-have consecrated the whole nation. The
holiness of the root of God's olive tree[4] has passed to the latest
branches. It is quite true that some of these branches of the Jewish
olive tree were broken off, and that the Gentiles were introduced in
their place; like a wild olive grafted upon the root of a cultivated
plant, and so sharing its rich sap. But that--to let the metaphor
continue--gives the wild olive no ground for an insolent contempt of
the branches which naturally belonged to the tree. What advantage it
now has it wholly derives from that which it is {70} affecting to
despise. It is the root that supports it, not it the root. And are
the Gentiles disposed to argue that these rejected Jewish branches were
broken off in order that they might take their place; and that they,
the Gentiles, are thus plainly preferred by God to the Jews? The
answer is plain. Why were they broken off? Because they would not
maintain the correspondence of faith with the purpose of God; and it is
simply by maintaining this attitude that the newly introduced Gentiles
can hope to retain their place. They had better exhibit, not a
groundless pride, but a reasonable fear. Is God likely to be more
sparing towards them than towards His first chosen? God has displayed
before their eyes both His attributes of severity and goodness, and
they must take note of both. At the present moment it is severity
towards Jews, goodness towards Gentiles. Yes, goodness towards
Gentiles; but so long only as they abide faithfully in His goodness, no
longer. When they fail of faithfulness, they too, like their Jewish
predecessors, shall be cut off. And, on the other hand, when those
Jews change their attitude, and their hardness melts and faith returns,
they shall be recovered and reingrafted into the old olive tree. If
God {71} could graft into it branches cut out of an alien and inferior
stock, how much more easily can He reingraft into it what is really
part of its very self?

Here then we have a real disclosure of a divine secret[5], to which the
Gentiles would do well to keep their eyes open, lest (like the Jews
before them) they mistake for wisdom their own self-conceit. The
hardening of the Jews has been used by God as an opportunity for the
gathering in of the full number of the nations of the earth; and that
with the further purpose that, when the nations are gathered in, Israel
in all its completeness should be recovered too. And s