So St Paul, just at this point of the Epistle, turns with a peculiar intensity of grief and yearning towards the Israel which he had once led, and now had left, because they would not come with him to Christ. His natural and his spiritual sympathies all alike go out to this self-afflicting people, so privileged, so divinely loved, and now so blind. Oh that he could offer any sacrifice that would bring them reconciled, humbled, happy, to the feet of the true Christ! Oh that they might see the fallacy of their own way of salvation, and submit to the way of Christ, taking His yoke, and finding rest to their souls! Why do they not do it? Why does not the light which convinced him shine on them? Why should not the whole Sanhedrin say, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have us to do?" Why does not the fair beauty of the Son of God make them too "count all things but loss" for Him? Why do not the voices of the Prophets prove to them, as they do now to Paul, absolutely convincing of the historical as well as spiritual claims of the Man of Calvary? Has the promise failed? Has God done with the race to which He guaranteed such a perpetuity of blessing? No, that cannot be. He looks again, and he sees in the whole past a long warning that, while an outer circle of benefits might affect the nation, the inner circle, the light and life of God indeed, embraced "a remnant" only; even from the day when Isaac and not Ishmael was made heir of Abraham. And then he ponders the impenetrable mystery of the relation of the Infinite Will to human wills; he remembers how, in a way whose full reasons are unknowable, (but they are good, for they are in God,) the Infinite Will has to do with our willing; genuine and responsible though our willing is. And before that opaque veil he rests. He knows that only righteousness and love is behind it; but he knows that _it is_ a veil, and that in front of it man's thought must cease and be silent. Sin is altogether man's fault. But when man turns from sin it is all God's mercy, free, special, distinguishing. Be silent, and trust Him, O man whom He has made. Remember, He _has made_ thee. It is not only that He is greater than thou, or stronger; but He has made thee. Be reasonably willing to trust, out of sight, the reasons of thy MAKER. Then he turns again with new regrets and yearnings to the thought of that wonderful Gospel which was meant for Israel and for the world, but which Israel rejected, and now would fain check on its way to the world. Lastly, he recalls the future, still full of eternal promises for the chosen race, and through them full of blessing for the world; till he rises at length from perplexity and anguish, and the wreck of once eager expectations, into that great Doxology in which he blesses the Eternal Sovereign for the very mystery of His ways, and adores Him because He is His own eternal End.