be known, while the inert mass
of people, 'important' or 'unimportant,' is lost in the dim background,
they will be seen distinctive in the foreground: the real movement of
God in history, the real witness of the truth, the real spiritual
succession of the kingdom of God, will be seen to have been carried on
through them for the enriching of the whole world.

I would add two reflections on subordinate, {92} but still important
points. It is the function of the catholic church to let its light so
shine before men that it shall 'provoke to jealousy,' by the manifest
presence of God in the midst of it, the ancient and now alienated
people, the Jews. At the moment, with the anti-semite cry strong
throughout Europe, and on the morrow of the 'affaire Dreyfus,' these
words ring with a bitter irony. And in our own East London how utterly
unlikely it is that the spectacle of our Christianity should make the
Jews feel that Christian society cannot but be divine! Indeed, the
unfulfilled debt Christendom owes to the Jews is appalling. That
ancient and indomitable race retains, with all its faults, its
close-knitting sense of brotherhood, its faith, its frugality, its
industry, its patience, its heroism. We are meant to show it the
greater glories of the New Covenant, the splendour of the purity, the
unworldliness, the expansiveness, the love of the brotherhood of
Christ. And we do show it--what? Is there that in our common
Christianity, as they see it, which should obviously make Judaism
ashamed of itself? Could St. Paul, looking at our Christendom, have
expected 'all Israel to be saved' by the spectacle of a catholic
church? These are considerations {93} which indeed should drive us to
bitter penitence and earnest prayer.

Finally, before we leave these chapters, we shall do well to look
steadily at St. Paul's habit of mind in dealing with antithetic or
complementary truths. No one could believe with a more glorious
conviction than St. Paul in the dominance of the purpose of God in the
world: in the certainty of the accomplishment of what God has
predestined. If the very rejection of the Christ by the Jews was
turned into an opportunity for the conversion of the Gentiles, what
crime can be too great for the divine wisdom to overrule it for good?
No one, on the other hand, could realize more deeply the responsibility
which lies upon men: their strange power to correspond with God, or
partly thwart His purpose for them