ust, our sense of the text will be admitted.

If we consider the context, and the part which had been formerly acted
by the apostle, it will not be difficult to ascertain his meaning, nor
strange that he should express himself as in the text. He begins the
chapter with strong expressions of concern for his nation, who had
rejected him "whose name alone is given under heaven," for the
salvation of men. If they continued to neglect the grace offered them
in the gospel, he knew that they could not escape. And when he looked
on them and mourned over them, the dangers which a few years before
had hung over himself, rose up before him. He had been an unbeliever,
a blasphemer, and a persecutor of the church of Christ; had boasted
his enmity to Christ and opposition to the gospel; in which he had
even exceeded the body of his nation--he had taken the lead against
Christianity--been unrivalled in zeal against the cause, and rancour
against the followers of the Lamb. When warned of his danger, and
admonished to consider what would be his portion, should Jesus prove
to be the Messias, he seems to have derided the friendly warnings, and
imprecated on himself the vengeance of the Nazerene!--to have defied
him to do his worst! to pour his curse upon him!

It is not strange that witnessing the temper of his nation, should
call these things to his remembrance--that the consideration should
affect him--that he should shudder at the prospect of the destruction
which hung over them, and at the recollection of that from which
himself had been "scarcely saved"--that he should exclaim, "God and my
conscience witness my great heaviness and continual sorrow, when I
look on my brethren the Jews, and consider the ruin coming upon them,
from which I have been saved, _so as by fire_! Lately I was even more
the enemy of Christ than they, and boasted greater enmity.. against
him! And should have brought on myself a more intolerable doom, had
not a miracle of power and mercy arrested me in my course!" That such
considerations and a recollection of the share which he had formerly
taken in strengthening the prejudices of his nation against the
truth, should deeply affect him, and draw such expression from him as
we find in the text and context, is not strange. They appear natural
for a person circumstanced as he was at that time; and especially to
one divinely forewarned of the devastation then coming on his place
and nation.

These we conceive to b