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with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing 33 to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is 34 he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 35 shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed 36 all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him 37

inconceivable and majestic benignity of the Father. 1 John iv. 9, 10.

33, 34. That the purpose of the Apostle is one of vindication and defence, not of indoctrination, as before intimated, is apparent here, where he reiterates the calling and justification of God and the intercession of Christ, as proofs that the disciples were safe. There remain, therefore, none to accuse or to condemn, for the only two beings who have any rightful authority to do it are God and Christ. God would not do it, for he is himself the Justifier; and Christ would not do it, for he is the Intercessor. 1 John ii. 1. If anything seems assured in the Scriptures, it is the distinct personality of Christ as separate from God, as one being is separate from another; and this is here represented as extending to the future world, as well as the present state.

35-39. The Apostle here rises into a strain of the loftiest and most impassioned eloquence, in describing the certainty of the Christian's hope, and the immortality of the love of God to him, as manifested by Jesus Christ. He presents the thought first in an interrogative form,- Who shall separate us? and then in a positive form,-Nothing shall separate us from this great fountain of life and happiness.- -The love of Christ, i. e. the love which Christ had for his disciples, not the love which his disciples had for

him. He could not have spoken either with that ecstasy or that assurance of the feeble and fluctuating sentiments of men that he could of the overflowing mercies of God, and the eternal love of Jesus. It must be a coal from the altar of heaven, not a spark of human striking, that could kindle and that could justify so splendid a flame of enthusiasm. - -Shall tribulation, or distress, &c. The items of trial here enumerated were the ones to which the Christians of that day were especially exposed. But they were bound to live through them all, and retain their hold of the great treasure which had been vouchsafed to them in this heavenly love and compassion of Jesus and of the Father. - As it is written. Ps. xliv. 22. The old times were made good, and, as in the days of Jewish persecution and slaughter, so now the faithful few were obliged to face danger and death. It was not many years after this was written, that Paul himself suffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, the Emperor, by being beheaded, according to the most reliable traditions, and thus encountered the fate which he had long foreseen was in store for him.

37. More than conquerors. So far from being defeated by these adversities and trials, they only call forth a more unflinching courage, and win for us a greater victory. Through

38 that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 39 things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

CHAPTER IX.

The Divine Sovereignty in the Rejection of the Jews and the Choice of the Gentiles defended on Historical Inferences from the Old Testament.

I SAY the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me

this love of Him who died for us, we die for Him, and repay martyrdom with martyrdom, and cross with cross. 38, 39. Phil. i. 6; 1 Tim. i. 12. But he was not content to repudiate the suspicion that any of the peculiar trials and sorrows of the Christian world at that time could shake their hold upon this heavenly love; he challenges the whole creation to deprive them of the boon. He darts from earth to heaven, from time to eternity, from life to death, and calls upon worlds above worlds, and creations beyond creations, to produce any cause potent enough to tear away this eternal pillar of faith and hope, the love of God in Jesus Christ towards mankind. He appealed to mighty agents; he rose to angels and archangels; he dared the visible and invisible; for nothing could be so strong, so living, so lasting, so prevalent and victorious, as this Eternal Mercy. We believe it, we know it. All things declare it in heaven and earth; and two thousand years of Christianity since these words were written have rolled up an everaccumulating amount of testimony to their truth, have multiplied millionfold their witnesses, and peopled this world and the world to come with the examples of their beauty and power. What Paul prophesied history has fulfilled; and prophecy and history now clasp hands for a yet

more glorious future. The spirit of this passage gives assurance of the final triumph of the Gospel in this world, and it inspires a calm and a strong assurance that all will eventually be won to this omnipotent love in the world to come.

A poor, simple man once said: "I have lost all my property; it is all gone. I have lost all my relations; my last son is dead. I have lost my hearing and my eyesight. I am all alone, old and poor; but it all makes no difference. Christ never grows old, Christ never is poor, Christ never dies, and Christ never will forsake me."

CHAPTER IX.

This is one of the hardest passages to interpret probably in the whole Scriptures; for the subject treated of is the very purpose and will of God in his government, providence, and grace in that dark and debatable region where human freedom borders upon the Divine decrees. Man proposes, God disposes. God's kingdom ruleth over all, but man has a kingdom within a kingdom. Man wills, acts, thinks, chooses, but the very faculties by which he performs all these decisive acts were originated, planned, decreed, moulded, and colored by the Supreme Power. All this world is made by the Blessed

*Mrs. Stowe.

witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and con- 2

God, and in no part of it has any evil Demiurgus had a finger. How, then, shall we account for evil and sin? Why are we to be blamed for the action of faculties and elements which we had no option in bringing into existence, or shaping into form and destiny? Or, as the Apostle puts it in the mouth of an objector, Why doth he yet find fault? Is not God himself the author of sin? How can man be finite and be at the same time responsible?

These and other wild speculations like them may not be capable of being refuted by anything like a demonstrative argument, but they are capable of a fair moral answer, and of being sufficiently relieved and explained for all the practical purposes of cordial duty and of entire confidence in the goodness and wisdom of the Supreme Being.

The sovereignty of God is a great and glorious truth. To decree all things is of the very nature of God, who would not be God if he did not originate and determine all things, endow all beings with their peculiar nature, arrange for them their abode and their culture, and mark out for them their general course and the boundaries of their being. The decrees of God, therefore, are not an abuse, but a legitimate and necessary use of infinite power as it respects God; and they are not a terror, but a mercy, as it respects man, for they are his only shield against blank night, and chaos, and annihilation. The single anxious question is, whether these decrees are just or unjust, benevolent or cruel, or indifferent? Is the election of God partial or impartial, has he or has he not respect of persons, or are his decrees capricious, and does he treat his creatures at random?

The point being settled, then, that

God, to be God, must be a Determiner and a Decreer of all things in general, we come to this second stage of the inquiry: Whether the character of his decrees, so far as we know them, is such as comports with his justice, honor, and benevolence. The sources of our information are Life, Consciousness, Observation, History, and Scripture. Now all these witnesses convey to an attentive and candid mind a broad and firm impression of the righteousness and benignity of the Infinite Disposer, as generally viewed in the present world. The numerous Scripture declarations of the goodness and truth of God are not merely the ejaculations of pious and trusting hearts, but the truest and most profound utterances of the reality of things; a just vindication of the ways of God to man, when they have been subjected to the most piercing intellectual and moral examination. There is, in fact, only just that amount of darkness resting upon the subject of the moral government of God which we ought to expect from its infinite and eternal character, and from our very limited apprehension of its nature and operations. This certainly could not be the universe of the Almighty, if our puny faculties, born yesterday, could grasp with success its vast problems, and explain the uses of all things. We find it a somewhat difficult task to comprehend a new pattern of the steam-engine, or to trace all the parts and bearings of a watch or a clock. Shall we not, puzzled with things finite, learn to reverence and wait, rather than to hastily prejudge, or unfilially complain, as it regards the boundless questions of a system of things whose Maker is God, whose space is Infinity, whose duration is Eternity, and whose agents and subjects are innumerable creatures of

3 tinual sorrow in my heart.

For I could wish that myself were

life and progress, from the worm to the seraph?

Thus comprehensively viewed, we find not one word in this ninth chapter of Romans, respecting the Divine sovereignty and decrees, that is not taught us in all our human life, and that is not perfectly harmonious with the absolute eternal perfection of God, and with his just and benevolent dealing with his finite and dependent creatures. We rise from the perusal of Paul's reasoning in this chapter, not only with Bossuet's famous ejaculation, "God is great!" but with the more peculiarly Christian conclusion, “God is good!”

As if aware that he might by his reasoning in the last chapter have given offence to his Jewish brethren, and desirous to win them to a candid judgment of his reasoning, he turns to them with the warmest and most patriotic devotion, and commemorates the great glories of the Hebrew commonwealth. But his regard for their past renown as the people of God did not blind his eyes to their approaching fate, of which he warns them now and which he proceeds to show by an historical argument was in harmony with the past dealings of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the history of Moses and Pharaoh, and the prophecies of Hosea and Isaiah. Out of the mouth of their own history, therefore, he adduces the arguments that would condemn them and justify God in his rejection of Israel, and his adoption of the Gentiles in the new Church of Christ. It was a special argument to the Jews, argumentum ad hominem, and could be but imperfectly understood except by that people; but the principles which he here discusses are applicable to all cases, and to every age of

the world.

Three additional preliminary re

marks are all that are required. One is, that it is primarily an election to external privileges and advantages which is here discussed, and only secondarily and as resulting therefrom by the use or abuse of said privileges and advantages, that the moral and spiritual state and character come within the reach of the predestinating agency of God. Jacob was chosen and Esau rejected, but Esau seems to have been quite as good a man as Jacob, perhaps better. Many Jews, although of the privileged race, were notoriously bad; while many of the Gentiles, though less favored in external advantages, attained to a superior spiritual life.

The next remark is, that the election here spoken of is by no means a final decision of the everlasting destiny of the parties concerned. There is not a word, or a syllable, intimating that the election of Jacob instead of Esau, insured the eternal salvation of one, or prejudiced the eternal salvation of the other. On the contrary, to them who received most would the demand be made for most in return. The condition of the Jews, who so largely rejected Christ, and of the Gentiles, who so often accepted him, showed that, even as respected their spiritual state here, the one by not being of the elect was not cut off from Gospel privileges, nor the other necessarily included in its blessings then how much less likely it was, that it sealed their eternal fate!

The third remark is, that the election spoken of in this chapter is of a piece with the whole system of Divine Providence and human life. Election to religion is like election to art, to business, to literature, to clime, and class, and color, and the period of the world, and state of society, in which each individual is born. He who decreed that Moses should be the leader

accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to

of the children of Israel, and Pharaoh king of Egypt, decreed that Raphael should be a great painter, and Goethe a poet, and Channing a divine. The justification, therefore, of the variety of gifts, talents, and positions in human life, and its consistency with a just and benevolent Providence, are based on the same ground as the selection of the Jewish or the Christian Church out of the millions of mankind. The only proviso in either case that is necessary as a caveat against injustice, is that temporary conditions and privileges shall not be decisive of eternal consequences.

1-5. These verses contain a species of deprecatory introduction to an argument, in which Jewish history itself would be employed to vindicate the choice of the Gentiles and the rejection of the Jews, as it respected the Christian Church.

1. In Christ, as a Christian.- Conscience, as a conscientious Christian. -Holy Ghost, as a conscientious and inspired Christian. The Apostle, as usual, does not directly state, in so many words, the point about which he is so deeply agitated, but leaves it to be inferred that it is the condition of his countrymen the Jews, as it regards their attitude towards the Christian Church.

2. Norton translates this verse, "that I have great grief and continual pain in my heart," &c. 2 Cor. xii. 15. "So fervent a brotherly love, which affectionately embraced in the Spirit, as fellow-members, all who are engrafted into Christ, which, eager to unite the whole globe into one Church of the Saviour, found not space enough for the vehemence of its operation in all the region from Jerusalem to Illyricum, Rom. xv. 19-23, could not but glow to incorporate into the Lord's Church the peculiar people which in its maternal

bosom had borne the germ of that Church, and brought it forth to the world."

3. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, &c. There are two points in doubt among the commentators; one is what was the nature of the Apostle's wish, and the other, whether it was proper for him to make the wish he did. As to the first, there can be but little doubt that he used, and intended to use, a very strong expression, signifying his willingness to do or suffer any thing right and reasonable for the sake of recovering his brethren from their unbelief. Lardner quotes and approves Photius as remarking, that the Apostle does not say, “I wish,” but "I could wish, if it were fit, if it were lawful, and if my fall and misery might be beneficial to others," &c. The word here rendered accursed is a noun in the Greek, meaning an offering, or gift to the gods, such as it was customary to suspend in the heathen temples; and hence the secondary meanings of devoted, consecrated, or given over to death, or accursed, gradually going so far as to mean almost the opposite to the first sense. Acts xxiii. 14; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xvi. 22; Gal. i. 8, 9. Margin_reads, "separated." He had just spoken, in chap. viii. 38, 39, of what had no power to separate him from the love of God, death, life, height, depth, &c.; but he now seems to say, that if anything could do such an almost impossible thing, it would be his desire by such a perdition to draw the Jews to the feet of Jesus. Similar expressions are elsewhere found, as Moses says with deep feeling, Exod. xxxii. 32: "Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin: and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Elsewhere Christ himself is represented as having been made

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