only that the Christian Church was formed exclusively, but the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction, as every predestinarian Jew contended, were also admitted. The Jews were to beware, lest, having been so long vessels of mercy, they should now find their position reversed, and they should become vessels of wrath, and the Gentiles vessels of mercy in their place. - Endured with much longsuffering, &c. Olshausen truly remarks, that he is disposed to believe that "we must assume that the Apostle intended by this method to signify the different relation in which God stands to the good and the evil, since he employs such different terms for the one from what he does for the other." (In one, it is vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,-i. e. by themselves, and in the other, it is the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.) For, Olshausen continues, "there is something not only discordant, but absolutely contradictory, in the idea that God endures with much long-suffering what he has himself prepared." Can anything be more horrible to infer than the conclusion of Gomar, a Calvinistic critic, that, "when God will condemn a man, he first creates sin in him in order that, after he has been plunged into sin, he may be justly damned"? But to such results does the bald and dead-letter interpretation of Paul's writings lead. His Epistles are thus an armory from which every species of weapon may be taken, offensive or defensive, and

capable of being used for evil sometimes as well as for good. It is evident, throughout this passage relating to the clay, and the potter, and the different vessels, that it is only in relation to the temporal disposal of nations that the act of the Divine sovereignty is spoken of, and not in respect to the final determination of the salvation or rejection of individuals in the eternal world. Rom. x. 12; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. i. 11, 12.

25, 26. He proceeds to show by the prophets, as he had previously done by the history of the patriarchs and of Moses their great lawgiver, that mankind were appointed to the privileges of religious truth, not on account of merit, but by the disposal of the Higher Power. Hos. i. 10; ii. 23. Tholuck agrees that "it is not the vocation of individuals into the kingdom of grace which is treated of, but that of entire national masses, and so not of an absolute, but only of such a conditional decree, on God's part, as depends on faith, consequently upon the bias of the will.” Osee, or Hosea, as it is printed in the better editions even of the English versions. The obsolete spelling requires to be corrected throughout the English Bible. The original application of the prophet's words in these verses was to the children of Israel, that they would be restored from their fallen and captive condition, which they had brought upon themselves by their sins. But the secondary application by the Apostle of the words of this ancient Scripture

is to the call of the Gentiles and the rejection of the Jews, particularly

the former.

27, 28. He adds to the testimony of Hosea that of Isaiah x. 22, 23. Crieth. As if on a great occasion, when he would arouse and warn the careless in their fancied security.— A remnant shall be saved. I. e. a remnant only. It was not the first time, the Apostle would say, that Israel has been decimated by the retributions that have overtaken her sins. Her own prophets bore witness to the righteous chastisements of God. Finish the work. The margin reads account. Make a short or contracted account. Cut it short in righteousness, &c. The sense of which is, that God would fulfil his fixed and righteous decree, and shortly, speed-. ily, bring it to its consummation in the land of Judæa. By accommodation and illustration this ancient warning was applicable to the rejection of the Jews from Christian privileges on account of their unbelief. All would not come into the new kingdom and thus be saved. But it was quite improbable then that the Jews would venture into open conflict with the overmastering power of Rome, and thus surely draw down destruction upon themselves. This great catastrophe, however, happened in a few years afterwards, when Vespasian and Titus wellnigh obliterated the Jews from the face of the earth, and drove them forth to be vagabonds

and exiles in all the world, and no more to possess a country, a city, or a holy national temple of Divine worship under the sun.

29. Esaias. Greek for Isaiah, i. 9. The emphasis in this verse is on the word seed. I. e. unless a part had been preserved, the case of Israel would have been as bad as that of the corrupt cities of the plain. The winnowing process was not applied to the nation for the first time now, but was as old as the days of Isaiah. The Jew was thus answered from the books of his own faith, and taught by the very prophets in whom he so much trusted, not to be lulled into a deceitful security as to the adoption necessarily of the chosen people into the Christian kingdom, for a day of fearful reckoning and expurgation was at hand.

30, 31. The Gentiles, not having any false grounds of confidence, any mock-righteousness, came readily to the method of righteousness by faith, as proposed by the Gospel. Whereas the Jews, who had been trained by a system of Law, became so addicted to it and so bigoted in their adhesion to it, that, when the higher lawdispensation came, many of them rejected it, because they did not perceive that it was, in fact, not the destruction of their old Law, but its glorious fulfilment. It might then be said, perhaps, Was not Gentilism better than Judaism? and why was the elder dispensation given at all?

Because Judaism, on the whole, though attended by these drawbacks, was a necessary initiation of religious truths and institutions in an idolatrous world, to prepare the way for Jesus, a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. Jesus would have made still less advancement of his kingdom in Greece than in Judæa. As it was, the first churches in Gentile cities were chiefly Jewish in their materials, and Moses and the prophets furnished the stock on which the Gospel ingrafted its scions, and commenced the growth of new spiritual fruits and the promise of a fresh spring-time of humanity. Neander acutely observes, — and I quote him because his orthodoxy is unquestioned, that such language as is used in these verses "by no means implies that the conduct of men makes no difference in the impartation of grace, but exactly the contrary; for he thus expresses the hinderance to the reception of the Gospel by the Jews, arising from the direction of their minds, from the state of their hearts; namely, that a confidence in their own willing and running' prevented their consciousness of their need of redemption, while those classes of heathens among whom the Gospel was first propagated were more easily led to embrace it, because they indulged in no such false confidence."

32, 33. And how did this tremendous moral lapse take place, but by the Jews pursuing a wrong course, swerving from the early spirit of their religion, which was conceived and brought forth in faith,—for

Abraham was a man of superlative faith, and in faith found his righteousness? They had gone in quest of a legal, moral righteousness, not animated by the higher sentiments and aspirations of the soul; and they therefore became dry, hard, and bigoted, and cut themselves off from the heavenly sources of spiritual life and growth. Isa. lviii. 2, 3. "Bound on a voyage of awful length, Through dangers little known, A stranger to superior strength, Man vainly trusts his own. "But oars alone can ne'er prevail

To reach the distant coast;
The breath of Heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost."

That stumbling-stone. The doctrine of a crucified Messiah was in the way of the Jews accepting Christianity; for they were in expectation of a temporal kingdom, and they could not brook the idea of the humiliation of Jesus of Nazareth, born in a manger, living as a carpenter till he entered on his ministry, poor and lowly and unattended with worldly pomp, and dying at last on the ignominious cross of Calvary. Such a life, no matter how devout, lovely, or benevolent it might be, clashed at every point with their most cherished notions, and crushed their fondest hopes. Luke ii. 34; Acts iv. 11; 1 Cor. i. 23. As it is written. Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16. The quotation is made from both texts. Matt. xxi. 42. Probably neither of these passages originally related to the Messiah, but they had been accustomed to be so applied in the Jewish commentaries, and Paul employs them as an argu

ment in combating their peculiar state of unbelief. They were but showing national characteristics long ago observed and described. Ashamed. The margin reads confounded. The stone which God had placed as the corner-stone of his edifice in Mount Zion, the strength and ornament of his great temple of revelation, became to the Jews a block to stumble over and fall upon.

Well might the Apostle mourn and weep, and wish himself accursed from Christ for his brethren, when he reflected upon the shame and sadness of their fall, their rejection of the Prophet of prophets, who came to fulfil their whole system of religion, and the denial of the chosen Son of God by the chosen people of God. Nothing in history is more full of pathos, nothing is more mysterious in providence and revelation, and nothing throws a more discouraging aspect over the nature and condition of man, than the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews, the crucifixion of the Son of God in the holy city of Jerusalem. These are historical events full of saddest import, of terrible warning, and almost incredible contrasts. But a light gleams out of the darkness: "Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." These are words of inexpressible comfort, and of immortal hope. Amid all the darkness and discouragement of human depravity, whether revealed in history, or in our own consciousness, we know that a human being has never existed, that seized hold of this promise as if he were grasping the horns of the altar, to whom these words have not been trebly made good, and

"good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over, been given into his bosom."

CHAPTER X.

1, 2. The present chapter is a continuation of the same general argument as that of the last one, with new reasons, and inferences from the Old. Testament. As the Apostle had spoken severely, in chap. ix. 31-33, of the lapse of the Jews in their rejection of the Messiah, and the cause of it in their own conceited selfrighteousness, he now, by the natural reaction of alternate emotions, is led to feel deeply for their rejection of Christ, and to express his yearning for them in the most compassionate terms. He calls those whom he addresses his brethren. He says, that, so far from having any hard feelings against the Jews, his constant prayer is for their good and salvation. It was not merely saying words of conciliation, but it was the deep desire and wrestling of his heart for them that they might come into the blessedness of Christianity.-For Israel. Griesbach, Tischendorf, and all the best critics read "for them," meaning, however, the same, namely, the Israelites. But the manuscripts and versions require the alteration. A new edition of the Bible is much needed, in which these palpable errors shall be corrected. A zeal of God; or, a zeal for God and his law. The zeal of the Jews was so strong a national characteristic, as to be proverbial. John xvi. 2, 3; Acts xxi. 20; xxii. 3; Gal. i. 14. It arose from their original constitution as a people, from the fact that they had been put in

trust with great religious privileges, and from the persecutions they had endured from other natiens, who had sought to corrupt their allegiance to God. The New Testament is full of illustrations of this zeal; it led to the crucifixion of Jesus, and the persecution of his disciples. Paul was actuated by it when he was arrested by a vision from heaven on his way to Damascus. The Jewish writers record many instances of the zeal of their nation for the law, and the Apocrypha gives a narrative of martyrdoms in its behalf. -Not according to knowledge. But the error was, that their zeal was not intelligent, and therefore it was narrow, bigoted, obstinate, and persecuting. It was not baptized into love, gentleness, and the higher and more genial exercises of the spiritual nature. In the particular instance under consideration, if their minds had been as much enlightened as their feelings were excited, they would recognize Jesus as their Messiah, and they would perceive that he was the very completion and fulfilment of that Law, to which they gave so contracted and blind, though devoted, an adherence.

3, 4. Ignorant of God's righteousness, &c. He now explains what he meant in ver. 2, by accusing them of want of knowledge. They had set up in the place of God's method of making men righteous and holy, namely, faith-righteousness, a method of their own, namely, law-righteousness, which of course acted as a virtual exclusion of the other mode. "The Apostle uses the expression submitted, since he considers the cause of their not receiving what God is willing to bestow to be a spirit of in

subordination, a want of humility and acquiescence in the Divine arrangement." - Christ is the end of the law, &c. That is, he is the very fulfilment of the system of Law on which the Jew so much prides himself. The Law ends in Christ, who came not to destroy it, but to fulfil it. Matt. v. 17. The same argument is virtually renewed here that is conducted in chap. vii. The whole state of the case is somewhat after this wise. Man is in sin, and he knows how to escape this wretched state. He deeply feels the evil and the misery of sin, but the law of his members is stronger than the law of his mind, and he yields to his baser appetites and passions. In this state Jesus Christ is presented to him as the realization of the perfect life. He is the righteousness of God, and sanctification and wisdom and redemption. He shows what every man may become in a degree. He shows what the result of the law of the mind is, when that law is perfectly obeyed, as it could not be under the Mosaic Law, because the motives were not strong enough. To believe in Christ is therefore to believe in personal perfection and good

ness.

Our past sins still annoy us, for we do not get rid of all their consequences, and at times their old roots sprout up again, and trouble us. But we do not despair, for we feel that we are justified in our best hopes and prospects by the righteousness of Christ; both objectively towards God by the observance of his law, and subjectively towards ourselves by seeing what our nature is capable of becoming, if we persevere, hold fast the profession of our faith, and