jews? The answer is plain. Why were they broken off? Because they would not maintain the correspondence of faith with the purpose of God; and it is simply by maintaining this attitude that the newly introduced Gentiles can hope to retain their place. They had better exhibit, not a groundless pride, but a reasonable fear. Is God likely to be more sparing towards them than towards His first chosen? God has displayed before their eyes both His attributes of severity and goodness, and they must take note of both. At the present moment it is severity towards Jews, goodness towards Gentiles. Yes, goodness towards Gentiles; but so long only as they abide faithfully in His goodness, no longer. When they fail of faithfulness, they too, like their Jewish predecessors, shall be cut off. And, on the other hand, when those Jews change their attitude, and their hardness melts and faith returns, they shall be recovered and reingrafted into the old olive tree. If God {71} could graft into it branches cut out of an alien and inferior stock, how much more easily can He reingraft into it what is really part of its very self? Here then we have a real disclosure of a divine secret[5], to which the Gentiles would do well to keep their eyes open, lest (like the Jews before them) they mistake for wisdom their own self-conceit. The hardening of the Jews has been used by God as an opportunity for the gathering in of the full number of the nations of the earth; and that with the further purpose that, when the nations are gathered in, Israel in all its completeness should be recovered too. And so shall be fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of a redeemer from Zion, who should restore Israel, and of a new covenant with them, based on a fresh forgiveness of their sins[6]. Thus if we think of the actual relation of the Jews to the present preaching of the Gospel, we must think of them as God's enemies, and as having by their very enmity secured the Gentiles their opportunity; but if we think of them in relation {72} to God's eternal choice, they still must appear as sharing the divine love which rests on the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God's gifts and vocation do not admit of being repented of and recalled. Thus we know what to expect. As the Gentiles passed out from disobedience under the divine compassion through the opportunity afforded by the disobedience of the Jews; so now the divine compassion which rests on the Gentiles is intended (by stimulating the Jews to recover their lost privileges) to prove the means of recovering them too out of their disobedience into the shelter of the divine compassion which is the common heritage of all. We see, in fact, all men in turn shut up in disobedience to God,