But beyond all this the Apostle found a deeper gulf, a more
170 ANATHEMA FROM CHRIST
terrible sentence. To be anathema from Christ, cut off for ever from that eternal life which he had known as the truest and highest blessedness, sentenced for ever to that outer darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth — this was what he had prayed for, if it might have for its result the salvation of his brethren. He had but just asked triumphantly, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? " Now he is prepared, for that reward, if it were so possible, to separate himself.
2. But we must be careful not to treat the language of feeling as if it were that of reasoning and reflexion. St. Paul has proved that without Christ all men are lost, and lost hopelessly. He turns to show the abounding love of God, who in His Son has opened a way of salvation for all. He strives to express the magnitude of that salvation. Carried beyond himself, he breaks forth into the grandest of all his doxologies: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord."
Borne far beyond the present, and now bathed in the light of the Eternal love, he remembers the unutterable loss of those who will not go with him. Must he leave his people in their darkness ? The thought wrings his heart. A counter- wave of horror rushes over him. It sweeps him from Hermon into Gethsemane. Never before, perhaps, has he approached so near the mind of Him who wept over His countrymen, crying, "0 Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not ! "
His father, his mother — great Israel, with all its faults the noblest race the earth has seen ; to whom first the promises were given, first the glory was offered ; stem of which Christ Himself had come — these Israelites alone of all the world he sees rejecting the world's Saviour. The Master's own parable is in his brain. The great day is near, has come. He sees the chosen people, his own people, upon the left hand. He hears the words, "Depart from me, ye cursed!" That he sees, that he hears. For the instant he sees no more, hears no more. He cannot reason, he can only feel. "My brethren are doomed! My
ROMANS IX. 3 171
breibren are lost ! " Love shrieks while reason reels : " Save them ! Send me away, but save them ! I am one, they are many." In such a moment come the words : " I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, . . . whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."
^ An inferior, self-conscious spirit could not have spoken as St. Paul spoke. St. Paul himself could speak thus only when the unutterable vision had fused his soul and burned away its dross. The nearest approach to this glowing utterance was made by Moses when he too had been closeted with God, had talked with God as a man talketh with his friend, had caught enough of the Divine spirit to think of others more than of himself. Then for an instant he forgot who had taught him to love and to sacrifice ; for that instant he fancied he loved men more than God loved them, and exclaimed in substance, " If thou wilt not forgive them, blot me, I pray thee, out of the book which thou hast written." Moses had left the Divine presence but a little moment when he lost power to speak such words. Spoken deliberately, they would be blasphemy. Spoken in the supreme moment when the heaven- kindled heart melts the fetters of the intellect, they are doxologies. If we picture God in the image of a small-souled, jealous lover, of course we shall count such language blasphemous. If we remember that God is God, it will seem prayer.
^ When John Knox cried in an agony, " Give me Scotland or I die ! " was he not setting his will against the Eternal ? Was it not his business to live and work willingly, though it should not be God's purpose to give him Scotland ? Eeason and reflexion are ready to answer " Yes ! " What God Himself thought of John Ejiox's prayer we may read in the way He answered it.
^ I like a bit of hyperbole in our hymns; for instance, I admire the extravagance of that verse of Addison's —
But 0 eternity's too short To utter all Thy praise !
A gentleman said to me, " That cannot be, because eternity cannot be too short for anything." If the Lord had put a drop of poetry into that critic's nature he would not have dealt so hardly with the poet's language ; and if the same Lord had put a little of the fire of grace into the nature of some hard-headed commentators, they would have understood that this passage is not meant to be out' to pieces &ud discussed, but is intended to be taken boiling hot