Thus stated, the idea of the 'communion of saints' in the Jewish race is nothing else than a ground of hope, and a stimulus to recovery. And the idea admits at once of being transferred to the catholic Israel, as in fact its Jewish {81} parody has, at certain periods, been only too fully and fatally transferred. I say, the true idea admits of being transferred. We belong to the same body as the apostles and martyrs, the virgins and saints, the Jewish patriarchs and prophets also. Their possibilities are ours. Their God is our God for ever and ever. And God looks on us as in one body with them. We too are beloved for these our fathers' sakes. And they too, we cannot doubt, are conscious of our fellowship with them, and if we are trying to live in the same spirit with them, we must believe, all the limitations of our knowledge notwithstanding, that they are supporting and helping us, as in Christ our sympathetic advocates and allies. 4. The metaphor of the olive and the grafting is intelligible enough without explanation. We know how often the olive and the vine are taken in the Old Testament and in other Jewish writings--as in the passage just quoted from the Talmud--for a symbol of Israel; we must frankly recognize that St. Paul, apparently in forgetfulness and not by design, accommodates the physical process of grafting to its spiritual counterpart; for in physical fact, of course, the ingrafted shoot (which represents the Gentiles), {82} and not the stock upon which it is grafted (which represents the Jews), would determine the character and produce of the tree: but when this is once recognized it may be forgotten, and the metaphor is as intelligible to us as if the physical process of grafting were really as St. Paul represents it.