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Israel had stumbled at that stumbling stone- J. their own Messiah come in grace to lead them in repentance back to God. " Have they stumbled that they should fall ? Far be the thought ; but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness?" If those that were "bidden" refuse to sup of His grace, then they must see others enjoy the royal bounty. If Israel will but look, she may see the knowledge of Jehovah-as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ-enriching the world and bringing salvation to the Gentiles, delivering from all uncleanness and converting them to God from idols.

The apostle's hope is that this spectacle of grace may provoke some of his brethren after the flesh to jealousy, and bring them to repentance, and so to salvation.

But if the effect of the gospel now going out, on account of Israel's having stumbled, has enriched the world and brought salvation to the Gentiles, what will be the effect of the gospel going out again, not on account of Israel being cast away, but on account of her reception back to favor with God ? The gospel then (of the kingdom) being accompanied by the story of God's dealings with His ancient people because of their sins (the explanation of their long dispersion), together with the impartial judgment of God, as seen in His rejection of Christendom because of unfaithfulness to the truth and ultimate apostasy, will have such an effect on the peoples, outside of Christendom, that the apostle is led to characterize it as "life from the dead." Does not this bring to mind the call of Abraham, considered as a rescue from idolatry (Josh. 24 :2, 3), and the birth of Isaac from the dead womb of Sarah, from whom was to come a multitude as numerous as the sand upon the seashore ? " Life from the dead "-how expressive of God's power displayed in grace!

"For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy." This is an evident allusion to the first-fruits of their dough, which the children of Israel were to offer to Jehovah (Num. 15 :20, 21). Abraham, the first fruit; the nation, the lump, holy, or set apart to God.

Passing from this figure (possessing the principle necessary to his illustration) the apostle transfers the figure, with its principle, to that which is more suited to the immediate purpose on hand – the figure of a tree and its branches. If Abraham was set apart to God, so likewise was the nation. And since the "gifts and calling of God are without repentance," the place of earthly nearness to God and of national pre-eminence must ultimately be the portion of Israel ; this the apostle goes on to show.

Addressing himself to the Gentiles, he says :"And if some of the branches were broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, were graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou barest not the root, but the root thee." Abraham the root, the nation the branches of the good olive tree:for it was in Abraham the Spirit of God manifested His light and leading, aud the nation was the sphere of the Spirit's activities in Old Testament times. The olive tree, from which the oil comes, which is a type of the Spirit of God, seems to be the suited figure to set forth the sphere of His actings. The Gentile having been brought into, and having characteristically become the sphere of the Spirit's gracious activities, is warned against boasting; but if he does, the apostle points to the breaking off of the branches, and he is told why they were broken off-"Because of unbelief." "Thou standest by faith; be not high-minded, but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches "-those by nature descended from Abraham – "take heed lest He spare not thee." The question here is that of corporate, or national, light and privilege, not of life or of individual faith-light which must be walked in, and privilege which must not be abused.

So long as Israel was characterized by faith, or so long as there was hope of their being called back to this, they maintained their place of national pre-eminence. But when even the remnant of Judah ceased to be so characterized, and were beyond hope of recovery to that state, God gave them up to judgment and to dispersion.

The Jew was given up to hardness of heart because of unfaithfulness to the truth, which led him further and further away from God, and deeper and deeper into religious conceit, until, when at the height of his self-righteousness, he crucified the Christ of God, in whom was his only hope. The beseeches of Christ, and, after the cross, the pleadings of His ambassadors, fell alike on ears that were deaf, until it fulfilled the Lord's own parable :"A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy until I come. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying. We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 19 :12-14); for when Stephen bore this testimony to them, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God " (Acts 7 :56), " they gnashed on him with their teeth," and sent him to heaven as messenger to the "nobleman in the far country," to say unto Him, We will not have thee to reign over us.

Up to this point in their history, the Jews had evidently an offer of national restoration, as in Acts 3:19-21, if as a nation they had repented. Their rejection of Christ was put on the ground of ignorance (Acts 3 :17) ; but now the repeated pleadings of the apostles, bringing out more fully the deep-rooted enmity to all that was of grace, and so to all that was of God through Christ, they were definitively given up by God as a nation. For the wilful murderer there is no city of refuge. In this connection, Heb. 6:4-9 is very instructive. Those there addressed, after having received enlightenment as to Christ, and having been brought into the sphere of the Spirit's operations, had turned away from it all and gone back to Judaism, thus taking themselves off the ground of ignorance, and so "crucified to themselves the Son of God," putting Him to an open shame.

Prior to their profession of Christ, they had been implicated in the guilt of His national rejection; but now, having had the evidence of grace and of the moral power of the word of God and of the miracles wrought in the power of the Holy Spirit, in turning back to Judaism they put their own hand as it were to the crucifying of the Son of God, and set His claim to the Messiahship as false. It is impossible to renew such to repentance, for there is no city of refuge for the wilful man-slayer.

Applying this principle nationally, it is interesting to notice the ordinance of the cities of refuge in their dispensational teaching, as bearing on our present study. First of all, the gravity of wilful murder lies in the fact that man is made in the image of God (Gen. 9 :6). How awful then is the murder of Him who is the image of God, and who is in His moral attributes, the express image of His substance ! How could there be forgiveness for those who, after all the evidence which the patient goodness of God could supply had been given to them, in proof of the claims of Him whom they had crucified, still refused those claims, and by going back to Judaism , justified themselves in His crucifixion ?

Where was there ground of appeal to those who denied the voice of Moses and the prophets ?-who refused the Son of God accompanied as His message was with every sign of grace and power ?- who resisted the wondrous signs of the blessed Spirit of God manifested at Pentecost, and throughout the succeeding days by the instrumentality of the apostles ? There was no city of refuge for such. There could be no hiding-place in Christ for those who denied that Jesus was He. But when "the fulness of the Gentiles be come in," when the last of the Gentiles shall have been brought to God in this present age, and the present testimony to Christ shall have ceased, then will Israel be again on the ground of ignorance, and God will plead with them ; and at the appearing of Christ, with the change in the priesthood for Israel, they will be set free from the avenger of blood.

But if God has so dealt with Israel for their sins, if He has broken off these "natural branches," because of their unbelief, what shall He say to the " wild olive branches," who had in grace and mercy been grafted in the good olive tree ? The Gentile tenure of office, as was the Jewish, was conditioned on continuance in faith; but heedless of the apostle's warning, he became " wise in his own conceits" and lost the "fear of God," and, like the Jew, took the place of earthly blessing and national supremacy as the entitlement of his own merit. His language betrayed him as a stranger to God in heart:"I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." The sentence upon him is:" Thou also shalt be cut off." The Gentile cut off, because of unbelief; Israel graffed in again, because of a return to faith-how impartial are the ways of God!

"All Israel shall be saved." To understand this phrase, as here used, we must go back to the apostle's statement:" They are not all Israel who are of Israel" (chap. 9 :6). "The Deliverer" has "come out of Zion, and turned away ungodliness from Jacob." "Jacob," the suppliant, becomes "Israel;" whilst the mass, Esau-like, in independence and forgetfulness of God, go on to judgment. "Israel "shall come into her inheritance. The land, long defiled with blood, shall be cleansed-cleansed too by the Lord Jesus Himself, coming in judgment upon those who had defiled it by the murder of Himself. "So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye dwell :for blood it defileth the land :and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it" (Num. 35 :33). If the blood of Abel cried from the ground, how much more the blood of Christ, against its apostate despisers.

It is a striking fact that, whilst in the ways of God it may suffice to use the armies of the "Beast" to pour out His judgment upon the ecclesiastical system which had corrupted the truth during this present age (Rev. 17 :16, 17), to the defilers of the land by blood (the proud Roman and the apostate Jew), the judgment is meted out by His own hand in the land whereon His blood was shed. " For the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it" (Rev. 19 :19-21; Num. 35 :33).

But of Israel it is written :"And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem." " And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:for they shall all know Me, from the least to the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more" (Isa. 4:3; Jer. 31:34). These are the "children of the promise," and they are "counted for the seed." " For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as indeed ye [also] once have not believed in God, but now have been objects of mercy through the unbelief of these, so these also have now not believed in your mercy, in order that they also may be made objects of mercy. For God hath shut up together all in unbelief, in order that He might show mercy to all" (chap, 11:29-32, J. N. D.'s Trans.).

This, then, was the gracious purpose of God, to bring men, Jew and Gentile, to the knowledge that mercy was their only hope; to shut them up in unbelief with its debasing influences and its awful consequences, to bring them to the position of suppliants for mercy, that they might learn that righteousness is the product of Life; and that the creature, to abide in faith, must be born of God and divinely kept.

"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God." Who could have divined that God, by giving them to eat of the fruit of their ways, and filling them with their own devices, was bringing the idolatrous Gentile to the knowledge of his sins, bringing him thus to the recognition of the need of mercy? Nor does the Jew to-day conceive that God is by the same process bringing him to the confession of his guilt, and to the sense of his need of mercy. Truly, God is no respecter of persons. How unsearchable are His ways ! They are the ways of Wisdom :ways which shall yet in the complete web of time approve themselves as the Urim and Thummim of God, in perfect wisdom lighting up the whole blighted track of man's shameful history with the sweet purposes of divine love-ways in which the "children of light " may find Him who is Light and Love; of whom, as the Source, through whom, as the Director of agency, and for whom, as their ultimate purpose and justification, are all things. To whom be glory now and forever. Amen ! G. MacKenzie.