ioo The salvation of all Israel CHAP. 



fell in the wilderness " 1 J What has the Apostle to 

 say of his brethren according to the flesh who were 

 resisting the Saviour, and of whom he saw that 

 the wrath was coming upon them to the utter- 

 most? 2 Had he regarded God's government from 

 the point of view of the books of Moses, the question 

 would scarcely have arisen ; the blessings of the 

 Mosaic dispensation were national blessings ; and 

 though the generation which came out of Egypt 

 with Moses died in the wilderness, yet the nation 

 of Israel entered into the Promised Land. But 

 could such a hope as this satisfy Saint Paul, whose 

 whole mind was dominated by the thoughts of the 

 resurrection of the dead, Christ's future judgment 

 of mankind, and eternal life 1 When he said that all 

 Israel shall be ultimately saved, is it possible that 

 he only meant to say that every Israelite who lives 

 in the last times shall be saved, but the generations 

 who have rejected Christ have died without hope? 

 The rejection of Christ by his fellow-Israelites, he 

 tells us, caused him "great sorrow and unceasing 

 pain in his heart;" 3 and was there no consolation 

 for this, except the thought of a salvation in the 

 indefinitely remote future, from which they were 

 to be excluded whom he had known on earth his 

 fellow-students at Jerusalem, his playmates at Tarsus, 

 his kinsmen according to the flesh, one of whom, 

 apparently not a Christian believer, afterwards saved 



1 Hebrews iii. 17. 2 1 Thess. ii. 16. 



3 Romans ix. 1, 2. 



