t. The men and women whom we would fain
help seem so hardened or so weak. But 'the gifts and callings of God'
within them and about them, 'are without repentance.' God's remedies
for them are not yet exhausted. We therefore have a right to hope and
labour on, 'never despairing[18].'

And where is a nobler presentation to be found than here of the idea of
divine election? That in the great household of the world there are
magnificent and (comparatively, at least) ignominious vocations among
races and individuals; {88} that some men are born for the top, and
other men for the bottom of society; that there are 'honourable' and
'dishonourable' limbs in the body of humanity, the latter fulfilling
their necessary function no less than the former, is an indisputable
fact. It is no use challenging it, any more than any other fundamental
law of the universe. And, if we can see why certain races and certain
individuals are fitted for certain tasks, yet on the whole we can
advance but a very little way in seeing the reason of human
inequalities as in fact they exist. All that lies in the inscrutable
and free counsels of God, and the responsibility is--in spite of the
modifying effects of human sin--ultimately His[19]. But in St. Paul's
treatment of it, the recognition of the fact that God works universal
ends through selected races and individuals, is robbed of all that
ministers to pride and narrowness in the elect, or to hopelessness and
a sense of injustice in the rest.

The New Testament writers in general would teach us that with God is no
respect of persons; {89} so that the lowest vocation may result in the
highest glory, where it is faithfully fulfilled, and the highest
vocation, misused, in the deepest degradation; but St. Paul in
particular makes us feel the humbling responsibility which attaches
necessarily to any state of election. The Jews failed because they
lacked the faith and docility which would have enabled them to
correspond to God's larger leading. The time came when God who had,
'through the Jews, prepared the Christ for the world,' had also,
'through the Gentiles, prepared the world for Christ'; but the Jews
were ready neither to welcome the Christ, nor to 'receive' the world.
Thus the richest ministry ever vouchsafed to a race was waiting for the
Jews, and they proved false to it, because they had turned their
privileges into an occasion for pride and selfishness, and would not
learn the new tr