Although those privileged Hebrews rejected him, Christ did not remain a king without subjects, a shepherd without a flock. In the exercise of the same sovereignty through which he chose Abraham at first, he passed over Abraham's degenerate posterity and called another family. This family was Abraham's seed, not by natural generation, but in the regeneration through faith. Of these stones he raised up children to Abraham, when the natural children of the family had through unbelief shut themselves out. "Go to the highways:" Christ commanded his apostles to begin at Jerusalem indeed, but he did not enjoin,--did not permit them to continue holding out their hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people; the alternative was embodied in their commission, If the Jews do not receive you, go to the Gentiles. It becomes us to stand in awe before these deep things of God: their fall became our rising. In the channel through which a running stream is directed upon a mill wheel the same turning of a valve that shuts the water out of one course throws it into another, that had previously been dry; thus the Jews by rejecting the counsel of God shut themselves out, and at the same moment opened a way whereby mercy might flow to us who were afar off. The servants went out and did as they were bidden. Peter went to the house of Cornelius, and in that lane of the world's great city found a whole household willing to follow him to the feast his royal master had prepared. Soon thereafter Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, and others traversed the continents of Europe and Asia, bringing multitudes of neglected outcasts into the presence and the favour of the king.