11.
The Feeling of the Patriot.
No sacrifice, St. Paul felt, was too great for him to make — for whom ? " For my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." All Christian believers were his brethren spiritually, but it was the Jews who were his brethren by natural relationship. So let us look at St. Paul's words as they express his patriotic spirit — his love for his fellow-countrymen and his fatherland. He has just finished his glowing description of the position and prospects of the elect people of God. And then, by contrast, the misery of the outcast people once called elect — his own people — wrings his heart with pain. The very idea that in his new enthusiasm for the Catholic Church he can be supposed to be forgetting those who are of his own flesh and blood, stirs him to a profound protest. He solemnly asseverates that the pain wliich Israel's rejection causes him is acute and continuous. He has caught himself at the point of praying to be himself an outcast from Christ, if so be he could bring the people of his own kindred and blood into the Church.
For who indeed could seem to have so good a title to be there ? They are the Israelites — that is, God's own people ; the eye of God was so specially upon this race that He redeemed it and made it His own son ; to them was vouchsafed the shining of His continual presence in the Tabernacle ; to them, in the persons of the patriarchs and of Moses, God gave special covenants, that is to say, pledged His word to them in an unmistakable manner
» T. G. Selby.
ROMANS IX. 3 177
and repeatedly that He should be their God and they should be His people; thus in pursuance of a Divine purpose they were brought under the education of the Divinely given law and ritual worship ; and all this with direct and repeated promises of a more glorious position in the future to be brought about by the Divine long, the Christ who was to be. To them, finally, belongs all the sanctity which can attach to a people from having numbered among its members the holy ones of God ; for of this race were the patriarchs, the friends of God; and of this race, so far as human birth is concerned, came in fact the Christ who, born a Jew, is Sovereign of the universe and ever-blessed God. Surely then, St. Paul implies, that this race, now that the Christ they were expecting is at last come, now that the goal of all God's dealings with them is at last reached, should have fallen outside the circle of His people and should be no longer sharers in the Bonship or the election would seem a result too monstrous to contemplate. The contrast between what they were and were intended for and what in present circumstances they are is indeed appalling.
1. Patriotism is not a Christian virtue. — It is not like humility, or meekness, or patient cross-bearing, which were not virtues at all till Jesus made them so. Much of the noblest patriotism that the world has known has been witnessed in countries that knew nothing of Christ Jesus : the love of country, like a mother's love for her children, blossomed and fruited long before Christ was born. The tale of Thermopylae is not a Christian tale, yet as an instance of patriotism it is well-nigh peerless. The most famous line in literature about dying for one's country was written by a Eoman and a pagan. The Greeks were all patriots ; so are the Japanese. Long before Christ was born, and far beyond Christen- dom, the love of country has been powerful.
^ Danton the Titan rises in this hour, as always in the hour of need. Great is his voice, reverberating from the domes: Citizen-Eepresentatives, shall we not, in such crisis of Fate, lay aside discords ? Eeputation : 0 what is the reputation of this man or of that ? " Que mon nom soit fletri : que la France soit libre : Let my name be blighted : Let France be free ! " ^
^ During the Eusso-Japanese War a Japanese officer wrote ^ Carlyle, French Btvolution, iii. 134, ROMANS — 12
178 ANATHEMA FROM CHRIST
a letter to some friends in England. It was a very calm and business-like epistle, with little trace of sentiment. But after the signature, in true Western fashion, was a postscript, and in the postscript, as occasionally happens, was the news, for it said, " P.S, — I have just been ordered to the front, where it will be a pleasure to die for my country." I wish all postscripts from our Christian homes were as instinct with magnificent sentiment as that. A duty ? A stern necessity ? Even that would have been something ; but a pleasure to die ! ^
I must be gone to the crowd untold
Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old;
Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who died like me, Just for the pride of the old countree.^
2. But patriotism may be Christian patriotism. — Just as the sunshine falling on the trees kindles them into unsuspected splendours, and just as the love of the mother for her child has been ennobled and transfigured by Christ Jesus, so the love of one's country, which is a common heritage implanted in the natural heart by God, has been touched into new glory by Christ Jesus.