3. The teaching of the passage as to the Place of Israel in the divine Plan of life for the world. We have remarked on this already, but it calls for reiterated notice and recollection. "At sundry times, and in divers manners," and through many and divers races and civilizations, God has dealt with man, and is dealing with him, in the training and development of his life and nature. But in the matter of man's spiritual salvation, in the gift to him, in his Fall, of the life eternal, God has dealt with man, practically, through _one_ race, Israel. Let it never be forgotten that the "sundry times and divers manners" of the apostolic Epistle (Heb. i. 1) are all referred to "the prophets"; they are the "times" and "manners" of the Old Testament revelation. And when at length the same Eternal Voice spoke to man "_in the Son_" (ἐν Ὑιῷ), that Son came of Israel, "took hold of Abraham's seed" (Heb. ii. 16), and Himself bore definite witness that "salvation is from the Jews" (John iv. 24). Amidst the unknown manifoldness of the work of God for man, and in man, this is single and simple--that in one racial line only runs the stream of authentic and supernatural revelation; in the line of this mysteriously chosen Israel. From this point of view, the great Husbandman has planted not a forest but a Tree; and the innumerable trees of the forest can get the sap of Eden only as their branches are grafted by His hand into His one Tree, by the faith which unites them to Him who is the Root below the root, "the Root of David," and of Abraham.