The life and work of St. Paul

500 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST PAUL.
Isaiah prophesied) had sent them a spirit of stupor which finds its illustration in the
phrase, " let their eyes he darkened," amid David's prayer for the humiliation and
bewilderment of his enemies. 1
But then another awful question occurs : is this hardening, this spiritual blind-
ness, to be final ?
" Did they stumble that they may utterly fall ? "
Again Paul
exclaims, Perish the thought! Their very fall was meant for salvation to the
Gentiles, and to stimulate their own hearts to better things. And here his readers
could not but feel that he was explaining facts which were taking place under their
very eyes. In every instance the Gospel had been offered first to the Jew ; in eveiy
instance the Jew had rejected it ; and it was through this very obstinacy that it
had now been offered everywhere to the Gentile. The Messiah rejected by the
Jew was daily being glorified as the Redeemer of the Gentile. The Church of the
Christ was now securely founded, but even already Antioch, and Rome, and
Ephesus, and Thessalonica were far more its capitals than the Holy City. But this
fact revealed a glorious anticipation. If their deficiency was thus the wealth of
the Gentiles, how much more would their replenishment ! It was his grand mission
to preach this to the Gentiles, and thereby, if possible, to stir the Jews to emulation,
for if their rejection be the world's reconciliation, what will be their acceptance but
life from the dead ?
And that there will be this restoration of Israel he illustrates by a
double metaphor
i. When the heave-offering was offered, the whole lump of dough acquired
eacredness from the fact that a portion of it was sanctified to the Lord. So with
Israel. Their first-fruits Abraham and their patriarchal fathers were holy, and
their holiness was ideally attributable to all the race.
ii. The second metaphor has a wider applicability. The root of the olive-tree
is the source of its fruitfulness ; but if some of its branches lose their fruitfulness
and become withered, they are lopped off and are replaced by grafts of the wild
olive, which then shares the richness of the tree. Such withered branches were the
present unbelieving majority of Israel. That they should be lopped off is a part of
God's just and necessary severity. To explain this truth to bring it home to the
pained and angry consciousness of his people has been one of his objects in this
great Epistle , and he has carried it out, at whatever cost, with a most unflinching
sincerity. But meanwhile, if the Gentiles in their turn were tempted to assume
the airs of particularism with which the Jews had so long gloried over them, what
a warning should be conveyed to them by the state of things here shadowed forth !
And how much consolation might the Jew find in this metaphor to revive the fainting
hopes of his patriotism, and to alleviate his wounded pride of nationality by
gentler and holier thoughts ! For Christ, after all, was a rod of the stem of Jesso,
and a branch out of his roots. The Gentiles were admitted into the Church through
the vestibule of the Temple. With the Jews had remained till this moment the
oracles of God. In Judaism its privileges, its promises, its prophecies were the
germs of Christianity. The new rich fruitfulness of the Gentiles was drawn from
the tree into which they had been grafted. Little cause had they to boast against
the natural branches. Deep cause had they to take warning by the fate which
those branches had undergone. They, in their turn, might be lopped off, and
though here the metaphor as such breaks down the old branches might be grafted into
their proper place once more. 2 Let them remember that faith was the source of
their new privileges, as the want of it had caused the ruin of those whom they
replaced ; let them not be high-minded, but fear.*
ri. 1-11.
* This of course was, physically, an impossible method of tyKtinpurrfs ; the other, if
adopted at all, was most rare. (V. supra, p. 12.)
* xi. 1624.