There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer; He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: And this is my covenant unto them, When I shall take away their sins. As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience, even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shewn to you they also may now obtain mercy. For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed {75} unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen. 1. There is a true patriotism which must at times be content to wear the guise of disloyalty; and not even Jeremiah 'weakening the hands of the men of war[8]' in the conflict with the power of Babylon, while all the time his very heart was bleeding for Jerusalem, presents a more pathetic and moving picture of such patriotism than does St. Paul as he here shows himself to us. While he was shaking off the dust of his feet, as he left the synagogues to turn to the Gentiles, while he was throwing all his tremendous energy into the apostolate of the nations, and vindicating their cause, even to fierceness, against the narrowness of his own nation, all the time the thought which buoyed him up was that when the catholic church had become an established fact--when it should have become plain, even to Jewish eyes, that the elect people of God is now a fraternity of all nations, and not their own race only--then it could not fail to happen, that the members of the ancient people, finding themselves in their turn 'alienated,' 'strangers,' and 'far off,' while {76} they knew so well, and needed so deeply, the fellowship of the covenant, should be stimulated to resume their former privileges. Surely then at last Israel 'should remember her way and be ashamed,' and 'receive' her Gentile 'sisters,' though they had been to her as 'Sodom and Samaria,' and though they were now given to her for 'daughters, but not by her covenant'--not by any means on her own terms[9]. All the time that St. Paul is fighting Judaism and vindicating Catholicism, laying down the lines of the great church of the nations, this is the vision that cheers him--an Israel, penitent, humbled, worshipping the Christ whom she had crucified, and therefore welcomed back again with the honour due to her great memories and her inextinguishable vocation. But we notice by the way, as throwing an unmistakable light on the circumstances of Roman Christianity, that while St.