[197] "To our safety our sedulity is required." Hooker, _Sermon on the Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect_ (at the close of the sermon). See the whole sermon, with its temperate and well-balanced assertion of the power of grace. CHAPTER XXIV _THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL DIRECTLY FORETOLD: ALL IS OF AND FOR GOD_ ROMANS xi. 25-36 Thus far St Paul has rather reasoned than predicted. He has shewn his Gentile friends the naturalness, so to speak, of a restoration of Israel to Christ, and the manifest certainty that such a restoration will bring blessing to the world. Now he advances to the direct assertion, made with a Prophet's full authority, that so it shall be. "_How much rather shall they be grafted into their own Olive?_" The question implies the assertion; nothing remains but to open it in full. [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this mystery,= this fact in God's purposes, impossible to be known without revelation,[198] but luminous when revealed; (=that you may not be wise in your own esteem,= valuing yourselves on an insight which is all the while only a partial glimpse); =that failure of perception (πώρωσος), in a measure,= in the case of many, not all, of the nation, =has come upon Israel,= and will continue =until the fulness[199] of the Gentiles shall come in,= until Gentile conversion shall be in some sense a flowing tide. [Sidenote: Ver 26.] =And so all Israel,= Israel as a mass, no longer as by scattered units, =shall be saved,= coming to the feet of Him in whom alone is man's salvation from judgment and from sin; =as it stands written= (Psal. xiv. 7, Isai. lix. 20, with Isai. xxvii. 9), ="There shall come from Sion the Deliverer; He shall turn away all impiety (ἀσεβείας) from Jacob;= [Sidenote: Ver 27.] =and such they shall find the covenant I shall have granted,[200]= such shall prove to be My promise and provision, 'ordered and sure,' =when I shall take away their sins,"= in the day of My pardoning and restoring return to them.