Jewish unbelief for the blessing of the Gentiles, and then make use of that blessing to remove that unbelief, and gather into the fold of Christ's church the repentant multitudes of the ancient people.

How unsearchable are his dispensations and how past finding out are his ways.w

This thought naturally suggested itself to the apostle's mind, on being permitted by God to search out his dispensations and to find out his ways with respect to the certain advance and complete triumph of the gospel. The Divine disclosure of this one great event of the future forcibly impressed him with a sense of the utter impossibility of every human attempt to dive into the secret meaning of those various arrangements and methods of procedure, by which God, oftentimes in the most extraordinary and unlikely manner, produces results, which it would never enter into the imagination of man to conceive. By the light of the revealed, he learned perfectly the darkness of the unrevealed. He felt that, though he had always believed in the incomprehensibleness of God's secret working, he had never fully realized it, till he beheld its amazing issue in the universal Christian church of the future.

For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or

W

Thy judgments are a great deep (Tà кpipará σov worì älvoroç Ton version of the LXX). Ps. xxxvi. 6.

'As the etymology of aveğixviaoroc (past finding out) declares, there are no footmarks to guide us through that mysterious deep. All

we know is only what, to us undiscoverable, he himself, of his unspeakable compassion, has been pleased to disclose from his mysterious concealment. And yet how rich is this! A compassion which extends to all.'-Thol.

who has been his counsellor ? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him ?

These questions are perhaps intended as quotations, although certainly not accurate ones, from the Old Testament scriptures, and are here asked by the apostle in order that he may express, as strongly and vividly as possible, his deep sense of man's ignorance of God's plans, and undeservingness of God's mercies. The Divine mind, except when some gracious revelation may be communicated of its meaning and intention, must be utterly inscrutable to our finite understanding; and, of course, the idea of the competency of any created being to give advice to its Creator is absurd

See Isai. xl. 13, 14. The apostle quotes the passage nearly in the language of the LXX.

And thy counsel who hath known, except thou give wisdom and strength from above?' Wisd. ix. 17.

"The Lord governeth the world with the palm of his hand, and all things obey his will: for he is the king of all, by his power dividing holy things among them from profane. To whom hath he given power to declare his works? and who shall find out his noble acts? Who shall number the strength of his majesty? and who shall also tell out his mercies?' Ecclesiasticus, xviii. 3-5.

Tholuck quotes a fine parallel saying of a Persian in Dschami's Spring Garden: The face of the beloved God is covered with a veil; except he himself remove it from his countenance, nothing can tear it from him.' See 1 Cor. ii. 16.

y Some commentators suppose that this passage is intended to be

we

'The apostle means to teach that not merely can no mortal fathom the depths of divine love and wisdom, but that all which thence receive is nothing but grace. We cannot ask, What has God given me? He has conferred upon us everything. And when, from this point of view, we contemplate all his dealings and dispensations, we not merely reverence-we adore in the dust his love and his wisdom. It is into such a feeling of adoring self-abasement and humility that the reader sinks at the conclusion of this section, after having had brought before him by the apostle all the great and unspeakable things which God has done for our sinful race.'-Thol.

and blasphemous. Nor is it right for us to regard any blessing, which we may receive from God as in the slightest degree our due. Every claim of human merit must be always disallowed by our Divine Benefactor, from whose love no kindnesses can possibly flow except those which are of mere grace.

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things! To him be glory for ever. Amen.

With this comprehensive doxology the apostle now concludes his important exposition of the wonderful manner in which all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, would at length be brought to acknowledge Christ as their Lord and Saviour. He had just declared, in the most emphatic language, that all God's blessings were of grace. This greatest blessing of all, therefore, the whole world's evangelization, would be simply the highest exhibition of God's unmerited goodness. This impression Paul wishes to leave, at the close of his argument, on the minds of his Roman friends. He states, therefore, in a single weighty sentence, the reason why every blessing must be of grace.

It is because all things are of God, and through God, and to God. From him, as the original source of

To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom ( ov) are all things, and we to him (ɛis avrov): and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom (di' ov) are all things, and we through him (di' avrov).' 1 Cor.

'Him first, him last, him

contains a similar sentiment to that of the apostle.

The proud speech of the king of Egypt, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself,' which

being, all things take their rise. By him, as the efficient cause of being, all things are created and sustained. And for him, as the end of being, all things exist: because it is for his glory and for the accomplishment of his purposes that their existence has been bestowed upon them; and because it is in this living for the Divine honour that the true happiness of the creature consists. There can, therefore, be no such thing as human merit. Whatever be the blessing, God is the sole author of it, and to him alone be all the glory. Amen.

CHAPTER XII.

1I BESEECH you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind: that ye may prove what is the will of God, even that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

WE

E now enter upon that portion of the apostle's letter, which, consisting of a variety of Christian exhortations, naturally succeeds and is connected witha the whole of his previous exposition of the gospel of Christ and description of the wonderful result of God's goodness in the final conversion of the whole world of Jews and Gentiles to the faith of the Messiah. The important precepts, which we have now to consider, are evidently based, in the mind of Paul, on that Christian doctrine of free justification through faith in the

'I beseech you, therefore (ovv), brethren, by the mercies of God,

Saviour, the holy tendencies of which he had asserted and proved in a former part of his epistle. They must not, therefore, be regarded by us as the stern commands of law; for to law, as the producing cause of holiness, the believer in Christ, as we have seen, is dead, but rather as affectionate admonitions, which serve as guides into the happy paths of Christian goodness, and to which, as soon as they are understood, the loving hearts of Christ's members cordially respond, with an earnest desire to carry them out in the daily conversation of their lives. And not only

b "The apostle,' says Olshausen, | Hence it is necessary to point to 'most suitably follows up his de- the fruits of faith, inasmuch as the tailed doctrinal statement with an defect of these is a decisive token ethical part, as is the case in almost of the defects of the inner man. The all his epistles. As blossom and object of the ethical admonitions, fruit grow only from a sound root, therefore, is not immediately through so, too, it is only from faith in Christ them to produce fruit; for of this and in the redemption wrought by the law altogether is not capable, not him, that the true moral life pro- even in its New Testament form. ceeds. But from this faith it must, Still, neither is their object the indeed, of necessity be produced, as purely negative one of merely formsurely as light and warmth must ing a mirror, in which the reader be diffused where there is fire. But may be able to discern what he has if from this it should be argued, not and is not. Rather the ethical that therefore there can be no need admonitions of the New Testament of particular moral admonitions, have a positive character, which conwe should overlook the perverse- sists in this, that, although they do ness of human nature. If, indeed, not work productively (which nothe life of faith had its thoroughly thing can do but faith, or the power right course in every individual, of the Spirit accompanying the adthen, certainly, it would not be monitions), yet they are meant to necessary to call attention particu- arouse the consciousness how far larly to the fruits which ought to the power of faith must work into proceed from it, even as there is no all circumstances of life, even the need of any special precautions in minutest. The advanced members order to make a generous tree bring of the church, therefore, and, above forth generous fruits. But in man, all, the apostles, have to show changeable as he is, the life has no others the way how to attain, by such physically regulated course. degrees, to the estate of being peneThe disordered relations of head trated on all sides by the religious and heart often lead him to per- principle.' suade himself that he has the life of faith, without really having it.

There are truth and beauty in the following remarks of Theodoret :—